Tag Archives: Mercedes-Benz

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Mercedes’ New Axial-Flux Motor Could Make Rear Brakes Obsolete

In the EV arms race, we’ve gotten used to bold claims: record-shattering motors, range numbers that sound like wishful thinking, charging tech that promises to “change everything.” But every once in a while, something genuinely disruptive rolls onto the stage. Mercedes’ subsidiary Yasa just unveiled one of those somethings.

A month after revealing an absurdly compact, absurdly powerful 12.7-kilogram axial-flux electric motor, the company is back with a bigger, stranger, and potentially industry-shifting announcement:
This motor may allow EVs to ditch their rear brakes entirely.

A Motor That’s Lighter Than Your Backpack—and Stronger Than a Supercar

Axial-flux motors are already known for wild power density, but Yasa’s new unit raises the bar. The company claims an unofficial record of 59 kW (80 hp) per kilogram, a figure that makes most conventional EV motors look like they’re skipping leg day.

Peak output? 1,020 horsepower.
Continuous output? Between 476 and 543 hp, depending on configuration.
And it pairs with Yasa’s own 15-kg dual inverter, forming a powertrain module that seems tailor-made for next-gen hypercars.

But the real twist is where Yasa wants to put it.

The Return of the Wheel Motor — But This Time It Might Actually Work

In-wheel motors aren’t new. They’ve been teased for years but rarely adopted because they’re typically heavy, unsophisticated, and murderous to unsprung mass. Yasa thinks it has cracked that problem.

By integrating its featherweight axial motor directly into the wheel assembly, the company says it can produce so much regenerative braking that physical rear brakes may not even be necessary. Not reduced. Not downsized. Deleted.

That’s not just an engineering party trick. Eliminating rear brakes — and possibly the entire rear axle assembly in some architectures — represents a stunning weight reduction:

  • Up to 200 kg saved on current platforms
  • Up to 500 kg saved on ground-up EV designs

For context, that’s roughly the curb weight difference between a Tesla Model 3 and a base Porsche 911.

Range Gains and New Design Freedom

According to Simon Odling, Yasa’s Head of New Technologies, the breakthrough isn’t just about shedding hardware. It’s also about capturing far more energy during braking — energy that currently turns into heat in EV brake pads.

More regen means more watt-hours back into the battery and, therefore, more range. And with huge mechanical components gone, designers suddenly have real freedom: new battery pack layouts, new aerodynamic concepts, cleaner underbodies, and optimized suspension kinematics.

In other words, this isn’t just a new motor. It’s a potential shift in the EV blueprint.

Where You’ll See It First

Mercedes-AMG will be the first to deploy Yasa’s axial-flux motors in upcoming high-performance EVs — specifically the all-electric AMG GT 4-Door sedan and SUV.

But don’t expect in-wheel motors on those models. They’ll use a traditional setup: one motor up front and two out back. Yasa’s in-wheel aspirations appear aimed beyond the near-term AMG lineup, toward next-generation platforms still being developed.

The EV world has been talking about reduced mechanical complexity for a decade. Yasa wants to take that idea to its logical extreme:
Let the motor do everything.
Drive the wheels. Slow the car. Capture the energy. Save the weight.

If the technology performs in the real world the way it does on paper, the EV landscape is about to get a lot lighter, more efficient, and maybe just a little weirder — in the best possible way.

Source: Mercedes-Benz

Story

Close-Up: The Mercedes-Benz CLS 350 CGI — The Shape That Changed the Game

Walk into the Mercedes-Benz Museum’s Youngtimer exhibit, and one car stops you in your tracks before you even get close enough to read the placard. Under the gallery lights, the Mercedes-Benz CLS 350 CGI looks less painted and more poured. Its body shimmers in Satin Alubeam Silver, a finish normally reserved for design studies—and in this case, created exclusively for the 2006 auto-show fleet. Even standing still, it looks like it wants to slip back into motion.

Liquid Metal, Frozen in Time

Satin Alubeam Silver wasn’t just another paint color. It was an optical flex—the kind of finish that bends reflections like soft metal, refracting light with a gentle sheen instead of a mirror shine. It turns the first-generation CLS into a visual event, guiding your eyes along the car’s long flanks, crisp shoulders, and subtly muscular haunches.

Complementing the skin are 19-inch multi-spoke alloys, bright silver and unapologetically elegant. They fill the arches just right, stretching the car visually and reinforcing what made the CLS a sensation when it debuted. When the Vision CLS concept broke cover in 2003, Mercedes expected interest. What they got instead was a global “build it now” mandate from the public. And so, in 2004, they did—barely changing a line.

The Four-Door Coupé That Rewrote the Script

Today we take the “four-door coupé” trope for granted. In 2004, it didn’t exist. Mercedes-Benz invented it, and the CLS became the brand’s first design-led halo for the 21st century.

Slim roofline. Flowing surfaces. A stance that looked tailored rather than assembled. Former chief designer Peter Pfeiffer and his team didn’t just style a car—they shifted the brand’s center of gravity. The CLS told the world that design, not just engineering, could be a reason to choose a Mercedes.

Inside: Tailored Confidence

Open the door of the museum’s CLS 350 CGI and you’re met with a soft, lingering leather aroma—remarkably intact nearly two decades later. The cabin is wrapped in semi-aniline nappa leather, supple and deep in its black-anthracite tone, contrasted by warm burr-wood trim. It’s classic early-2000s Mercedes, but done with extra intention: sporty, intimate, impeccably crafted. A car wearing a bespoke interior to match its bespoke exterior.

The Debut of CGI: When the Future Took the Stage

This particular CLS wasn’t just good-looking. It was a technology demonstrator, debuting Mercedes’ new CGI (Charged Gasoline Injection) system to the world at the 2006 Geneva Motor Show. Using high-pressure gasoline injection, the 3.5-liter V6 produced 292 hp (215 kW) while promising better efficiency—numbers solid even by today’s standards. Electronically limited to 250 km/h, it previewed the production CGI models sold from 2006 to 2010.

In other words, this wasn’t just a museum piece. It was a milestone.

A Mirror of Its Era—And a Marker for What Came Next

The CLS 350 CGI on display doesn’t just represent a car; it represents a shift in Mercedes-Benz’s identity. The early 2000s were the brand’s emotional awakening—more daring, more expressive, more design-forward. The CLS led the charge. It remains one of Mercedes-Benz’s most influential shapes, a design icon that hasn’t lost its edge.

A Time Capsule Called “Youngtimer”

You can find this CLS in Collection Room 5 as part of the Youngtimer exhibition, open until April 12, 2026. Ten icons from the 1990s and 2000s—complete with the fashion, lifestyle, and culture of their era—tell the story of a generation. Interactive retro gaming, early-Internet aesthetics, even AI-powered creative stations bring the turn-of-the-millennium spirit back to life.

But even among the neon colors and techno nostalgia, the CLS stands apart. Quiet, sculptural, confident—still doing what it did back in 2004.

Still rewriting expectations.

Source: Mercedes-Benz

News

Mercedes-Benz Joins Europe’s AI Vanguard — and It’s Not Just Corporate Talk

Mercedes-Benz isn’t just sprinkling buzzwords on a press release. By officially joining the IPAI innovation platform in Heilbronn, the brand is making a strategic bet: the future of building cars — fast, safe, and smart ones — depends on getting artificial intelligence right. And getting it right in Europe.

IPAI, a growing hub of AI experts, standards builders, and open-source evangelists, aims to streamline regulation and boost innovation across the continent. For Mercedes, it’s a chance to plug into a network that thinks big and moves fast.

“Artificial intelligence influences all areas and fundamentally changes how we think, develop, and operate at Mercedes-Benz,” says CIO Katrin Lehmann. In typical Stuttgart fashion, she puts it plainly: AI isn’t a side project — it’s a lever for “sustainable value creation.”

What’s Mercedes Bringing to the Table?

A lot. The company already deploys AI across nearly every link of its value chain — development, procurement, production, sales, aftersales, even the office workflows most workers wish were automated yesterday.
The brand’s experience ranges from AI copilots for procurement to machine-learning models that crank out test cases during engineering, detect damage in workshops, and monitor production with cloud-based data analytics. Even AMG engine quality control is in play, where micrometer-level perfection is non-negotiable.

In return, IPAI gives Mercedes something it can’t buy off the shelf: shared standards, shared expertise, and shared infrastructure with other top-tier players in Europe’s tech ecosystem.

Moritz Gräter, CEO at IPAI, frames it as a decisive moment: Europe needs to pool resources if it wants competitive, trustworthy AI that can stand up to Silicon Valley and Asia. Having a global powerhouse like Mercedes on board adds credibility — and horsepower.

Beyond the Factory Floor

Concrete results from the partnership will show up in places like the Mercedes-Benz Digital Factory Campus in Berlin, where futuristic production concepts are developed before being unleashed globally. But the ambitions go well beyond building cars more efficiently.

Think smart-city vehicle behavior. Think predictive safety systems. Think genuinely adaptive driving experiences that tune themselves in real time. Mercedes is already exploring those scenarios with IPAI, hinting at a future where mobility is less mechanical and more cognitive.

AI for the People — Not Just the Engineers

One of the more surprising parts of Mercedes’ strategy is how aggressively it’s democratizing AI internally. The company has doubled daily AI usage among employees this year and is targeting a 50 percent usage rate by the end of 2025.

To make that happen, Mercedes built an internal AI web portal — a one-stop shop for chatbots, tools, and cross-departmental knowledge. Want a virtual assistant to help you draft supplier requests? Done. Need automated workflows to trim hours off a process? Already happening.

Daniel Eitler, Chief Data and AI Officer, puts it bluntly: “We seek to unlock the full potential of AI as a catalyst for transformation.” In other words, AI isn’t replacing people — it’s supposed to take the drudgery out of their day so they can do higher-value work.

A Control Tower for the AI Era

Overseeing all of this is Mercedes’ central AI competence center. This isn’t your typical IT department. It’s a company-wide command hub that standardizes platforms, manages infrastructure, and keeps AI deployments on track with regulations.

Part of that effort is the intriguingly named Agent Garden, a multi-cloud platform now in beta. The idea: employees can easily access AI agents regardless of cloud provider, with all the compliance work baked in. Think app store, but for internal AI workflows.

Mercedes has also compressed its model deployment pipeline: new AI models can now be onboarded in five weeks with five days of testing — fast by automotive standards, where validation usually moves at glacial speed.

Risk-based governance and strict AI principles tie the whole thing together. Mercedes wants innovation, but it also wants guardrails. “Responsible AI” isn’t a tagline here — it’s an operating requirement.

What It Means for Drivers

For average buyers, this partnership won’t show up as a badge on the trunk lid, but it will shape the future driving experience. Smarter safety systems, cleaner interfaces, more personalized features, more reliable production, and cars that integrate into connected infrastructure — all of it accelerates under this AI-forward approach.

In other words: you may not see AI in your next Mercedes, but you’ll definitely feel it.

Source: Mercedes-Benz