AMG's First Road Car With F1 Hybrid Tech Is The Long-Winded Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door E Performance
The future of Mercedes-Benz's performance lineup will be hybrid-powered and the German company is claiming that technology is pulled straight from the record-winning Formula One racing team. The first of these new electrified German bruisers will be the Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door E Performance, which debuts the "E Performance" branding for the rest of the cars to come.
Details are loose, and all that Mercedes has specifically mentioned is some battery tech coming at an undisclosed date, and a new electric turbocharger due out "soon."
Here's more details on the future impact of the arrangement on future Mercedes-AMG models, from the press release:
The latest example is the electric turbocharger, which is standing the test in Formula 1 under extreme conditions and will soon be used in AMG production models. There is also close cooperation with regard to sharing experiences with simulation technology during development phases and in terms of the operating strategies in the battery and hybrid field.
Further technology cascade and developments from Formula 1 will follow. They include the cell technology of the high-performance batteries as well as their particular cooling requirements.
Integrating electric drive into superchargers has been around for a hot minute, but deploying electric power to turbochargers (as well as harvesting from them) is indeed the kind of stuff you see in current turbo hybrid F1 cars. We've been in the hybrid era since 2014, but Mercedes has been more recently mad that F1 isn't "telling the hybrid story well enough." I guess Mercedes thinks F1 marketing around road cars should help.
A likely candidate for all this new electric turbocharger engine technology is the new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door E Performance that was also first teased with the announcement this week. While no specific details of the model are mentioned, the "V8 Biturbo" badging is pulled from the provided image gallery of the camouflaged car, which is clearly an AMG GT 4-Door parked alongside the Formula One racer, as well as the upcoming Mercedes-AMG hypercar, which the release also promises will still be delivered to customers this year.
While you can already get an AMG GT 4-Door with a hybrid powertrain, this new model will likely achieve an estimated anticipated power output of around 800 horsepower. That's assuming it's aiming above the current 630-HP AMG GT63 S.
We often like to complain about ridiculous model names on this website, and they often enough happen to be German cars. In this case, I don't understand why Mercedes-Benz could not recognize the nomenclature-nightmare "E Performance" adds to their already jumbled and bloated lineup. Couldn't it just be "EP"? "EF1" also sounds great. AMGE? And why is there no correlation with the fully-electric Mercedes EQ lineup naming? Did they even get to the whiteboard stage of branding development, or is the naming so literal because, well, they're German? Who cares — the car will be damn fast.
