- Mercedes-AMG has released a teaser image of its first bespoke EV.
- The four-door AMG fastback will be fully revealed in July.
- Its electric motors make 480 hp each, but we don't know how many it will have.
Mercedes-AMG is working on a bespoke electric fastback that will take the fight to the Porsche Taycan, which will be revealed in June. With the announcement, AMG also shared an image of the car’s side profile, which, even if mostly obscured, still looks great. And it should have performance to match its aggressive design.
The teaser shot gives us a good look at the upcoming four-door’s hood area, greenhouse and rear flanks, and it ticks all the boxes of what makes a great modern sports sedan. The nose looks very low and pointy, like a Porsche 911 from the side.
The greenhouse tapers aggressively toward the vehicle's rear, leading to a short decklid, which will likely have a small spoiler that pops up at speed, just like the current gas-burning four-door AMG GT. Unlike the Porsche Taycan sedan, this car’s main European rival, the AMG, will have a liftback trunk opening, which is more practical and better suited to the fastback-style aesthetic.
Even if this new EV ticks all the right low-slung sporty four-door design boxes, it also needs to perform, and we’re pretty sure it will have around 1,000 horsepower in its most powerful guise. It needs that power level to compete with the quickest cars in the segment, and AMG has just the right motors for the job.
They are supplied by Mercedes-owned British subsidiary Yasa and are called axial-flux motors that offer “the greatest efficiencies and highest power and torque density in their class, for the smallest size and weight.” Each motor makes 480 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque, so if Mercedes is making a quad-motor performance EV (it wouldn’t be the first time or even the second), it could have almost 2,000 hp and over 2,300 lb-ft of torque.
Even a dual-motor car with these drive units would be highly potent and come close to matching the most powerful version of the Porsche Taycan. However, BMW is working on quad-motor EVs, and several fast EVs are coming out of China with two or three motors and over 1,000 hp (even over 1,500 hp), so AMG may want to make a splash and launch something that's much more powerful than all direct competitors.
It’s worth noting that this bespoke AMG EV is coming at a time when Mercedes is changing course on its strategy to have a parallel lineup of electric and combustion models. It will phase out its current crop of EQ-badged bespoke EVs (and the EQ naming scheme) and instead launch electric versions of the regular models in its lineup.
We’re pretty sure the car that AMG is teasing here will be a pure EV with no combustion option, but the brand previously said it is the “first dedicated electric vehicle architecture developed by Mercedes-AMG.” That architecture is called AMG.EA (short for AMG electric architecture) and is unique to AMG. It will also underpin a taller electric AMG SUV, which is expected to be revealed after the fastback, offering much of the same but in a taller package.
