The Evolution of Electric Car Batteries: A Revolution in Motion

Battery technology has been a game-changer in the electric car industry, with advancements happening at an incredible pace. Just two months ago, the laws regarding high energy density on batteries were changed, paving the way for the next generation of battery technology. The shift towards solid-state batteries is gaining momentum, with companies like Tesla and Mercedes-Benz leading the charge.

Thomas Edison's Alkaline Battery: A Revolutionary Idea That Failed to Materialize

In his letter to Henry Ford, Thomas Edison predicted that his alkaline battery would revolutionize the electric car industry by doubling mileage. However, this promise did not materialize as expected. The batteries did not live up to their promise, and it wasn't until the advent of lithium-ion batteries that significant advancements were made. Despite these setbacks, Edison's innovative spirit paved the way for future breakthroughs.

The Cooling Conundrum: Air-Cooled Batteries and Their Limitations

When the Leaf was first introduced, it featured an air-cooled battery system, which proved to be less effective in hot weather. This led to reduced range, with estimates suggesting a 30-mile reduction in mileage due to the cooling system's inability to cope with high temperatures. In contrast, cold weather had little impact on the battery's performance, but even then, it was not ideal. The air-cooled system relied on the chemical reactions within the battery to function, which required time to cool down and recharge.

The Science Behind Solid-State Batteries

Solid-state batteries work by using a solid electrolyte instead of a liquid one, which enhances energy density and reduces weight. However, this comes with its own set of challenges, including the need for cooling systems to maintain optimal temperatures. The bigger the battery, the longer these chemical reactions take place, which affects the overall performance and range of the electric car.

Safety First: Crash Testing Electric Cars

Electric cars have undergone rigorous safety testing, with a focus on protecting passengers in the event of an accident. Mercedes-Benz's GSD 43 has received high praise for its safety features, including a robust body structure and advanced airbag systems. However, one area that requires improvement is the battery system itself, which must be designed to withstand extreme temperatures and other external factors.

The Future of Electric Cars: Affordability and Range

As electric car technology advances, prices are expected to decrease, making it more accessible to a wider audience. The European market will see the introduction of new models in mid-2019, with prices expected to be revealed in spring. Mercedes-Benz is committed to electrifying their lineup, with the GSD 43 being one of the first models to showcase this technology.

The Driving Experience: Features and Programs

Mercedes-Benz's electric cars offer a unique driving experience, complete with features like eco-mode and acceleration characteristics that provide an additional layer of control. The company's driving program, which includes options like "blue sea" mode, allows drivers to customize their experience and optimize range. Advanced navigation systems also come equipped, using real-time data to predict charging times and optimize routes.

A Special Invitation: Testing the Mercedes-Benz GSD 43

The author was given the opportunity to drive the Mercedes-Benz GSD 43, a fully functional prototype that showcases the company's commitment to electric car technology. The vehicle offered an impressive range of features, from advanced infotainment systems to sophisticated safety features. This exclusive test drive provided insight into the future of electric cars and their potential to revolutionize the automotive industry.

As the world continues to evolve, it will be exciting to see how battery technology advances in the coming years. With companies like Mercedes-Benz leading the charge, we can expect significant improvements in range, affordability, and overall performance. The future is bright for electric cars, and it's clear that Thomas Edison's innovative spirit has paved the way for a revolution that will continue to shape the automotive industry for years to come.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthere is no gas it select a cure just no gas well another episode of Jay Leno's Garage we have today an exclusive a car that has yet to appear anywhere at least in the United States it is a 2020 model it is a mercedes-benz it is a cube C what does that mean we will find out but it's a revolutionary car from mercedes-benz let's let's bring in our powertrain testing engineer is that correct that's correct yeah Bastian Schultz right that's right my friend yeah okay well this is pretty exciting so tell people what we have here fully electric it's completely fully electric car the brand new if you see like you just told us we going to introduce it somewhere in 2020 here I guess and it's the first battery full electric car under the new brand EQC what is EQC stand for its electric intelligence it's it's like it's coming from our our core core competences or core values like intelligence and emotion right so and this is like make something cool for the electric car okay very good and I guess it's what would it be a crossover and SUV and we like to call it a sporty SUV okay okay so I like most of electrics I mentioned everything is below the axle all the weight right so obviously it's gonna handle pretty good is it two wheel drive or wheel drive we ever already drive here oh well single-engine Doolin's we have two engines one on the front axle one on the rear extra they are almost the same like each of them has 150 kilowatt power mm-hmm so and then the total we have a system power of 300 kilowatts so 300 kilowatt translates into what kind of horsepower slightly more than 400 400 no okay okay all right interesting and and the range is about what we have only right now the European cycle and there we have nothing official largest okay and we will do more than 200 miles okay round about 220 something okay and you know Mercedes has always been a leader in innovative stuff I remember they I think the Mercedes diesel that was the first Patrick R then in the oh I remember the 70s they went crazy with a Wankel engine it was was gonna be the next thing the Wankel never really Mazda made it go but nobody else could get it to go because the fuel mileage was not good we're not particularly efficient but electric seems to be the future is that I imagine Germany will probably be very strict in terms of restricting polluting cars right there right you're completely right I mean we now made the first step with the EQ with a brand and by 2022 we will have 130 models completely electrified really yeah okay so we have more we have we're gonna have 10 fully electric cars up to 2022 and then everything like the 48 volt electrification of the diesel and the power trains and the gasoline and then the plug-in hybrids so the completely package of electrification will start right now why no cause Mercedes always kind of sit back and watches what happens I always tell the electric car manufacturers when mercedes-benz gets into the business that's when it's gonna get really competitive because I remember in America a cupholder why would you need a cup holder and and we're saying he's never put a cup holder in the car and then Americans market and when they did come out with a couple that was the most complicated you turn it it turns around because I like this brings the cup through you like it just it just made me laugh because a Mercedes couple everybody else just has two holes in their transmission tongue we sticking cup Mercedes you press it the thing goes around it comes like this okay it's very funny and that's why I do an engineering well I like I like I like German engineering I'm a fan of German engineering and that's why I wouldn't I know when Mercedes Benz gets into the electric game it's gonna be full on and and pretty unbelievable I imagine you know people like change but not like gradual change and to me it looks like a Mercedes Benz except it's all electric as opposed to coming out with something you know you can't introduce something before its time you know when the Chrysler airflow came out it had this sweeping front end there and people enroll what what's there is too much you know because electric cars can look different because they don't need radiators and grills and stuff but people like the look of you you have to ease into it you know I'm saying that's what I mean this looks like it could be a gas car but it's obviously all-electric and more efficient than more space or less space because of the batteries almost the same actually I mean we made this completely new platform but we can fix it in the in the plants in Germany and also in China and the US we install just the battery beneath or underneath the car right and but below that or in the in the normal Kevin we have more or less the same space like like the normal class and imagine you have the regen is that adjustable it is and as a default version we have a optimized recuperation using camera information using the data from the maps and everything and then you can choose another for fixed recuperation from very strong recuperation until you're just rolling on the street so obviously your brakes last twice as long because when you slow down you pull the regenerating electricity and you're not wasting your brakes so so you know you're not you're not I'm hard on the pads or anything you can do it automatically like a default version but then if you maybe going down the valley of from mountains and you can you can use a very very strong recuperation and then you just choose it with with pedals right now does an electric car like this have a reserve you know a lot of people will drive until it says empty mm-hmm and then how much do you get how much how much of a warning do they give you we have a normal warning scenario which is you are comparable to to the gasoline engines so you get a warning I don't know something about 30 40 miles or 50 kilometers and then you you get be warned so I think you get one three or four times okay where is where is your where do you plug in the charge on the other side and the other okay let's see as the charge port right here yeah here we go okay here we have two possibilities to charge is this a Mercedes only charger or it'll be sort of the universal this one is the the combo the CCS one so this is used also in the US market yeah you can go up to I think we have here yesterday we found some stations from up to 50 kilowatts okay so this is pretty fast but the car can go up to 110 kilowatt cool yeah about this pattern on the wheels it's kind of cool that what is the blue signifies and the blue is as you see the the EQ the color to create it a little bit like you told us because looking like the normal materials were very specific I've specified further for the electric vehicles but we have created this lovely blue rims and we have the same blue on the EQ batch on the on the side and so we try to get the blue into the car and it's important that it looked like a Mercedes yeah customer I mean if you come up with something totally different it just people you know people like the Mercedes name they like the Mercedes quality so it's got to look like what they perceive a Mercedes to look like you know yeah so it's sort of evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary because everything looks mercedes banz you know I'm looking very frustrating for you guys because people don't read a handbook they don't pay attention you know they know I somebody called me the other day and they said a light came on in my car which I do I said what does it look like said it looks like a little gas pump I said well you're almost out of gas but I have a meeting to go to I said we got to put gas in it I don't know the time ever meet I know you're not gonna get your meeting I would get to the car I went oh my god trying to explain a complicated vehicle then this guy would be unbelievable so the trick is to keep it as normal mercedes-benz as you can and just sort of ease people into that everything how was the electric car perceived in Germany because it took a while here people are somewhat suspicious mmm you know I mean the same is like in Europe like all over the world it's it's it's a new thing a big thing I think we have to deal it and we want to deal it and I think it's it's a good story but you need the infrastructure and you need everything you so the people get used to it and it's not the normal behavior like traveling from here to to San Francisco you normally go to the gas station just fill in some some petrol and then I continue in 10 minutes so actually we had a road trip yesterday with this car from San Francisco down here to LA with this car and it's not a big problem it's it's fun driving and very calm inside the cabin so it's not the combustion engine right you you were here so it's it's very very you're comfortable driving now I notice it has normal big tires and when electric cars first came out yes states they always had these very mm-hmm small you know he you know 50 pounds you're a hard you know you get the most mileage basically you don't need special tires anymore for for electric cars no what we made some aerodynamic rims that the people want to have nice rims so we want to create a package that is efficiency with the rims but also the people like to buy an electric car can always be more aerodynamic in a gas car because the air doesn't need to flow through you don't need to go into a radiator you know you don't you don't need diffusers because you have a muffler and it's got to go around you can be smooth all the way around so your coefficient of drag is a lot less that's what we did I mean looking from the front it's it's a little bit more close than the normal Mercedes well this probably most dramatic angle the front with the big and this illuminates doesn't it yep front yeah only in the US oh is that right yeah yeah a special special gift for the US market so we have the illuminated illuminated star yeah you see it's not completely closed maybe you can you know from some other electric vehicles it's closed up a little bit more in comparison to our combustion engines we don't need the complete air while driving for the electric vehicles but you need the for the cooling of the battery right sometimes in the in the hot summer driving but not most people driving it's mostly for charging while you parking ok so we then you have a lot of heat on the on the battery and you have no air inside does that have fans that come on well we have a fan right so that you can get in the air while you are acting and charging ok the the big advantage with this front we have a little bit more efficiency on the aerodynamics and the seamless design but so what is the coefficient of drag its 0.28 oh that's very good very good I think it's the one of the best and become yeah yeah because you know like I have a Lamborghini Countach it over there and people think that's aerodynamic you know it's like a brick a wedge is like a brick it's like you've pushed in the air but you know what looks aerodynamic is not air anomic that your drop is the most arranged knob I guess and this sawed it has that feel to it and because it the air does not have to stop and cool the radiator you can go around yep go through it that's it you know yeah because I mean aerodynamics is another whole I mean the amount of thought that goes into having this little crease here it's there for a reason right on the bonnet we have this for a reason for efficiency reasons or for aerodynamics on this side we have a very seamless design so this is yeah best of both options you have a aerodynamic advantage and it looks very very clean so what's under here can we open this yeah we just have to go to the yeah so I don't always see nothing yeah another blue yeah stuff here even if you open it Wow things like the flux capacitor yeah okay when you remember we have so much power and it normally you would have been at least six cylinder or 8 cylinder engine under I so it's very very small in comparison to normal combustion engines this is the powertrain the electric powertrain and we installed it into this subframe so this is like almost a roll bar for the engine this is ok and this is like this your ECU or what you call what you use the Onix yeah this is the electronic ok and your coolant flows where that's down below yeah oh honey into the bedroom and this is a radiator of some kind yeah ok so this belongs to the cooling so this car is building plant Bremen and the normal ongoing production of the series production cars of the normal G L C and C Class and everything and this can go on the same assembly just with this subframe I say ok Wow I mean it's extremely complicated but once you explain where everything is very cool how often would you change the cooling fluid do you ever as as long as yeah I mean we are doing a lot of testings yeah but normally if you're doing normal behavior you don't have to have to refill it as often it doesn't run like an antifreeze it doesn't run a glycol so we have some antifreeze in it but it's the normal user will be used for the series production right ok thank you thank you so nothing so there's really no maintenance on this car at all other than maybe brake pads occasionally right and even them maybe because you have this recuperation you never use the brakes here as often as on the normal right right I mean that's what's kind of fun I love the paddles because when you come to a light you just grab the paddles and and you're using it basically as a handbrake it just slows you down and you just put your foot on the pedal won't you stop that's why we use the pedals because this behavior you have a normal engine and you go down the mountains you're using a lower gear to break your car and here's the same on the you you choose a lower gear right stronger recuperation and so you have the same behavior on the electric guitar so we have this same setup in the back yeah well okay this is the same owner or a different moment it's almost the same slightly different some different parts but because we haven't every we would have problems with a package down there but it's the same engine so same hundred fifty horsepower now I hear think the cooling is working okay because it's there ready for drive yeah that's funny yeah so it's so there's no battery disconnect switch analyst no no no so you have this this poor chain on the front and then on the on the rear same together and it's a single spigot single speed gear or in singles mean yeah yeah because there's really no transmission that can take the amount of torque that these engines put out I mean I remember years ago 10 years ago Elon Musk came by here with the roadster and he had a gearbox in it and I put it in second and it just it just broke and the real then they went through a single speed because you did there was no advantage to having a gearbox something they did be fun to shift but it was just the engine had so much torque it couldn't take it yeah very cool well it looks complicated but once you look at it it well it begins to make sense it doesn't seem that complicated at all pretty straightforward it will be completely assembled from another plant from the fall time plant in Hamburg and and this whole body is coming to the plant to the assembly line where the car is on and then it's only one single station for if you go in to this car with the right with a six-cylinder or with this so it's very flexible on the production side now you explain before you mentioned that this is more efficiency and the rear engine is more for power explain what you man and so the the engines has different kind of windings so we have here the five windings for the most efficiency right so if you're driving just down the early in the city we're driving then the car will only go with this one okay so this is the single or the only only powertrain which that means these front wheels of driving and those are freewheeling in the back yeah okay so and if it's going more dynamic or if you need some more power than the if I step on the throttle all the way then then it kicks in yeah okay alright so in this okay seven windings then cool cool well let's uh can we take over right sure obviously extremely quiet and this being European model the dash is all in German American no no it's completely completely German or European well that's that's it yeah it's a completely German European version of the car now you have you just have a five week old daughter correct that's it though by the time she's able did what's the driving age of Germany 16 18 18 18 so everything should be probably fully electric she probably won't even I think no I think she don't have a clue what combustion engine is if as soon as she were driving any camera and maybe she will get more convenient with all this stuff like some others now now okay so what I want to break I put both feet back at this one um actually you see it down there this is now rolling so the pluses pluses like the most easy so no recuperation okay if you if you hit the left one yeah turn it or pull it so now you have a different one this is slightly a little bit more recuperation I think then turn another one that's max this is maximum this is very one pedal feeling like okay you know what it's like remember on your bicycle and you're a kid and you had that little generator that rubbed against the tire and the faster you want the bread will light got well that's basically what just a myth imagine as you were slowing down you you push that little motor against the tire harder it would grip more and it would put more electricity but yeah that's basically what it would and you just get used to doing one foot driving like see right here now no life step on the brake but now I just take my foot off the gas and hey I'm making a couple of amps of electricity there but if you're someone who likes a gas car so you can go this way and just see now I'm just rolling and I'm just rolling and you get less regen but it's a good way to save your brakes or if you're going on a steep decline switch you just put it in that and let it just make energy I know coming down Coldwater Canyon in some electric cars I'll pick up two or three miles because it's a long grade and you go you've got six miles let onna so oh I got eight miles left yeah so it's almost like somebody's pouring gasoline thirsty going along I mean it's really fascinating and this really is the future you know I don't I don't get the hydrogen thing it costs more than a hydrogen we already have the infrastructure for electricity I mean it exists already obviously we need to upgrade and Germany has really embraced the electric thing everything I think so yeah I mean very green I mean they're very green I mean we've there's still a long way to go yeah like all the infrastructure is it's it's growing every year and we're and the building they're pretty pretty busy building up infrastructure for the for the for the charging points now in Germany do you get credit for buying an electric here in America in California might electric car you get anywhere from twenty five hundred and seventy five hundred dollars back then when the government did they have that in Germany we had programs like this yeah actually really don't know how exactly they work but you can you also get a text refine or something like this you can give your old cars back to the dealers and then also get a little bit like refund what's happening that's it okay where the energy and here you see on the energy flow now we are just idling we are only working with a with a excellent with a with a power train on the front exit right and if you would have a problem or off the gas no it should yeah it's free can't see you putting it like rotors hard right we now are in essentially economy mode for lack of a better word so we're just using a minimum amount electricity to move the vehicle if you step on the gas okay it throws the camera in the back yeah and it transfers the power to the rear so it's all nothing for you I mean the fun thing with electric cars is the lease they call them the states hypermiling well you try to get up to a certain speed back on try to put in much electricity get back into the vehicle if you can and it actually works and you have this fun driving you know that electric powertrain has a characteristic which is very lovely to drive because we the talk from the beginning and it's very very nice but if you have to go for long distance or if you you don't want you want to have maximum of your electric range and so the behavior of the of the driver is very important right I mean as fast as you go the the bigger problem do you have with the electric range because if you go full speed you can go up to 180 kilometres an hour right but doesn't make sense if you want to travel long distance because you you're running out of energy but I want to say for new technologies at sea it's got it can't be equal it's got to be better mmm-hmm and you know that's where like when the electric cars first came out the jokes are always how slow they were yeah electric cars really aren't slow I needed they were made slow to get more range but now the batteries have improved I mean almost any electric car will blow a gasket out of the water I mean it's it's unbelievable how fast it is and you just travel silently you know the absence of noise is almost one of the biggest advantage yeah very calm driving you know it's you don't have the combustion engined you don't have the normally noise you get used from the from the car like you used before but this is very comfortable and it's very I mean we are writing here prototypes the pre-production car right so it's even getting more silent yeah and and yeah you hear a little bit of whistling from the wind have you always been an electronics engineer or were you autumn I started mechanical engineering actually yeah so I started in the old world so when your daughter will say you know my dad actually worked yes cars yeah it'd be like the old cool and there she she was definitely in eighteen years when she going to make a driver license the word is maybe I don't think we'd have a lot of combustion and yeah maybe and this will be the future yeah I mean the car has changed more from 2005 to now than it did from 1900 2000 I mean there's almost nothing quote automotive about this except the body shell that maybe the brakes the transmission the power delivery the way the batteries is situated how hard is it to change the battery they slide you have to put the carb and then just take the battery from from to the button though it's not the big steel a big story but but yeah takes a couple of hours and most batteries let I mean there are Prius has been around 115 years something like that and most are still on their original batteries you moon is maybe 5% yeah Tesla you know people always don't know you have to replace the batteries all the time but that really hasn't been the case no actually I mean the behavior of the driver halt at the of the owner can have a pretty big influence on the on the batteries I mean if you're always charging DC fast charger it's not very good for the bed ride if you go always up to 100% and leave it for a couple of days without any driving it's not very good so if you find the sweet spot something you don't I don't know you you your normal distance to go to the work is 20 20 miles yeah you don't have to to charge up to 100% state of charge you can't like to be no less than 20 percent no more than 85 correct absolutely that's true and in in the next couple of years I think there a lot of manufactures will bring out new electrically yeah yeah what was funny we went to Phoenix in September for testing purposes anything and this with the illuminated star in front it was a it was a magnet on the street now people like to hear very much so why would that only be an American because it's not allowed in Europe we only have the sight the the head oh you cut in front yeah I think I'm not too sure but I'm it wasn't allowed for us we have this light strip right underneath the bonnet and it couldn't be completely closed to the to their headlights that's what I heard what's the most difficult country to get a car certified for the United States mm depends maybe on the desert side yeah no no but and we have China is quite complicated because you never know what you're gonna get and when they're changing the changing laws yeah two months before and when you yeah we had this problem with their high energy density on the battery right and they just said it and maybe August okay this will coming up the first of June and 2019 so and what you can't do anything Wow battery technology is moving so fast yeah it is you know I know him you might have seen in my garage mm-hmm and ahead there was a battery sitting on the ground next to it okay Thomas Edison made that battery that was an alkaline battery yeah Thomas Edison wrote a letter to Henry Ford think this alkaline battery will make your model team extinct this is gonna revolutionize the electric car okay you're gonna double the mileage Bubba yeah none of that happened they all kinda worked okay but it really didn't do what was supposed to but and batteries didn't really change much from Edison's time to almost 10 to 15 years ago now oh my god now we have lithium-ion batteries yeah but we still need the cooling and I heard about some some Korean Asian maybe some Germans are building or trying to get this solid battery yeah odenie Cooling's and everything that's interesting yeah I know when the leaf came out it had an air-cooled benefit which was not very good because in Phoenix where it's hot your range will go down to 30 miles Emily and then someplace where it's cold the same thing yeah so the air cool doesn't work if you drive this on the coldest German day and you park it in your garage yeah which is not heated will the car keep the battery heated or it's that not the battery itself we have chemical reactions within the battery the battery only would go very very low temperature if you would let it there for maybe one week right so if you come home in the evening and go back or leave again and tomorrow morning the battery would be ready if you left it for a week with maybe five days into the weekend here hmm with the electricity in the battery circulate heat to keep to keep itself more no so we don't do this actively that's only the chemical reaction which doing this and because because you have a very very big volume so the bigger the battery the longer these chemical reactions work in the batteries so the the slower the the cooldown phases and I imagine crash testing electric cars another whole yeah especially for my city spends as you know it's but one of this core core practice like safety safety for passengers exactly and so we had a lot of safety structure in the body and wide and even in the battery so but on the one hand it's very safe we just had some crash tests and everything was very fine so the car itself with all the questions in the battery so everything is very very nice and scho safe on the other hand you're losing a lot of volume for the batteries in inside the battery so that energy density will decrease how much more will this be through a comparable gas Mercedes about the same is the idea to have close to the same for the same price point or electric will always be more expensive we want to make it affordable for everybody because we we want to electrify the people but on the other hand the Productions is very very not very cheap and the batteries are quite expensive right now getting better and better so I think therefore the we don't have any prizes for the vs for the European market we're going to introduce it mid of next year so the prices will be available in spring but there might be in the area of on the range of the GSD 43 and then you have as a tool now we are riding in the driving program comfort like the blue sea if you want to go as far as you could with with a electric range you can choose these programs like eco and you have the acceleration characteristic is a little bit we stealing a little bit of the power but there for you you can go some lights more extra and the maximum range you have also like on the maps you have this multi-purpose topping and multi input you're putting stopping that unit from here to San Francisco then that the system is calculating where to stop at widgets or charging station and so on well I want to thank mercedes-benz and Bastion for letting me drive this this has not driven anybody outside of Germany I think I'm the first person to do on this is really cool and I've just been waiting for Mercedes to get into this electric game because I know they would sit back let's see what's happening here let's punch in the C and then when they would come in there would come with something amazing like this I mean it has all the amenities of a normal to say dispense accepts as electric which is it's just a beautifully well-made oven and this was a prototype it's not even the finished product no no it's a full yeah and all kinds of power watch hey see you guys next weekthere is no gas it select a cure just no gas well another episode of Jay Leno's Garage we have today an exclusive a car that has yet to appear anywhere at least in the United States it is a 2020 model it is a mercedes-benz it is a cube C what does that mean we will find out but it's a revolutionary car from mercedes-benz let's let's bring in our powertrain testing engineer is that correct that's correct yeah Bastian Schultz right that's right my friend yeah okay well this is pretty exciting so tell people what we have here fully electric it's completely fully electric car the brand new if you see like you just told us we going to introduce it somewhere in 2020 here I guess and it's the first battery full electric car under the new brand EQC what is EQC stand for its electric intelligence it's it's like it's coming from our our core core competences or core values like intelligence and emotion right so and this is like make something cool for the electric car okay very good and I guess it's what would it be a crossover and SUV and we like to call it a sporty SUV okay okay so I like most of electrics I mentioned everything is below the axle all the weight right so obviously it's gonna handle pretty good is it two wheel drive or wheel drive we ever already drive here oh well single-engine Doolin's we have two engines one on the front axle one on the rear extra they are almost the same like each of them has 150 kilowatt power mm-hmm so and then the total we have a system power of 300 kilowatts so 300 kilowatt translates into what kind of horsepower slightly more than 400 400 no okay okay all right interesting and and the range is about what we have only right now the European cycle and there we have nothing official largest okay and we will do more than 200 miles okay round about 220 something okay and you know Mercedes has always been a leader in innovative stuff I remember they I think the Mercedes diesel that was the first Patrick R then in the oh I remember the 70s they went crazy with a Wankel engine it was was gonna be the next thing the Wankel never really Mazda made it go but nobody else could get it to go because the fuel mileage was not good we're not particularly efficient but electric seems to be the future is that I imagine Germany will probably be very strict in terms of restricting polluting cars right there right you're completely right I mean we now made the first step with the EQ with a brand and by 2022 we will have 130 models completely electrified really yeah okay so we have more we have we're gonna have 10 fully electric cars up to 2022 and then everything like the 48 volt electrification of the diesel and the power trains and the gasoline and then the plug-in hybrids so the completely package of electrification will start right now why no cause Mercedes always kind of sit back and watches what happens I always tell the electric car manufacturers when mercedes-benz gets into the business that's when it's gonna get really competitive because I remember in America a cupholder why would you need a cup holder and and we're saying he's never put a cup holder in the car and then Americans market and when they did come out with a couple that was the most complicated you turn it it turns around because I like this brings the cup through you like it just it just made me laugh because a Mercedes couple everybody else just has two holes in their transmission tongue we sticking cup Mercedes you press it the thing goes around it comes like this okay it's very funny and that's why I do an engineering well I like I like I like German engineering I'm a fan of German engineering and that's why I wouldn't I know when Mercedes Benz gets into the electric game it's gonna be full on and and pretty unbelievable I imagine you know people like change but not like gradual change and to me it looks like a Mercedes Benz except it's all electric as opposed to coming out with something you know you can't introduce something before its time you know when the Chrysler airflow came out it had this sweeping front end there and people enroll what what's there is too much you know because electric cars can look different because they don't need radiators and grills and stuff but people like the look of you you have to ease into it you know I'm saying that's what I mean this looks like it could be a gas car but it's obviously all-electric and more efficient than more space or less space because of the batteries almost the same actually I mean we made this completely new platform but we can fix it in the in the plants in Germany and also in China and the US we install just the battery beneath or underneath the car right and but below that or in the in the normal Kevin we have more or less the same space like like the normal class and imagine you have the regen is that adjustable it is and as a default version we have a optimized recuperation using camera information using the data from the maps and everything and then you can choose another for fixed recuperation from very strong recuperation until you're just rolling on the street so obviously your brakes last twice as long because when you slow down you pull the regenerating electricity and you're not wasting your brakes so so you know you're not you're not I'm hard on the pads or anything you can do it automatically like a default version but then if you maybe going down the valley of from mountains and you can you can use a very very strong recuperation and then you just choose it with with pedals right now does an electric car like this have a reserve you know a lot of people will drive until it says empty mm-hmm and then how much do you get how much how much of a warning do they give you we have a normal warning scenario which is you are comparable to to the gasoline engines so you get a warning I don't know something about 30 40 miles or 50 kilometers and then you you get be warned so I think you get one three or four times okay where is where is your where do you plug in the charge on the other side and the other okay let's see as the charge port right here yeah here we go okay here we have two possibilities to charge is this a Mercedes only charger or it'll be sort of the universal this one is the the combo the CCS one so this is used also in the US market yeah you can go up to I think we have here yesterday we found some stations from up to 50 kilowatts okay so this is pretty fast but the car can go up to 110 kilowatt cool yeah about this pattern on the wheels it's kind of cool that what is the blue signifies and the blue is as you see the the EQ the color to create it a little bit like you told us because looking like the normal materials were very specific I've specified further for the electric vehicles but we have created this lovely blue rims and we have the same blue on the EQ batch on the on the side and so we try to get the blue into the car and it's important that it looked like a Mercedes yeah customer I mean if you come up with something totally different it just people you know people like the Mercedes name they like the Mercedes quality so it's got to look like what they perceive a Mercedes to look like you know yeah so it's sort of evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary because everything looks mercedes banz you know I'm looking very frustrating for you guys because people don't read a handbook they don't pay attention you know they know I somebody called me the other day and they said a light came on in my car which I do I said what does it look like said it looks like a little gas pump I said well you're almost out of gas but I have a meeting to go to I said we got to put gas in it I don't know the time ever meet I know you're not gonna get your meeting I would get to the car I went oh my god trying to explain a complicated vehicle then this guy would be unbelievable so the trick is to keep it as normal mercedes-benz as you can and just sort of ease people into that everything how was the electric car perceived in Germany because it took a while here people are somewhat suspicious mmm you know I mean the same is like in Europe like all over the world it's it's it's a new thing a big thing I think we have to deal it and we want to deal it and I think it's it's a good story but you need the infrastructure and you need everything you so the people get used to it and it's not the normal behavior like traveling from here to to San Francisco you normally go to the gas station just fill in some some petrol and then I continue in 10 minutes so actually we had a road trip yesterday with this car from San Francisco down here to LA with this car and it's not a big problem it's it's fun driving and very calm inside the cabin so it's not the combustion engine right you you were here so it's it's very very you're comfortable driving now I notice it has normal big tires and when electric cars first came out yes states they always had these very mm-hmm small you know he you know 50 pounds you're a hard you know you get the most mileage basically you don't need special tires anymore for for electric cars no what we made some aerodynamic rims that the people want to have nice rims so we want to create a package that is efficiency with the rims but also the people like to buy an electric car can always be more aerodynamic in a gas car because the air doesn't need to flow through you don't need to go into a radiator you know you don't you don't need diffusers because you have a muffler and it's got to go around you can be smooth all the way around so your coefficient of drag is a lot less that's what we did I mean looking from the front it's it's a little bit more close than the normal Mercedes well this probably most dramatic angle the front with the big and this illuminates doesn't it yep front yeah only in the US oh is that right yeah yeah a special special gift for the US market so we have the illuminated illuminated star yeah you see it's not completely closed maybe you can you know from some other electric vehicles it's closed up a little bit more in comparison to our combustion engines we don't need the complete air while driving for the electric vehicles but you need the for the cooling of the battery right sometimes in the in the hot summer driving but not most people driving it's mostly for charging while you parking ok so we then you have a lot of heat on the on the battery and you have no air inside does that have fans that come on well we have a fan right so that you can get in the air while you are acting and charging ok the the big advantage with this front we have a little bit more efficiency on the aerodynamics and the seamless design but so what is the coefficient of drag its 0.28 oh that's very good very good I think it's the one of the best and become yeah yeah because you know like I have a Lamborghini Countach it over there and people think that's aerodynamic you know it's like a brick a wedge is like a brick it's like you've pushed in the air but you know what looks aerodynamic is not air anomic that your drop is the most arranged knob I guess and this sawed it has that feel to it and because it the air does not have to stop and cool the radiator you can go around yep go through it that's it you know yeah because I mean aerodynamics is another whole I mean the amount of thought that goes into having this little crease here it's there for a reason right on the bonnet we have this for a reason for efficiency reasons or for aerodynamics on this side we have a very seamless design so this is yeah best of both options you have a aerodynamic advantage and it looks very very clean so what's under here can we open this yeah we just have to go to the yeah so I don't always see nothing yeah another blue yeah stuff here even if you open it Wow things like the flux capacitor yeah okay when you remember we have so much power and it normally you would have been at least six cylinder or 8 cylinder engine under I so it's very very small in comparison to normal combustion engines this is the powertrain the electric powertrain and we installed it into this subframe so this is like almost a roll bar for the engine this is ok and this is like this your ECU or what you call what you use the Onix yeah this is the electronic ok and your coolant flows where that's down below yeah oh honey into the bedroom and this is a radiator of some kind yeah ok so this belongs to the cooling so this car is building plant Bremen and the normal ongoing production of the series production cars of the normal G L C and C Class and everything and this can go on the same assembly just with this subframe I say ok Wow I mean it's extremely complicated but once you explain where everything is very cool how often would you change the cooling fluid do you ever as as long as yeah I mean we are doing a lot of testings yeah but normally if you're doing normal behavior you don't have to have to refill it as often it doesn't run like an antifreeze it doesn't run a glycol so we have some antifreeze in it but it's the normal user will be used for the series production right ok thank you thank you so nothing so there's really no maintenance on this car at all other than maybe brake pads occasionally right and even them maybe because you have this recuperation you never use the brakes here as often as on the normal right right I mean that's what's kind of fun I love the paddles because when you come to a light you just grab the paddles and and you're using it basically as a handbrake it just slows you down and you just put your foot on the pedal won't you stop that's why we use the pedals because this behavior you have a normal engine and you go down the mountains you're using a lower gear to break your car and here's the same on the you you choose a lower gear right stronger recuperation and so you have the same behavior on the electric guitar so we have this same setup in the back yeah well okay this is the same owner or a different moment it's almost the same slightly different some different parts but because we haven't every we would have problems with a package down there but it's the same engine so same hundred fifty horsepower now I hear think the cooling is working okay because it's there ready for drive yeah that's funny yeah so it's so there's no battery disconnect switch analyst no no no so you have this this poor chain on the front and then on the on the rear same together and it's a single spigot single speed gear or in singles mean yeah yeah because there's really no transmission that can take the amount of torque that these engines put out I mean I remember years ago 10 years ago Elon Musk came by here with the roadster and he had a gearbox in it and I put it in second and it just it just broke and the real then they went through a single speed because you did there was no advantage to having a gearbox something they did be fun to shift but it was just the engine had so much torque it couldn't take it yeah very cool well it looks complicated but once you look at it it well it begins to make sense it doesn't seem that complicated at all pretty straightforward it will be completely assembled from another plant from the fall time plant in Hamburg and and this whole body is coming to the plant to the assembly line where the car is on and then it's only one single station for if you go in to this car with the right with a six-cylinder or with this so it's very flexible on the production side now you explain before you mentioned that this is more efficiency and the rear engine is more for power explain what you man and so the the engines has different kind of windings so we have here the five windings for the most efficiency right so if you're driving just down the early in the city we're driving then the car will only go with this one okay so this is the single or the only only powertrain which that means these front wheels of driving and those are freewheeling in the back yeah okay so and if it's going more dynamic or if you need some more power than the if I step on the throttle all the way then then it kicks in yeah okay alright so in this okay seven windings then cool cool well let's uh can we take over right sure obviously extremely quiet and this being European model the dash is all in German American no no it's completely completely German or European well that's that's it yeah it's a completely German European version of the car now you have you just have a five week old daughter correct that's it though by the time she's able did what's the driving age of Germany 16 18 18 18 so everything should be probably fully electric she probably won't even I think no I think she don't have a clue what combustion engine is if as soon as she were driving any camera and maybe she will get more convenient with all this stuff like some others now now okay so what I want to break I put both feet back at this one um actually you see it down there this is now rolling so the pluses pluses like the most easy so no recuperation okay if you if you hit the left one yeah turn it or pull it so now you have a different one this is slightly a little bit more recuperation I think then turn another one that's max this is maximum this is very one pedal feeling like okay you know what it's like remember on your bicycle and you're a kid and you had that little generator that rubbed against the tire and the faster you want the bread will light got well that's basically what just a myth imagine as you were slowing down you you push that little motor against the tire harder it would grip more and it would put more electricity but yeah that's basically what it would and you just get used to doing one foot driving like see right here now no life step on the brake but now I just take my foot off the gas and hey I'm making a couple of amps of electricity there but if you're someone who likes a gas car so you can go this way and just see now I'm just rolling and I'm just rolling and you get less regen but it's a good way to save your brakes or if you're going on a steep decline switch you just put it in that and let it just make energy I know coming down Coldwater Canyon in some electric cars I'll pick up two or three miles because it's a long grade and you go you've got six miles let onna so oh I got eight miles left yeah so it's almost like somebody's pouring gasoline thirsty going along I mean it's really fascinating and this really is the future you know I don't I don't get the hydrogen thing it costs more than a hydrogen we already have the infrastructure for electricity I mean it exists already obviously we need to upgrade and Germany has really embraced the electric thing everything I think so yeah I mean very green I mean they're very green I mean we've there's still a long way to go yeah like all the infrastructure is it's it's growing every year and we're and the building they're pretty pretty busy building up infrastructure for the for the for the charging points now in Germany do you get credit for buying an electric here in America in California might electric car you get anywhere from twenty five hundred and seventy five hundred dollars back then when the government did they have that in Germany we had programs like this yeah actually really don't know how exactly they work but you can you also get a text refine or something like this you can give your old cars back to the dealers and then also get a little bit like refund what's happening that's it okay where the energy and here you see on the energy flow now we are just idling we are only working with a with a excellent with a with a power train on the front exit right and if you would have a problem or off the gas no it should yeah it's free can't see you putting it like rotors hard right we now are in essentially economy mode for lack of a better word so we're just using a minimum amount electricity to move the vehicle if you step on the gas okay it throws the camera in the back yeah and it transfers the power to the rear so it's all nothing for you I mean the fun thing with electric cars is the lease they call them the states hypermiling well you try to get up to a certain speed back on try to put in much electricity get back into the vehicle if you can and it actually works and you have this fun driving you know that electric powertrain has a characteristic which is very lovely to drive because we the talk from the beginning and it's very very nice but if you have to go for long distance or if you you don't want you want to have maximum of your electric range and so the behavior of the of the driver is very important right I mean as fast as you go the the bigger problem do you have with the electric range because if you go full speed you can go up to 180 kilometres an hour right but doesn't make sense if you want to travel long distance because you you're running out of energy but I want to say for new technologies at sea it's got it can't be equal it's got to be better mmm-hmm and you know that's where like when the electric cars first came out the jokes are always how slow they were yeah electric cars really aren't slow I needed they were made slow to get more range but now the batteries have improved I mean almost any electric car will blow a gasket out of the water I mean it's it's unbelievable how fast it is and you just travel silently you know the absence of noise is almost one of the biggest advantage yeah very calm driving you know it's you don't have the combustion engined you don't have the normally noise you get used from the from the car like you used before but this is very comfortable and it's very I mean we are writing here prototypes the pre-production car right so it's even getting more silent yeah and and yeah you hear a little bit of whistling from the wind have you always been an electronics engineer or were you autumn I started mechanical engineering actually yeah so I started in the old world so when your daughter will say you know my dad actually worked yes cars yeah it'd be like the old cool and there she she was definitely in eighteen years when she going to make a driver license the word is maybe I don't think we'd have a lot of combustion and yeah maybe and this will be the future yeah I mean the car has changed more from 2005 to now than it did from 1900 2000 I mean there's almost nothing quote automotive about this except the body shell that maybe the brakes the transmission the power delivery the way the batteries is situated how hard is it to change the battery they slide you have to put the carb and then just take the battery from from to the button though it's not the big steel a big story but but yeah takes a couple of hours and most batteries let I mean there are Prius has been around 115 years something like that and most are still on their original batteries you moon is maybe 5% yeah Tesla you know people always don't know you have to replace the batteries all the time but that really hasn't been the case no actually I mean the behavior of the driver halt at the of the owner can have a pretty big influence on the on the batteries I mean if you're always charging DC fast charger it's not very good for the bed ride if you go always up to 100% and leave it for a couple of days without any driving it's not very good so if you find the sweet spot something you don't I don't know you you your normal distance to go to the work is 20 20 miles yeah you don't have to to charge up to 100% state of charge you can't like to be no less than 20 percent no more than 85 correct absolutely that's true and in in the next couple of years I think there a lot of manufactures will bring out new electrically yeah yeah what was funny we went to Phoenix in September for testing purposes anything and this with the illuminated star in front it was a it was a magnet on the street now people like to hear very much so why would that only be an American because it's not allowed in Europe we only have the sight the the head oh you cut in front yeah I think I'm not too sure but I'm it wasn't allowed for us we have this light strip right underneath the bonnet and it couldn't be completely closed to the to their headlights that's what I heard what's the most difficult country to get a car certified for the United States mm depends maybe on the desert side yeah no no but and we have China is quite complicated because you never know what you're gonna get and when they're changing the changing laws yeah two months before and when you yeah we had this problem with their high energy density on the battery right and they just said it and maybe August okay this will coming up the first of June and 2019 so and what you can't do anything Wow battery technology is moving so fast yeah it is you know I know him you might have seen in my garage mm-hmm and ahead there was a battery sitting on the ground next to it okay Thomas Edison made that battery that was an alkaline battery yeah Thomas Edison wrote a letter to Henry Ford think this alkaline battery will make your model team extinct this is gonna revolutionize the electric car okay you're gonna double the mileage Bubba yeah none of that happened they all kinda worked okay but it really didn't do what was supposed to but and batteries didn't really change much from Edison's time to almost 10 to 15 years ago now oh my god now we have lithium-ion batteries yeah but we still need the cooling and I heard about some some Korean Asian maybe some Germans are building or trying to get this solid battery yeah odenie Cooling's and everything that's interesting yeah I know when the leaf came out it had an air-cooled benefit which was not very good because in Phoenix where it's hot your range will go down to 30 miles Emily and then someplace where it's cold the same thing yeah so the air cool doesn't work if you drive this on the coldest German day and you park it in your garage yeah which is not heated will the car keep the battery heated or it's that not the battery itself we have chemical reactions within the battery the battery only would go very very low temperature if you would let it there for maybe one week right so if you come home in the evening and go back or leave again and tomorrow morning the battery would be ready if you left it for a week with maybe five days into the weekend here hmm with the electricity in the battery circulate heat to keep to keep itself more no so we don't do this actively that's only the chemical reaction which doing this and because because you have a very very big volume so the bigger the battery the longer these chemical reactions work in the batteries so the the slower the the cooldown phases and I imagine crash testing electric cars another whole yeah especially for my city spends as you know it's but one of this core core practice like safety safety for passengers exactly and so we had a lot of safety structure in the body and wide and even in the battery so but on the one hand it's very safe we just had some crash tests and everything was very fine so the car itself with all the questions in the battery so everything is very very nice and scho safe on the other hand you're losing a lot of volume for the batteries in inside the battery so that energy density will decrease how much more will this be through a comparable gas Mercedes about the same is the idea to have close to the same for the same price point or electric will always be more expensive we want to make it affordable for everybody because we we want to electrify the people but on the other hand the Productions is very very not very cheap and the batteries are quite expensive right now getting better and better so I think therefore the we don't have any prizes for the vs for the European market we're going to introduce it mid of next year so the prices will be available in spring but there might be in the area of on the range of the GSD 43 and then you have as a tool now we are riding in the driving program comfort like the blue sea if you want to go as far as you could with with a electric range you can choose these programs like eco and you have the acceleration characteristic is a little bit we stealing a little bit of the power but there for you you can go some lights more extra and the maximum range you have also like on the maps you have this multi-purpose topping and multi input you're putting stopping that unit from here to San Francisco then that the system is calculating where to stop at widgets or charging station and so on well I want to thank mercedes-benz and Bastion for letting me drive this this has not driven anybody outside of Germany I think I'm the first person to do on this is really cool and I've just been waiting for Mercedes to get into this electric game because I know they would sit back let's see what's happening here let's punch in the C and then when they would come in there would come with something amazing like this I mean it has all the amenities of a normal to say dispense accepts as electric which is it's just a beautifully well-made oven and this was a prototype it's not even the finished product no no it's a full yeah and all kinds of power watch hey see you guys next weekthere is no gas it select a cure just no gas well another episode of Jay Leno's Garage we have today an exclusive a car that has yet to appear anywhere at least in the United States it is a 2020 model it is a mercedes-benz it is a cube C what does that mean we will find out but it's a revolutionary car from mercedes-benz let's let's bring in our powertrain testing engineer is that correct that's correct yeah Bastian Schultz right that's right my friend yeah okay well this is pretty exciting so tell people what we have here fully electric it's completely fully electric car the brand new if you see like you just told us we going to introduce it somewhere in 2020 here I guess and it's the first battery full electric car under the new brand EQC what is EQC stand for its electric intelligence it's it's like it's coming from our our core core competences or core values like intelligence and emotion right so and this is like make something cool for the electric car okay very good and I guess it's what would it be a crossover and SUV and we like to call it a sporty SUV okay okay so I like most of electrics I mentioned everything is below the axle all the weight right so obviously it's gonna handle pretty good is it two wheel drive or wheel drive we ever already drive here oh well single-engine Doolin's we have two engines one on the front axle one on the rear extra they are almost the same like each of them has 150 kilowatt power mm-hmm so and then the total we have a system power of 300 kilowatts so 300 kilowatt translates into what kind of horsepower slightly more than 400 400 no okay okay all right interesting and and the range is about what we have only right now the European cycle and there we have nothing official largest okay and we will do more than 200 miles okay round about 220 something okay and you know Mercedes has always been a leader in innovative stuff I remember they I think the Mercedes diesel that was the first Patrick R then in the oh I remember the 70s they went crazy with a Wankel engine it was was gonna be the next thing the Wankel never really Mazda made it go but nobody else could get it to go because the fuel mileage was not good we're not particularly efficient but electric seems to be the future is that I imagine Germany will probably be very strict in terms of restricting polluting cars right there right you're completely right I mean we now made the first step with the EQ with a brand and by 2022 we will have 130 models completely electrified really yeah okay so we have more we have we're gonna have 10 fully electric cars up to 2022 and then everything like the 48 volt electrification of the diesel and the power trains and the gasoline and then the plug-in hybrids so the completely package of electrification will start right now why no cause Mercedes always kind of sit back and watches what happens I always tell the electric car manufacturers when mercedes-benz gets into the business that's when it's gonna get really competitive because I remember in America a cupholder why would you need a cup holder and and we're saying he's never put a cup holder in the car and then Americans market and when they did come out with a couple that was the most complicated you turn it it turns around because I like this brings the cup through you like it just it just made me laugh because a Mercedes couple everybody else just has two holes in their transmission tongue we sticking cup Mercedes you press it the thing goes around it comes like this okay it's very funny and that's why I do an engineering well I like I like I like German engineering I'm a fan of German engineering and that's why I wouldn't I know when Mercedes Benz gets into the electric game it's gonna be full on and and pretty unbelievable I imagine you know people like change but not like gradual change and to me it looks like a Mercedes Benz except it's all electric as opposed to coming out with something you know you can't introduce something before its time you know when the Chrysler airflow came out it had this sweeping front end there and people enroll what what's there is too much you know because electric cars can look different because they don't need radiators and grills and stuff but people like the look of you you have to ease into it you know I'm saying that's what I mean this looks like it could be a gas car but it's obviously all-electric and more efficient than more space or less space because of the batteries almost the same actually I mean we made this completely new platform but we can fix it in the in the plants in Germany and also in China and the US we install just the battery beneath or underneath the car right and but below that or in the in the normal Kevin we have more or less the same space like like the normal class and imagine you have the regen is that adjustable it is and as a default version we have a optimized recuperation using camera information using the data from the maps and everything and then you can choose another for fixed recuperation from very strong recuperation until you're just rolling on the street so obviously your brakes last twice as long because when you slow down you pull the regenerating electricity and you're not wasting your brakes so so you know you're not you're not I'm hard on the pads or anything you can do it automatically like a default version but then if you maybe going down the valley of from mountains and you can you can use a very very strong recuperation and then you just choose it with with pedals right now does an electric car like this have a reserve you know a lot of people will drive until it says empty mm-hmm and then how much do you get how much how much of a warning do they give you we have a normal warning scenario which is you are comparable to to the gasoline engines so you get a warning I don't know something about 30 40 miles or 50 kilometers and then you you get be warned so I think you get one three or four times okay where is where is your where do you plug in the charge on the other side and the other okay let's see as the charge port right here yeah here we go okay here we have two possibilities to charge is this a Mercedes only charger or it'll be sort of the universal this one is the the combo the CCS one so this is used also in the US market yeah you can go up to I think we have here yesterday we found some stations from up to 50 kilowatts okay so this is pretty fast but the car can go up to 110 kilowatt cool yeah about this pattern on the wheels it's kind of cool that what is the blue signifies and the blue is as you see the the EQ the color to create it a little bit like you told us because looking like the normal materials were very specific I've specified further for the electric vehicles but we have created this lovely blue rims and we have the same blue on the EQ batch on the on the side and so we try to get the blue into the car and it's important that it looked like a Mercedes yeah customer I mean if you come up with something totally different it just people you know people like the Mercedes name they like the Mercedes quality so it's got to look like what they perceive a Mercedes to look like you know yeah so it's sort of evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary because everything looks mercedes banz you know I'm looking very frustrating for you guys because people don't read a handbook they don't pay attention you know they know I somebody called me the other day and they said a light came on in my car which I do I said what does it look like said it looks like a little gas pump I said well you're almost out of gas but I have a meeting to go to I said we got to put gas in it I don't know the time ever meet I know you're not gonna get your meeting I would get to the car I went oh my god trying to explain a complicated vehicle then this guy would be unbelievable so the trick is to keep it as normal mercedes-benz as you can and just sort of ease people into that everything how was the electric car perceived in Germany because it took a while here people are somewhat suspicious mmm you know I mean the same is like in Europe like all over the world it's it's it's a new thing a big thing I think we have to deal it and we want to deal it and I think it's it's a good story but you need the infrastructure and you need everything you so the people get used to it and it's not the normal behavior like traveling from here to to San Francisco you normally go to the gas station just fill in some some petrol and then I continue in 10 minutes so actually we had a road trip yesterday with this car from San Francisco down here to LA with this car and it's not a big problem it's it's fun driving and very calm inside the cabin so it's not the combustion engine right you you were here so it's it's very very you're comfortable driving now I notice it has normal big tires and when electric cars first came out yes states they always had these very mm-hmm small you know he you know 50 pounds you're a hard you know you get the most mileage basically you don't need special tires anymore for for electric cars no what we made some aerodynamic rims that the people want to have nice rims so we want to create a package that is efficiency with the rims but also the people like to buy an electric car can always be more aerodynamic in a gas car because the air doesn't need to flow through you don't need to go into a radiator you know you don't you don't need diffusers because you have a muffler and it's got to go around you can be smooth all the way around so your coefficient of drag is a lot less that's what we did I mean looking from the front it's it's a little bit more close than the normal Mercedes well this probably most dramatic angle the front with the big and this illuminates doesn't it yep front yeah only in the US oh is that right yeah yeah a special special gift for the US market so we have the illuminated illuminated star yeah you see it's not completely closed maybe you can you know from some other electric vehicles it's closed up a little bit more in comparison to our combustion engines we don't need the complete air while driving for the electric vehicles but you need the for the cooling of the battery right sometimes in the in the hot summer driving but not most people driving it's mostly for charging while you parking ok so we then you have a lot of heat on the on the battery and you have no air inside does that have fans that come on well we have a fan right so that you can get in the air while you are acting and charging ok the the big advantage with this front we have a little bit more efficiency on the aerodynamics and the seamless design but so what is the coefficient of drag its 0.28 oh that's very good very good I think it's the one of the best and become yeah yeah because you know like I have a Lamborghini Countach it over there and people think that's aerodynamic you know it's like a brick a wedge is like a brick it's like you've pushed in the air but you know what looks aerodynamic is not air anomic that your drop is the most arranged knob I guess and this sawed it has that feel to it and because it the air does not have to stop and cool the radiator you can go around yep go through it that's it you know yeah because I mean aerodynamics is another whole I mean the amount of thought that goes into having this little crease here it's there for a reason right on the bonnet we have this for a reason for efficiency reasons or for aerodynamics on this side we have a very seamless design so this is yeah best of both options you have a aerodynamic advantage and it looks very very clean so what's under here can we open this yeah we just have to go to the yeah so I don't always see nothing yeah another blue yeah stuff here even if you open it Wow things like the flux capacitor yeah okay when you remember we have so much power and it normally you would have been at least six cylinder or 8 cylinder engine under I so it's very very small in comparison to normal combustion engines this is the powertrain the electric powertrain and we installed it into this subframe so this is like almost a roll bar for the engine this is ok and this is like this your ECU or what you call what you use the Onix yeah this is the electronic ok and your coolant flows where that's down below yeah oh honey into the bedroom and this is a radiator of some kind yeah ok so this belongs to the cooling so this car is building plant Bremen and the normal ongoing production of the series production cars of the normal G L C and C Class and everything and this can go on the same assembly just with this subframe I say ok Wow I mean it's extremely complicated but once you explain where everything is very cool how often would you change the cooling fluid do you ever as as long as yeah I mean we are doing a lot of testings yeah but normally if you're doing normal behavior you don't have to have to refill it as often it doesn't run like an antifreeze it doesn't run a glycol so we have some antifreeze in it but it's the normal user will be used for the series production right ok thank you thank you so nothing so there's really no maintenance on this car at all other than maybe brake pads occasionally right and even them maybe because you have this recuperation you never use the brakes here as often as on the normal right right I mean that's what's kind of fun I love the paddles because when you come to a light you just grab the paddles and and you're using it basically as a handbrake it just slows you down and you just put your foot on the pedal won't you stop that's why we use the pedals because this behavior you have a normal engine and you go down the mountains you're using a lower gear to break your car and here's the same on the you you choose a lower gear right stronger recuperation and so you have the same behavior on the electric guitar so we have this same setup in the back yeah well okay this is the same owner or a different moment it's almost the same slightly different some different parts but because we haven't every we would have problems with a package down there but it's the same engine so same hundred fifty horsepower now I hear think the cooling is working okay because it's there ready for drive yeah that's funny yeah so it's so there's no battery disconnect switch analyst no no no so you have this this poor chain on the front and then on the on the rear same together and it's a single spigot single speed gear or in singles mean yeah yeah because there's really no transmission that can take the amount of torque that these engines put out I mean I remember years ago 10 years ago Elon Musk came by here with the roadster and he had a gearbox in it and I put it in second and it just it just broke and the real then they went through a single speed because you did there was no advantage to having a gearbox something they did be fun to shift but it was just the engine had so much torque it couldn't take it yeah very cool well it looks complicated but once you look at it it well it begins to make sense it doesn't seem that complicated at all pretty straightforward it will be completely assembled from another plant from the fall time plant in Hamburg and and this whole body is coming to the plant to the assembly line where the car is on and then it's only one single station for if you go in to this car with the right with a six-cylinder or with this so it's very flexible on the production side now you explain before you mentioned that this is more efficiency and the rear engine is more for power explain what you man and so the the engines has different kind of windings so we have here the five windings for the most efficiency right so if you're driving just down the early in the city we're driving then the car will only go with this one okay so this is the single or the only only powertrain which that means these front wheels of driving and those are freewheeling in the back yeah okay so and if it's going more dynamic or if you need some more power than the if I step on the throttle all the way then then it kicks in yeah okay alright so in this okay seven windings then cool cool well let's uh can we take over right sure obviously extremely quiet and this being European model the dash is all in German American no no it's completely completely German or European well that's that's it yeah it's a completely German European version of the car now you have you just have a five week old daughter correct that's it though by the time she's able did what's the driving age of Germany 16 18 18 18 so everything should be probably fully electric she probably won't even I think no I think she don't have a clue what combustion engine is if as soon as she were driving any camera and maybe she will get more convenient with all this stuff like some others now now okay so what I want to break I put both feet back at this one um actually you see it down there this is now rolling so the pluses pluses like the most easy so no recuperation okay if you if you hit the left one yeah turn it or pull it so now you have a different one this is slightly a little bit more recuperation I think then turn another one that's max this is maximum this is very one pedal feeling like okay you know what it's like remember on your bicycle and you're a kid and you had that little generator that rubbed against the tire and the faster you want the bread will light got well that's basically what just a myth imagine as you were slowing down you you push that little motor against the tire harder it would grip more and it would put more electricity but yeah that's basically what it would and you just get used to doing one foot driving like see right here now no life step on the brake but now I just take my foot off the gas and hey I'm making a couple of amps of electricity there but if you're someone who likes a gas car so you can go this way and just see now I'm just rolling and I'm just rolling and you get less regen but it's a good way to save your brakes or if you're going on a steep decline switch you just put it in that and let it just make energy I know coming down Coldwater Canyon in some electric cars I'll pick up two or three miles because it's a long grade and you go you've got six miles let onna so oh I got eight miles left yeah so it's almost like somebody's pouring gasoline thirsty going along I mean it's really fascinating and this really is the future you know I don't I don't get the hydrogen thing it costs more than a hydrogen we already have the infrastructure for electricity I mean it exists already obviously we need to upgrade and Germany has really embraced the electric thing everything I think so yeah I mean very green I mean they're very green I mean we've there's still a long way to go yeah like all the infrastructure is it's it's growing every year and we're and the building they're pretty pretty busy building up infrastructure for the for the for the charging points now in Germany do you get credit for buying an electric here in America in California might electric car you get anywhere from twenty five hundred and seventy five hundred dollars back then when the government did they have that in Germany we had programs like this yeah actually really don't know how exactly they work but you can you also get a text refine or something like this you can give your old cars back to the dealers and then also get a little bit like refund what's happening that's it okay where the energy and here you see on the energy flow now we are just idling we are only working with a with a excellent with a with a power train on the front exit right and if you would have a problem or off the gas no it should yeah it's free can't see you putting it like rotors hard right we now are in essentially economy mode for lack of a better word so we're just using a minimum amount electricity to move the vehicle if you step on the gas okay it throws the camera in the back yeah and it transfers the power to the rear so it's all nothing for you I mean the fun thing with electric cars is the lease they call them the states hypermiling well you try to get up to a certain speed back on try to put in much electricity get back into the vehicle if you can and it actually works and you have this fun driving you know that electric powertrain has a characteristic which is very lovely to drive because we the talk from the beginning and it's very very nice but if you have to go for long distance or if you you don't want you want to have maximum of your electric range and so the behavior of the of the driver is very important right I mean as fast as you go the the bigger problem do you have with the electric range because if you go full speed you can go up to 180 kilometres an hour right but doesn't make sense if you want to travel long distance because you you're running out of energy but I want to say for new technologies at sea it's got it can't be equal it's got to be better mmm-hmm and you know that's where like when the electric cars first came out the jokes are always how slow they were yeah electric cars really aren't slow I needed they were made slow to get more range but now the batteries have improved I mean almost any electric car will blow a gasket out of the water I mean it's it's unbelievable how fast it is and you just travel silently you know the absence of noise is almost one of the biggest advantage yeah very calm driving you know it's you don't have the combustion engined you don't have the normally noise you get used from the from the car like you used before but this is very comfortable and it's very I mean we are writing here prototypes the pre-production car right so it's even getting more silent yeah and and yeah you hear a little bit of whistling from the wind have you always been an electronics engineer or were you autumn I started mechanical engineering actually yeah so I started in the old world so when your daughter will say you know my dad actually worked yes cars yeah it'd be like the old cool and there she she was definitely in eighteen years when she going to make a driver license the word is maybe I don't think we'd have a lot of combustion and yeah maybe and this will be the future yeah I mean the car has changed more from 2005 to now than it did from 1900 2000 I mean there's almost nothing quote automotive about this except the body shell that maybe the brakes the transmission the power delivery the way the batteries is situated how hard is it to change the battery they slide you have to put the carb and then just take the battery from from to the button though it's not the big steel a big story but but yeah takes a couple of hours and most batteries let I mean there are Prius has been around 115 years something like that and most are still on their original batteries you moon is maybe 5% yeah Tesla you know people always don't know you have to replace the batteries all the time but that really hasn't been the case no actually I mean the behavior of the driver halt at the of the owner can have a pretty big influence on the on the batteries I mean if you're always charging DC fast charger it's not very good for the bed ride if you go always up to 100% and leave it for a couple of days without any driving it's not very good so if you find the sweet spot something you don't I don't know you you your normal distance to go to the work is 20 20 miles yeah you don't have to to charge up to 100% state of charge you can't like to be no less than 20 percent no more than 85 correct absolutely that's true and in in the next couple of years I think there a lot of manufactures will bring out new electrically yeah yeah what was funny we went to Phoenix in September for testing purposes anything and this with the illuminated star in front it was a it was a magnet on the street now people like to hear very much so why would that only be an American because it's not allowed in Europe we only have the sight the the head oh you cut in front yeah I think I'm not too sure but I'm it wasn't allowed for us we have this light strip right underneath the bonnet and it couldn't be completely closed to the to their headlights that's what I heard what's the most difficult country to get a car certified for the United States mm depends maybe on the desert side yeah no no but and we have China is quite complicated because you never know what you're gonna get and when they're changing the changing laws yeah two months before and when you yeah we had this problem with their high energy density on the battery right and they just said it and maybe August okay this will coming up the first of June and 2019 so and what you can't do anything Wow battery technology is moving so fast yeah it is you know I know him you might have seen in my garage mm-hmm and ahead there was a battery sitting on the ground next to it okay Thomas Edison made that battery that was an alkaline battery yeah Thomas Edison wrote a letter to Henry Ford think this alkaline battery will make your model team extinct this is gonna revolutionize the electric car okay you're gonna double the mileage Bubba yeah none of that happened they all kinda worked okay but it really didn't do what was supposed to but and batteries didn't really change much from Edison's time to almost 10 to 15 years ago now oh my god now we have lithium-ion batteries yeah but we still need the cooling and I heard about some some Korean Asian maybe some Germans are building or trying to get this solid battery yeah odenie Cooling's and everything that's interesting yeah I know when the leaf came out it had an air-cooled benefit which was not very good because in Phoenix where it's hot your range will go down to 30 miles Emily and then someplace where it's cold the same thing yeah so the air cool doesn't work if you drive this on the coldest German day and you park it in your garage yeah which is not heated will the car keep the battery heated or it's that not the battery itself we have chemical reactions within the battery the battery only would go very very low temperature if you would let it there for maybe one week right so if you come home in the evening and go back or leave again and tomorrow morning the battery would be ready if you left it for a week with maybe five days into the weekend here hmm with the electricity in the battery circulate heat to keep to keep itself more no so we don't do this actively that's only the chemical reaction which doing this and because because you have a very very big volume so the bigger the battery the longer these chemical reactions work in the batteries so the the slower the the cooldown phases and I imagine crash testing electric cars another whole yeah especially for my city spends as you know it's but one of this core core practice like safety safety for passengers exactly and so we had a lot of safety structure in the body and wide and even in the battery so but on the one hand it's very safe we just had some crash tests and everything was very fine so the car itself with all the questions in the battery so everything is very very nice and scho safe on the other hand you're losing a lot of volume for the batteries in inside the battery so that energy density will decrease how much more will this be through a comparable gas Mercedes about the same is the idea to have close to the same for the same price point or electric will always be more expensive we want to make it affordable for everybody because we we want to electrify the people but on the other hand the Productions is very very not very cheap and the batteries are quite expensive right now getting better and better so I think therefore the we don't have any prizes for the vs for the European market we're going to introduce it mid of next year so the prices will be available in spring but there might be in the area of on the range of the GSD 43 and then you have as a tool now we are riding in the driving program comfort like the blue sea if you want to go as far as you could with with a electric range you can choose these programs like eco and you have the acceleration characteristic is a little bit we stealing a little bit of the power but there for you you can go some lights more extra and the maximum range you have also like on the maps you have this multi-purpose topping and multi input you're putting stopping that unit from here to San Francisco then that the system is calculating where to stop at widgets or charging station and so on well I want to thank mercedes-benz and Bastion for letting me drive this this has not driven anybody outside of Germany I think I'm the first person to do on this is really cool and I've just been waiting for Mercedes to get into this electric game because I know they would sit back let's see what's happening here let's punch in the C and then when they would come in there would come with something amazing like this I mean it has all the amenities of a normal to say dispense accepts as electric which is it's just a beautifully well-made oven and this was a prototype it's not even the finished product no no it's a full yeah and all kinds of power watch hey see you guys next week\n"