At the 2019 Geneva Motor Show,
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Aston-Martin has unveiled not one, but two brand new mid-engine supercars.
This, the Vanquish Vision concept.
And the car we're gonna talk about in this video, the 003, Son of Valkyrie.
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To talk us through the car we have Miles Nurnberger, Aston Martin's Director of Design It's a long way down, isn't it?
[LAUGH] Way down here.
Now I gotta [UNKNOWN]
for this door.
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There we go.
Wow.
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This is quite something, isn't it?
Yeah.
I mean, it's a bit of a spaceship inside.
Well, spaceship is a good description in so many ways because there's actually a lot of space in here.
It's much more roomy and airy than I'd ever expected.
Yeah I mean it is still a very small cabin.
We started when we did the package we started with valykire.
And we added say a hundred mil between the occupants.
There is more space around your head.
But actually we have carved out the space understanding how we learning the package of Valkiyre.
Although the cabin is quite tight from the outside You feel spacious inside.
And we've got also some materials going here, this is 3D printed, all of it?
Yeah.
3D printed car and also the air vents that run around the base of the air post into the door.
Yes, now to through this because it's.
So this is, it's all part of a design flaw that, sort of, started with Valkyrie, but it's about apex ergonomics, perfect ergonomics, and it's about your alignment to the steering wheel, but it's also about the peripheral things, so Reducing them.
So air vents are an interesting thing, aren't they?
They're sort of like radiators in old houses, but actually what you really want is underflow heating, and it's sort of trying to take that away, put it in the background.
Still make a beautiful feature out of it, but actually it's moving out of your eye line and more discreet.
The emphasis is here and obviously the view out in front of you.
Absolutely.
And talking of the [UNKNOWN] in front of me.
So [UNKNOWN] is quite a long way sort of forward.
But actually, you get this amazing sort of wide screen view around.
And I've got a really good view of both the tops of those front arches as well.
Yeah, so bigger amount of work on that and understanding what you do.
Traditionally, what you'd do is, you'd need A/d posts far wider.
Okay.
So that you can see what are nicknamed Beckers point at Aston Martin, after Matt Becker.
Becker points on the tops of the arches, the only thing with that is, is your front layer.
It grows, cuz the cabin has just gotta be bigger.
To be able to see that, so we placed around a lot, basically looking at the base of that A post, to sort of, particularly from where you are now, that--
That is right in the middle of that--
And you read, you still read the mass of the wheel arc to either side and your brain fills in the gap.
So what you actually get, is you feel you've got a windscreen this wide, when in fact you've got this Cockpit front layering.
Absolutely, and just to come back to some of the materials as well, because this seat, this is what I was saying, this seat is fixed here and then the pedal box and the steering wheel would move towards me.
And my feet are, it's still quite an F1 car sort of position, my feet feel like they're Are they both the H1?
Yes so they are both your hip point, your heel point is above your hip point.
It's nowhere near the sort of feet on the bathtub taps that you get in Valkyrie but it's still, it's that.
And it's partly to do with Arrow so we're trying to get the feet up high to get the air passing through and under and outside of the car.
Through there.
But yeah, it's quite unusual still.
It's dialed down but it's more than you'd have in a normal mid engine car, if there is such a thing.
Absolutely, and we've got, obviously, some leather and then what this material is down here.
Yeah, so a real mix of materials.
So you've got some very high tech ballistic nylon materials through here.
Ballistic nylon?
And then Leather and printed carbon, and I'll call it traditional carbon.
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Although a high-tech material.
So we're looking to create a modern craft for the car.
If it was just- I mean, you can't imagine sitting in this car with a Leather and walnut producer.>>No.>> It's bringing that story and bringing it forward with light-weight materials but having that touch point craft points.>>I see.
I am now trying to obviously imagine what this would be like with leather walnut.>>With walnut.>> We won't go down there.
Just as I look around here.
I can't see out of the back.
So we are investing a lot with technology.
So we have cameras to the outside on the side of the car and to the rear of the car.
And basically this is a hybrid mirror.
So you will constantly have an image that's far far better than if you just had a traditional rear view mirror in the car.
And you can actually alternate so you can use, if you indicate, you'll actually bring up an image from the side, or it'll exaggerate an image from the side.
So there's various configurations you can have.
What you find is is you get far better visibility of cameras now than you could have the traditional architecture.
We have seen the [UNKNOWN] eTron now, we've seen them on a car that's actually reached production, so it obviously is going to work.
There is a phone here.
There is yeah.
Yeah.
So within provocative hearing and again lightweighting and how you might use, so this is a test bed for us this car?
That's what we're about how technology we're gonna use in cars.
So, with this, with the way you use your phone in your car today, your phone is to have more than the car.
So this is sort of being provocative to say actually do we Do we need, and we're looking for feedback on this, we're into a dialogue with the customer, could you live without your phone, rather than an integrated sound?
It makes sense, because-
Is it relevant, any longer?
I'm-
Absolutely, and then, this steering wheel looks wonderful, not very round.
I'll point that out, but But quite complicated here as well.
What's going on here?
So yeah, we are putting far more controls, we're trying to minimize everything else here, put the controls.
We have RTDs, renconfigurable touch displays through here, through here, and through here.
We're looking to integrate some [UNKNOWN].
Function, so we might be able to monitor your heart rate, et cetera, through the steering wheel, and actually display it on here.
So it's like a big Fitbit?
It's like a very fast Fitbit, yes.
[LAUGH] Excellent.
Yes, but we're looking at those reconfigural displays.
We don't want necessarily in a car those big displays, but we want something that You can use, so you might pick a function and then you have a sub-option that appears, so it's only when you need it.
We're doing a lot of research into that because we've gone in the industry from very manual controls to You know you go to an extreme like Tesla and you've got a tv in your car practically.
[LAUGH] Actually it's focusing in, what's the product, what do I want from it.
So there's a big amount of research at us on that.
And I think it's worth saying as well in a car that's this fast, I don't know how fast it's going to be but I can guarantee it's going to be very, very fast.
Actually for these sort of people.
I'm sure some F1 drones, perhaps will be buy them.
But a lot of people will not be F1 drones.
And will not have the mental capacity.
To be able to
Yes>> In the nicest possible way, I wouldn't if I was driving this very quickly.
I don't think I would be distracted by lots of buttons.
Tough to do
Yeah>> It's nice to keep it uncluster isn't it.
Yeah, Wow.
Shall we go and have a look at the outside?
Yeah, let's do.
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Yeah, [INAUDIBLE] that door.
Yes.
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I love the fact that you can see all the way down to the front suspension there.
It really becomes so obvious, doesn't it?
And you look in here, and you see the cameras.
Lets get into some of the Aero features.
That here that is for the HVAC, is that right.
HVAC, Ventilation through there, HVAC through there.
Side vents are actually feeding, they run through the door, feed into the engine, hence you are running air through the center of the car.
Through that.
Wow.
So to keep presumably airflow high, so you can-
Just to keep everything neat and tidy.
Actually taking the air there is actually quite clean to actually take through the car, so you don't need such a big cross-sectional area to feed the engine.
Wow.
And then down at the front we've got the I suppose this is the face we're getting now of we've seen on Valkyrie and on Vanquish Vision Concept as well.
These lights, we've got to talk about them.
Yes they are very much derived directly from Valkyrie.
This car is world molugated so they have to evolve a bit but they are very very lightweight.
So they'll probably come in a little bit heavier than Valkyrie because of some of those constraints, but a set of lamps of this car, a whole set, is about the same weight as one lamp on a normal Aston.
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So huge weight saving.
On Valkyrie, we in fact use 3D-printed carbon parts in the headlamp.
I mean, every time it's saving grams, but it all adds up in the way you do it.
So we expose all the engineering of the lamp.
So most of that in a normal car gets hidden.
We decided to make the beautiful engineering, expose it.
It's like the F1 suspension.
You know, you take the cover off of an F1 car And you look in there.
You think, wow.
It's actually super technical, isn't it?
Yeah.
But there's a beauty in that precision.
Absolutely.
And we're trying to get it back into our headlamps like that.
And it makes it super lightweight as well.
Outstanding.
One of the things.
So I read Adrian [UNKNOWN] book on how to build a racecar and.
Can't say I've understood all of it, but I did understand some of this.
Or at least recognize things like this down here which, obviously you see on modern F1 cars, I noticed it further up on the floor there which is creating 4 seasons.
Creating 4 season usually is about managing wake around the front tire.
Which ten years ago in road cars Five years ago in road cars no one was looking at.
Even in F1 ten years ago it wasn't really a thing.
But that generation of vortexes to guide and create a path for the air to follow underneath the car and manage it is now a big thing on road cars.
Yeah, absolutely.
Talking about the [UNKNOWN] should we move further around the car.
We'll put the doors down so we can then do it very, very gently.
A wonder there aren't hundreds of these hanging around down here.
So the other thing that we should talk about on this car in terms of the arrow is the flex foil technology.
What is that?
So, basically we are creating a morphing aero surface.
So the carbon fiber on the back can actually bend, re-profile itself to either create more downforce or the other thing is you tend to get to a point where actually you are generating too much downforce today.
So it actually backs it off so that you get the right And you don't overload the tires.
So that is actually reconfigurable.
We have a system running on this, which is sort of a pretty cool concept, which only moves a small amount.
The final one will move three, four times the amount and will actuate far faster.
So we're doing that on the rear on the car, and we're also looking, in the front wing area that we were looking earlier, we're looking at
We haven't decided exactly what, we're looking at various concepts and either within the wing flaps or to actually elongate the whole wing system forward on the car.
Wow, and you mentioned as well sort of you looked at When you're not sure if it's going include almost cooling openings could open up and then close.
Once you go into that technology you're sort of like, What else can i do with it?
So it was like actually there's cooling requirements but actually what happens basically is you generaly you say, Maximum cooling requirements and you just got to plunk that on the car.
You sort of think, I can be more intelligent than that.
I can open the cord when I need to, I keep the camera more efficient more error efficient when it doesn't need a calling.
So we we're looking at some of the openings of the air vents also we're doing that.
And I think we moved away from that slightly, but in some you might see in the future.
Yeah.
Which talk about was.
Under here, or going to be under here as well.
Yep
So we've got a turbo charged V6 engine with hybrid technology and
Which drives the rear wheels and we have a P4 electric motor driving the front.
So we have four wheeled drive on this car.
Wow, so that, it's quite one of the things that This is called Son of Valkyrie, and Valkyrie's such a halo project that everyone's obviously incredibly excited about, and all the technology going into that.
There's a risk that with this, it's seen as [UNKNOWN] relation somehow.
But I think having that A part which, ironically there's a certain other company that's producing a hypercar that might have a turbocharged V6 and various hybrid parts instead of an element of almost Trolling the fact that your massacre has that sort of engine in it.
It is.
I mean Valkyrie had the All right, so once we think about like what does the V12 because A, there's a certain pricepoint and the ability to make the engine we have in that when this engine, you know, this engine is gonna go across a number of cars And such that we had to design an engine that would work around the world in larger numbers and meet all of our criteria that we have to as a manufacturer
To get some idea as to where this sits the factory is up there redefining is this sort of Do we have numbers of how many might be produced or anything like that?
Say 500 coup��s will be produced of the car.
Right, coup��s?
Yeah.
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We should leave it at that.
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And approximate price is around $1 million, probably just slightly under, it depends where you are in the world and taxes [UNKNOWN]
Okay, so that puts it in the ballpark with other cars that people might sort of understand?
And in terms of performance, I mean, you're in the world of P1, LaFerrari, [UNKNOWN], but next generation.
So we aim to be obviously with Valkyrie and we're coming down, but we aim to be the best of that generation of
1 million pounds [UNKNOWN].
Absolutely.
And it's worth saying as well that this is being very much developed.
Again, sort of with Red Bull in terms of it will be in the [UNKNOWN] a lot before [CROSSTALK].
Dynamics.
Dynamically, aerodynamically.
We've in fact opened a design studio that's actually based in Red Bull's F1 campus, so.
This car and the vision concept that we talked about earlier, they are both being developed there.
So there is a strong blood line of work getting on there.
I see.
Calm body, calm chasy what I see.
Come and look at it.
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It's something.
Even more extraordinary, somehow, about, because it's, you can't call it a more normal looking car, can you?
But to get around the back and just see these.
I mean, I Go in sleep in there.
Gotta laugh it's sort of.>> You know in fact, I used to tease Adriane that that's where there boot of the car was.
[laughs].
So much space through the tunnel.
The trouser legs they were sometimes called through the car, buried around the car.
So yes again, pushing very hard in terms of the way.
You know, it's fascinating working with Adriane.
He.
My view when I've seen is he basically gives all the guys around him too little space an Aries king you get them too little space they have to go and beg for every millimeter.
And you see what happened is not an inch left over.
There is nothing and it's the same with this we take the same philosophy into that.
It is everything.
In a tailored, in Aston Martin terms,
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Tailored around the gear box to basic maximize the size of the fuse and the outcome.
I see.
And what I'm saying as well, 003.
Because it's the third one in its intercourse.
Yes so it's just,
Valkyrie, Valkyrie AMR, and then this one.
Yes, and then this one.
And I'm sure at some point we will probably get a better name.
Place your bets now.
[LAUGH] Probably begin [UNKNOWN] I imagine.
I think so.
But I don't know yet.
I am going from valet straight down to the bookies now and put a five on them.
I get people emailing me saying I hear the name [UNKNOWN] [LAUGH]
Excellent there we go.
Miles, thank you very much, indeed.
No problem.
Thank you.
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