One heck of a project from one heck of a firm
FRANKFURT MOTOR SHOW
Most of what follows on Mercedes-AMG’s Formula One-sourced Project One hypercar had to be heavily edited to remove involuntary potty mouth. Lots of it.
For example, the Project One concept car will punch from a standing start to 200km/h in six seconds. Six. That’s as long as it took me to read that last sentence and quicker than a Bugatti Chiron. The top speed of the thinly veiled concept is “over” 350km/h, which doesn’t seem like much in a Chiron world, but it’s plenty once you’re there.
There’s also in excess of 1,000 horsepower, more than 740kW of system power, scrabbling at the road through an eight-speed gearbox. Its tiny 1.6l single-turbo V6 engine crunches out more than 500kW, spinning out to an 11,000 rev limit, and claims more than 40% thermal efficiency.
All this, and it can drive as a zero-emission electric car for 25km when it needs to.
“The Mercedes-AMG Project One is the first Formula One car with MOT [ministry of transport] approval,” says Ola Källenius, Daimler’s board member in charge of research and development. “Our highly efficient hybrid assembly stems from motor racing and the electrically powered front axle generates a fascinating mixture of performance and efficiency.
“With a system output of more than 1,000hp and a top speed beyond 350km/h, this hypercar handles exactly as it looks: it takes your breath away,” he says.
The lucky few with $2.54m to spare will have to understand that the fully stressed engine and eight-speed transmission combination will have to be taken into AMG every 50,000km or so for a full tear-down and overhaul. Before that, they’ll be running through a number of driving modes, from full electric to what AMG calls its High Dynamic Mode for setting the fastest lap times.
Just like the dominant Mercedes-AMG F1 engine, the Project One’s powertrain has a split turbocharger, a 120kW electric on the turbo itself and another one on the crankshaft. There are two smaller electric motors to drive the front wheels.
The mid-mounted V6 is largely similar to the F1 engine, using pneumatic valves to cope with the higher revs.
The electric motors themselves spin at up to 50,000r/min, which is more than double the current standard of 20,000.
Just like in the engine that broke the mould for Formula One, AMG has separated the exhaust and compressor turbines to keep the inlet air as cool as possible. The MGU-H (it’s Formula One speak for Motor Generator Unit — Heat) sits on the turbocharger’s connecting shaft, spinning the compressor wheel at up to 100,000r/min.
“The hypercar is the most ambitious project we’ve ever made,” Mercedes-AMG chairman Tobias Moers insists.
“This marks another highlight of the successful strategic development of Mercedes-AMG as a performance and sports car brand. The Project One puts the benchmark of what is currently technically possible at a new level and, with its combination of efficiency and performance, represents the benchmark.
“At the same time, Project One provides an outlook on how AMG defines driving performance in the future,” he said.
The fast-spinning MGU-H technology moved Moers to claim that the Project One will have better throttle response than a naturally aspirated engine, with the electric motor boosting the turbocharger.
Built at Mercedes-AMG’s High Performance Powertrains unit in Brixworth, England, the powerplant can recuperate up to 80% of the energy on throttle lift-off. The MGU-H takes excess energy from the exhaust and either stores it in the lithium-ion battery or sends it around to the crankshaft’s 120kW electric motor to deliver more urge.
The car is effectively allwheel drive, with another two 120kW electric motors on the front axle, giving it full torque vectoring to each wheel.
It can also recuperate up to 80% of its braking energy, with each electric motor having its own floor-mounted powerelectronics unit.
“Motorsport is not an end in itself for us,” Daimler’s chairman, Dieter Zetsche, explains. “Faced with intense competition, we develop technologies from which our production vehicles also subsequently benefit.”
AMG isn’t keen to talk about the details of its batteries, which have the same arrangements and cooling systems as the F1 car, but there are four times as many of them.
The car’s EQ Power+ electric drive system runs at 800V, instead of the more usual 400V, to shrink the cable cross sections. The eight-speed manual transmission is based around the F1 unit, but has been heavily redesigned for road use.
The hydraulically actuated gearbox can do its own shifting or change gear via steering wheel-mounted paddles.
The pushrod, mutlilink suspension systems bolt directly onto the carbon fibre chassis tub, but it’s more complicated than that.
There are two coil-over systems sitting horizontally at each end, and the pushrod sprints struts eliminate the need for a stabiliser bar. It’s designed to deliver comfort and eradicate rolling movements in quick direction changes.
It retains ABS, while its ESP has three stages, including off.
There’s a partial carbon fibre cover for the forged aluminium centre-lock wheels and each of its 10 spokes has three slots to extract heat from the brakes.
“The Project One is the hottest and coolest car we have ever designed,” Daimler’s chief design officer, Gorden Wagener, says. “It combines our design philosophy of Sensual Purity with the performance of our Formula One racing cars and is the perfect embodiment of performance luxury.”
Not surprisingly, you are not going to see many, if any, Project Ones on SA’s roads — but then we said that about the Ferrari LaFerrari and there are a few of those around, so you just never know.