TEST – This is how the Mercedes EQS SUV tackles the biggest annoyances of EV drivers

You have to learn how to drive electric. Not driving the car itself, because that is no different than in a normal petrol car with an automatic transmission. It’s everything around it that makes electric driving a bit scary. Like plugging in the charging plug for the first time and waving your charge card. You just have to do that once to see how simple it is.

However, charging involves more than just a card and a pole. You also have to consider the location and the price. As soon as you realize that fast charging is fastest when the battery is almost empty, you will take this into account when choosing your charging stops.

But you also don’t want to run the battery so empty that you get stressed when all charging stations are occupied and you have nowhere else to go. But the crowds at a charging station are often short-lived, after fifteen minutes the Fastned location can be completely deserted again. You just have to experience that once.

You do know that the temperature of the battery pack plays a role in fast charging, right? A cold battery charges so slowly that you would be wise to drive it almost empty first. Then he gets the chance to warm up along the way. You could know the exact temperature of the battery through the OBD2 data port of the car. There are handy boxes and telephone apps for this, but we have not yet taken that step. We use our primal instinct in combination with the position of the moon to determine whether we get the optimal charging speed at the next charging stop.

This introduction, which quickly turns into an anti-advertisement for electric driving, is necessary to appreciate the smart systems of the EQS SUV. Because it seems as if Mercedes has taken a list of the biggest annoyances of EV drivers and has worked it out point by point to make electric driving even more comfortable.

Mercedes works with clear charging rates

What sets the Mercedes EQS SUV apart from other electric SUVs is that it’s smart. He knows a lot and shares that knowledge with his driver to make electric driving easier. For example, it knows how long fast charging will take. Other EVs do too, but the EQS’s navigation system is master of the pack and can make the decision to schedule two short charging breaks instead of one long one. That can save time, because its charging curve peaks at 207 kW and 35 percent. In other words: between 10 and 35 percent, the EQS SUV charges at its fastest and then uses it.

How much does charging cost? Lately there has been a lot of hassle about unclear charging rates. The EQS SUV knows exactly how much it costs to charge and tells you in advance how much you will spend for a full battery. That is welcome information and seems very clever, but it is a fairly simple trick.

The Mercedes charge card works with fixed rates. Such as 0.37 euros/kWh with normal charging and 0.59 euros/kWh with fast charging, regardless of which province or which charging station farmer you plug in. That makes the calculation a lot easier for the car and people know better where they stand. The amounts mentioned are in combination with a charging subscription of 4.90 euros per month. Mercedes has a pass of 12.90 euros per month for large consumers, which means that the electricity is a few cents cheaper.

Together with BMW, Ford, Hyundai and Volkswagen, Mercedes is building the Ionity network of fast charging stations. Not only are the 350 kW charging stations powerful enough to provide the EQS SUV with 207 kW of charging capacity and therefore a good place to plug in, with a new EQS you can also charge there for free for the first year. And the navigation system that guides you there also knows whether there is a free space.

Mercedes EQS SUV predicts your charging speed

One of the smartest features of the EQS SUV can be found in the EV menu: there you can see the maximum charging speed you can expect if you were to plug in at a fast charger at that moment, based on the battery temperature! That’s exactly what you want to know as an EV driver: is my battery cold or warm enough to fast charge?

It goes without saying that the EQS SUV is smart enough to automatically heat up or cool down the battery pack when there is a charging stop on the route. We keep an eye on the predicted charging speed and see that after a night in the freezing cold, the car first communicates a charging capacity of 44 kW (so much less than 207 kW). That number starts to add up as you drive. A battery icon with a thermometer confirms that the battery heater is active. Never before have we seen the operation of this system communicated so clearly to the driver.

As a driver you also learn how to extend the range by switching off systems. In the range menu you can see at a glance how many kilometers it will yield if you start driving in Eco mode or switch off the heating. You can easily open the range menu and the aforementioned EV menu with a physical button on the center tunnel. So you literally have all that useful information about electric driving at your fingertips.

Warranty battle between Mercedes and Lexus

It also credits Mercedes that it gives a 10-year or 250,000-kilometer warranty on the battery pack, instead of the usual 8 years or 160,000 kilometers. But as you can read in the test of the Lexus RZ 450e, the Japanese luxury brand is boss in this area with 15 years or 1 million kilometers.

That’s good news for you and me, because the developments of brands such as Lexus and Tesla keep the Mercedes designers sharp and alert. And hopefully it will also work the other way around: we would like to see all electric cars become as smart as the EQS SUV. Electric driving becomes a lot more comfortable if all EVs tell you what charging speed you can expect, where you can best charge and how much it will cost exactly.

Conclusion

The Mercedes EQS SUV is a beauty of an electric SUV. Of course it is a pleasure to drive it and you imagine yourself in a kind of spaceship with so many screens, but it is also very smart. The EQS SUV thinks along with you and provides you with all the information to make driving and charging as simple, fast and cheap as possible. Can Mercedes now pack all these EV smarts into an affordable model?