The standard car is just a huge laugh. It scampers about wagging its tail
every time you go near the accelerator.
You just know it was built to make a lap fun.
This, though, this was built to make a lap fast.
And then when you start cornering...
it's so much more focused and direct.
This is a serious car.
I bet it doesn't know a single joke, not one.
Of course, if you turn the traction control off
and stamp on the throttle, you can get it to misbehave.
But you sense immediately that it doesn't want to do this.
It doesn't like that.
"I am a serious racing car, English sir! Don't drive with your clown shoes on!"
Happily, even though it is a serious racing car,
Mercedes hasn't felt compelled to make the interior
as bleak as a Swedish police drama.
You still get sat-nav and air-con and many buttons that do... things.
So, it's luxurious and fast
and very, very good, but today,
it is rather overshadowed by this.
Partly, that's because this is the first car ever to come
with its own high-visibility jacket,
and partly it's because it produces 739 horsepowers.
Want to hear what that sounds like?
Well, turn up the volume on your TV and listen to this.
Welcome, everyone, to the world's first electric supercar.
I am astounded.
It is as quiet as a library for church mice.
It's so quiet, in fact, they fitted a device in the audio settings
that generates a bit of noise to keep you awake. Let's just turn that on.
It doesn't really work. It's just a hum.
Still, it isn't the end of the world,
because there is another way of staying awake in this car.
You put it in sport-plus mode and put your foot down.
Holy moly! That is 100 miles an hour.
120.
130.
140.
This is mind-boggling! And listen.
To find out just how fast it is, I lined it up for a drag race
against its petrol-powered twin.
I have 117 more horsepowers than he does,
but I still can't believe I'll win, because under here,
there are 864 batteries, so, this is half a ton heavier.
And it's electric, like a food blender, or torch.
And how can a glorified torch possibly beat a 6.2 litre V8?
Three, two, one.
It's not a torch!
It is a rampant rabbit!
What in the name of God is powering this thing?
Well, this is what an electric SLS looks like
if you take its high-visibility jacket off. And this is the key.
That is the electric motor. It's the size of a melon.
It has one moving part and it produces all of its torques,
and there are many, the instant you touch the throttle.
Now, all electric cars, the G-Wiz, the Nissan Leaf, the lot,
have one of these, but the SLS has four.
There's one for each wheel, so, it's four-wheel-drive,
and it has Formula One-style pushrod suspension
and a low centre of gravity, because all the batteries
are mounted in the spine of the chassis.
So theoretically, this should have the handling to match the immense grunt.
In comfort mode, it feels like any other car, really,
but when you put it in sport mode,
all sorts of electronic witchcraft starts to happen.
In a corner, the motor's powering the inside wheels
and I can feel this happening.
They use the sort of brakes to keep the line tight.
I can feel the car being pulled in.
Then you have a system that pumps juice into the batteries
every time you slow down, so it feels like you have engine braking.
Even though you don't.
And then there's a computer that decides which wheel should have
what amount of power at any given moment. And the upshot is...
this doesn't feel like anything I've ever driven before.
It feels twitchy and nervous. It feels like a thoroughbred.
It feels brilliant.
So, let's sum up, then.
Instant torque, savage power, mesmerising speed.
Mercedes quality, no noise and a petrol bill of exactly nought.
It sounds, then, like the stuff of dreams, but there are drawbacks.
Range, for example.
If you wanted to drive this car from London to Manchester,
you'd have to stop in Stoke-on-Trent and spend 20 hours charging it up.
Mercedes themselves say that at full chat it wouldn't be able
to do two laps of the Nurburgring and they may have a point.
I've only been out here for seven minutes on this run
and I've used 44% of the juice.
And there's more.
The electric SLS is £360,000
and for that you could have an SLS Black and 20,000 gallons of petrol,
which is enough to take it from here to the moon.
As a result, you'd have to be soft in the head to buy the yellow car
rather than the V8.
But when there's no choice, when the oil has run out,
this car does at least show us that the speed machines will live on.