Sunday Drive: Mercedes-Benz EQC

Sunday, 26 April 2020

We go for a ride in a pre-series Mercedes-Benz EQC, the German manufacturer's first all-electric SUV.

MERCEDES-BENZ EQC 400

Base price: $142,900.

Powertrain and performance: 80kWh lithium-ion battery pack, 300kW/760Nm, dual electric motor AWD, consumption 21.4kWh per 100kmh, range 417km (WLTP)

The EQC has styling that's totally understated. At least until the front and rear lightbars come on at night.

Vital statistics: 4761mm long, 1624mm high, 1884mm wide, 2873mm wheelbase, luggage capacity 500 litres, 20-inch alloy wheels.

We like: Beautifully engineered, astoundingly refined, impressive ride.

The EQC packs a beautifully made interior, complete with Mercedes' impressive MBUX infotainment system.

We don't like: Not as spacious as rivals, slightly anodyne styling.

This road test was completed before the current coronavirus lockdown restrictions came into effect.

While the EQC has a distinctive nose, the rest is a bit generic SUV.

When his Lotus cars were cleaning up Formula One, Colin Chapman famously attributed everything to a process of 'adding lightness'.

Electric car makers must hate hearing that. For them, kilowatt and kilogram balance is hard. Lithium ion battery performances keep improving, but commensurate weight reductions rarely avail.

Because the EQC shares underpinnings with the GLC, its packaging is similar, with the front electric motor in the engine bay.

A degree of podginess is an unavoidable for the Mercedes-Benz EQC. Another burden might seem to be the cost. It's a hard fact: electric means expensive.

**READ MORE:

The sleek roofline looks the part, but it does restrict rear headroom.

* Road test review: Mercedes-Benz EQC

* Mercedes announces NZ price for EQC electric SUV

The boot is decent, but doesn't quite have as much cargo space as the GLC wagon.

* Driving Mercedes-Benz's first-ever pure-electric vehicle

* Mercedes-Benz's electric future, from the passenger seat**

Then again, premium is already where Benz plays so, while tree huggers on a budget might whine, the affluent have means to really influence EV acceptance, so it's surely easily understood why it positions where it does.

Big spenders will be intrigued by what it proposes and the EQC really further blurs the already well obscured lines between car and SUV.

If 'SUV' means off-roading? Well, best not. As much as electric drive has awesome potential – instant torque to the individual wheel that needs it, for instance – it's not an adventure car. Towing is possible, but it's not set up to haul stuff that'll go behind the big diesel and petrol models. As much as anything, it's designated an SUV by virtue of happening to have been based on one. You could just as easily call it a very big car.

Which is fine, actually. Regardless of where it sits, it's impossible not to find this product hugely interesting. EQC's introduction comes with acknowledgement tomorrow's products will better what's here today.

That'll happen when the EQS Tesla Model S rival arrives in 2022, as it will debut a bespoke electric platform, though even then the brand will continue to make others to the formula applied with EQC. That is, adapt an underpinning also designed for fossil-fuelled fare.

To be fair, it's no soft conversion. EQC and GLC are all but totally divorced in appearance and, while the underbody and suspension are common, conversion goes well beyond just ripping out the combustion bits and transmission and banging in two drive motors, one in front and one behind, and an underfloor battery.

Still, the first influences the second. Ensuring EQC behaves as protectively as GLC in a crash explains the steel-tube replicas of the combustion car's engine block and gearbox housing; a contributing factor to why it has no 'frunk' under the bonnet and also to its kerb weight.

Also, it makes EQC slightly tighter inside than the Jaguar I-Pace and Audi e-tron, even though all three have a similar footprint. It's not tight, but it is cosier, in part because the others have a flat floor.

Like a GLC Coupe? Funnily, they share almost the same luggage capacity, but the EQC's boot is higher-floored and only accommodates 1060 litres when its split-folding rear seats are down.

If you're hoping for this compactness to deliver compensation on the scales, well, like I said, battery packs are heavy. EQC's 384 cell unit lends a significant 652kg to the quoted kerb weight. Even so, the surprise isn't that it's 650kg heavier than a GLC 220d 4Matic but that it outweighs the Jag and Audi.

Don't be dismayed. Like all electrics it has sharp step-off and the torque stream is rich. The claimed 0-100kmh time of 5.1 seconds is utterly believable, it holds the open road pace very easily, the range of more than 400kms is entirely realistic and with everything feeding asynchronous electric motor/generators on each axle to enable four-wheel drive, but actively varying the amount of torque to manage traction, nothing wastes.

Yet it's not bombastic. Though AMG accessories avail and, as in other Benz SUVs, it can be finessed to suit driving styles, through personalising or choosing from three pre-sets, it's a car tuned for refinement, civility and comfort.

So despite firmish damping, and well-controlled body roll that clearly benefits from having so much battery weight positioned low down, it doesn't like being pushed too far. It's best as a cruiser in which you can enjoy the serenity of a cabin is impressively isolated from the outside world.

Efficiency encouragement is naturally to the fore. The Eco mode familiar in fossil-fuelled models has more bearing here. Beyond that comes Max Range, which actively encourages e-driving, including the use of a haptic accelerator pedal that 'taps' the driver's sole to suggest easing off. Altering the level of energy recuperation harvested on deceleration, enabling one-pedal driving further enhances green-ness.

The cabin is just as you'll find in any other modern Benz, including the awesome MBUX digital dashboard, though in this case there are EQ-only toys and menus to find your way around.

What hammers home is just well sorted it is. There's just no sense of this being a new territory for the world's oldest brand. No shoddy workmanship or low-quality materials to embarrass. You'd think Benz had been doing this for as long as Tesla. Engineering and finish-wise, it's already doing it better.