Koenigsegg is more than just a super hard word to spell. It just so happens also to be one of the most coveted hypercar companies in the world. Koenigsegg is in the unicorn class of car that is so rare they might as well not exist. That being said, the ultimate hypercar is getting even more hyper with the announcement that it plans to use volcanoes as a fuel source for its car. 

Can Koenigsegg really power a car with a volcano? 

You don’t become the King of the hypercar realm without pushing and often going past the boundaries of technology. Like Rimac or Pagani, Koenigsegg is constantly going for the most extreme version of itself. 

In 2017, the Koenigsegg Agera RS broke a new production car speed record, and it also produced the first camless engine called the Freevalve. Koenigsegg also developed the Direct-drive, which completely gets rid of the transmission. Koenigsegg is always up to something, and now it seems its engineers are playing around with the idea of including volcano fuel to the list of sci-fi tech.

What is biofuel 

According to CarBuzz, Koenigsegg’s founder, Christian von Koenigsegg, said in an interview with Bloomberg that the company experimented with ultra-high-voltage battery packs and biofuel from semi-active volcanoes to create carbon-neutral hypercars. See! Koenigsegg is trying to make volcano cars. 

“So there is this technology from Iceland, it was invented there, where they cap the CO2 emittance from semi-active volcanoes and convert that into methanol,” Christian von Koenigsegg explained.

Koenigsegg went on to say, “And, if you take that methanol and you power the plants that do the conversion of other fuels and then power the ship that transports those fuels to Europe or the U.S. or Asia, wherever it goes, you put the fuel completely CO2-neutral into the vehicle.”

Mr. Hypercar even went so fast as to say that cars running on this “volcanol” fuel can “correct after treatment systems” and even “clean up the particles in the atmosphere while you’re using the engine.” 

Why not just build electric cars? 

Volcano cars are definitely the coolest thing I have ever heard of, but it seems like the hardest way to make an alternative fuel possible. Koenigsegg isn’t completely against electric cars or anything like that. The Koenigsegg Regera hypercar comes in a hybrid version as does the Gemera. The Gemera is powered by a turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-three engine and three electric motors producing a combined 1,700 hp.

Although the hypercar builder clearly sees the value of battery power, it is still hesitant to go full EV because the weight of the batteries is unacceptable when building these hypercars. These are meant to be blindingly fast, first and foremost. 

Basically, they love combustion but are obviously willing to go to great lengths to secure combustion technology that isn’t harmful to the planet. I, for one, wish Koenigsegg all the luck in the world for making volcano cars a real thing. The eight-year-old me needs it.