► AMG goes electric with new platform
► AMG.EA platform uses axial flux motors
► Platform will also spawn SUV and two-door hypercar
The mission for 2025, summed up a few years back by Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius, is easy to put into words: ‘Beat Porsche at their own game.’ Easy to say, hard to do – especially at a time when so many factors are in flux.
The Mercedes vision had, like Porsche’s, involved transitioning rapidly to an electric-only line-up. That’s all gone a little awry as demand has slowed and political priorities have shifted. And yet, despite all the opportunities for revising the plan and reining in the ambition, the Mercedes performance division is still full steam ahead – or should that be maximum voltage ahead – for its first electric car.
AMG isn’t starting small, either, targeting the likes of Porsche’s Taycan, the Lotus Emeya and Polestar 5 with an electric GT first. The zero-emissions AMG GT 4-Door, codenamed C590, will launch towards the end of 2025. It will combine extreme power outputs, smart battery designs and cutting-edge motors. It uses the new AMG.EA architecture, which is currently undergoing weather and stress testing.
Its e-motors are to be produced by Mercedes at its facility in Berlin, but their design and know-how originates in Oxford – home of the specialist supplier YASA, an R&D partner of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team, and a wholly-owned Mercedes subsidiary since 2021, although not confined to working for Mercedes.
High-rpm axial-flow electric motors have been chosen over radial-flux units for their compact dimensions, superior efficiency and light weight, claimed to be less than 25kg per unit. The motors are, sources tell us, smooth and quiet, with well-managed heat dissipation, high power density and reasonable costs. Together with a space-saving epicyclic transmission, a torque-vectoring device and a trick electronic control system, the motor is an integral part of the eATS 2.0 electric drive unit.
CAR’s vision of how the electric Mercedes-AMG GT four-door will look, illustrated by Lars Sältzer
YASA is ready to provide many different combinations of e-motors, but we understand AMG will at least initially refrain from offering the most radical four-motor layout – even though something along those lines is likely to feature on BMW’s electric M car due in a few years.
Each state-of-the-art motor is reportedly good for 479bhp and 590lb ft – yes, each. For rear-wheel-drive applications, that means 958bhp and 1180lb ft is available. Adding a third motor with the same outputs would bring the total to a hefty 1267bhp and 1383lb ft, but don’t take those figures as gospel. What we do know for certain is that AMG.EA uses an 800-volt electrical system and features a new generation of tubular lithium ion batteries with bespoke cell chemistry and silicon anodes.
‘We have a great new platform, a very authentic performance one,’ Markus Schäfer, Mercedes’ chief technology officer, tells us when discussing AMG.EA. ‘It’s equipped with possibly the most advanced electric motors on the market, really setting benchmarks. The battery is extraordinary, too – the pack will support an authentic AMG sports car.’
The 100kWh battery pack should be able to provide a WLTP range of 375 to 450 miles and a high-speed charging time of about 15 minutes from 10 to 80 per cent charge. Performance? Provisional data for the top-of-the-line three-motor model suggests a 2.0sec 0-62mph sprint, 0-125mph in 5.0sec and a maximum speed of 200mph.
It would be financially ruinous to create just one model from an entirely new architecture. That’s why AMG.EA has at least three more models in its medium-term portfolio. Aluminium-intensive, the light and stiff new multi-material architecture is fully scalable in terms of wheelbase, body style variations and engineering content. The highly flexible DNA can cover the full spectrum from a low-slung five-seat SUV (codenamed X591, due in 2027) to a two-seat hypercar (C592) capable – in its most extreme guise – of outpacing even the F1-inspired AMG One.
The electric AMG’s design is still a work in progress. While it shares cues with the MMA-based new CLA and the super-efficient EQXX concept, the more adventurous SUV is believed to break new ground as the most dynamic-looking crossover to date, visually eclipsing even the Ferrari Purosangue and the Aston DBX.
All AMG.EA cars will get distinctive daytime running lights and six equally striking tail lights featuring three-pointed star patterns. The four-door coupe boasts a prominent pop-up rear spoiler for increased high-speed downforce, plus flush-fitting door handles, low-drag 22-inch alloys, concealed windscreen wipers and a flap-operated active battery cooling system.
Unlike Audi Sport and BMW’s M division, Mercedes-AMG has gone in hard on EVs and invested heavily in this bespoke AMG.EA matrix and hasn’t yet backed down – even as the mothership abandons its more luxury-focused MB.EA version.
AMG is not taking a blinkered approach, however, and will have been particularly interested in the recent declaration from Porsche chief financial officer Lutz Meschke – made in the context of the general dimming of the industry’s enthusiasm for an electric-only range of cars – that combustion engines should get a new lease of life, which will need an accompanying set of more flexible platforms.
Although legislators still plan to ban the sale of new petrol-fed models in Europe from 2035 onwards, other markets including the Middle East and US will still want to hang on to Affalterbach’s potent V8s. So much so that this new electric AMG GT 4-Door won’t immediately replace the current combustion version.
‘We’ve never stopped working on engines,’ says Schäfer. ‘We have this parallel world of technologies, and we’ll have to continue in this dual world for some time.
‘Would we wish that things would be less complex? Yes. We don’t have a crystal ball. But dealing with complexity is something that we’ve learned over 130 years of vehicle development, and we can be flexible,’ he says.
‘It’s still an electric future, but the question is the speed at which we get there and the acceptance in society – the customer makes the decision, not the regulator. Electric cars offer great advantages, but we’re still in the transitioning phase.’
AMG, then, needs to make a decision for the longer term: update the long-running MRA platform that underpins everything from C-Class upwards, or jump-start a new platform that will run electric as well as combustion power – as it has done with the new Mercedes Modular Architecture platform for its smaller cars.
Neither option will be cheap, but Mercedes and AMG need to decide.