Customers of the Mercedes-AMG One were supposed to take delivery of their F1-powered hypercar last year, but the project is once again facing delays. Making the car roadworthy is a huge technical challenge, to the point where company bosses even joked about being ‘drunk’ when they gave it the green light.
According to Autocar, Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius said: “The team at AMG and the [AMG] High Performance Powertrain Formula 1 arm came to us about four years ago and said ‘we’ve got a great idea, let’s put a Formula 1 engine into a road car’.”
“I will have to go back to check the meeting minutes, but I’m sure we were drunk when we said yes,” Källenius jokingly told the media while responding to a question about the official launching of the One. In case you forgot, the One was first shown to the public in 2017 in concept guise.
Now, only 275 examples will be made, all of which have already been sold. Each unit costs 2.27 million euros (RM10.56 million), by the way. The One is powered by a road-legal 1.6 litre split-turbo V6 from the W07 Hybrid F1 race car – the same engine that propelled Nico Rosberg to his only world championship in 2016.
The engine is mated to MGU-H and MGU-K electric motor-generator units as well as twin front-mounted motors to deliver a total system output in excess of 1,000 PS. Top speed is quoted at over 350 km/h. Engineers are reportedly having trouble in getting the powertrain to comply with WLTP emissions standards – the 1.6L mill idles at 5,000 rpm, and using a petrol particulate filter would hurt performance.
In any case, it’s too late to wind back the clock, so Mercedes-AMG will have to figure this one out. The automaker will also post a “very honest documentary” about its progress on the project, so we get to see exactly what went down. So, what was the best or worst decision you made under the influence?
Looking to sell your car? Sell it with Carro.
Can Nio EP9 has a competitor, after over half a decade?
Electric cars are heavy, heavy track cornering is difficult.
Oh, this is not Electric. But It’s the Powerful F1 1.6 EV.
Lighter, Powerful.
They key issue stopping from production is the lack of Halo, when the team proposed this car they did not factor in Halo will be used in F1 now they have a problem to incorporate that device into their roadgoing hypercar. Now they even more headache how to incorporate F1 latest innovation; ‘porpoising’ into this car. Ini semua salah F1 keep changing specs every few years so carmaker looking to port F1 tech over to their passenger cars will always be outdated.
Michael Loke ordered one.
Making a road legal & reliable highly tuned tiny 1.6 liter turbo engine, sounds like an almost impossible task. There’s a limit to everything.
Don’t F1 engines need to heat up the engine oil and coolant before it will even crank? Or have they increased the tolerance to allow it to crank at normal temps?
If so, how is it still producing 1000hp?