Good Grief, AMG Found The High-Voltage Socket
Image Credit: Mercedes-AMG.
My whole life, I've associated Mercedes-AMG with a very particular, very beautiful noise. It's the sound of a hand-built V8 clearing its throat, a deep, guttural roar that promises thunder, lightning, and a serious depletion of your local oil reserves. So, when they unveiled this thing… the Concept GT XX, I'll admit I was skeptical. An electric AMG? Is AMG asking a grizzly bear to take up knitting? It just feels wrong. But then I saw the numbers, and oh boy, the numbers are very, very right.
AMG has literally cannonballed into the EV pool from the high-dive, wearing a bright orange swimsuit. This four-door coupe is a bright, loud, 1,341-horsepower declaration that the folks in Affalterbach have found the biggest electrical socket they could, plugged in, and are now waiting to see what happens. This is their vision for the next AMG GT 4-Door, and it makes most other EVs look like they're powered by AA batteries.
Image Credit: Mercedes-AMG.
The power? It's simply bonkers. One thousand, three hundred and forty-one horsepower. In a four-door family coupe! This colossal grunt comes from three electric motors. There's one up front for when you need a bit of extra pull, and two at the back doing most of the heavy lifting. AMG says the top speed will be north of 220 mph. They haven't given us a 0-60 time, but I suspect it will be quick enough to turn your stomach into a pancake and wrap it around your spine.
You might think that electric motors are all the same, but you'd be wrong. AMG is using something called "axial flux" motors, which they developed with a British firm Yasa. Which they now own, by the way. Instead of the usual chunky, can-shaped motors, these are flat, disc-like "pancakes." They are 67% lighter and much smaller than a conventional motor with the same output. This is the secret sauce that lets them cram so much power into a sleek coupe.
Of course, all that power is useless without a battery to feed it. And what a battery it is. It's a completely new design with over 3,000 cylindrical cells featuring a fancy-sounding Nickel Cobalt Manganese Aluminum (NCMA) chemistry. The important bit is that it has a massive energy density of 300 Wh/kg. Even more impressively, each one of those 3,000 cells is directly cooled by a special oil. This means the battery can be thrashed relentlessly on a track day and still perform without getting all hot and bothered.
AMG claims this car can add about 249 miles of range in just five minutes. This is possible because of its 800-volt architecture and an absurdly high average charging power of over 850 kW. The slight problem is that public chargers this powerful simply don't exist yet. It's a bit like inventing a teleportation device but having nowhere to teleport to. AMG's solution? They're partnering with a company to build their own prototype chargers. Completely mad, and I love it.
Image Credit: Mercedes-AMG.
Visually, the GT XX is certainly a statement. It's low, wide, and draped in a color that can only be described as "look-at-me orange." The drag coefficient is an incredibly slippery 0.198, which is brilliant for efficiency and high-speed stability. AMG achieved this with some clever tricks, like getting rid of the rear window entirely, much like Polestar did. I'm not sure how I feel about driving a 220-mph car while relying solely on cameras to see what's behind me, but I suppose that's progress.
The rest of the car is a festival of high-tech wizardry. The 21-inch wheels have active aero blades that open to cool the brakes and close for better aerodynamics. The side sills have "luminescent paint segments" that can glow. And at the back, instead of a third brake light, there's a panel with over 700 LEDs that can display messages. I can already imagine the witty remarks I'd program it to show to tailgaters. Most of this is probably too "video game" for the final production car, but it's fantastic theater.
Image Credit: Mercedes-AMG.
Step inside, and it's a minimalist, driver-focused affair. There are lightweight carbon fiber seats, a yoke-style steering wheel pinched from the AMG ONE hypercar (I'm still not sold on yokes), and a couple of crisp screens. It's all very futuristic and clean, a stark contrast to the fire-breathing V8 beasts of old. AMG even found a way to pipe a V8 soundtrack through speakers embedded in the headlights, which is both hilarious and a little bit sad - like a mime pretending to sing opera.
Image Credit: Mercedes-AMG.
Is this the future? Mercedes-AMG seems to think so, stating that this concept is basically ready for production. I suspect the final version will be toned down a bit - the glowing paint and message board might not make the cut. But the technology - the pancake motors, the hyper-cooled battery, the mind-bending charging speed - that's all real. AMG really is setting a new benchmark here. A part of my soul will always miss the glorious, inefficient noise of a proper V8, but I have to admit: If this is what the electric future looks like, sign me up.
