Mercedes-Benz electric cars are designed for the long haul
After a year-long hiatus the IAA Mobility conference, Germany’s premier motor show, returned a few weeks ago – albeit with a reduced attendance and a new home, roughly 400km from its regular spot in Frankfurt, and to the Bavarian capital city Munich. But while the presence of other leading marques – BMW, Volkswagen, Renault – was concomitantly subdued, Mercedes-Benz clearly didn’t get the memo. From a barnstorming presentation show on the first evening to an open-air showroom in one of the city’s most historic squares, the Stuttgart-based company stole more headlines than an AOC Met Gala dress and unveiled not one, two or three but four new models it hopes will propel it into the Champions League of electric vehicle makers.
“We really want to go for it,” Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius told journalists before the event. He’s not wrong. Mercedes-Benz has pledged to go fully electric – where markets allow – by 2030, and invest a whopping $47 billion into batteries, software and other tech before then. It is adding 3000 developers to a global team of 22,000, and building eight brand new battery-making Gigafactories (Tesla, widely seen as Mercedes’ hottest competitor in EVs, currently operates out of three, with a fourth arriving soon in Berlin).
So yes – this is, as Källenius says, is a “profound reallocation of capital.” But what about the cars themselves? The first to arrive this year will be the EQE 350, a zippy, 350hp sedan sporting the range’s soft, streamlined features and benchmark interior “Hyperscreen”, a 141cm display unit stretching the entire length of the dashboard that Mercedes-Benz CTO Sajjad Khan claims is the “brains of the car.”
And that’s not all. With aftersales revenues plummeting due to simpler and more reliable electric motors, manufacturers are looking to software for future income. “Imagine you’re in the vehicle and you’re getting a massage, you have your scent you select, you have your music, you have your light system, all in your car,” says Mercedes COO Marcus Schäfer. “And you can go on and on. In the future, you can buy these as a service, and they’re in your car. But we have to do it right, and we have to do it quickly.”
The Hyperscreen is one bit of wizardry Mercedes-Benz hopes will attract a newer generation of drivers to the brand. Fully compatible with smartphones, it’s able to display a map almost the size of an old-fashioned A to Z. Passengers can personalise their own part of the screen, and they’re even able to watch films or TV while being driven without the driver being able to see, which is good if you want to get to your destination alive.
The EQE’s much bigger and stronger brother is the EQS – the Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 4Matic+ to be precise, a dual-motor, all-wheel-drive model that pumps out 658hp, with an extra 103hp to be squeezed from an additional AMG tuning package. That means it can hit zero to 100 in 4.3 seconds, which is about as quick as you can get without a pit crew. Without the grunt of a combustion engine it’s sometimes difficult to gauge speed (willfully ignoring the digital odometer display), and – full disclosure – this reporter had to be warned several times on a test drive that he was in danger of losing his license.
The EQS will set you back around $100,000, putting it in direct competition with Tesla’s Model S. But it won’t just be the speed that Mercedes-Benz is relying on to master an EV market that’s growing at a rate of 40 per cent year per year. The EQS comes equipped with a monster 107.8kWh battery giving it a range of up to 785km – enough to get from Dubai to Doha without a charge. Furthermore, it can be zapped with another 785km of range in just 15 minutes. For comparison, Tesla’s Model S Long Range currently offers a maximum 660km per charge.
“I think Mercedes-Benz is in a very strong position with the switch to ‘electric only’, moving up alongside Volkswagen and ahead of BMW for the electric market of the future,” says Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, an automotive researcher so influential in Germany that he’s often called the Auto Papst (“Car Pope”). “They have done very good things with the driving experience, the interior and the screens, creating a space where people can feel good while they drive. This is really novel and very important.”
The Mercedes G-Class, aka the G Wagon, is already one of the world’s strangest car models, transforming from an all-terrain packhorse in the 1970s to a darling of rappers and A-list celebs. At Munich, Mercedes-Benz unveiled a “near-production” electric version, the EQG, which the company promises will be an “uncompromising off-roader” with a two-speed gearbox. Not a lot more about the EQG is out there – but, adhering to tradition, Mercedes won’t put it on the market until it has mastered the 1445m high Schöckl Mountain pass near Graz, Austria, which has gradients of up to 60 per cent – that’s steeper than the average skiing black run.
The 585hp roar of the G Wagon has made it an icon. Recreating that in an electric motor might be difficult, says Chinese auto expert Tu Le. “Right now, I think the ‘thought’ of grunt plays a more important role than the ‘actual’ grunt of the G-Wagon…Engineering that grunt will take some effort, so that’s likely why Merc is currently light on details. But it’s one of their halo cars and needs to be badass right out of the gate or they’ll lose sales to the other premium brands that have hybrid or fully electric vehicles on their way.”
This February was the 175th anniversary of the birth of German engineer Wilhelm Maybach. The luxury brand that still carries his name – a subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz – launched its own assault on the electric market at Munich, in the form of the hulking Concept Mercedes-Maybach EQS. The dual-colour outfit is pitched more at those looking at a Rolls Royce, Bentley or Porsche – though little more is known about it at this stage.
“This brand always puts its foot forward with luxury and technology, and traditional values like safety and driveability,” continues COO Schäfer. “So we’ve got to keep this in the future, and EV is the future.”
In fact, EVs were seen as the future of cars as far back as the 1890s, with American inventor Thomas Edison claiming they would comfortably overtake combustion engines. “Electricity is the thing,” he said. “There are no whirring and grinding gears with their numerous levers to confuse.”
But Henry Ford’s Model T crushed the EV dream for almost a century until manufacturers began facing up to the car industry’s climate costs in the 1990s. This July, the EU proposed a ban on all new diesel and petrol cars by 2035 and has ploughed billions into charging stations across the continent. Even the gas-guzzling GCC has rolled out EV programs: the UAE aims to have 10 per cent electric or hybrid cars on its roads by 2030, and its EV sales have shot up 95 per cent in the past year alone.
In China, premier Xi Jinping has targeted EVs as a way to reduce his country’s chronic pollution. If it continues at its current pace, the country will buy almost 50m electric vehicles by 2035 – almost as many as the entire planet’s industry today.
Mercedes-Benz wants a big piece of that pie. At Munich, it made its intentions clear. Tesla and a host of Chinese car startups may have got there first. But never underestimate the prestige that comes with the inventor of the modern motor car. “It’s one of the largest transformations that Mercedes is experiencing – ever,” says Schäfer. “We’re very proud.”
This article originally appeared on GQ Middle East.