[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHRIS HARRIS: Clever people keep telling me that
everything will be electric soon.
This fills me with the fear of God, because I don't much like
electric cars.
But there's now a race among some makers to prove that
electric can be exciting.
And the first to land is the Mercedes SLS Electric Drive.
But is it a genuine alternative to a supercar?
The SLS Electric Drive is a strange mix of the familiar
and unfamiliar.
I know it's a bit odd to say I'm familiar with the interior
of the SLS, but I did run one for a while.
And it's quite conventional Mercedes in its layout.
But of course, being electric, it just has a couple of
slightly strange things that look profoundly different to
the normal production car.
To start with, we have this rev counter here that shows
percentage of energy being used.
It has a battery temperature gauge, and it has a battery
life gauge.
The center screen is a computer readout that tells
me, again, how much battery life I've got, because that
seems to be the pertinent thing.
The central screen here, well they've taken the and now
turned it into something that looks like a computer game.
It's absolutely fantastic.
You'll see that now.
It tells you what's going on and where torque is going.
The rest of the controls are quite conventional.
Got a normal steering wheel.
My paddles, they now control the amount of brake
regeneration I've got.
So I can either have a lot of brake regeneration, which
gives massive retardation when you let off the pedal, and a
lot of regenerative power going back into the batteries.
But it does mean that if there was a car following me on the
road, they'd probably rear end me.
Gear lever is the same as the normal SLS.
You pull it back into drive, there's a bit of a whirring as
the handbrake goes off, and now in complete silence.
And honestly, at the moment, the loudest thing is the fan
that's on two at the moment.
We just roll away.
And we do so in one of the three driving modes, this one
called comfort.
Comfort is as described.
It gives us the easiest, most relaxed throttle
position in the car.
So we've got quite a long throttle as we push on now,
doing 25, 30 miles an hour.
Just remarkable.
Less spring rate than I think in a standard SLS.
The car's heavy, obviously, nearly 2.2 tons, with a bit
more with two people on board.
I've got nice steering weight, not too light.
Circuit's very slippery today.
Performance--
well, at the moment I've got around 440 kilowatts.
I probably better do the math on that for you in a minute.
But it does mean that if I thump my foot down, it doesn't
feel as quick as a standard SLS.
It doesn't.
But even so, this is--
in this form, in its most sanitized form-- the SLS
Electric Drive still feels like a proper performance car.
It's still got good amounts of performance.
Look at that.
Foot down, 60, 70, 80--
that's quite quick.
Ceramic brakes work well.
The torque vectoring that's going on here is massively
complicated.
It's unbelievable.
We've got four electric motors, one at each corner,
and all of the torque would be monitored the whole time
according to your steering angle, lord knows what else.
As a calibration exercise, this is unprecedented.
So let's go into sport mode.
So now I've got a slightly more responsive throttle.
And I've got a chassis which is trying to make things a bit
sharper for me.
The car feels--
yeah, certainly feels a bit more responsive.
This is just freakish.
This whole torque vectoring thing is freakish.
I think torque vectoring might almost be more interesting
than the fact that this car is electrically driven.
It's the new snake oil of chassis design, isn't it?
I mean, it almost gives infinitesimal possibilities,
the fact that you can put negative
torque into one wheel.
So the wheel that's moving the slowest in the corner, if you
want, you can drag that wheel back to nothing.
That's incredible.
You can make the car just turn.
And this car does feel very agile for something so heavy.
In comfort and sport, the car is limited to 200 kilometers
per hour, so 125 miles an hour in old money.
That's about fast enough, isn't it?
And if you drive the car like this, ie not too harshly, you
could probably cover about--
I don't know, 160, 170 miles.
If you gun it, well, yeah.
It becomes a bit more inefficient then.
Interestingly, I tried to push Mercedes on some real CO2
figures, because they claim that
the car is zero emissions.
Well it's not, is it?
It pushes the emissions to another point
in the carbon cycle.
If a normal SLS is 300 and something grams per kilometer,
then this--
realistically in a northern European nation that uses a
mixture of nuclear, coal, and increasingly, some renewable
energy sources--
this is around 15 to 20 grams per kilometer.
So it's still pretty efficient.
Wow.
This is quite alarmingly quick, even in sport mode.
Now, sport plus.
Sport plus.
I've got a much more responsive throttle now.
And I now have 740 something horsepower, 1,000 newton
meters of torque, 737 foot pounds.
And I'm limited to 150 miles an hour.
That won't be a problem here.
But this is a slippery track, so I've got to be
a little bit careful.
What happens?
Well, the torque vectoring is doing an incredible job of
keeping me on the circuit.
It's very slippery today.
And what it's doing is allowing each wheel to do its
maximum given the circumstances.
But rather than getting really juddery brakes, it actually
feels like the tire has reached its limits of grip and
just stops there.
Just keep your foot planted, and it's seamless and smooth.
And then when it lets go in a straight line, I mean, it's
quick, isn't it?
Neil's speechless next to me, recording.
This is new.
This is profoundly new.
It's genuinely fast, guys.
It's genuinely fast.
I'm not sure what this means for the future of the
motorcar, because this is 400,000 pounds by the time
you've paid a few taxes.
There's no right-hand drive version.
And it's a technology that's available now, but it's also
massively complex.
It's not ultimately as usable or as flexible as
a combustion engine.
And it's not a car for the people, is it?
Although this is modular.
So imagine 740 something horsepower.
Well, you could take a third of this and stick it in an
A-class, and you're away.
Not as much fun as that though.
I mean, that is just back to the future when you squirt it
down the straight, isn't it?
Blimey O'Reilly.
Torque vectoring--
very, very interesting.
Now, there are three modes here, and we
can play with them.
So we have the ability to switch off torque dynamics
into sport now.
So this allows me, again, to have a completely different
chassis setup on the car.
So this is less cautious.
It will allow a bit of slip.
Look at that, a bit of slip.
Now, this is all done through electronics.
It's slippery as hell, and it's just managing
everything for me.
And it's all done on steering angle.
What's really freakish about the dynamics of this car with
the torque vectoring is that in a conventional sports car,
you have the same ultimate behavior of the car, and you
just play with the levels of intervention.
Yeah, you can put more support into the car by stiffening the
dampening up.
And you can play with other bits and bobs, and some cars
have differentials that will change a bit as well.
But ultimately, the character of the car is the same.
You just play with the intervention levels.
With this car, when you go from comfort to sport plus,
you have a totally different car.
It feels quite different.
It performs differently.
The axles behave differently according to the grip levels
and the amount of power being thrown at them.
Bizarre.
So sport mode gives us a bit more slip.
Mega.
Absolutely mega.
The vaguely oversteering electric car.
Tell you what, though.
We could try the completely oversteering electric car.
[CAR SKIDS]
[INTERMITTENT BUZZING]
CHRIS HARRIS: That's an electric car in a skid.
[LOUD BUZZING]
CHRIS HARRIS: About five minutes ago, I was out of the
track, which is wet, oversteering a four wheel
drive electric car.
I've never done that before.
So rather than stand around that car and try and have my
mind blown, we've come inside to this cutaway.
And I want some of this technology explained to me--
how this works, why it works, and how they've reached this
level of performance from the car, because I just wasn't
expecting it.
OK.
First of all, four electric motors, yeah?
JAN FEUSTEL: Four electric motors, one in each wheel.
CHRIS HARRIS: Torque split, 25% per corner?
JAN FEUSTEL: That's the basic setup, yes.
CHRIS HARRIS: But it can change?
JAN FEUSTEL: And it will change if you're driving in a
dynamic way.
Torque vectoring will help you set the right torque on the
right wheel in the right second.
CHRIS HARRIS: So we have the battery packs mainly in the
center of the vehicle within the carbon structure, which is
completely different to an SLS.
So even though the car looks like an SLS on the outside,
underneath, it's nothing to do with an SLS at all, is it?
It's completely different.
JAN FEUSTEL: It's completely different.
We changed the body in white in terms of the center of the
vehicle, the spine of the vehicle.
We do have a zero intrusion cell made out of carbon fiber,
which is pretty much the backbone of the vehicle, gives
the body in white a lot of the stiffness
that you already felt.
And it's additional--
it's an intelligent way of our strategy of lightweight
performance, since that battery housing is part of the
body in white.
CHRIS HARRIS: OK.
Actually in twist, is this stiffer than a normal SLS?
JAN FEUSTEL: Yes it is, due to the carbon fiber housing.
CHRIS HARRIS: That's interesting.
But we have a lot of mass down here.
We have 550 kilograms or so, don't we, of batteries?
JAN FEUSTEL: Yes.
CHRIS HARRIS: But the actual center of gravity is quite
good, because it's low and in the middle of the car, yes?
JAN FEUSTEL: Yes.
And the center of gravity in total, in the center of
gravity of the vehicle, is about an inch lower than in
the regular SLS.
CHRIS HARRIS: The electric motors-- how much power do we
have coming from the front and the rear axle in terms of
electric motor power?
What's the split?
JAN FEUSTEL: Each electric motor provides 138 kilowatts,
so they all four are the same.
Basic setup is 25% each.
So the total is 552 kilowatts, which is 750 horsepower.
And the--
CHRIS HARRIS: Sorry.
How do you say that without smiling?
You've made an electric car 750 horsepower.
JAN FEUSTEL: 750--
CHRIS HARRIS: That is utterly bat [BLEEP]
isn't it?
Think about it, 750 horsepower and 1,000
newton meters of torque.
Carry on.
Sorry.
Just try not to smile when you say it, all right?
JAN FEUSTEL: With 750 horsepower, it's the most
powerful electrical car.
And it's the most powerful AMG ever.
CHRIS HARRIS: Let's have a little look around a couple of
bits and bobs.
Talk me through the cells.
The cells come from South Korea?
JAN FEUSTEL: Yes.
CHRIS HARRIS: How many cells?
70--
JAN FEUSTEL: 864.
CHRIS HARRIS: OK, in all, and they come in blocks of--
is it three big blocks?
JAN FEUSTEL: Actually, what we see here is
what we call one module.
And we do have 12 equal modules in the vehicle.
Four of these modules are mounted together to a battery.
So from an electric point of view, we do have three equal
batteries in the car.
CHRIS HARRIS: And I suppose from an R&D perspective--
because this is an R&D project, and we have to
remember that--
it's entirely possible to take one of those.
You could take one of those and put them in a car.
JAN FEUSTEL: You can.
You won't have that much fun, but you can.
CHRIS HARRIS: But you still have a third of 750
horsepower, don't you?
JAN FEUSTEL: Yes.
CHRIS HARRIS: That's quite a lot--
JAN FEUSTEL: Yeah, that's quite good.
CHRIS HARRIS: --by conventional standards.
How long do these last for?
If you recycle them properly, if you charge them and
discharge them properly, how long does that last for?
JAN FEUSTEL: During development, we did a lot of
testing in terms of cycling, of aging, corrosion tests.
And we kind of torture our components to make sure they
will last in customers' hands.
But that battery is made to last for 10 years.
CHRIS HARRIS: 10 years.
So we're not worried about that.
In terms of range--
so if I drive the car normally, I don't try and
drive too fast, I keep the car in comfort mode, maybe for 20%
of the time of a full charge, I have it in sport plus and I
go a bit quicker.
How many kilometers do you think?
JAN FEUSTEL: The certified range is 250 kilometers.
But as you said, the real life range that you can achieve in
an everyday use might be around 200.
This is what we expect, even though if you know how to
drive the vehicle in an economic way, you will be able
to reach 250.
But if you're cruising in, let's say, more or less normal
traffic, 200 is a realistic answer.
CHRIS HARRIS: 225 miles, which is still a long way, given
that I'm not used to electric cars having any range
whatsoever.
Just talk me through the way that each gear box
works on each axle.
Can we have a look at that?
JAN FEUSTEL: Sure.
CHRIS HARRIS: I presume-- and you'll tell me I'm wrong now.
And we're on video.
He's recording--
do we just have a reduction gear effectively here?
Is that what we're doing?
We're just taking a motor and reducing its speed down?
JAN FEUSTEL: Basically, that's what we do.
We have one, two electric motors are facing each other.
They're mounted onto one gear box.
And inside this gear box, actually, there's two
independent gear sets in there.
So the right motor doesn't know what the left one does.
They're facing to each other.
There's two sets of gears.
And there's a driveshaft connected to the axles.
So differential is realized in an electronic way.
And that's why torque vectoring can tell that motor
independently from this one what we want
to do with the vehicle.
And that is the key for the fast reaction and the ability
to control the vehicle in a dynamic way.
CHRIS HARRIS: Talk me through, effectively, negative torque,
the way that you can apply what you call negative torque
to a wheel in a situation.
How does that work?
JAN FEUSTEL: Negative torque is a thing that you--
you might have difficulties to understand what negative
torque means.
For instance, if you go through a corner on your
right, these two wheels on the left hand side, they get all
the vehicle load, so you can put the maximum positive
torque onto these two wheels.
If you're turning into the corner, the two left wheels,
they get this negative torque.
And it's not that we're turning wheels backwards.
It's more like breaking down the wheel, or kind of try to
turn it backwards.
If you rip it off and turn it backwards, then
you lose the grip.
That's not what you want.
So you kind of break it down and turn it backwards.
And by moving this way, these two have maximum torque
positive and these two negative.
This is--
you can imagine, it turns automatically
without steering angle.
CHRIS HARRIS: You're not actually
running the motor backwards.
You're just pulling the torque back to zero.
JAN FEUSTEL: Exactly, yes.
CHRIS HARRIS: And that's what you call negative torque?
JAN FEUSTEL: Well, we don't turn it back to zero.
We are even able to turn it backwards.
CHRIS HARRIS: So it's actually decelerating the wheel?
JAN FEUSTEL: Yes.
CHRIS HARRIS: And this is all done through the gear box and
the motor, nothing to do with the brake?
You're not using the brake disc at all to trim it?
JAN FEUSTEL: Torque vectoring doesn't work with brakes,
since brakes kind of-- it takes some time to activate
them and to get the pressure there.
The electric motors, they set it right as you want it.
CHRIS HARRIS: Madness.
Absolute madness.
OK, I think that's about all the tech we can
digest in that period.
But that is a car that requires a lot of thinking
once you've driven it, and I need to go and think now about
what I've experienced.
I don't think it's an immediate solution for the
super sports car, because obviously it's expensive, and
it doesn't quite have the range, and it's heavy, and it
has some downsides.
But if you told me two or three years ago that there
would be an SLS for sale that was completely electric that
could perform like this, I just wouldn't
have believed you.
The SLS Electric Drive is too limited and too heavy to be a
genuine replacement to a supercar.
But it's much, much more exciting
than I'd ever expected.
This is a showcase for what's coming.
And it's mostly good news, even if it looks like the
smaller, lighter batteries we really need are still at least
a decade away.
It's a totally bizarre car.
I feel like Marty McFly the moment he got
into the bloody DeLorean.
If you made a time machine out of an SLS--
it's absolutely bizarre.