We get asked dozens of the same questions every day, so here is a list of all the answers to the most common ones.

1. Drive your cars in Automation?
2. Diesels, Wankels, 2-Strokes, Hybrids, and Electrics?
3. Which engine configurations will be in the core game, DLC?
4. W-Engines, VR-Engines, custom bank angles, and firing order?
5. Motorcycles, 3-wheelers, large trucks, micro-cars, busses, tractors, multi-axle, tracked vehicles?

6. Superchargers, more turbo options, different turbo configurations?
7. Hemis, sidevalve, and flathead engines?
8. Extend the game to before year 1946?
9. Extend the game to beyond year 2020?
10. 12k+ RPM rev limit, higher Octane fuels?

11. When will Automation be released?
12. Will Automation be on Mac / Linux / Mobile / Console?
13. What if you run out of money / get hit by a bus?
14. If buy now, do I get the finished game?
15. When will “feature X” be released?

16. Will you add “car body X” or “fixture Y”?
17. Will you be able to design car interiors?
18. Can I help? Can I help translate?
19. Can I become a Beta Tester?
20. How do I get V16 engines?


As a previously 3- and nowadays 7-man team, Automation is a very ambitious and complex project as is, and we’re dedicated to making it high quality, realistic and fun. To create a realistic driving simulator would take a 20-man team at least 3 years and about 3 million dollars to make. Besides, there is very strong competition in that market already. So driving in Automation will never happen, for that and other reasons.

BUT we do collaborate with BeamNG and have created an exporter that allows you to drive your designs in BeamNG.drive, the first version of the exporter was released on July 13th 2018. There might be exporters to other driving / racing games in future, but that would require significant input from the developer of the respective target game.

None of these will be part of the core game (Automation 1.0) because of the massive amounts of development time and cost they would add. The most popular request seem to be Diesel engines and Wankel rotaries. Those would be considered for DLC after the full game is released, assuming we’re successful enough to keep working on Automation after its release.

For a more in depth answer, check out this video, it is old but still relevant in that regard. And no, implementing Diesel engines isn’t as simple as adding “Diesel” to the list of available fuel types. ;)

In the core game: I3, I4, I5, I6, V6, V8, V10, V12, V16 (Info: V16 FAQ), Boxer-4, Boxer-6.
This means all engine configurations planned for the core game are now in the game.

A potential first engine pack DLC after the game is done: I2, Boxer-2 (Flat Twins), V4.
In case the sales are high enough we’d consider making: I8, Flat-8, Flat-12.
Our ability to make these packs also depends on being able to acquire the respective engine sounds.

Creating W- and VR-engines for the game would require a whole new set of base 3D assets because of how different the blocks and heads are for these engines compared to what we have in game. Unfortunately, due to how uncommon they are, this makes them unviable additions for the game.

Custom bank angles not only are technically difficult to implement, but also are a bad idea in general apart from very few exceptions: there are few optimal bank angles for every configuration that even make sense. The most common ones (apart from 72 degrees V10s) are represented in the game. The same is true for firing orders, which also are linked to bank angles.

Due to the large amount of time and money it would take to properly implement any of these other vehicle classes, their technologies, and markets, unfortunately this is a “No” to all the above. Automation is and will remain a (production-) car focused tycoon game.

We plan on revamping the forced induction options available in Automation in milestone versions LCV4.2 (Turbo Revamp) and LCV5.0 (Superchargers) coming after 4.2. The turbo revamp could include the addition of Quad-, Sequential-, Twin-Scroll, and Variable Geometry Turbos, while the supercharger update could include Roots-, Centrifugal- and Screw superchargers. A single-turbo option for V-configurations will most likely also be included. The full extent of this has not been decided yet though. Once implemented, these will be available to everyone who owns the game.

There are no plans to implement these head designs. The reasoning here is that they were technically surpassed by other existing designs at the time the game starts in 1946. Of course there were very good, even iconic, engines made using these designs, and this is not to diminish their achievements. Automation is technically reasonably accurate, and this would mean there would be no real incentive to use the older tech because it would give you an overall worse performing engine compared to the same effort being put into a different, also available head design.

The pioneering days of the automotive industry indeed are fascinating, but we can’t see that working in the context of Automation. Most of the engine layouts and tech that stood the test of time were available since very early on (Inline 6, DOHC-4… in 1922? No problem!). That means tech which doesn’t stand the test of time and straight up is just inferior would have to coexist with the good tech. There would be no good incentive to use worse designs except for “it’s cool”, and sure it would be.

Unfortunately we cannot invest the heap of required time and money to make this tech for something that would not work well in Automation. We rather use that time and money to make Automation the best it can be. By the post WWII era, the automotive industry had mostly settled on different viable designs, most of which are represented in the game already.

For the core game we do not plan to expand the year range, we don’t want to spread the existing content thin, rather we focus on making the game the best we can in the existing year range. If Automation is successful enough and we get around to making an expansion for the game that includes electrics and hybrids, it would make sense to extend the year range, for example, to 2040.

Automation is a game focused on running a car company that builds factory production road cars, and maybe a few touring car style race cars. In that context neither a rev limit above 12k RPM, nor fuels that don’t see widespread use make sense to include in the game. We chose the 12k RPM rev limit as it covers every production car engine ever made and then some. Due to the way we get engine sounds produced, anything beyond 12k RPM would be more or less impossible and remaking all sounds very expensive. Yes, there are very few, limited-production, highly-specialized cars running motorcycle engines able to rev higher, but as the name implies, “motorcycle” is not “car”.

New content and features are released to the public version in big updates about every 3-4 months, with separate smaller patches and content updates in between. We’re always prioritizing quality over rushing the game out unfinished, but for those daring enough there usually are opt-in open beta phases of new major milestone updates. The full game is still quite some time away. To get an overview of the development timeline, check out this video.

Windows PC Only for now, but with the game now being based on Unreal Engine 4, we will look into porting the game to other platforms. We will mainly reconsider Mac and Linux as the main candidates. The plan is to look into porting the game to these two platforms once it is closer to its 1.0 release.

We’ve already committed a lot of our own money and 10 years of our lives to this project, so we’ll do everything in our power to make sure this game gets finished.

No! If you buy the game at any point during development you will get access to all the versions released after your buy including the finished version of the game once it is released. What it does not include are V16 engines, unless you have one of the old premium preorder packages which including them.

The best way to keep up with the development of the game is to follow our YouTube Channel and the Little Dev Update series. If we haven’t announced a release date for something, it is because we don’t know ourselves. We develop the game in well-defined smaller projects which you are informed about regarding scope, content and progress on our YouTube channel. We also post development news items and release notes for patches in our Steam news section.

We are constantly working on expanding the car body and fixtures options available in the game. We have contracted some of the best modders of the game to create new content for us and there is a lot more to come in future updates. Our focus is on filling the gaps in car types available over the years first. Also we want to have car bodies have as many meaningfully different body variants as possible. However, there is no specific schedule for adding this kind of content, new bodies and fixtures will make their way into every bigger update until the game is considered done, and most likely beyond that point.

While you can choose what type of interior and entertainment system your cars have you can’t visually design or see them. To read what is included in the specific interior package you chose, refer to its description, which gives a fair amount of detail. Proper visible, custom interiors that fit every car would add a really long time to development and not be relevant to the core Automation gameplay. With the LCV4.1 update we did implement transparent windows and the functionality to custom craft (painstakingly) your own interiors, which seems promising and will be added to in future.

The biggest hurdle for an indie with a good product is visibility. We don’t have a publisher that does the marketing, so to large degree we rely on you guys to get the word out. Spread the word, the more interest we can drum up the better! Contact YouTubers you think would enjoy the game and tell them about it, etc.
You can help us out by translating the game to your native language, widening our potential audience.

All translations are community based and you are most welcome to help translate and/or proofread the translations! Quite a few languages are available to be translated for as is, but we will add more over time and as requested. We use crowdin as a platform for the community translations. It only requires you to make a free account with them. You can join the translation project via this invite link[crowdin.com]. This video illustrates the translation process: How to translate with crowdin.

If we need beta testers, we will ask for them from time to time in a special forum thread.
In very few cases we pick people for beta testers, if they stand out of the normal forum, but that is quite rare, so don’t hope that you will be tester if you make 8x more posts then everyone else. The closed beta is not for FAAAN (Fool-Around-And-Accomplish-Nothing) players though, you are expected to do actual work which isn’t fun all the time, but pretty rewarding in the end when seeing how things come together.

This is best answered by the V16 FAQ.
There is also a brief explanation in video form.


Hope this has helped!
Anything else I missed? Ask us!