Jeremy Bass•8 Jun 2013
NEWS
AMG's electric gullwing sets new ‘Ring record
A sub-eight minute lap makes Benz's SLS EV a hard act to follow – let alone overtakeMercedes-Benz’s SLS AMG Coupe Electric Drive has set a new EV lap record on the notorious Nordschleife (north loop) circuit at Germany’s Nürburgring.
At 7:56.234 minutes, the all-electric gullwing is the first EV to cut the eight-minute mark on the 21km circuit, seen by many as the world’s toughest race track.
Rated at 560kW with an instantaneous 1000Nm available through its four wheel motors, the Coupe Electric Drive is the most powerful of the SLS AMG line-up, and indeed the most potent series production EV in the world. Benz claims a 0-100km/h sprint time of 3.9 seconds, with an electronically governed top speed of 250km/h.
The car’s individual wheel motors give it unusual levels of torque vectoring precision, making for immense potential on tough tracks like this one, with its tightening bends and uncooperative cambers.
The electric gullwing’s AMG Torque Dynamics system amounts to a centralised brain responding instantly to changes in speed, direction and microtopography to constantly redistribute torque and brakeforce among all four wheels, adjusting damping individually as it goes.
The result is a chassis that responds with rare dynamism to each corner, tailoring traction to changing conditions, neutralising and easing steering, dramatically reducing yaw and pitch and minimising the intervention of safety technologies like stability control that intrude on performance.
This being a series production consumer car, AMG has extended the system’s dynamics to allow drivers to switch manually between Comfort, Sport and Sport Plus modes.
So accomplished was the track car, incidentally, that the company announcement of its achievement failed to identify the person at the wheel.
You can meet him here, however, and go for the record-breaking ride…
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Written byJeremy Bass
Our team of independent expert car reviewers and journalists
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