The Mercedes’ Project One is one big unknown, especially when general info like top speed, 0-60 MPH time and similar are considered. The only thing that is vaguely familiar is the look of the Project One which came from some unclear teasers, but hey that is progress as well. What we for sure know about this car is that it will be a $2.8 mil hypercar which instantly means a lot of people will have monstrous expectations. The Project One is made by AMG, and it is supposed to bring the Mercedes company into the elite club of hypercars, and it is planned to do just that sometime in 2019.
The things are starting to unravel a bit, and a cloth of mystery rose when the AMG chief, Tobias Moers, decided to share some details about the hearth of Project One and its suspension setup. Since the tech has advanced greatly, Mercedes couldn’t have just picked up the biggest engine they could find and slap it under the hood, no. Instead, they turned around to the tech coming from the company’s very successful Formula 1 team. Thanks to this the Project One will get a turbocharged 1.6 L V6 unit which may seem a little petite for a hypercar, but this unit is a close cousin to one that powered Lewis Hamilton’s F1 championship car in 2015.
Since the Formula one cars have high revving engines (reaching about 13.500 rpm) some changes have to be made for the Project One but not much, since the rpm range that the new hypercar will have is a lot closer to that number. According to Tobias, this small, free-spinning motor will redline at an outrageous 11.000 rpm (idles at 1.200 rpm), and it will send its power through the manual shifting eight-speed automatic to the rear wheels. Thanks to this high red line this little powerplant will output around 700 HP which is plenty for anyone, but not nearly enough when you consider that $2.8 mil price tag. When you say that the latest $85,000 Dodge Demon that has more than 800 HP and does wheelies the price tag of the Project One is outrageous. But Mercedes has thought of that and to make up the difference they equipped the hypercar with a battery-powered motor good for 161 HP at each front wheel.
The total amount of horsepower that the Project One will offer goes up to 1.000 which is monstrous. Thanks to the fact that all wheels will receive power the hypercar comes with enabled torque vectoring in order to provide superior handling and grip in corners. Besides the two electric motors up front, there is the third one that will make sure that the turbocharger spins at full all the time, which promises instant power by turning off turbo lag entirely. What is even more interesting is that the Project one will be able to drive on nothing but electricity, from those front wheel motors and a battery pack that is under the driver and passenger and is powered by regenerative braking. It will not be able to get far on electricity alone, but around 20 miles is what you can expect at max.
Thanks to all of this info a sane person would ask, well how do you plan to keep this rocket planted to the ground? Engineers have thought of that, and the solution is a suspension system that lowers the car’s ride height significantly at certain speeds and when the driver selects performance-oriented race mode, to limit its lift. That is a solution from only one side of the car, and the other side is its body which will certainly host aerodynamic aids up to wazoo in order to generate enough downforce to keep the tires stuck to the asphalt. There is just one more interesting fact about Project One, and it says that none of the company’s famous driver-assistance technologies will be available in it, in Project One you are fully in charge at all times.
