It's one thing to make a lightning-fast two-seater GT sports car. It's another accomplishment entirely to make run on any substance other than petroleum. Before people had entirely warmed up to the idea of electric cars. The SLS AMG Electric Drive prototype showed the world that not only could electric cars be fun to drive, but they can also be faster than their gasoline-powered equivalents.
The normal SLS AMG was a fire-spitting monster with a 6.2 liter V8 under the hood that sounded more like an American V8 than anything else. So no one was expecting the next evolution to be even faster while making substantially less noise. Maybe it's not a coincidence then that soon after the SLS AMG E Drive's unveiling, the electric car market exploded into the stratosphere. Elon Musk and Tesla may take all the credit for the electric drive revolution. This bright yellow gull-winged beauty shows the Mercedes-Benz deserves a good portion of the credit as well. It won over petrolhead Jesus figure Jeremy Clarkson, that itself should speak volumes.
Is the regular SLS AMG not historically significant or unique enough for your tastes? Maybe the SLS AMG E Drive will fulfill your desire for groundbreaking and special AMG cars. Let's have a look at why that's the case.
An Electric Prototype To Win Over The Masses
Mercedes AMG cars are known for their hardcore, adrenaline-pumping engines that roar with every single rev while you're doing a big, smokey burnout the entire way down the street. In many ways, AMG cars of the past have had a particularly muscle car mystique to their natures. But not the SLS AMG E-Drive. It's so quiet they had to pump white noise into the dashboard to keep the driver from falling asleep.
Gone is the fire-spitting AMG V8, obviously. Instead was a system of four electric motors that put together produced around 700 horsepower and powered by over 800 high-performance lithium-ion batteries.
The end result was a car that accelerated faster than its petroleum-powered counterpart as Jeremy Clarkson so hilariously showcased to us in his review of the car. One that made the electric AMG's outreach that much more profound.
Our Favorite English Motoring Journalist Makes It Famous
As Jeremy Clarkson lined up the E-Drive SLS AMG against its gasoline-powered sister car, he compared it to a food blender or a glorified electric flashlight. By race's end, he called it a "rampant rabbit" as the electric car gapped its dino-juice-powered alternative.
The essence of what makes the SLS AMG E-Cell so special is revealed as Jeremy reveals what the car looks like underneath. In place of an engine, there are four in-board mounted electric motors that each power one wheel. This gives the SLS E-Drive full-time four-wheel drive, which explains why the electric SLS absolutely trounced the standard SLS.
Blistering Speed And Acceleration With The Handling To Match
Formula One-style pushrod suspension ensures the big heavy car stayed planted even as the electric motors produced enough torque to spin all four wheels. The batteries being arranged lengthways down the center of the car ensures there's almost no un-sprung weight stopping grip from reaching the tires.
The benefits of electricity generators in the braking system that turns kinetic energy from pumping the brake pedal into electrical energy, which can be used to recharge the batteries was profound. There's also a centralized computer that in real-time could change which wheel gets the most amount of power depending on how much force is being applied to each wheel.
Where the rear-drive only petrol-powered SLS AMG was iconic for lighting up the rear tires going around any corner it came across, the E-Drive was a poised and capable handling machine that commanded its immense weight in batteries extremely well.
These features seemingly straight out of a triple-a video game is just another one of the reasons the SLS AMG E-Drive is just that little bit crazier than any other AMG product before or since. The only drawback at the time was a complete lack of fast charging capabilities. Relegating the E-Drive to spend at least 20 hours charging up completely. Even so, that's just another aspect of the barely contained genius and lunacy we've come to love about AMG. And the E-Drive is perhaps the biggest contribution to the advancement of automotive design that AMG has ever built.
Beat That Tesla Model S
Elon Musk might want to fancy himself the godfather of all modern electric cars. His Model S did open many minds to the possibility of an all-electric future, but it was the SLS AMG E-Cell that proved electric supercars wouldn't be hard to get used to either.
We don't think any self-respecting petrolhead would pick the Tesla over the SLS AMG E-Cell. The only shame is they only made a handful of them, but what an example those few are.
Sources: BBC, Top Gear