What Aston Martin’s Latest Speedster Reveals About The Future Of Automaking

Aston Martin’s newly unveiled DBR22 isn’t just the latest in head-turning V12 sports car elegance.

It also represents a milestone in automotive 3D printing and gives us a glimpse into the future of intelligent vehicle production.

In a first for Aston Martin, the DBR22’s subframe is built from multiple 3D printed parts bonded together. This new design concept was made possible through a collaboration with Divergent, a pioneer in the automotive 3D printing space. The DBR22 also represents a first for Divergent: until now its production system had only been deployed by its sister company, hypercar builder Czinger.

Aston Martin’s collaboration with Divergent to incorporate a super-light subframe that doesn’t compromise on stiffness is an exciting development for the industry because it amounts to an early example of “factory in a box” automotive production.

As Kevin Czinger, founder of Divergent and Czinger, explained in an interview, the companies have developed what they call the Divergent Adaptive Production System (DAPS) aimed at achieving “perfect structure optimization while shortening the time it takes to get new, innovative, sustainable ideas into production”.

It’s the type of development that will help revolutionize the automotive industry’s traditionally snail-paced concept-to-production processes, and should lead to much-needed vehicle design innovation.

“We’re delighted that Aston Martin is the first of many automotive partners who have understood the value of this,” Czinger said.

A shake-up of these old production processes has already started within some sectors of the industry. Innovators such as TeslaTSLA
have shown agility that their more established competitors lacked, one example being how they overcame microchip supply chain challenges during the pandemic. Tesla has also gotten a lot of attention recently for its Giga Press, which “upends” traditional methods and systems.

Another automaker focused on production innovation is British startup Arrival which has ambitious plans to develop environmentally sustainable “micro factories” so its electric vans and buses can be manufactured near the city centers where they will be used.

Arrival is planning to build its EVs in a modular, almost Lego-like manner, physically close to, and more attuned to local demand. With extensive use of autonomous robots they feel they can create a dynamic manufacturing operation that can flex in line with local customer demand. It believes its concept can be profitable at volumes in the thousands of vehicles rather than the traditional hundreds of thousands.

Additive manufacturing initiatives such as these offer huge potential to transform the auto sector into a greener, more consumer-friendly industry capable of delivering the modern, flexible transport solutions the world needs.

Czinger said Divergent’s focus was on “designing and manufacturing vehicles to minimize material and energy use while maximizing performance”.

He believes the industry needs to look at the full emissions picture—from mining to manufacturing to operating to end of life disposal or recycling—using life cycle assessment.

“In some instances, for example, a given EV’s battery manufacturing can generate more CO2 than the tailpipe exhaust of an average internal combustion engine car driven 80,000 miles.”

By adopting this type of mindset, and embracing the potential that 3D printing offers, automakers can shift their production processes into high gear, and get them powering along like a V12 twin-turbo speedster.