This is one of the fastest cars in the world. It can go from 0 to 60 m an hour in 2. 8 seconds.
You've heard of billionaires feuding online, but you've never seen anything like this. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome CEO and founder of Christian Kernig. The CEO of Koigseg, a man who usually keeps quiet, just wiped the floor with Elon Musk in a way no one expected.
And when the comment reached Musk, he completely lost it. This isn't just a clash over cars. It's a brutal collision of two completely different worlds.
Here, I'm 22 years old. I had started my first company when I was 19. It was a trading company.
Raw hypercar engineering versus electric empire building. What started as mutual respect spiraled into one of the most unexpected showdowns in automotive history. So, why did you decide to build this car?
It was my childhood dream. I had a dream since I can remember. I was 56 years old.
And by the end of this video, you'll understand exactly why the Swedish underdog. In the world of supercars, most stories start the same way with old money, luxury brands, and billion-dollar corporations. But Christian von Koigseg's story, it's nothing like that.
It starts in a tiny town in Sweden, far away from the flashing lights of Ferrari, Lamborghini, or Tesla. No family fortune, no giant investors, just a young man with an obsession and a dream that everyone told him was impossible. Christian von Kunigseg was only 22 when he decided he was going to build the world's fastest, most advanced car.
Here I'm 22 years old. I had started my first company when I was 19. It was a trading company.
Not join an existing company, not work for someone else. He wanted to start his own. And not just any car company, one that would challenge the titans of the industry.
The odds zero. The resources none. But the ambition off the charts, he poured everything he had into that dream.
He sold his belongings, maxed out every loan he could find, and set up a workshop in an abandoned airfield in Engleholm, Sweden. No celebrity endorsements, no Silicon Valley cash injections. Just him, a small team, and a garage full of sketches, carbon fiber, and engine parts.
What he built over the next two decades became something the automotive world had never seen. While companies like Ferrari and Bugatti leaned on their heritage and deep pockets, Koigseg quietly started rewriting the rule book. He wasn't interested in tradition.
He was interested in physics, speed, and mechanical perfection. His company, Kunigseg AutomotiveAB, created cars that seemed impossible on paper. the CC8S, the CCR, the Agiraa RS.
Cars that didn't just compete with the Giants, but beat them. In 2017, the Aggera RS shattered the world's speed record, hitting an average of 277. 9 mph, something no one thought a small independent Swedish company could ever pull off.
And while all this was happening over in California, another man was rising in the automotive world, Elon Musk. But while Musk had Wall Street, investors, and media hype, Christian had something else. An obsession with engineering and a refusal to follow the herd.
On paper, they couldn't have been more different. Musk was building electric cars for the masses, trying to change the world. Koigseg was building hypercars for the few, trying to perfect it.
But what nobody realized back then is that these two very different paths were on a quiet collision course. Because while Christian von Kernoseg rarely made headlines outside the hypercar bubble, behind the scenes, he was paying attention. He was watching Tesla's rise, the shift toward electric everything, and how the world started ignoring things like weight, balance, and real driver connection, the things he spent his life perfecting.
And as the years went on, admiration turned to skepticism. The quiet Swedish underdog, who had once praised the electric pioneer, was starting to question where this was all going. What nobody knew at the time is that this quiet rivalry was building towards something big.
Something that would leave the automotive world stunned and one of the world's loudest billionaires publicly fuming. But we're not there yet. First, you need to know how two very different visions of the future, one Swedish, one American, slowly, quietly started to clash.
And trust me, it only gets better. Breaking the hypercar rules. If you ask most car makers what defines a hypercar, they'll give you the usual checklist, outrageous horsepower, eye watering price tag, and a badge that looks good on a billionaire's Instagram.
But Christian von Kunigseg wasn't interested in any of that. He wasn't trying to sell a lifestyle. He was trying to bend the laws of physics.
From the start, Kernigseg's approach to building cars was the opposite of what the industry had been doing for decades. Where others added luxury features and bloated designs, Christian stripped everything down to one thing, performance. Every inch of a Kunigseg hypercar exists for one reason, to make it faster, lighter, and more advanced than anything else on the planet.
The result, machines like the Agiraa RS, which didn't just flirt with the speed limit, it obliterated it. In 2017, it became the fastest production car in the world, clocking an average speed of 277. 9 mph on a public road.
No marketing stunt, no excuses, just brutal mechanical proof that a small Swedish company could outenineer the biggest names in the game. But it wasn't just about speed. Christian's obsession went deeper.
He wasn't satisfied with using off-the-shelf technology or copying what other manufacturers were doing. Instead, he built things no one else dared to try. Take the Reggera for example.
A hypercar without a traditional gearbox. Something that in the world of petrol heads sounded like sacrilege. But Koigseg invented an entirely new system called direct drive.
Blending a twin turbo V8 with three electric motors, giving drivers instant torque without the weight and complexity of a transmission. No one else had done it. No one else even thought to try.
Then there was the free valve technology. an internal combustion engine design without cam shafts, giving the driver precise control over every valve, every cylinder at every moment. Again, nobody else was doing it.
Why? Because it was too complicated, too risky. But that's exactly what Christian wanted to build things that were technically impossible, then prove they weren't.
While the rest of the automotive world was busy adding cup holders, digital dashboards, and autonomous driving systems, Koigseg was in a workshop sweating over airflow dynamics and lightweight materials. He wasn't trying to make cars easier to drive. He wanted them to be thrilling, dangerous, and mechanical at their core.
And it worked. Year after year, Koigseg's cars didn't just break records. They made the competition look lazy.
The Jesco, the Reira, the Jira, each one a masterpiece of engineering built in limited numbers and sold to those who wanted something more than just another fast car. They wanted a machine with a soul. But here's the thing, not everyone agreed with that philosophy.
Because while Christian was perfecting the art of analog meets digital hypercars, another movement was brewing halfway around the world. A movement that didn't care about gear ratios, engine acoustics, or driver feel. A movement led by a man who believed the future wasn't about driving.
It was about efficiency, autonomy, and software. And that movement was about to collide with everything Koigseg stood for. You see, Christian von Kernikseg had spent decades building machines for people who love to drive.
But what happens when the world starts falling in love with machines that drive themselves? That's where the story starts to shift. And what comes next?
It's the beginning of a clash that no one saw coming. The rise of Tesla and the two roads. While Christian von Kernikseg was quietly rewriting the rules of hypercar engineering in Sweden across the Atlantic, a very different story was unfolding.
One that wasn't about carbon fiber monokes or turbocharged V8s. It was about batteries, mass production, and a man who didn't just want to change the car industry. He wanted to change the world.
That man, of course, was Elon Musk. In the early 2000s, as Koig Sig was testing prototypes and fine-tuning air flow, Tesla was just an idea, a startup no one took seriously. An electric car company at a time when electric cars were seen as glorified golf carts.
Most of the auto industry laughed them off. But Musk wasn't in it to build a few nice cars. He was building a movement.
By 2012, when Tesla launched the Model S, everything changed. It wasn't just a decent electric car. It was fast, sleek, and desirable.
The public loved it. The media couldn't get enough of it. And suddenly, the conversation shifted.
People weren't talking about Ferrari, Lamborghini, or even Koigseg anymore. They were talking about Tesla. The Model S was followed by the Model 3, the Model X, the Model Y.
And with each release, Musk's vision became clearer. He wasn't aiming for niche performance. He wanted to make electric mobility the default, to change transportation forever.
And the world ate it up. Governments began banning petrol engines. Investors poured billions into electric startups.
Headlines everywhere declared, "The future is electric. " But while the world was cheering, somewhere in Sweden, Christian von Kernigseg was watching, and he wasn't cheering, he was calculating. At first, there was no tension, no rivalry.
Christian even admitted in interviews that he admired Elon Musk's achievements. After all, it's hard not to respect a man who took on the entire automotive industry and won. Koigseg, like Musk, had built his company from nothing.
He understood what it took to survive in a business filled with giants. But admiration doesn't always mean agreement. Because while Musk was building a future powered by mass production, data, and algorithms, Koigseg was still fighting for something far more analog.
The pure mechanical thrill of driving. Tesla's rise wasn't just disrupting the car market. It was disrupting the entire philosophy Koigseg believed in.
You see, Christian wasn't interested in cars that could drive themselves. He didn't care about touchscreen dashboards, autopilot systems, or who could fit the biggest battery under the floor. He believed driving was an experience, something you could feel in your hands, in your chest, in the pit of your stomach.
And as the years passed, those two roads, one electric, one mechanical, kept diverging. At first, their paths ran parallel. Both men were innovators.
Both were building impossible machines. But slowly, quietly, the gap between them started to widen. And while the public saw two visionaries, behind the scenes, something else was brewing.
Because when two people build their legacies on completely opposite philosophies, it's only a matter of time before those philosophies collide. What no one realized at the time was that the admiration Kernigseg had once openly shared for Elon Musk wasn't as solid as it seemed. In fact, it was already starting to crack.
And soon you'll see exactly when and why that respect began to fade. Praise and distance, a friendship fades. There was a time when Christian von Kernigseg spoke about Elon Musk the way most people talk about their heroes.
In interviews, he didn't hold back. He called Musk's achievements amazing. He said he was a great fan.
He even admitted he had bought Tesla shares early, close to the company's IPO, and made what he described as easy money off of them. That's how much he believed in what Elon was doing back then. For a guy like Christian who spent decades fighting uphill battles without financial backers or tech billionaires in his corner, that praise wasn't cheap.
He admired the hustle. He respected the risk and he understood what it took to build something from nothing because he had lived it too. But admiration in this industry has an expiration date.
It started small, barely noticeable. Christian's tone in interviews became a little cooler when Tesla came up. The praise grew shorter.
The excitement faded and every now and then between the lines you could hear something else creeping in. Skepticism. You see, Koigseg had always been about one thing, the connection between man and machine.
Every car he built was handcrafted, overengineered, and deliberately mechanical. It was never about convenience. It was about creating a raw, exhilarating experience.
Something you could feel through the steering wheel. Something that made your heart race. And the more Tesla leaned into the future, self-driving systems, oversized touchcreens, algorithmic driving, the further that future felt from Kunigseg's world.
Christian started speaking publicly about how adding massive batteries to cars wasn't a real solution. He talked about how heavy EVs were becoming, how they sacrificed handling and balance in the name of straight line speed and range numbers. And while he never mentioned Elon by name, the message was clear.
Behind the polite interviews and measured statements, Christian was quietly drawing a line in the sand. It wasn't just about technology anymore. It was about two completely different ideas of what a car should be.
For Musk, cars were tools, efficient, quiet, seamless. For Kernigseg, cars were experiences, loud, imperfect, thrilling. And as Tesla's empire grew, Christian watched the industry rush to follow, ditching combustion engines, embracing automation, and chasing range numbers like they were the only thing that mattered.
And that for Koigseg was the problem. The man who once openly admired Elon Musk was now questioning if the entire industry had lost its soul chasing his vision. Industry insiders noticed.
Automotive journalists started pointing out the shift. Koigseg wasn't named dropping Tesla anymore. He wasn't buying more stock.
He wasn't throwing compliments across the Atlantic. Instead, he was doubling down on what made his cars different, lighter, louder, more analog. And behind the scenes, the gap between these two men was growing wider by the day.
But admiration turning to distance is one thing. What happened next was something else entirely. Because when Christian von Koigseg finally spoke his mind without the filter, without the PR friendly quotes, it didn't just make headlines, it made Elon Musk furious.
But we're not there yet. First, you need to understand exactly what Koigseg believed Tesla was doing wrong and why he thought the future Elon was selling wasn't the one we should want. The battery debate.
Weight versus range. For most people, the Tesla story is a fairy tale. A company that took electric cars from boring science projects to sleek and insanely fast machines.
They made going green cool. They made EVs desirable and they made billions doing it. But for Christian von Kernigseg, there was something about that story that didn't sit right.
As Tesla's popularity exploded, so did the numbers. 0 to 60 in under two seconds. Quartermile times that embarrassed milliondoll hypercars.
Range estimates that stretched farther and farther with every new battery pack. On paper, it was all impressive, impossible even. But Christian wasn't reading the fine print.
He was looking under the hood. And what he saw bothered him. For Koigseg, performance wasn't just about numbers.
It was about physics, balance, weight distribution, and the feeling you got when you wrapped your hands around the steering wheel. But Tesla's method of chasing performance was simple. More batteries, more power, more weight.
Christian started pointing it out politely at first. In interviews, he began explaining why throwing huge battery packs into a car was, in his view, the wrong way forward. Yes, it made for impressive acceleration.
Yes, it extended range, but it also made the cars heavy, sluggish in corners, and fundamentally less engaging to drive. Weight was the enemy. Always had been.
In the hypercar world, every gram matters. Engineers spend years shaving ounces off components because even the slightest weight gain changes how a car behaves. But Tesla, they were loading their cars with battery packs that weighed nearly half a ton.
To Christian, it wasn't elegant engineering. It was brute force. And as Tesla's influence grew, more and more manufacturers started following their lead.
Everyone wanted faster EVs, longer ranges, bigger batteries. Christian saw the trend creeping into the performance sector, the world he had fought so hard to define, and he didn't like where it was going. In one interview, he even joked that Tesla's insane acceleration numbers had embarrassed companies like his, forcing them to re-evaluate their benchmarks.
But behind the smile, the message was clear. This isn't how you build real performance. He wasn't alone in that thinking.
Purists, engineers, and old school drivers echoed the same concerns. But Christian wasn't just a critic. He was an innovator.
And he wasn't about to sit back while the future of performance driving was reduced to battery size and 0 to 60 bragging rights. So he doubled down on what he believed in. Kernigseg developed hybrid systems that use lightweight electric motors alongside high revving combustion engines.
They created battery packs that were smaller, more efficient, and integrated into the car without sacrificing handling. And while the rest of the industry raced to catch up to Tesla, Koigseg quietly worked on something else. Something that could bridge the gap without giving up the soul of driving.
The difference in philosophy couldn't have been clearer. Elon Musk wanted to automate, electrify, and mass-produce the future. Christian von Kernigseg wanted to preserve the mechanical thrill of performance and reimagine what it meant to drive.
And it wasn't just a technical disagreement anymore because the more Christian talked about weight, balance, and real driving feel, the more it felt like he wasn't just criticizing Tesla's engineering. He was criticizing Tesla's entire ideology. The divide was growing and soon it wouldn't be polite.
It wouldn't be subtle. It would be public, brutal, and unforgettable. But before that moment came, Christian had one more move to make.
A move that sent a message to the entire industry, including one person in particular. And that's what we'll get into next. The JRA challenge.
By the late 20110s, the automotive world was no longer asking if electric cars would take over. It was only a question of when. Tesla wasn't just dominating headlines.
They were changing legislation, shifting markets, and forcing the old guard to either evolve or die. Every major car maker scrambled to electrify their lineups. And in the middle of all that noise, Christian von Kunigseg did something unexpected.
He didn't join the race. He rewrote the playbook again. In 2020, Kunigseg unveiled the JRA, a car that on the surface shouldn't exist.
It wasn't a two-seater hypercar. It wasn't a track monster. It was something completely new, a mega GT, as they called it.
A fourseater family hypercar with over 1,700 horsepower, a tiny 3cylinder engine, and three electric motors. The world went nuts. We have a full mega car.
You have an interior space never before seen in esports car. This wasn't just a response to Tesla or the EV craze. This was Koigseg's way of saying, "We see the future, but we'll get there our way.
" The JRA wasn't weighed down by oversized batteries. It wasn't soulless or sterile. It blended electric power with mechanical madness, keeping the lightweight driver focused philosophy intact.
But that wasn't the end of it. A year after revealing the hybrid JRA, Christian dropped another bombshell. He announced that Koigseg would also offer a fully electric version of the Jira, no combustion engine at all.
And just like that, Koigseg stepped into Tesla's territory, but not like everyone else. Because while other companies were chasing range numbers and software gimmicks, Koigseg's approach to an electric hypercar wasn't about autopilot features or touchscreens. It was about raw mechanical feel, preserving what made driving exciting, even without a combustion engine.
Industry insiders immediately started whispering, "Is this a direct shot at Tesla? " The timing was suspicious. Tesla had just teased their second generation Roadster, a car promising outrageous acceleration and over 600 m of range.
But Christian wasn't interested in range. He wasn't building a roadtrip EV. He was building a machine that would terrify you in the best way possible every time you touch the accelerator.
The media started framing the narrative. Koigseg versus Musk. Two visions of the future colliding.
And whether Christian meant it that way or not, the comparisons kept coming. People began to notice how different the JRA's design philosophy was. where Tesla stripped out physical controls and driver involvement, Koigseg doubled down on making the driver feel every millisecond of acceleration, every ounce of torque.
Elon Musk remained quiet on the matter, publicly at least. But behind the scenes, people close to both companies claimed that Musk was paying attention, that he didn't like the way Koigseg's subtle jabs about battery weight and driving feel were being picked up by the media, that the Swedish hypercar genius, who once openly admired him, was now shaping the narrative against Tesla's philosophy. And the final spark, it came during a private event when someone asked Christian about the future of EVs and how Tesla had changed the game.
What he said in response wasn't meant for headlines, but it made them anyway because at that moment, Christian von Koneigseg stopped hinting. He made it personal. And when the comment reached Elon Musk, he completely lost it.
What Christian said and how Elon reacted is what we'll get into next. The moment everything exploded. It happened behind closed doors at a private industry Q&A during an automotive event in Europe.
Nothing fancy, no cameras, just a handful of executives, engineers, and journalists, all tossing polite questions back and forth until someone brought up the elephant in the room. A reporter asked Christian Fon Koigseg what he thought about Tesla's dominance in the EV space and whether he believed hypercar makers like Koigseg could even stay relevant in a world run by Elon Musk. According to reports, Christian smiled.
For a second, it seemed like he'd give the usual diplomatic answer, the one he'd given a hundred times before. but instead he leaned back, laughed under his breath, and casually dropped a line that would send the entire automotive world into meltdown. Tell Elon I said, "F you.
We build real cars, not appliances. " The room froze. Nobody was sure if he was joking or dead serious, but either way, it was too late.
That sentence, five words and a jab at the heart of Musk's philosophy made its way out of that private room and onto the internet within hours. And when it reached Elon, he completely lost it. Sources close to Tesla say Musk was livid.
He ranted to his inner circle, calling Kernigseg's cars irrelevant toys for the ultra rich, dismissing Christian as a small-time engineer who doesn't understand the future. Screenshots of deleted tweets circulated online. Harsh, bitter comments Musk had supposedly fired off and quickly removed, but the damage was done.
For years, their clash had been quiet. A difference in philosophy, a few technical disagreements, maybe a little coldness in interviews, but now it was personal. The Koigseg CEO, the man who once called himself a fan, had just wiped the floor with Elon Musk in front of the entire industry with five words.
And Musk completely lost it. And the best part, Christian never issued a follow-up, no apology, no clarification because at the end of the day, he wasn't trying to win headlines. He was just telling the truth exactly the way he saw it.
And Elon Musk wasn't used to being told off by the quiet guy from Sweden. So now the question is, was Christian von Kernigseg simply defending the soul of driving or did he just expose the one thing Elon Musk can't control? What do you think?
