- Among the many aero-enhancing features of the AMG GT XX concept are active aero wheels.
- They open and close depending on driving conditions, and we may see them in production.
- They don’t have cables to talk to the car, and instead use Bluetooth to know when to open and close.
The Mercedes-AMG GT XX concept is brimming with cutting-edge EV tech that push the envelope in terms of performance and charging. But it also has some quite novel features, like its active aero wheels that open and close to either allow for brake cooling or improve the car’s drag coefficient.
It’s a key issue for the GT XX, which can go over 223 mph (360 km/h). At that speed, the air becomes your biggest enemy. This concept didn’t just visit the wind tunnel; it basically lived there, which is why Mercedes was able to achieve a coefficient of drag of just 0.198. That is even slipperier than the super-streamlined Volkswagen XL1, the most aerodynamic production car ever.
At 186 mph (300 km/h), around 83% of this car’s oomph is used to overcome air resistance. To manage this, the AMG can shift whether to use the air for cooling or let it pass through, over and under the car as efficiently as possible. It uses powered louvers in the front of the vehicle that have a wide range of motion, offering more than just open and closed positions.
The car wants to keep these louvers closed as much as possible to preserve its remarkable aero efficiency. Naturally, it has a completely flat underbody—not having one at this level is basically malpractice—working with a rear diffuser to create a Venturi effect that helps keep the car stuck to the road at high speeds. Even the side skirts are designed to direct the air in a calculated way.
6
Source: Andrei Nedelea
But while all of this is cool and everything contributes to the GT XX’s remarkable aero credentials, it isn’t anything we haven’t seen before. In fact, there are production cars with more advanced and extreme active aero than this concept, but none have active aero parts on the wheels. The study features flaps on the wheels that open and close to either cool the brakes or make the car more slippery.
They are connected to a central hub that Mercedes says gets its power from the rotation of the wheel and isn’t connected to the car through any kind of cables. It instead uses a Bluetooth connection, which is a very novel use of wireless connectivity. Bluetooth-enabled wheels are not something I ever expected to write about.
When I asked Mercedes-AMG CEO Michael Schiebe if these wheels would hit production, he smirked and said that the likelihood was “not low.” Cue every journalist at the round table starting to giggle while putting this down in their notes.
Schiebe went on to explain that this idea originated as one engineer’s passion project that he worked on individually in his own time and then brought to the attention of management. Everybody loved the idea, especially the fact that it had never been done.
There’s just one little snag: figuring out how to protect the Bluetooth wheels when they’re open while you’re trying to parallel park next to a curb. But, then again, if Mercedes is actually doing this for production, finding a way to prevent curb rash isn’t going to be the boss fight. The deciding factor will ultimately be whether these active wheels actually provide a benefit for cooling and/or aero, and if the extra complication (and cost) can be justified.
