Now that electric cars are no longer in their infancy, we’re starting to see more niche segments, innovative engineering and, most importantly, performance models appearing. We’ve known that Mercedes has been working on its electric AMG.EA architecture for a while, with the company showing off the Vision AMG concept in 2022 and more recently releasing photos of camouflaged prototypes of the production version in testing.
Mercedes is gearing up to reveal its first AMG.EA-based car within the next few months, and new teasers are giving us our best look yet at the slinky four-door coupe. While Mercedes hasn’t said as much yet, this thing is essentially a replacement for the dated AMG GT 4-Door Coupe (it could even retain that name), as well as a direct competitor for the Porsche Taycan. And I think it looks freakin’ awesome. In Mercedes’ social posts of the images, the brand says it has “the focused gaze of a true athlete,” and its star lighting motif sure does catch your eye.
Impossible to miss
The new EV looks way more dramatic than any other current Mercedes. Its overall shape and profile are very similar to the Vision EQXX, with an even more rakish roofline and slimmer greenhouse than the first-gen CLS. There’s a pretty good dash-to-axle ratio and a fairly long hood, with the coolest implementation yet of Mercedes’ new three-pointed star headlights that we’ve seen on cars like the third-generation CLA. It looks like the wheels have some sort of aerodynamic cover on them like the EQXX’s; AMG has been making some of the coolest aero-driven wheel designs for a while now, so I’m glad to see it really lean into wheel covers.
Things get really wild at the rear end. Like the concept, it has an angled kammback tail, and there will be an active spoiler on the trunklid. The three-dimensional taillights are a bit of an abstract three-pointed star, looking like a rocket thruster on a sci-fi spaceship — the concept had six total round taillights lower down in the bumper, and I hope the production model will also have three of them on each side. That would look wild.
Veyron-rivaling horsepower
The electric AMG.EA platform has been designed just for AMGs, and it will use power-dense, lighter-weight axial flux motors from Yasa, a British company that was acquired by Mercedes a few years ago. While it won’t get four motors like some hi-po EVs (and Mercedes’ own G-Class), just two will be plenty as the Yasa motors will each produce around 500 horsepower and 600 pound-feet of torque. Of course, there will be room for a more powerful tri-motor version too. The platform will also utilize a new, slimmer high-voltage battery with an 800-volt architecture for faster charging, better efficiency, more repeatable performance, and greater interior space. Straight-line and track performance should rival the best that Porsche and Lucid have to offer.
In a recent conversation with Car and Driver, Mercedes-AMG CEO Michael Schiebe says the new model will be “not comparable to all the electric cars that you have in the market right now” and that it will be a visceral experience like a gas performance car in terms of sound and feedback. He also said that U.S. dealers recently got to drive a prototype, and “when they got out of the car, all of them were smiling. They said that this is completely changing what they thought about electric cars.”
There will be an SUV version, too
The electric GT 4-Door coupe will be joined by an SUV sibling, riding on the same platform, using the same powertrain, and sharing similarly rakish styling. It’ll be the first SUV developed as a standalone model by Mercedes-AMG, and as the company calls it a “high-performance off-roader” it should have some modicum of capability off the pavement. A rally mode, hopefully. The SUV variant started cold-weather testing at the end of last year, so it’ll probably debut around six months after the car’s debut.
AMG’s new EV should be revealed within the next couple months, potentially going on sale in Europe by the end of the year. We don’t yet know how much it will cost, but I’m guessing a starting price in the $130,000 range. The AMG.EA is modular enough that we’ll surely see other models based on it too — including, according to the rumor mill, a production version of the spectacular Vision One-Eleven supercar concept.