Exclusive: Mercedes boss on why car fans will love its future EVs
With his experiences at McLaren and AMG, Källenius maintains a particular interest in ensuring that Mercedes continues to deliver when people want to push their cars. He recalls fondly taking part in track days with friends during his six-and-a-half-year stint in the UK (“my favourite circuit was Goodwood, which is just fantastic to go round”) and is clear that he wants the Affalterbach division to keep growing.
“Our intent is to over-proportionally grow the performance side of the business,” he says – something that he’s sure will appeal to, well, you. “Having been more or less a lifelong Autocar reader, I know that Autocar readers know their stuff about sports cars,” he laughs.
AMG is now beginning to develop cars atop bespoke platforms to maximise their performance, albeit using the wider synergies of the company (“the way a climate control system works, do you need an AMG version? No, you don’t”), but Källenius insists that there will remain “cross-fertilisation” between those models and the wider Mercedes line-up.
Exclusive: Ola Källenius promises next AMG GT will be “insane”
One example of that is the new AMG CLA 45, which features an electric powertrain that can simulate a V8 engine, down to pops and bangs and feedback on the virtual gearchanges.
“When I first drove the CLA 45 with that system, I was like a born-again Christian,” says Källenius. “It was the best V8 I’d ever driven: it had all the feeling of a V8 but with more power and torque.”
Not that a virtual, electric V8 is about to replace the real thing: while Källenius thinks that the industry has “turned a corner” on the road to electrification, he admits that “the consumer is not quite there yet”.
He says that Mercedes “didn’t wobble” from its ultimate goal of becoming electric-only but nor did it abandon its commitment to “high-tech electrified combustion engines”.
Another area where Mercedes has maintained a singular focus is in its commitment to keeping its knowledge in-house. Aside from Smart, now a 50:50 joint venture with Geely, the company has eschewed the general industry trend of forming partnerships with other manufacturers.
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