Mercedes Takes The Wraps Off Its New GigaCoupe

Giga is the new mega. If it’s hip, hot, and happening in the world today, it’s gotta be giga. Elon Musk started it by naming his enormous new battery manufacturing facility the Gigafactory. Renewable energy enthusiasts think in terms gigawatts of clean, renewable power coursing through the electrical grid. Now Mercedes has taken the wraps off a concept car so in your face huge, so over the top gigantic, it could be aptly named the GigaCoupe. “Excrescence” is another word that comes to mind.

For some reason, car companies think an electric car, to be worthy of consideration by connoisseurs, must be so large, its footprint is equivalent to that of a city bus. It also has to be loaded down with enough technological gee wizardry to boggle the mind and befog all sanity. Such a car is the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6. It was unveiled this week at Pebble Beach, the annual pilgrimage for those who swoon over automobiles with seven figure price tags — and up.

The Maybach 6 uses 24″ wheels to support its nearly 20 feet of languorous length. Inside, it seats a maximum of 4 people. The fortunate few who enter and exit do so via gull wing doors. They are supposed to remind people of the 1953 Mercedes 300 gull wing coupe but really are a pale imitation of the falcon wing doors found on the Tesla Model X.

Once inside, the privileged few will be slathered in luxurious appointments and a slew of high tech gizmos. Sensors in the seats will read each passenger’s body temperature and adjust the climate control accordingly. No need for those with enough money to break a sweat, even though the temperature of the surrounding world is slowly rising. The car will take notice of color of the clothes the plutocrats and potentates inside are wearing. Then it will conjure up interior lighting schemes to match. The entire windshield is a giant heads up display operated by hand gestures.

Hidden underneath all this magnificence are four electric motors that combine to send 750 horsepower to the wheels for 0-60 sprints in under 4 seconds. Hello? Mercedes headquarters? Anybody home?  The Tesla Model S P90D seats 5 and can get to 60 in 2.6 seconds with Ludicrous mode enabled. And it’s a real car, not some tarted up concept that might be ready for the road in 4 to 5 years, if it ever gets built at all. It also has almost 300 miles of range. The Maybach 6 with its 80 kWh battery can only manage 200 miles on a full charge.

The Maybach 6 is supposed to give us a clue as to what the all electric cars of the future will be like. Instead, it suggests that all the suits in all of Mercedes’ executive suites in Stuttgart are simply clueless.

Source: Wired   Photo credit: Mercecdes