is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.

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Earlier this year, Mercedes’ AMG performance brand grabbed our attention with the GT four-door coupe, a souped-up sports sedan with three axial flux motors delivering over 1,150 horsepower. Well, now meet its beefier cousin, the 2028 Mercedes-AMG GT SUV, an equally powerful, ultra-fast-charging electric people-hauler.

The AMG GT SUV (say that five times fast) marks the first time in the performance brand’s 59-year history that it has developed a full-size SUV entirely in-house from the ground up. Scheduled to hit the US next summer, the new EV is built on Merc’s high-performance AMG.EA architecture to combine sports-car handling with full-size SUV suburban practicality.

It will be available in three trims — GT 53, GT 55, and the flagship GT 63 — with the top model delivering 1,153hp via the same three axial flux motors powering the four-door coupe. That beats the Porsche Cayenne Turbo Electric with Launch Control, which is sure to make for some awkward run-ins around Stuttgart.

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Thanks to an 800-volt architecture, the SUV supports blistering-fast charging speeds up to 710kW on the 128kWh battery (GT 63 / GT 55) and 600kW on the 106kWh battery (GT 53). Drivers can charge 10–80 percent in 12 minutes or gain up to 450km (around 280 miles) of WLTP range in just 10 minutes. The 128kWh battery trims will have an estimated max range of 435 miles.

That battery, by the way? It utilizes F1-inspired technology with specialized NCMA cathodes, silicon-containing anodes, and cylindrical cells. An electrically nonconductive oil flows directly around each individual cell for uniform thermal management, enabling continuous high-power delivery and long battery life. Mercedes has quietly been on the vanguard of battery technology for a while now, with the AMG GT SUV just the latest example. The 710kW charging speed, in particular, could give Mercedes another edge over Porsche’s 320kW speeds.

For a full-size SUV, the AMG GT sounds like it could handle like a vehicle half its size. Mercedes-AMG replaced the traditional mechanical roll bars with a newly developed suspension that uses active hydraulic elements to eliminate pitch and roll during acceleration, heavy braking, and cornering. Combined with three-stage air springs and standard six-degree active rear-axle steering, it purports to balance track precision with long-distance comfort.

But just because it’s a beefy lad doesn’t mean it’ll tip the scales. The AMG GT 63 SUV weighs in at 5,941lbs, making it slightly lighter than the Lotus Eletre R (6,007lbs) and Lucid Gravity (6,100lbs), and nearly identical to the Porsche Cayenne Turbo Electric (5,960lbs).

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Silence is golden — except to a performance brand’s EV engineering team. That means piping in recorded sounds of real AMGs — in this case, the legendary AMG V8 and six-cylinder engines — to preserve the “emotional” AMG identity. Mercedes is proud that it’s using real engine sounds over synthetic EV tones, though some may disagree. The system even simulates mechanical gear shifts with paddle controls, offers adjustable sound profiles, and integrates physical seat vibrations — so you can still feel like there’s a real engine under that hood instead of a 78-liter frunk. The so-called AMGFORCE Sport+ drive program is offered as standard across all three trims of the Mercedes-AMG GT SUV.

Inside, you’ll find the MB.OS platform on your 14-inch display, with an army of AI agents from ChatGPT, Microsoft, and Google at your disposal to boss around. Use them to set navigation, discover random locations, do web searches, tell bad jokes, or whatever else people use AI for in their cars. Merc’s own onboard AI system can handle the physical stuff, like adjusting HVAC, changing drive modes, or fiddling with the lighting — all through voice commands.

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Beyond voice and navigation, the AMG GT SUV applies AI to high-performance track driving through something called the Predictive Performance Manager. Mercedes says the PPM uses track-mapping data to dynamically throttle or boost electric motor output depending on topography, conserving battery energy on downhill or technical winding sections so full power is available on steep inclines and long straights. That could also mean faster, more consistent overall lap times by eliminating battery overheating and power throttling during track driving — something an AMG lover would likely appreciate.

Mercedes didn’t release the official pricing yet, though we can expect something closer to its official launch.