Mercedes SLS AMG E-Cell Video

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Mercedes SLS AMG E-Cell
Created: 01/13/2011
Video description: When--and if--you get past the color, the real eye-popping stuff begins.

Mercedes SLS AMG E-Cell Video Transcript

I don't know what to tell you about the color of this car. It looks like you either crashed into a highlighter factory or spilled a urine sample from a [unk] victim. But either way, this is unbelievable. But that's actually the least interesting thing about it. This is the Mercedes Benz SLS AMG E-Cell. You know the car; it's their latest supercar, but the E-Cell part is what's fascinating. Once my retinas recover, I'll tell you more about it. Underneath here somewhere lies the guts of an electric car, pushing motors out to each of the 4 wheels. They combine for 525 horse power- God, my eyes hurt, 649 foot pounds a torque. That gives this rather heavy car up to 60 in well under 4 seconds; 3.839 to 62 miles per hour. It's got a full 800 pounds more weight than a gasoline engine powered version of what's already a hefty car, and still goes that fast. So, this is quite the formula. Now of course the torque comes on not just in a way that's normally only associated with things that have Burlington Northern written on them. But it comes on like that, because those wheels are pushed out right onto the corners that torque isn't just massive, it's right now you better know what you're doing. Let's go inside. And once you drop the gull-wing, two words: Oh Lord. This is a serious cockpit. It really hangs onto you. Yeah, I sit in a lot of cars that hang onto you; this one is organically so. Very Spartan in fact, not a whole lot going on in here. We do have an enormous sort of trapezoidal shaped touch screen like 9.8 inches- very specialized stuff, couple of simple gauges in front of us that have unique readouts for the fact that we're driving an electric missile, or, car. Here's your controls for the vehicle- very simple. You can drive it, you can park it, you can back it up. That's about it. There's no gearbox, just motors sitting on at the wheel. This one here is going to be some suspension settings, Sport Plus bothers me. Then we have the button here which will extend the rear spoiler, and the front air splitter- an extendable splitter. And you've got the AMG mode button- that's funny, yeah. 'Cause I bet this car has got a docile mode you might get stuck in. And of course, abounding just about everywhere is lots of carbon fiber- this is the real stuff, not those appliques you bought down at Kragen last week. Now, here's the most shocking thing about this car, they green-lighted it for production; in 2013 that many copies will actually be available. Price and range are both under the category of "if you have to ask".

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