Cigarette AMG Electric Drive Concept: No Need for the ED Badges, This Boat Screams It

Just days after the revealing a G63-inspired powerboat, Mercedes-Benz AMG and Cigarette Racing are at it again, this time creating a speedboat that shares more than just a customer demographic. Officially named the Cigarette AMG Electric Drive concept, the vessel is not only inspired by the SLS AMG Electric Drive, but shares a fair bit of hardware with the car as well.

Pop the engine cover on the boat, and buried within are 12 liquid-cooled, permanent-magnet synchronous electric motors very similar to those found under the hood of the electrified SLS. The electric motors are arranged in two banks of six, and power is channeled through a pair of transmissions and outdrives. While all performance data is regarded as preliminary, AMG and Cigarette are quoting figures of 2220 horsepower and 2212 lb-ft of torque, with a top speed of more than 100 mph. The horsepower and torque figures check out considering the boat features three-times as many motors as the car, and the SLS Electric Drive produces 740 horsepower and 738 lb-ft of torque—roughly a third of the boat’s output. AMG and Cigarette are claiming their creation to be the “world’s fastest electrically driven motorboat,” a claim we’ll buy purely on the basis that the number of attempts to build a 2200-plus-hp electric-powered offshore race boat surely is miniscule.

As where the SLS AMG Electric Drive uses a single 60-kWh battery comprised of 12 modules, the boat uses four of those batteries (a 240-kWh capacity) consisting of 48 modules. Two 22-kW on-board chargers lifted from the car require approximately seven hours to recharge; to reduce the charging time to “less than three hours,” Cigarette offers two additional on-board quick chargers as an option. Cigarette and AMG have yet to reveal the weight of the four battery packs on board, but if we use the comparable—if not identical—battery pack from the SLS, which weighs 1208 pounds, we estimate the Cigarette AMG Electric Drive concept is toting roughly 4800-pounds worth of batteries. For reference the G63-inspired powerboat the pair debuted earlier this week has a fuel tank capable of carrying 500 gallons, or just about 3000 pounds. Of course, while the batteries never will become lighter as their energy storage is depleted, they are located low down in the boat to “ensure sublime handling characteristics during more dynamic changes of direction.”

The exclusive matte chromatic AMG Electricbeam Magno finish is lifted directly from the SLS AMG E-Cell prototype we drove nearly three years ago, as is, according to Mercedes, the instrument display. Fitted dials featuring AMG logos over the same extroverted paint color sit behind the wheel, providing information about current motor output, speed, battery voltage, and of course, the battery’s state of charge.

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• Comparison Test: V12 Vantage vs. R8 V10, 458 Italia, SLS AMG, 911 Turbo S
• Comparison Test: 2012 Chevrolet Volt vs. 2012 Fisker Karma EcoSport
• First Drive: 2013 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT Coupe

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The big question is range; what good is a 100-mph offshore powerboat if it can’t make the run from Hooters to Shooters without stopping for a seven-hour recharge layover in between?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/caranddriver/blog/~3/zZgEawxsoJI/

Piercarlo Ghinzani Bruno Giacomelli Dick Gibson Gimax Richie Ginther