What it is
The 45 badge used to mean the world's most powerful production four-cylinder, a screaming 2.0-litre turbo in a compact hatch. At the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed on July 9, Mercedes-AMG revealed what the badge means now: the new CLA 45 4MATIC+ is fully electric, and it is the most powerful compact the brand has ever built.
There is no combustion version of this car. The 45, historically AMG's four-cylinder halo, is now a tri-motor EV.
The powertrain
The CLA 45 carries three axial-flux motors, one on the front axle and two at the rear, developed with YASA, the British motor specialist Mercedes-Benz bought outright in 2021. Combined output is up to 671 hp (500 kW, or 680 PS) and 1,297 lb-ft (1,759 Nm) of torque, sent to all four wheels.
That is enough for 0-62 mph in 3.0 seconds flat, or 2.7 seconds with a rollout. Top speed is limited to 155 mph (250 km/h), rising to 168 mph (270 km/h) with the AMG Dynamic Plus package. For a compact four-door, those are numbers that would have embarrassed a supercar a decade ago.
Battery and charging
Under the floor sits a 94 kWh battery, good for an estimated 416 miles (about 670 km) on the WLTP cycle. Peak DC charging runs at 330 kW, taking the pack from 10 to 80 percent in as little as 22 minutes, and a ten-minute stop adds more than 168 miles of range.
The usable range is the quiet headline here. A performance EV that can cover 400-plus miles and recharge in the time it takes to drink a coffee removes the one excuse buyers still make against electric AMGs.
Two body styles
The CLA 45 arrives as a four-door sedan and as a Shooting Brake, AMG's name for the estate. The wagon gets the identical powertrain and performance figures, so the choice is purely about whether you want the longer roof and the extra load space.
Our take
Retiring the four-cylinder 45 is going to sting for the people who loved the old A 45 and CLA 45 for their manic, boosty character and their exhaust that popped like a rally car. Nothing about an axial-flux EV replicates that.
But AMG has not lost the plot on numbers. 671 hp in a compact, 400-plus miles of range, and a 22-minute fast charge is a genuinely complete performance package, and the Shooting Brake keeps the range interesting. Whether it has the character to match the badge is the question every AMG EV now has to answer, and this is the one where it matters most. See how it stacks up in our compare tool against the rest of the electric performance field.
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Sources: The all-new Mercedes-AMG CLA 45 4MATIC+ (Mercedes-AMG). Revealed July 9, 2026 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Photography: Mercedes-AMG.