Has S-Class luxury been successfully packaged into a modern-day high-rise EV? MODEL TESTED450 SUV BUSINESS CLASSPrice £143,795 Power 355bhp Torque 590lb ft 0-60mph 5.5sec 30-70mph 5.2sec Economy 2.4mpkWh Max DC charging speed 166kW 70-0mph 45.3m
I t’s a continuing quandary for the ‘legacy’ car manufacturers: how do you maintain your identity when there are no engines to establish it, and when the traditional rules of vehicle design no longer apply in quite the same way as they have done for 100 years? It clearly has an impact on model hierarchies, as they get frantically rejigged and renamed.
The Mercedes-Benz S-Class is a well-understood concept: a luxury limousine that’s equally suited to being chauffeur- or owner-driven. The electric EQS, while impressive in a number of ways, is more of a technical showcase and less of a prestige saloon. Strictly speaking, it is a hatchback and not a saloon at all.
As we will find out, the EQS SUV doesn’t follow tradition any more than its hatch-saloon counterpart and is something rather different from the ‘tall electric S-Class’ that its name would suggest. One look at its stubby bonnet and seven-seat layout confirms as much.
That leaves the question of what this EQS SUV is instead, who it’s for, and if this Alabama-built behemoth is just an attempt at making an EV for America, or whether it has any relevance in Europe.
DESIGN AND ENGINEERING
Built in Mercedes’ Tuscaloosa plant alongside the GLE, GLS and EQE SUV, the EQS SUV is clearly a US-sized car, one that could stand up to a Ford F-150.
At 5125mm in length, the EQS SUV is a good deal longer still than the largest EVs from BMW and Audi – the iX (4953mm) and the Q8 E-tron (4915mm). It’s closer in length to the piston-powered GLS (5209mm), but because it’s built on a dedicated EV platform, it has a shorter bonnet and shorter overhangs, giving the car a longer wheelbase than the GLS and thus making more of its considerable footprint. That also makes the EQS SUV one of the few EVs to be available with seven seats. In fact, all UK-market EQS SUVs come with a third row.
The EQS SUV uses the same EVA2 platform as the EQS saloon and the various versions of the EQE. For this Mercedes range-topper, everything is supersized. As such, the EQS SUV is powered by a gargantuan battery: it was 108.4kWh at launch but was quickly upgraded to 118.0kWh. All cars made from January 2024 have this battery (along with a few other small
