You’re actually charging the battery by drifting.
Exactly.
That’s the most Mercedes-AMG thing I’ve ever heard!
Welcome to the latest episode of INSIDE AMG!
Today, it is going to be all about the future of driving performance.
I had a chat on this with our CEO, Philipp Schiemer,
and our CTO, Jochen Hermann.
If you missed that video, just click the little icon on top.
But today, we are going to dive deep into the technical details
that will define our future with two experts.
Here is the first one already; hi Denis!
Hi Felix, good to see you!
Good to see you too! Jochen already told me a few things
about this very special piece of equipment here.
Our very own high-performance battery.
I understood this is not a conventional hybrid battery,
what exactly makes this battery so special?
This is completely different.
Something we developed with our colleagues at HPP in Brixworth.
We tried to use Formula One technology in a series production car.
That makes it completely different from every battery you know from the market.
If you take a closer look at the cell itself, for example.
This looks like a regular battery you would use for a flashlight.
It is not only the battery.
The one key fact is that we developed a different cell.
This one is especially made for more power.
Our target is to have the maximum possible peak power in such a small battery.
So this one is very special.
If you combine it with our battery strategy and the temperature and the cooling,
then it will be completely different.
This is what makes the difference.
Then you take one of these contraptions here and just stuff a bunch of cells in there?
Exactly. We use 40 cells for each cell frame
and a total of 14 cell frames.
This way, we get 560 cells inside this battery.
560 cells lead us to a voltage of more than 400 V.
Wow!
We get 150 kW out of this system.
– 150 kW!? – Exactly, in peak power.
That is huge! This is still a small battery pack in terms of a hybrid battery.
That is pretty impressive.
Yes. Another target was to get the high power density.
We not only focus on power,
we also need to reduce the weight as much as possible.
As you can see, this housing is made of thin sandcasting walls.
This helps us to reduce the weight to 89 kg.
What do we have here? There is a lot going on in this part as well.
Well, this is actually the brain of the system.
This is the intelligence, where the battery management system is.
So this is where we measure everything,
where we see the voltage of the system,
the current through the system.
This measures everything. But it is also a compartment for cooling.
So, is there some sort of cooling liquid in there or how do you do that?
Exactly. This is a non-conductive liquid cooling.
This chamber here, where the cells are, is completely flooded with special fluid.
With this, we can cool down the battery
and set the temperature we need.
That’s crazy, I never heard anybody do that before!
We have never seen something like this in series production before.
And with this internal cooling mechanism,
you always operate within the perfect temperature range?
Exactly. 45°C is the perfect cell temperature in our system.
Therefore, we try to keep every single cell at that temperature.
On a standard battery, things are completely different.
I can show you this on the screen right here.
Ok.
Consider a standard battery:
If the cells reach 60°C, every “normal” battery will stop.
They will turn down the power to save the structure,
save the cells and every part of the system. Then you lose power.
But that is not what we want to do. We want to do something completely different.
That is something you will only get with the direct cooling system.
Yes, you can put in power and take out power.
And you are always within the perfect temperature range.
Exactly. I did not show you on the battery, but this is the heat exchanger.
This red and blue part.
This is our heat exchanger, where we remove the heat from the system
and transfer it to the vehicle system.
That helps us to keep the battery temperature at the targeted 45°C.
Like you said, we can use the battery
not only to take power out but also to put power in.
And that works continuously, it is always on.
That is why you use the F1 analogy.
This is motorsports technology, exactly what you want on the racetrack:
always have the power when you need it.
Exactly. That is the big point we want to have with this battery.
Jochen can tell you more about the strategy and how that works.
He will help you with the strategy of the system.
– Wonderful, thank you! – You are welcome!
Hi, Jochen, nice to see you! How is it going?
Fine, thanks.
We have some pretty nice equipment here.
I have already learned that hardware-wise we are in tip-top shape.
But I also learned that it requires a specific operation strategy
to get everything going. What is that exactly?
If you consider the internal combustion engine the heart of the Mercedes-AMG,
the operation strategy will be the brain of the whole powertrain system.
But the driver still has control by using different system settings, right?
Right. You already know the driving programmes
from our conventional models: C, S, S+...
With this system, we can drive fully electric.
We want to give the customer the opportunity to drive in completely silent mode.
If you do not want to disturb anybody in the morning, you can go fully electric.
So, we have a new bespoke electric drive programme for electric driving.
Then you move onwards through the drive modes Comfort, Sport, Sport+, and so on.
How does the operation strategy change through those modes?
First, we will talk about the C-mode, our most efficient mode
and therefore the most highly sophisticated one.
This is the only mode where the operation strategy
will automatically change from pure electric driving
to combined driving, and to Boost mode.
OK, in Comfort mode, this all happens automatically in the background.
The driver doesn’t have to do anything,
the system selects the most efficient mode to move.
You just drive and, in the background, the system
will always use the most efficient way to get you from A to B.
That is very handy.
Then you move on to more sporty driving,
which is, of course, where it gets interesting for us.
For a performance hybrid, of course.
Sporty modes are the most important for many of our customers.
So we focused on that a lot.
When you move up from C to S or even higher, the ICE will never stop.
So it will continuously provide you with the whole system power
from the electric side and from the combustion side.
OK, that is the “always-on” strategy.
The internal combustion engine is always on and the whole system activated.
Exactly. So this is the other aspect of “always-on”.
The one aspect is to never lose power on the electric system.
And the other one is to avoid stopping the ICE.
Because if you always have the combination
of electric engine and combustion components,
you are all set to drive off.
You always get power in and out of the battery
with each move you make with your feet on the pedals, right?
Exactly. This is where we come to a special feature:
this P3 powertrain features the first selectable recovery system.
You can select the recovery level you want to get from the electrical system.
Therefore, we can provide customers with a wide range of options
for using the acceleration and brake pedals,
from “sailing” to “one-pedal drive”.
You know this from PHEV cars:
if you lift your foot off the acceleration pedal, there will be a massive drag.
That charges the battery, of course, but will also slow you down.
If you like this feeling, you can have it with a P3 E PERFORMANCE version as well.
Both ends of this spectrum are very interesting to drive.
You mentioned the “one-pedal drive”, but also the sailing side:
you lift your foot off the pedal, and then you just sail on like nothing happens.
And you can experience both ends of the spectrum with the P3 hybrid concept.
Is there any specific change when we then move onward
from Sport+ to Race, the sharpest programme we have?
We defined this in close cooperation with our colleagues from the racetrack.
Especially the race drivers designed the features
of the Race driving mode of the E PERFORMANCE system with us.
Awesome! So this is real motorsports know-how that went into that drive mode.
Straight from the racetrack through our racing drivers.
Exactly. There are two main goals we want to achieve.
The first one is preciseness.
If you are driving around corners, you have to brake, you need to be precise.
We want to reduce the drag torque we already spoke about.
And we give the driver the full control of the recuperative
and the friction braking system only on the brake pedal.
So there will be no drag torque.
Second: when you drive out of the corner, you always want to have precisely the same power
and the linearity of your acceleration pedal,
allowing you to perfectly drive off every corner and accelerate optimally.
That is completely logical.
It would be irritating for a race driver to take his foot off the accelerator,
and then for the car immediately to slow down without him touching the brake.
Achieving this continuous force of recuperative braking and regular braking
throughout the whole path of the braking pedal, that is revolutionary!
You will not get any hint where the recuperative braking is ending
and where the friction braking is taking over.
Because we start with friction braking on a very low level, we are not losing energy
and keep the efficiency of the recuperative system very high.
Then, when we come to the point where the battery or the e-system is limiting us,
we hand over to friction in one brake system. It is all one control strategy.
So there is no handover from one to the other and a lack of power.
But it will go the whole way from zero to hero.
Amazing!
So you always put power back into the battery, no matter what you do.
Someway it finds its way back into the system.
Exactly. We will not waste energy because efficiency and recuperation
are also the main strategies for faster lap times.
Cool! Are there any other ways to get power back into the system and not waste it?
One easter egg out of the software development:
when drifting, you can also recuperate.
So we use the electric system to slow down
or take the load out of the ICE, putting it into the battery.
And then, when the slippery condition is over,
the ICE is already at full load and you can accelerate much faster.
And while drifting, you were able to recharge the battery.
So you are telling me not only does the ICE not cut down the power,
but you are actually charging the battery by drifting.
Exactly.
That’s the most Mercedes-AMG thing I’ve ever heard!
Absolutely crazy!
Thank you for these very interesting insights.
I have learned that if we do a hybrid, we do it the Mercedes-AMG way.
Very interesting, definitely! Thank you very much for that!
You are welcome!
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Today, we’ve learned a lot about the future of driving performance.
There are a lot of interesting new products right around the corner.
Stay tuned for that, also stay tuned for more videos.
Comment down below what we should shoot next.
Until the next one, bye-bye!