Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door interior reveals new secrets about AMG's Porsche Taycan rival
The covers are slipping off Mercedes-AMG’s hotly anticipated electric flagship. The interior’s been revealed first, with a number of key details on show.
AMG is preparing to launch its first fully electric car and we’ve gotten our first look at it. Well, the inside anyway. What you’re looking at here is the interior of the all-new, all-electric Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door.
Interior reveals can on occasion be a little underwhelming and telegraph not all that much about the car you’re yet to see. This AMG GT 4-Door happily, is no such car. This cabin is incredibly bold, incredibly distinctive and tells us an awful lot about just how far Mercedes-AMG is going to make what will be at once its first electric car and its new flagship, feel special. Frankly, it makes the Porsche Taycan look pretty bland and old hat.
Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door – engine sounds confirmed, but not ‘gears’
Underneath you and ahead of you there’s familiarity – bucket seats and a similar steering wheel design to that of the combustion AMG GT. The wheel, curiously, features paddles, which Mercedes says control recuperation. No word yet on whether there will be virtual ‘gears’.
The 10.2-inch driver’s display shows a curious thing for an EV to have – a tachometer that begins at ‘1’ with a needle sitting at an ‘idle’, with room to swing up to a ‘redline’ at 7. Look across to the main 14-inch ‘multimedia monitor’, canted towards the driver and sat above the sculptural alloy trim, and you’ll see a selection of adaptable settings.
One of which is sound, which appears to be set on the most aggressive ‘powerful’ setting, with balanced the next mode down. We knew the AMG GT 4-Door would have some sort of artificial sound from a number of teasers with V8-ish noises posted by Mercedes-AMG last year. We also know the headlights will have built-in speakers to project noises to the outside.
Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door – dynamics and powertrain
Believe it or not the reveal of the interior gives us some important insights into what to expect dynamically. Because look down below the main screen to the chunky central tunnel and you’ll see three prominent, backlit rotary dials. One reads ‘response’, the next ‘agility’ and the third ‘traction’, each with multiple stages of control. Response, for instance, appears to be on setting seven from the images, with more room around the dial to move.
As you’d expect, response lets you decide how sharp the throttle is, agility pertains to the handling attitude. Mercedes hasn’t given specifics as to exactly what is affected by twisting this dial but a reasonable inference would be, exactly how power is distributed between the GT 4-Door’s array of front and rear electric motors. Finally, traction control – how much slip the car will allow you, once you’ve set the ‘agility’ dial to ‘as much rear bias as you dare’.
The current AMG GT 4-Door is a force of nature – in GT63 S E Performance trim it packs a colossal 831bhp, weighs 2.3 tons and features a complex electric drive unit mounted at the rear axle. The new GT 4-Door while lacking an actual V8, will go even further as far as technology is concerned, being built on the new bespoke AMG.EA EV platform, with a Lotus Eletre-rivalling AMG SUV to follow. The platform features axial-flux motor tech developed by the now Mercedes-owned YASA, which prior to this, delivered electric motors used in the Ferrari SF90 and 296.
The motors are more compact and power dense, with the new AMG GT 4-Door potentially getting close to 1000bhp in its most potent forms. The new battery pack meanwhile is designed specifically for high performance applications, with new liquid-cooled, cooler-running cylindrical cells that are much more power dense. They charge and discharge at much higher rates and deliver consistent, dependable performance.
Mercedes-AMG put the technology to the test to record-setting effect in the Concept GT XX that previewed the GT 4-Door last year. It managed 40,075km’s worth of Nardo laps in 7 days, 13 hours and 24 minutes, covering 3293 miles per day on average, with charging speeds averaging at 850kW. For context, a Taycan maxes out at 270kW. The top speed was 223mph while average speed, even with those stops, was 186mph. Michael Schiebe, Mercedes-AMG CEO, has told us that the GT 4-Door will be a ‘marathon sprinter on steroids, with bionic legs’.
Again, no exact figures yet, though our first look at the interior has given a clue as to range: the dash is saying 81 per cent is good for 509km of range. With some slightly wonky maths, the indicated range for 100 per cent should therefore be in the 400-mile region.
Whatever your stance on EVs, there’s no denying the AMG GT 4-Door will be a leap forward in terms of high performance electric car engineering. From the battery to the motors, to how it deploys its performance, the goal of the GT is to be the next step in making electric cars thrilling.
Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door interior design
There’s an awful lot of pixels across three screens – the driver’s 10.2-inch display, the 14-inch multimedia display and the 14-inch passenger display – but somehow they don’t dominate. It’s not like a Tesla where it’s totally bland with the central screen the only distinguishing feature, nor like the Ferrari Luce which sort of flips the script on interior architecture. The AMG GT 4-Door sits in the middle, with sculptural elements that draw your eye.
The flanking circular air vents and the dynamic rotary dials in particular, which feature what Mercedes calls ‘chain-link’ design, which refers to the backlit diagonal slashes in the metal trim.
Then there’s the central tunnel, trimmed in carbon but sprouting out of a large alloy-look arch in which the vents sit. This is a distinctive, high-end place to be that does make rivals feel a little bland, if not because of, then in spite of the screens. Look up, especially if you’re in the back, and you’ll see ‘Sky Control’ panoramic glass. Switchable from opaque to transparent in multiple sections, it also features illuminated AMG emblems. The rear seats themselves should be spacious enough, with recesses in the floor for legroom and decent headroom. You can even get a three-seat bench.
All that’s left to see is the exterior. We know there will be active aero (you can see ‘aero’ as a configurable element on the central screen here). We initially didn’t think it’d get the distinctive circular lights from the concept but as the production car’s disguise has thinned, it looks like it will. Three-pointed star headlights will feature at the front, with more star-shaped graphics within the tail lights. Expect a Panamericana ‘grille’ to span across the nose, potentially with CLA-style backlighting.
