The Koenigsegg Gemera's Hot & Cold Cupholders Took Two Years To Perfect

The recent Monterey Car Week extravaganza gave Koenigsegg the opportunity to show off its updated Gemera megacar, and James Walker from YouTube channel Mr JWW spent time with Christian von Koenigsegg to learn all about the development updates as the vehicle gets closer to production.

The updates are mainly centered around the new V8 engine option, but there are tidbits of information on the heated and cooled cupholders, the expanded luggage space in the trunk, the available roof rack and accompanying storage box, and when we can expect the car to reach production.

If you prefer your media in audiovisual format, watch the video below. If you'd prefer to endure the mundane task of reading, scroll on, but we'd recommend watching anyway, just to hear the Gemera's raucous engine note...

The video opens with presenter James extricating himself from the trunk of the Koenigsegg Gemera, illustrating just how much space is hiding beneath the surface.

One factor in increasing space was the decision to produce the rear crash structure of carbon fiber. This saved crucial millimeters and proved to be more effective in dissipating energy from a crash. As a result, Koenigsegg was able to change the original luggage layout (three carry-on suitcases in the trunk and one in the frunk) to fit all four adult occupants' luggage in the trunk, despite the larger V8 being sited just ahead. With this development, Koenigsegg was able to change the front end, adding an S-duct for improved downforce.

The luggage is pretty special in its own right. As you'd expect, you can color-match this to the exact finish of your Gemera, but a particular highlight is that the wheels match the alloys on the car. This remains the case even if you order your Gemera with exposed carbon fiber wheels.

The Dark Matter e-motor (an evolution of the Quark e-motor) added power with less weight and space than the previous hybrid setup, thanks to two fewer inverters.

As you may recall, the original version of the Gemera once considered going the normally aspirated V8 route, but packaging this with an electric component proved problematic. So, how did the bi-turbocharged V8 option happen? As it turns out, this was the result of a single engineer's imagination. He had been playing with computer-aided design just to see how far the V8 engine from the Jesko was from fitting in the Gemera, and it looked very close. The only downside was that the twin-turbo engine would encroach on the rear subframe. Once others on the Koenigsegg team realized what the engineer was doing, they started bouncing ideas off each other.

That's when the idea for a hot vee engine came about, and this saved a lot of space. The team had to cast new cylinder heads and develop new intakes, intercoolers, and exhausts, but the 2,269-horsepower juice was clearly worth the engineering squeeze.

Freeing up more space also allowed Koenigsegg to fit a 115-liter/30.4-gallon gas tank, enabling a potential range of over 1,000 kilometers/621 miles. But if there still isn't enough luggage space for your long journey, fear not. Koenigsegg has added neat clasps to the roof, allowing customers to fit an aerodynamically-shaped roof rack, which can be accompanied by a shapely roof box. With this equipped, Christian von Koenigsegg says that the car has a sensor to restrict it to 300 kph/186 mph. We didn't even think going that fast with a full complement of passengers and their luggage would be possible, but here we are.

What makes all this amazing is that, just a year ago, the Light Speed Tourbillion Transmission that wraps around this V8 did not exist in this form. We were still reeling from the manual-and-automatic transmission setup. The Dark Matter e-motor also did not exist. And the idea of a V8 engine seemed physically impossible.

One of our favorite details is the cupholder arrangement, which offers one heated and one cooled cupholder for each passenger. This can maintain temperatures as high as 50° Celsius/122° Fahrenheit or as low as 6° C/42.8° F, and it does this simultaneously using an aerodynamic principle called the Peltier thermoelectric effect. This is described as the heat exchange that results when an electric current passes through two dissimilar conductors.

Basically, there's a direct correlation between current and temperature, and passing a current through the right kind of circuit causes a very effective heat exchange, where one side is actively heated, and the other becomes cool automatically. Conversely, actively cooling one side turns the opposite side of the circuit into a heat sink. It's an ingenious solution, but it took over two years to perfect.

There's so much to get excited about, especially lap times. This car has the highest horsepower per pound of any Koenigsegg so far. Thanks to all-wheel drive with four-wheel torque vectoring, Koenigsegg can also put more power to the ground, with Christian saying that the simulations show "insane" lap times on some of the world's "longer tracks." He also notes that the Gemera is lighter than a Rimac Nevera... Could a Nurburgring lap time from this car become the quickest? We hope to find out in the next couple of years.

Building of pre-production vehicles will take place over the next six to eight months, after which testing will begin. Production of customer cars will begin next year, with deliveries to take place from the first half of 2025.