Stress Tests, Speed & Preparation: Record Drive | Episode 2
We are here in Nardò at the end of May to make the final testing with our lab car. As we only have a little bit more than two months left now, time is running. That means if we have to implement something new, time is against us. Check where that is. This is crucial. Here, you get a glimpse into the most secret area of the company. This is one of our design studios. Behind me is the clay model of the CONCEPT AMG GT XX. The sports cars are always the halo cars of a brand – the beauty pieces, the masterpieces. Starting with the perfect proportion, giving it the perfect surfacing, the most beautiful shape, adding significant iconic elements. The signature grille, very aggressive in this new negative form. Like a breaking wave pushing forward. We have the concept of a driver-focused interior with the screen suspended around the driver, with a lot of detailing, racing seats. We simplified it, we stripped it down to create a super-reduced, lightweight, optimized race car. The main challenge in the aerodynamics for this vehicle is to have a very stable car by very high speeds with a very, very extreme low drag value. And having the proper lift and downforce on the rear and front axle to have a stable car under this driving condition. Another purpose of aerodynamics is cooling. The airflow inside the car to the coolers and out again without destroying the air drag is also a main purpose of such a record car. The active device we use during the record drive is the air shutters. We open and close the shutters to provide the right amount of air when needed. Because we know that further opening the shutters produces more drag. Another special feature is the underbody. Adding contour on the underbody so we have a venturi effect. We use this know-how applied from other series vehicles, like the AMG GT. We modified the system and placed it between the rear wheels. That make the car press down on the rear axle. These forces increase at high speed. The lift on the rear axle is so low that the spoiler does not need to be deployed. When we set out to develop a dedicated architecture for high-performance electric AMGs, we knew the drivetrain had to be just as special. Something no one else was doing. Something our customers could fall in love with. That is why we introduce an entirely new motor to this car: axial-flux motors. They deliver around three times the power density and twice the torque density of a conventional electric motor. Considerably more power in a smaller, lighter package. One of the greatest strengths is continuous performance. Especially when paired with our liquid-cooled battery system. We defined something special as a cooling concept. The whole powertrain includes our three AFM motors and also our cylindric cells, which are cooled by oil. So, they have their own cooling circuit. They will have the best temperature for peak performance behaviour. Since we want to drive these records here in Nardò in August, which is obviously the hottest season in Southern Italy, we added something new to the car: a large cooling plate in the underbody. We want to use the flowing air at high speed to cool our battery and our drivetrain in addition. If we look at the CONCEPT AMG GT XX, we achieve an average charging power of more than 850 kW. This is almost charging like refuelling. After the mission of the car was clear, we thought about the right people within Mercedes-Benz to tackle that. Our first thought was Adam and his team. Because of Formula One: The whole driving strategy comes from HPP. First thought about the project: Let’s go! What an awesome challenge! It’s the sort of challenge that we absolutely love at HPP. We were looking to take the racing experience of HPP and the speed of development and complement that with the AMG team and the awesome product they have been developing. The teams have worked together hand in hand to really push the envelope of what is possible. In Formula One, in racing, it always starts with the strategy. For this drive, we needed to bring all the systems of the car together into one simulation. That allows us to look at the complex trade-offs we have between different parts of the car. The faster we drive, the more energy we consume. That means we need to charge more energy into the battery. Whilst that is good, it creates heat and we need to reject that heat. Which means we may need to run with the louvers more open, which creates more drag on the next run. We took all of these parameters, factors like the weather, built them into our simulations to come up with hundreds of thousands of possible outcomes to look at what the optimal strategy is. That was a check in the box for the strategy. We are Mercedes, we want to build safe cars, right? So, we do a lot of crash simulation. The car itself is the last step; usually, everything is done before the car comes in place and on the test rig. We do a lot of work in the simulation, for sure. We have battery test benches, AFM test benches, e-drive test benches and also cooling test benches. Every part, component and system and the car itself is tested in isolation. After this, we started to build a lab car. In this car, the powertrain, the cooling and the electric side are like we plan it for the concept car. We are here in Nardò at the end of May to make the final testing with our lab car. That means all the guys, all the drivers, all mission control, all the people who will be working in August in this team at the record drive are here right now just for training purposes. As we only have a little bit more than two months left now, if we have to implement something new, time is against us. On the surface, the CONCEPT AMG GT XX may look like a concept car. But it is so much more than that. It offers a glimpse into the ground-breaking drivetrain technology that will soon power some of our series production cars. An AMG has never just been a machine of metal and rubber. It is something that moves you. Not just physically but especially emotionally. This morning in Affalterbach, you feel a lot of energy. It is amazing what the AMG team did to prepare for this one-of-a-kind event. We are full of anticipation. What is going to happen on the track? Are they going to deliver?
The time is spinning fast: CONCEPT AMG GT XX takes shape to break records. Every detail is engineered for peak performance: design, charging and aerodynamics.
In this second episode of Record Drive, we explore the extremes of development process. The preparation for the Italian summer, fast driving and charging as well as the perfect team setup – all for the first track appearance of the car.
The ambition: to push performance to its absolute limit ✅
The challenge: time is running 🚨
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