The Mercedes-Benz Electric Suv: A Review

As I sat behind the wheel of this impressive vehicle, I couldn't help but notice that it's a Mercedes through and through. The LED strip across the front may not be the most exciting feature, but it's a clear indication of what's to come - an exceptional driving experience. However, as I soon discovered, there's more to this car than just its impressive specs.

Upon first glance, the exterior of the car didn't exactly turn heads. The blobbiest and heaviest-looking design may not be to everyone's taste, but trust me when I say that it's a Mercedes - and an excellent one at that. The interior is where things really shine, with beautifully crafted materials and a premium feel that sets it apart from its competitors.

As I put the car through its paces, I was impressed by its effortless performance. At cruise speeds, it feels like a dream to drive, with virtually no wind noise or engine sound. The steering is responsive and well-weighted, making it easy to navigate twisty roads. However, it's not quite as agile as some of its competitors, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - this car excels at providing a comfortable grand touring experience.

One area where the Mercedes shines is in terms of balance. It doesn't ride as smoothly as some of its rivals, and its handling isn't as precise as others, but it gets close. The real standout feature is the way it feels to drive - effortlessly composed and quiet, with a natural response that's hard to resist.

Of course, no discussion of this car would be complete without mentioning its electric powertrain. With an 80kWh battery and a claimed range of 255 miles, it's clear that Mercedes has put a lot of thought into the car's efficiency. In reality, I managed to squeeze out a respectable 169 miles on a single charge - not bad for such a small battery.

But what really sets this car apart is its charging speed. With a 150kW charger, it can top up in just over 40 minutes - although if you're charging at home, that time drops down to a mere three hours with a wallbox 7kW charger. This is where the Mercedes truly shines, offering a quicker charge than even its closest rivals.

If I'm being completely honest, there are a few areas where this car falls short. The exterior design may not be for everyone, and some features - like the lack of powered charging flat or novelty door mirrors - feel like missed opportunities. However, these are minor quibbles in an otherwise excellent package.

Ultimately, the Mercedes-Benz Electric Suv is a top-notch vehicle that should appeal to anyone looking for a luxurious electric driving experience. While it may not be the most exciting car to drive, its balance of performance and comfort makes it an ideal choice for those who prioritize practicality over pure driving thrills. As such, I would have no hesitation in recommending this car - but do keep in mind that if you're looking for a more agile, fun-to-drive experience, there are other options available.

In my opinion, the Mercedes is the best luxury EV SUV by a considerable margin. It's an excellent choice for anyone who wants a comfortable, efficient, and feature-packed electric vehicle - and one that I would be happy to spend time with again in the near future.

As I concluded my test drive, I couldn't help but feel impressed by this car. While it may not be perfect, it's a well-rounded package that checks all the right boxes. Whether you're looking for a comfortable grand tourer or an efficient family vehicle, the Mercedes-Benz Electric Suv is definitely worth considering.

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"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthere's no doubt the electric car is in the ascendancy and nowhere is that more obvious than in the large luxury suv sector there have been more arrivals in this sector of the market than almost any other now tesla arguably stole a march on everyone with the model x but the mainstream manufacturers weren't far behind in particular jaguar with its eye pace now that car was launched three years ago and now there's a new refreshed one but in that time there have been a number of new and important rivals particularly the mercedes eqc and behind me here the audi e-tron sportback so let's find out whether these updates are enough to keep the jaguar at the top of the class so this is the new jaguar i-pace well i say new it's not really new it's an update and it's a very very very mild update so effectively the big change is we've got a new infotainment system so it's the pivi pro system so it's much quicker acting than before and it looks really good it works really well so that's that's good the old system was a bit laggy there's been some updates to the charging so it can now do 11 kilowatt charging other than that it's pretty much the same as before which given that it's the oldest car here is both a bit of a surprise and also not much of a surprise because jackie were the first ones to jump in with both feet to the luxury suv ev market they were the first legacy manufacturer to do it and frankly they did a pretty good job so even now the i-pace looks distinctive whereas the audi and the mercedes they look like electrified versions of internal combustion mercedes and audi suvs this doesn't look like any other jaguar and it's kind of better for it it looks modern that kind of suv crossover thing we're kind of well used to now but the jag still stands out and the best part about it is that they haven't changed the way it drives so we've got the least power here not by much 396 brake horsepower and 413 pounds for the torque but crucially whereas the other two weigh in the mercedes case just a scratch under two and a half tons the audi's case just over two and a half tons the jaguar weighs 2.2 tonnes now that's still quite a chunk of car but that reduction of 300 kilograms it makes a difference so even though it's slightly less powerful it's the quickest car here so jaguar claimed notice 62 in 4.7 4.8 seconds and it feels quick so we're cruising at 70 now and even now put your foot down and you get a proper kick in the back all of these cars are quick but this one feels the most alert to the throttle but crucially it's when you change direction when you want to go through some corners that the jaguar it proves that we shouldn't fear evs necessarily i know lots of people are claiming that evs aren't going to give you the same sensation as internal combustion engine cars and that is true they don't but the jaguar you really can enjoy it the steering is so much quicker than the other two there's eager turning and despite that weight it clings on really well and there's great body control so we can just fling it through corners good steering feel as well this is an se car so all the cars here start at around 65 000 pounds for the basic one i think the cheapest jaguar you can get is about 62 which is the s so this is an se about 65 000 now normally you get passive dampers coil springs this one's on air springs and adaptive dampers makes no difference really the ride is slightly nicer with the air springs i mean it's still probably the the busiest of the three and there's more road noise a bit more wind noise but in terms of poise body control you can really throw it around and have fun now there's torque vectoring it's two motors like the other two cars here and you get four wheel drive traction and it can tweak the motors and on the brakes to get the car turned in quickly and you don't feel it like some torque vectoring systems you can feel it working away just trying to rain the car in this one feels so much more agile than the other two and you can just lean on it oh you can even hear a bit of tire squeal there i mean it's it's great fun it really is there's an engaging nature to it an adjustability that's missing in the other two if you enjoy driving and don't we all then the i-pace has to be at the top of your list now it's not all great news because while the range is claimed to be the longest here 292 the jaguar does seem to chomp through its electricity rather quicker than the other two and that's not just down to the way it drives or the way you drive it now in fairness to it all our cars were fully charged when we picked them up mercedes had around 170 miles on a claim of 255 the ld just under 200 on a claim of 240 this one had 238 miles on the clock claimed 292 but even now i'm watching the range here and we're cruising and i'm watching the miles disappear off that range almost as quickly as they disappear under the wheels of the car now like the other two you get rapid charging so uh it's a 90 kilowatt battery in this so it's in between the mercedes and the audi uh 150 kilowatt charging you can have 80 fully charged in about 40 minutes plug it into a wall box a 7 kilowatt wall box you're looking at 13 hours for a full recharge now one area that really niggles is the fact that regenerative braking is available on all of them obviously and you get quite a high level of regenerative braking you can effectively drive all three as one pedal car so lift off and it just slows really quickly but smoothly and you can almost come to a complete stop as you would with a nice gentle brake and then back on the throttle and pick up now in the audi in the mercedes paddles on the steering wheel let you quickly adjust between three different levels of regenerative braking almost between total coasting no no braking at all up to one pedal full-on stopping with a jaguar you get a choice of high engine braking or low engine braking but you've got to go through about three different button presses on the touchscreen so where are we quick ev there we go regenerative braking low or high now i know it's personal taste i like to drive with high regenerative braking some people don't like any and i'm sure you just switch it to whichever is your preference and leave it but sometimes like on a motorway where regenerative braking can be irritating because every little lift you need to make results in the car slowing suddenly brake lights going on the person behind you inevitably tailgating you panicking you probably want it on low so it will coast and so that switching between the two is just a faff a real faff and it's a small thing i know it's a small thing but the rest of the car is so good so likable that you wonder why they didn't think that through but hey-ho you get used to it i'm sure i mean it's just such good fun to drive genuinely i mean i do miss the internal combustion thing but this thing you can have a genuine hoot and if all your journeys revolved around hacking down flowing country roads better town work and only short bits of motorway and you wanted an ev a luxury premium suv ev you'd be pretty bonkers not to choose the jag to be honest so does it come out on top well it's going to be a close run thing we need to try out the other two first so let's park up the jaguar and let's have a go in the audi so the audi e-tron so we've got the uh the sportback version here there's also uh a standard e-tron which is more like a standard suv this has got a bit of a coupe style to it like the mercedes it feels more like a normal car to look at at first they haven't had the same desire to start from such a clean sheet of paper as jaguar have with the i-pace they didn't want to scare off customers was the theory make it look like a standard car people will be less scared about the high-tech internals and for many that will work i mean it does mean it's not as exciting to look at it just looks like an audi suv a very nice handsome premium suv but an audi suv nonetheless that's not to say there aren't some interesting features here now this is the only car here that's got these clever little cameras for rear view mirrors so you'll see these stalks poking out on the doors and then we've got some cameras down here which at first take a little bit of effort to remind yourself to look down there you are having to make a conscious look down but once you get used to it they work really well and there's also a nice little bit of theater on the outside when you plug the car into charge rather than a normal petrol flap where you have to press and it pings open press a button and it slides out the way it's real theater it's quite a cool neat touch but other than that just looks like an audi and to be honest it feels like an audi too now inside it is typically slick i mean we have a multitude of touchscreens here it's over complicated it's probably doing a disservice but compared to the jaguar and the mercedes there's quite a lot going on here we've got a touchscreen for all your infotainment touchscreen for your climate control i mean it looks lovely and the materials are second to none this is a properly nice place to spend time now under the skin like the other two cars here we've got two electric motors now this is a 55 there's also a 50 with a lower powered output this one has 402 brake horsepower and about 489 pounds for the torque however it's also the heaviest so unbelievably even though outside it looks a bit more compact than the other two this thing weighs just over two and a half tons and as a result on paper it's not as quick audi claimed not 62 in about 5.7 seconds which in fairness is quick enough and there is like you'd expect put your foot down and it takes off there is no hesitation there's so much torque it's almost instant and of course it's four-wheel drive total traction it's a quick old thing it's also got the biggest battery here so it's 95 kilowatt hours which audi claim give you a range of just over 240 miles now when we got in it today fully charged it was around 200 so it's not bad i mean it is cold today um and it does seem quite stable you know even with a bit of a thump of the throttle whack on the heating you'll only drop off a couple of miles it is quite consistent but it's still compared to things like the tesla even compared to the jaguar with its near 300 mile range it's not range anxiety but you are aware that you have to keep an eye on it now with 95 kilowatt hour battery biggest one here it also means it takes the longest to charge so if you've got a wall box at home seven kilowatts you're looking at uh the thick end of 14 hours to charge it plug it into 150 kilowatt rapid charger they'll all do that and you're looking at 50 minutes to go from 10 to 80 which is pretty good it costs though now we plugged one of these in just for a short while to get 130 miles of range through a rapid charger it was an ionity ones other rapid charging uh networks are available and it took about 30 quid of our cash for 130 miles which you start to tap away your calculator and that's not much different from a sort of petrol executive saloon for a similar mile and petrol so charging at home save yourself a bundle beware though that rapid charges while though will get you going again quickly you will pay for the privilege rest of the car as we say i don't want to keep saying it feels like an audit but it does feel like an audi it is the heaviest car here and frankly it feels it i mean it's not bad to drive by any stretch of the imagination your standard slick if lack of field steering lots of grip now it's riding on air springs they're all riding on air springs here so we can dial through the various driver modes if i can find them takes a little bit of while here we are it's down here it's quite confusing this layout so let's have a look what we've got here let's go for individual no let's go for dynamic dynamics stiffens it all up bit of sticky weight to the steering feels torture in the corners but you are aware of that mass pile into a corner too quickly and you are acutely aware that physics would rather you go straight on and not turn into it but you still have to be going fairly quickly for that to be a problem but there's more steering angle that you have to put in compared to the jaguar and the mercedes it's the least dynamic car here but the trade-off is particularly on the air springs it probably just has the edge for ride comfort it's got big old wheels on it this thing but even over some sharp expansion joints and potholes there's just the nearest hint of a thud as it goes over the rest of the time it just smothers the road surface it's perhaps not as practical as the glc bit more practical than the i-pace bit more space in the back even in this fought back but we're talking little bits i mean it's a nice thing it is i like the mirrors that's quite cool and i really like the flap that opens to allow you to charge it and that sort of worries me that the one thing about this the best thing about this car is the flap you open to charge it i mean i'm being unfair this is a really good thing and if you're new to evs and you don't want to be shocked by some clean sheet design that's going hey we can rip up the conventions we don't need to do engine at the front transmission down the middle we can we can basically make it triangular and have square wheels if that scares you and i could understand why it would then this is a nice stepping stone it just feels like a really nicely built really comfy heavy on tech audi it's just i'm not sure i'd have it over the other two good but not the best here i don't think okay mercedes eqc have we saved the best till last well a bit like the audi the mercedes at first feels like the most conventional machine let's say like the e-tron they've gone for a very familiar look this looks like a mercedes suv i mean there are some nice little touches you'll probably notice on the outside you've got that led strip across the front but it is very much a mercedes you are buying like the advert says i drive a mercedes it's a mercedes it's not an ev it's a mercedes that happens to be an ev depending on your point of view that's a good thing or a bad thing personally it's executed really nicely i'm not so convinced on the looks i think it's probably the blobbiest and the heaviest looking here even though it isn't the heaviest inside as you'd expect mercedes it is beautifully done there's quite a lot of colors going on in this one this is a amg line premium i think which is somewhere over 70 000 pounds but prices start about 65 000 for the sport and it's nicely done this thing is effortless in the way a cruise speed it's very quiet wind noise yes drive train is very quiet and it's got the best balance of the two between agility and comfort it doesn't ride quite as smoothly as the audi and it doesn't feel as nimble as the jaguar but it's not far off the steering has a lovely natural rate of response and there's decent weighting there i mean we can flip between the various driver modes if we want dynamic again adaptive dampers with air springs stiffens it all up but frankly on a car like this stick it in comfort and it'll sort itself out and then it's really nice and wafty it's got that real kind of comfortable grand touring mercedes feel it's just a nicely resolved package like i say it's not as exciting to drive as a jack it's not as fun to drive as a jaguar but there's there's surprising agility there like i say the steering's got nice turning it's good grip yes you start to feel the mass as you lean on the chassis but it doesn't feel quite as heavy as the audi in fact it doesn't feel as heavy as the small difference in weight would have you believe it is billed as a luxury suv and it feels like that it feels a bit like an s-class but an electric suv version of an s-class it's not as big i mean it's the biggest here there's the most space in the back boot's the biggest it is the most sensible family car if that's what you're looking for but it's also the one that's most rounded in its approach yes it's slightly conservative to look at but i guess that's the market those are the buyers just a really nice thing loads of performance really poised the damping is lovely there's some there's some thuds a bit of jolting over really nasty potholes but the rest of the time as i say just wafts along composed it's nice now the battery 80 kilowatt hour in this one so it's the smallest battery the range mercedes claimed 255 so i got in this morning range was uh 169 miles which is some way off that 255 miles but i'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt because it was very cold this morning range resilience it's pretty good actually it doesn't lose miles from its range as quickly as the jag does and we're doing pretty similar speeds similar things what it does mean is it's the quickest to charge not by much but on 150 kilowatt charger similar sort of 40 minutes but if you've got a wallbox seven kilowatt wall box plug it in overnight 11 hours so three hours less than the audi means you don't get as long a lion maybe maybe that's a bad thing i don't know the rest of the car it's a really nicely rounded package it's not it doesn't do anything outlandish doesn't look as distinctive as the jack it doesn't have novelty door mirrors like the audi it doesn't have the audi's powered charging flat which that's a bit of a disappointment i have to say that is my highlight i like that a lot but as something to live with if it fits in with your lifestyle if you can plug it in at home charge it frequently this is going to say it i'm going to go on a limb now not lim this is the best luxury ev suv by this much this much i would be torn i would be torn between this and the jaguar the jaguar is great fun to drive and if i could if i could live with it's less practical me in and it's it's less resilient range the jaguar the jaguar would be my choice for just for driving but as an all-rounder as i say by that much i think the mercedes just just mix it if you enjoyed this video click the like button and don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss another auto car video\n"