Mercedes took its GT XX concept out to the Nardo high-speed test track in Southern Italy and came back with a slew of records for electric distance driving – including one for driving a distance equal to the circumference of the world.
Mercedes announced a new, 1,360hp 4-door EV concept, the GT XX, back in June.
The concept uses two axial flux motors and a 114kWh battery, with a top speed of 223mph or 359 km/h. And it’s capable of charging at 850kW – and that’s continuous draw, not peak draw. That means it can add around 400km/250 miles of WLTP range in 5 minutes.
So, with that high top speed and that incredibly quick charging rate, what’s a manufacturer to do, other than set some records?
The Nardo test track in Southern Italy is used by many manufacturers for high-speed testing. It’s known for its long, banked circular test track which allows cars to maintain extremely high speeds for long periods.
This is the track where speed and distance records are often set, and Mercedes set out to do the same with its concept.
Over the last 7 days, 13 hours, 23 minutes and 7.10 seconds, Mercedes ran the car, day and night, to see how it does at high speeds and without a break at all. And in doing so it set EV distance and endurance records set recently by other brands like XPeng and Xiaomi, and even by Mercedes’ own CLA (and, reaching even further back, an old one set by Tesla Youtuber Bjorn Nyland… without manufacturer support and on public roads).
Mercedes’ new record smashed the most recent 24 hour record, which stood at 3,961km (2,461mi) by the XPeng P7. The GT XX, with manufacturer support, fast charging and the right test track, managed to drive 5,479km (3,405mi) in the same 24 hour period, nearly 1,000 miles further than the previous record.
But Mercedes didn’t just go for 24 hours – that 7 days number mentioned above is how long it took the GT XX to drive a distance equal to the full circumference of the Earth, which is 40,075km (24,901mi) at the equator. In total, Mercedes did 3,177 laps of the 12.5km/7.8-mile track. Mercedes was looking to finish the trip in less than eight days, as a tribute to Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.”
It was helped in doing so by the incredibly quick charging rate the car is capable of, along with a fast charger that is capable of delivering that amount of electricity. 850kW is a lot more than any consumer vehicle or fast charger can currently deliver (usually 250-350kW max in US/EU), and is probably more than is practical or necessary for consumer cars. It’s even faster than the 600kW mid-race charging for Formula E. And it shows that the limits many think electric vehicles have are really not there in reality.
But in fact… Mercedes used two cars for this test, and both of them completed the same grueling test. Each of them finished with a similar distance traveled, only a 25km difference between them.
For the test, Mercedes engineers calculated that the optimal trade-off between energy efficiency and fast charging would be to drive the car consistently at 300km/h (186mph) around the track until it needed a charge, with the car driving an average of around 5,300km (3,293mi) per day.
Mercedes didn’t release any statistics on how much charging was done and how much energy was consumed, but it was certainly far more than the average consumption that you would see in normal driving, as is the case for any high speed track applications. There was certainly a lot of energy going in and out of that battery, and through those motors, over the course of those 8 days, and yet the cars seem to have handled it just fine.
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