What happens when you transfuse the 2200HP electric drive train from the world’s fastest and most powerful production electric car, the Mercedes SLS AMG Coupé Electric Drive, into a 12m racing hull? You get the world’s fastest and most powerful production electric speed boat. Duh.
Dubbed the Cigarette AMG Electric Drive, this luxury racer was developed by Mercedes-AMG in collaboration with Cigarette Racing (together forming the AMGCR group) and recently debuted at the Miami International Boat Show. It’s based on Cigarette Racing’s marquee Top Gun cigarette boat model and measures 12m long with an 2.4m beam, a 70cm static draft, and dual 600HP Mercury Racing 600 SCi inboard engines. Cigarette boats are small, fast ships with a long narrow platform, low centre of gravity and a planing hull. They were originally known as “rum runners” in reference to their favoured use during Prohibition.
The power train, however, is all Mercedes. The Top Gun’s main electronic components including the electric motors, power electronics, high voltage batteries, and AMG Powertrain Controller (APC) were ported wholesale from the AMG SLS Coupe. On land, the AMG SLS is powered by a quartet of electric motors with a combined output of 740HP and 985nM of torque. The Top Gun, however, packs triple the number of engines under its hood. A total of 12 185HP compact permanent-magnet synchronous electric motors are arranged into a pair of six-engine clusters, each driving one of the boat’s propeller shaft.
And even though the Top Gun’s 240 kWh lithium-ion battery packs add an extra 2195kg, they are situated low in the rear of the hull and the ship hardly seems to notice. With 2996nM of torque, it launches from 0 to 60 in less than four seconds and tops out at a blazing 250km/h (86 knots).
[Gizmag – Cigarette Racing – Wikipedia]
Picture: Cigarette Racing