Yahoo Autos "I Think There Will Be a Future" for the V-8, Says Mercedes-AMG Boss
Mercedes' parent company Daimler has officially ceased development of all-new combustion engines, instead focusing on upgrading its current powerplants ahead of a wholesale transition to EVs. Don't confuse that with discarding internal combustion engines entirely though. According to the man at the helm of AMG, there's still a future for the V-8 under the Three-Pointed Star.
In an interview with Road & Track, Mercedes's head of the Top End Vehicle Group, Philipp Schiemer, said he expects the V-8 engine to stick around for a decade or so.
"I think there will be a future, yes," Schiemer, who oversees AMG, Maybach, and the G-Class said. "I think for the next ten years we will see the V-8s, for sure. We have a lot of customers who love their cars and I still think that we will see those people buying the [V-8] cars for a long time."
He added that Mercedes is racing V-8 cars all over the world, citing GT3 and GT4 programs that have brought the company's trademark eight-cylinder bellow to tracks in Europe, America, China, and Australia.
"We have really a very high demand all over the world," he added.
Large-scale developments of the engine itself have been shelved, but that doesn't mean the AMG V-8 has reached its peak. AMG Chief Technical Officer Jochen Hermann pointed to the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S e-Performance as an example of where that engine is heading, with hybridization unlocking more power and flexibility.
"You have this extra power, like low-end torque which is usually more of an issue for a combustion engine. We get that instant torque, whereas, you know, on a German Autobahn[...] this is where the V-8 engine really kicks in," Hermann said.
Combining the V-8 with a performance hybrid system opens up many possibilities, he noted, adding that the company is quickly realizing that they can do so much more with this technology as they learn more about tuning and integrating the systems.
"So, it's all these different combinations that you can have and all of these driving modes. And once the team starts playing around, they realize, 'oh, we can do this, we can do that,'" Hermann said. All of those tricks haven't yet been realized in the GT 63 S e-Performance, but as the company launches more performance hybrids, expect the systems to get significantly more clever with time.
"I think it's the thrill we have with this new layout," Hermann added. "It's complicated, to be honest. And actually, we had a tough time to get it to a point where we could say, 'ok, this is where we want it to be.' And the thing is, now having gone through all this we know there's so much more that we can do with a powertrain layout like this."
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