Mercedes-AMG Is Building An EV For People Who Hate EVs

• AMG’s new video shows the EV GT being pushed hard in testing.
• Dual rear motors help it pull off big, smoky drifts, in true AMG fashion.
• It has 1,000+ hp and simulates a V-8 complete with simulated gears and noise feedback through the seats. 

The upcoming Mercedes-AMG GT four-door EV is one of the company’s most ambitious projects, if not the most. There is a lot riding on the car to not only deliver the performance that is expected from an AMG, but also win over electric propulsion nay-sayers who simply can’t imagine one of these cars without an angry combustion engine. AMG is working hard to make it feel like a gas car.

AMG released a video giving us a glimpse behind the scenes at how it’s testing its new EV, hinting at what it will be capable of and what it took to hone its handling. It involves a lot of track driving, some of it with the car going very sideways with tire smoke billowing behind it, which is something you expect a true AMG to be able to pull off.

This playful handling comes courtesy of the new AMG.EA dedicated EV architecture that isn’t shared with Mercedes. It’s a bespoke 800-volt platform for AMG EVs with two motors in the back, one for each wheel, and one powering the front axle. The motors are axial-flux from Yasa, which means they are about one-third the size and two-thirds the weight of traditional electric motors.

Having two individual motors powering the rear wheels is part of the secret behind AMG making this car very good at pulling off spectacular drifts. It’s all down to torque vectoring, which controls how much power each of the rear wheels receives, and precisely controlling this is what makes the four-door so naughty to drive.

The other big part is that it makes over 1,000 horsepower, and, as Mercedes Formula 1 driver George Russel explains in the video, you don’t need more than 40% acceleration to get the car to perform some pretty wild skids. You can control how crazy the handling is by turning the three dials on the center console, which change motor responsiveness, chassis behavior, and the amount of traction control that the car applies.

If you want to give it a glued-to-the-ground feel, you can, and AMG says the chassis is excellent, not just for going sideways and torturing the tires. The car gives you a lot of adjustability and, let’s not forget, it also simulates a V-8 engine, complete with shifting a pretend gearbox to make it feel like a traditional AMG product.

Mercedes-AMG is really pushing this as the next page in its history, an improvement over everything it’s done in the past. It has a lot to live up to, but it also looks like it’s going to be very good. The sedan will get a crossover sister model with the same power but in a higher-riding package.