Mercedes-Benz EQA 2021 review | baby Benz electric car | Chasing Cars

i'm tom baker this is chasing cars and this is the mercedes-benz eqa the most affordable full electric vehicle with the three-pointed star by far if you're thinking that the eqa looks a lot like the mercedes-benz gla you wouldn't be wrong the two cars have so much in common it's easy to think of the eqa as purely just a battery electric gla but that would be to ignore quite a few specification and design differences about the car but hey if you want to think of them as one single model i think that's fair enough clearly we do have quite a sharply restyled front apron on the vehicle and there are similar changes around the back incorporating this broad light bar front and rear that is becoming a brand signature of mercedes eq which is kind of a sub brand for bends just like amg is either way though i actually think it's quite a cute looking little crossover particularly dressed up as this grey car is with the amg package you get these really awesome looking multi-spoke 20-inch wheels and the chrome treatment outside is replaced with gloss black that being said even in standard form it's quite an attractive looking vehicle but while the eqa is about the same size as a gla this car is important because it gives mercedes benz a more affordable full battery electric vehicle to sell here in australia and while evs still remain a niche choice there are significant moves underway to make these cars more affordable and highly incentivized particularly right here in new south wales where a large package of ev incentives has just been announced before the filming of this video so the eqa250 which is the front wheel drive launch model that starts the range off in australia is just over 76 grand before on-road costs so in the gla sort of lineup that would sit between the all drive gla 250 and the gla 35 amg now later on mercedes-benz australia are going to bring an eqa 350 with all-wheel drive dual motors to australia in november or december of this year and that will give this electric eqa a higher performance all poor model but for now it's the eqa250 408 kilometers of range wltp 66.5 kilowatt hour usable battery and of course we'll talk about those fundamentals when we get the eqa out onto the road but let's have a quick look at this interior which is very gla not that's a bad thing because as i said in my review of the gla recently this is actually one of the best cabins in the small luxury suv segment it's attractive to look at it's high technology and it's very well made which is one of the differences to the first generation gla which did feel a little bit plasticky inside like the second gen gla the eqa feels better screwed together and more premium now this dashboard is a lot more complicated than mercedes-benz cars of old there's a lot of tech there's dual 10 and a quarter inch screens for the mbux infotainment system but thankfully they work well the central screen has touch you can use this track pad down between the seats or the track pads on the steering wheel similarly there's a track pad for the driver's digital display while setting it up does take a bit of your attention and time once you've got the screens how you like them they present information very clearly they're bright and fairly simple to use now really cool aviation inspired air vents across the cabin and a really broad dashboard that incorporates this open pore sort of textured wood and lots of ambient lighting which you can set pretty much to the color of your choice also nice is the stitched leather or faux leather on the dash and doors and then artico man-made leather down here on the seats but it is uh does do a pretty good impression of the real thing and the seats themselves are pretty comfortable one thing though is the seat base doesn't have enough under thigh adjustment for me i do have longer legs than most but it's something you want to try out when you test drive the car like a typical mercedes we do have electric seat controls up here on the door three memory positions for both the driver and passenger as standard seat heating is standard as well but you will need to pay more if you want seat cooling which i would recommend if you are going to go for the black upholstery although lighter beige better for australia is also available in terms of practicality we've got wireless smartphone charging is standard decent sized cup holders a decent size bin between the seats with two usb c ports and as i said the quality of the materials and the fitment and the build is excellent it does feel very very nicely screwed together so that's a look at the front of the eqa let's check out the back the beauty of the eqa being based on the new gla is the packaging of the car is pretty good now these rear doors open fairly wide and the isofix points back here are exposed with no cap to lose so fitting a couple of child seats in the back will be really simple and of course the extra ride height of this suv form factor does mean that you won't have to bend over to fit those child seats as for room in the back it's not bad for myself it's six foot headroom is absolutely fine despite the fact we do have these dual pane sunroofs in this particular tester leg room behind my own driving position is good and toe room is fair although there is a bit of intrusion from that seat down there as you can see though my legs are kind of a bit around my ears not quite but they're not really supported by the seat squat that's partially because the eqa is running a big battery between the axles underneath the floor so it does raise the floor a little bit although we had a similar effect in the combustion gla too that being said unless you're transporting adults in the back all the time i don't think it's going to be a huge problem as for amenities back here we do have air vents we've got one more usb-c port we've got map pockets in the back of each front seat soft ish materials i would say and we have a flip down arm rest with deployable cup holders plus this backrest actually folds 40 20 40 which gives you some nice flexibility and that'll be particularly helpful when the all-wheel drive eqa 350 comes along as you'll be able to fit some skis through the center hatch while still having four people in the car speaking of practicality in the boot that's what we're going to look at next here around the back of the eqa you can see that mercedes-benz have actually differentiated the design quite a lot from the gla more than the front in my opinion we have this cool full-width led bar that goes across but also small things like the number plate has been relocated to the bumper bar of the eqa on the gla it sort of sits up here on the tailgate now access to the boot is via a very volkswagen style flip up three-pointed star that's also where the reversing camera is to be found and it opens up this standard power tailgate to reveal a 340 liter boot now that's not bad in terms of literature some of the space is eaten up by the charging paraphernalia in two different bags but mercedes say that they expect customers to only take the cables with them that they need and impressively the eqa does actually come with both a five and an eight meter charging cable to suit home charging and public charging you don't have to pay extra for that stuff otherwise you can see in here i've got the big chasing car suitcase and the carry-on we had to banish the mid-sized one as it didn't fit and that's also compounded by the fact the gla doesn't have a frunk unlike some electric vehicles there isn't space for an additional carry-on bag under the bonnet and that's partially because of the use of a combustion platform for this car now underneath the boot floor there's also no spare wheel that's where the charging infrastructure for this vehicle actually lives but we kind of have dual finishes a plastic one and then this pleasant chrome item here we have nets off to the left and right of the boot substantial cargo cover controls to close or close and lock and as i mentioned the power tail gets standard as is convenience access to all four doors you don't actually have to get the key out and press unlock just before we chat about the running costs of the eqa i'll take you through the price of the car more specifically because interestingly i actually think the eqa 250 is better value than something like a kona electric or a kia niro ev it is about 10 grand more expensive than those cars in terms of list price but you do get a lot of standard kit stuff like memory electrically adjustable heated seats those dual screens inside keyless access to all of the doors and the boot these are things that typically aren't standard on rivals around this price of course the tesla model 3 standard range plus continues to be the standout vehicle for value for money in this part of the market but if you are tied to the three-pointed start you want a mercedes-benz ev the eqa gives you a much better value vehicle than something like the a-class plug-in hybrid or the eqc which is a size bigger than this now as i mentioned the eqa 250 is 76 800 there is a special first edition with a bunch of rose gold accents for about another seven thousand this card doesn't have that instead we have the amg package which is two thousand nine hundred and fifty dollars gives you different styling black accents these cool 20 inch wheels and a amg ish interior with things like that sports nappa flat bottom steering wheel we also have the vision package which is two thousand nine hundred dollars that gives you a 12 speaker 590 watt burmester stereo panoramic sunroof and a 360 degree camera and you can go further for another 2500 for an innovations package with a heads up display and augmented reality for the navigation sunroof cooled seats there are some standalone options so you can spend quite a lot on your eqa if you want to but as it comes stock it's actually not terrible value in this part of the market as for running costs running an ev can be very affordable particularly if you can charge at home and particularly if you have solar at your home but even paying the average sort of electricity price here in new south wales filling up from zero to a hundred percent in the eqa will only cost you about 16 at home and that in public using fast charges it'll cost around 26 dollars however the eqa comes with a three-year unlimited charge fox subscription included which really can cut those running costs in the first few years the warranty on the vehicle is five years unlimited kilometers and on the battery it's eight years 160 000 kilometers servicing mercedes-benz haven't given us a fixed price for servicing on the eqa yet but if they publish one by the time this video goes to air it'll be displayed on screen by the power of magic so those are the running costs of the car and a look at the price you can let me know what you think in terms of value down below the video next up let's drive so before we get going let's talk about another critical element for the eqa and that's charging the eqa can do 100 kilowatt dc fast charging which is okay but it is behind other evs out there even ones that are built on combustion platforms like the audi etron either way though if you find yourself a public charger that can do 100 kilowatt charging it's going to take about 30 minutes to charge the eqa to 80 and that charge speed is actually pretty consistent that's an average of 93 kilowatts uh across that charging session so it's still pretty convenient uh if you've got a rapid charger available at a supermarket or something like that much like the one next to our office in sydney now the maximum ac charging that the eqa is capable of is 11 kilowatts so at home for example if you have three phase and you put in a wall box the best you're going to get in terms of charging speeds is four hours and then just plugging it into the wall with a typical australian three pin socket it's going to take 25 hours to charge the battery to full and that's why most owners are going to put in a wall box at home so with that out of the way let's press the power button engage the single speed gearbox and set off in the eqa i've actually been looking forward to driving this ev because i've been quite impressed with the vehicles that mercedes-benz have been releasing on the mfa2 chassis that sits underneath the gla the glb the eqa cla the brand small cars basically and i've really been wondering whether the platform can kind of stretch to the pressures that full electrification puts on a chassis of which there are quite a number this is a pretty heavy car it's got a 66 and a half kilowatt hour usable battery so a bigger battery than that uh in terms of the growth size and that adds five or six hundred kilograms of weight but it is down low between the axles if you're going to shove that kind of weight on a car that's exactly where you'd want it to be but there's no escaping that compared to a gla250 the eqa250 is an absolute chunker now in terms of the mechanical package that we've got here the eqa250 is a front wheel drive ev and it has a single motor e motor as mercedes calls it on the front axle and most of the garments for that take up the space that the combustion engine in a gla would use underneath the bonnet now that single motor produces 140 kilowatts of power and 375 newton meters of torque so pretty powerful not quite as powerful as a gla 250 but it is talkier than that car although a gla 250 which is about seven thousand dollars cheaper it's a two liter turbo petrol it has all-wheel drive so compared to a front wheel drive gla the eqa is more like 19 000 more expensive but it's much better equipped than a base gla it's much faster and it's much more refined so it's not actually that easy to pigeonhole the eqa250 into the gla lineup and of course the electric motor in this car behaves very differently to a combustion turbo engine that you get in the rest of the the gla lineup torque is plentiful there's lots of it and it comes on strong immediately the car's not that forceful off the line it's a little more responsive in sport mode but it's actually sort of a second after it's moved off the line it really shoves all that torque at you and you get just tremendous linear smooth response the motor's behavior is smooth that's the main word i would use for it and that's perfect for people that love a mercedes-benz because you know i own a six-cylinder mercedes-benz as one of my personal cars and there's no doubt that the motor in the eq8 is much smoother than that engine and it's a pretty smooth engine later the eqa 350 will offer a big performance boost from its dual motor all drive setup the eqa 350 probably cost 10 or 15 000 more but it will produce 215 kilowatts of power and 520 newton meters of torque more torque than the gla-45 so that really should be quite an enjoyable drive but as it goes you don't really feel like you're missing out in the eqa250 i'd say it's quick enough and punchy enough for almost anyone pulling out of a corner it's tremendous and i want to give a really big shout out to the engineers that did the stability control calibration because a lot of heavy inert evs particularly ones based on existing combustion platforms can get very very pushy and produce a lot of understeer when you start to corner harder the eqa resists that understeer very well indeed and it's all in the esc basically the chassis itself is solid and well set up and the weight is distributed better thanks to the battery but it just really really keeps you tight and hemmed in in the corners and doesn't want to push wide into the opposing lane like a like a kona or a nero do the continental conti eco 6 tires also do a pretty good job and they don't have that kind of crappy low grip sensation to them that said it's dry this test so i haven't driven the eqa in the wet yet if you have and you have a comment on the contes in that situation put it below in the comments so the motor is smooth and the way the eqa behaves when you start to drive it a little bit more athletically is impressive but how does it go day to day well you can tell that there have had to be compromises in the ride for the eqa and that's to be expected even though evs have their weight down low it's still a heavy car and that does create stresses on the suspension of any vehicle so the ride isn't as compliant or as comfortable as it is on a gla 250. now to be fair this tester does have big 20 inch wheels on it but there's still a reasonably chunky tire on there actually it's just you do feel more reverberations from the road there's a little more head toss in the eqa than there is in the gla the ride is actually very similar to the tesla model 3 in that sense it's it's comfortable enough and compliant enough but there's a little bit too much bounce at times and it's a little bit arthritic over imperfections i would say now that kind of slight lack of compliance over potholes never goes away but you can actually fix the body control by putting the dampers into sport mode the ride is no less comfortable it's still fine but the body stops pitching around under throttle under braking and in the corner so i actually set up my individual drive mode to have the steering and the motor in comfort but the suspension in sport and that's not usually what i do i usually want the suspension in comfort or normal but in this case sport dampers hem the body control right in and the ride stays the same which is perfectly acceptable but it's not old-school isolated mercedes compliance that's for sure similarly brake pedal feel is just okay this car has a number of braking modes in its automatic mode it uses the long range radar for the adaptive cruise control to judge whether there's a car in front of you and use regenerative braking to keep you at a reasonable distance from that car but you can actually alter it massively you can put the car just in standard drive mode where it mimics the gearbox of a combustion mercedes lift off your foot and you get a subtle flywheel effect as if it's engine braking a little bit but certainly not like a pitching regen but if you want something closer to one pedal driving you have two levels of of off throttle regen and the second one which i'm using now it definitely does have that sort of regen braking pitch you forward feel similarly you can go the other direction you can have the car totally free will no engine braking simulation so depending on the situation you're in you can customize that all through the pedals personally i just drove it around in drive like not really using regen braking most of the time but if you want to get the best efficiency from the car you will need to use regen speaking of efficiency wltp range rating for this car is 408 kilometers which means it consumes around 1920 kilowatt hours per hundred kilometers and that's precisely what we got in testing another reason why the wltp standard is the one we use on chasing cars it's not perfect it is generally about 10 under the real world consumption and range but it's pretty good now in more performance driving you're going to see 30 kilowatt hours per 100k easily but in our general normal testing 20 21 kilowatt hours per 100 was perfectly achievable without really trying in other news it's refined it's quiet inside apart from the fact you do hear more suspension noise because there's no engine or gearbox sound and in terms of safety it's well equipped we've got sophisticated adaptive crews lane keeping that really works well blind spot monitoring a 360 degree camera that's part of an option package i should say it feels safe smart and largely well kitted out so that's a look at the mercedes-benz eqa 250 my personal opinion on the vehicle is that this is where evs really do start to hit an important part of the market there are heaps of people here in australia who love mercedes-benz and have rusted on mercedes-benz customers and it's vehicles like the eqa that are going to encourage them to try out electric motoring and what they find in the eqa250 is a luxurious well-packaged small luxury suv that happens to be electric the fact it doesn't shove it in your face is actually a positive for people like that and so personally i find a lot to like about this car now you do need to cross shop it with the model 3. there's absolutely no doubt about that and in the coming 12 months there's going to be a slew of competitors for this car that make this segment more difficult to compete in but that's great for the consumer keen to know your view though let me know down below this video what you think of the eqa will it be on your shopping list while you're there make sure to hit subscribe and the notification bell and as always thanks for watching chasing cars [Music]

Channel: Chasing Cars

Views: 36,680

Keywords: Chasing cars, chasing cars reviews, Tom Baker, Mercedes-Benz EQA, EQA, Mercedes, Mercedes-Benz, electric Mercedes, new EQA, 2021 EQA, 2022 EQA, Mercedes-Benz EQA review, EQA250 review, EQA 250, Mercedes EQA review

Id: dLmxIAVJMEU

Length: 21min 54sec (1314 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 08 2021