NEW Mercedes EQS Review: REST IN PEACE S-Class? 4K

[Music] the s-class the flagship in the mercedes range if you want comfort presence and refinement that is the car you go to but maybe not for much longer because mercedes like everyone else is having to go electric and therefore they've had to develop a luxury product powered not by ice but by something called batteries this is the mercedes eqs the electric alternative to the s-class it promises high levels of comfort refinement and advanced technology it should cost somewhere north of 80 000 pounds has a near 500-mile driving range and recharges in minutes representing a huge leap towards the future it doesn't look very futuristic though does it it's a bit of a weird shape the eqs it's got this kind of bubble look to it i'm not sure i'm a fan of it if you look at the s-class it's sleek it's got presents if three of these rock up you think i don't know some italian gangsters or mafia or the head of a small republic has just rocked up whereas if three of these turn up you think well you wouldn't even look twice would you but there is a reason for this design apparently the eqs is the most aerodynamically efficient car that's ever been production built it has a drag coefficient of 0.20 so it's even more slippery than the s-class it's about 100 millimeters shorter and 200 millimeters narrower than the s-class so takes up less space on the road but the wheelbase is nearly identical it's available in an unusual two-tone paint finish or a single color and comes with a choice of 20 21 or 22 inch low drag wheels it does have a very interesting front this front end is completely smooth with dozens of mercedes stars all across it plus it's got this full width light bar at the front as it does at the back and these headlights are completely digital apparently they use 1.3 million micro mirrors so they combine to have a total resolution of 2.6 million pixels now i know pixels sounds like marketing nonsense but these can actually project images onto the road icons to warn you of trouble ahead for example roadworks or pedestrians you can't use it in the uk because it's not allowed but in germany that system is very effective unfortunately there is no front trunk on the eqs this doesn't open at all for reasons i'll explain later so how do you perform any maintenance on the eqs well the only thing you can do is add screen washer and that is done at the side you basically press this here that folds out and you pour in your screen wash very futuristic as for the doors well it's got the same pop-out door handles as the s-class but it goes a step further it will actually open automatically for you to let you in then when you get inside to close it you press the brake pedal and the door will close automatically what a flex once i'm in i can if i want to open all of these doors automatically using the screen look at that it's just absolutely ridiculous oh and by the way it goes another step further if i want to i can even open the boot so let's do that as well since we're here before i show you the interior of the eqs let me show you what it has to compete with the cabin of the s-class is majestic with a 12.8 inch oled infotainment display fingerprint and face sensing technology for logging in some of the best ambient lights in the game and even a 3d driver display that makes it look as if the graphics are floating in front of your face but even this isn't as advanced as the interior of the eqs [Music] look at this [Music] you hear that ladies and gentlemen this is an absolute spaceship the star of the show in the eqs is this enormous display which mercedes calls the hyper screen it's a 55 inch display that stretches from a pillar to a pillar although it's not really a 55 inch screen it's actually three separate displays the first one is your driver information screen which is directly in front of you and can be controlled using the capacitive buttons on your steering wheel the second is a passenger display which lets your passenger control various aspects of the car as well as media playback so they can watch daytime tv films from a usb for example but that only works if they're sat in the seat the third display is this brilliant central screen this is oled by the way and it's super crisp super sharp and gives you access to all of the cars main functions what you'll notice at first is that all of your heating ventilation and climate controls are down the bottom they're permanently there which means that you always know where to go when you're adjusting the temperature if you adjust the temperature up then you get ambient lighting around the sides and up here on the dashboard turning red if you adjust it down they turn blue just like you get on the s-class it's not the simplest system in the world it's not as good as having physical buttons but it's still pretty cool the rest of it works in a similar way to the s-class but with a couple of key differences there's a one-layer philosophy which means that the ui presents information that it thinks you should be seeing so i've been using these comfort doors quite a lot today and it puts up an icon because it thinks that i might need to access that because that's something that i do quite regularly so if i press that then i get an instant shortcut to opening and closing all the doors apart from that there's also an eq menu which gives you access to all your local charging stations parking spaces restaurants and all your charging options for example you can tell the car to only charge up at night when your particular energy costs are lower or to preheat and pre-cool the car before you get inside as for the rest of the cabin i think it's pretty cool actually you've got this floating center console design with a sliding door here for a couple of cup holders two usb ports and a wireless charging mat again a central pinnacle down here with two more usb ports and another charging mac plus down here another little storage area with two more usb ports to go with the two usb ports that are in the back so all in all very practical very cool looking and filled with tech i will show you the back in just a second but first i want to tell you what this card drives like but before i do that i need to refresh my memory with the s-class [Music] [Music] okay the s-class the absolute daddy of the luxury segment it's a wonderful thing it really is it's quiet it's refined it's smooth and it feels very special it's the s500 to be specific and i love the suspension in this thing it scans the road ahead for any imperfections and slackens off the air suspension to make the ride as supple as possible these seats are outrageously good as well super comfortable and you've got these huge pillows behind you you almost want to fall asleep in this car i won't but that's the kind of vibe in the s-class it's just nice also the seats have these active bolsters on either side so when you go around a left hand bend the bolsters on the right will actually push you back into place or if you go around the right hand bend the bolsters on the left push you across to counteract that movement in your body it's almost like you've got a butler behind you cuddling you and just pushing you back into the place where you need to be the steering is super light got to give a shout out to these massaging seats as well they use speakers in the seats to vibrate and rumble your bottom it sounds a bit rude but it actually feels really nice this you gotta say is right up there when it comes to luxury however and i said this when i reviewed the new s-class back in december 2020 the one thing holding it back is the internal combustion engine it kind of compromises the whole thing you feel vibration through the steering wheel through the pedals through the floor through your body and it's not nice i mean it's okay it's acceptable if that's all you've ever known but now we know that electric cars are a lot smoother you can't help but think this thing will be made better with an electric motor in fact that's what i said i said even a budget electric car is slightly more refined than a high-end expensive mercedes s-class and that what the s-class needed was batteries and electric motors was i right today's the day we find out [Music] yep i was right no beating around the bush the difference is night and day the eqs has all of the comfort and the luxury that you might expect from the s-class but it takes it a step further by massively improving the level of refinement it's so smooth it's unbelievably smooth in here you know it doesn't rely on an internal combustion engine it doesn't rely on pistons slamming into cylinders causing explosions in order to move and that means there are no vibrations there's no unwanted noise it's a cocoon of luxury honestly if i'd never driven an eqs i would have thought the s-class was pretty much as good as it gets but by hopping into an eqs you immediately feel the difference it's it's night and day the s-class almost feels like steampunk technology it almost feels a bit like a tank whereas this just feels like a spaceship and it's so quiet in here man it's unbelievable they use a lot of old-school noise reduction techniques so for example loads of sound deadening material inside this new platform double glazed windows and i've already spoken about that low drag coefficient but there's also a lot of new school techniques that they've applied in order to keep things as quiet as possible for example the burmester audio system inside this car works a bit like a giant pair of noise cancelling headphones it basically detects the unwanted low-frequency sounds around you the rumbling that you get in a normal internal combustion engine car and then plays opposite frequencies in order to cancel those out so the end result it's almost like the world has been put on mute it's mad if you're not a fan of complete silence then you're in luck because mercedes have put in a couple of sound profiles that allow the eqs to make a little bit of noise while you drive and to access that all you need to do is dive into the menu system and click on the sound experience adjustment when you do that you can choose between two sound modes in this model so there's silver waves if i press that and accelerate you hear that and if i break it makes a breaking noise as well acceleration and breaking very cool and then there's vivid flux oh that's a tinier more high-pitched noise so you can actually have a little bit of encouragement from a fake engine sound really but it does sound a lot more like a spaceship than an internal combustion engine very cool plus if you don't like any of that you can switch it off completely one thing that i don't think is quite as good as the s-class are the seats which in this case don't have those incredible side bolsters that keep you in place as you go around corners and overall i don't think they're quite as comfortable as the seats in the s-class but i'm nitpicking now because they're pretty good i mean look at these pillows gotta love that you might have noticed the eqs has paddles behind the steering wheel those aren't for changing gears those are actually for changing the level of energy recuperation from the brakes so you can cycle between no recuperation which means that the car will just coast along without scrubbing off any speed or normal recuperation or increased recuperation which slows it down quite aggressively to the point where you barely need the brake pedal as for the suspension well it's at least as good as the s-class probably better i've driven these two cars back-to-back now and the impression i get is that this rides a little better than the s-class it's wonderful it can actually scan the road ahead and learn where potholes are so that the next time you visit that location it'll slacken off the air suspension so the car rides more smoothly over the roads it's i mean it works like an absolute treat this is ah it's so good at the moment in the uk we're only getting one version of the eqs the 450 plus which has a single 329 horsepower motor driving the rear wheels this gives 568 newton meters of torque which is enough for nought to 62 in 6.2 seconds that's not very powerful on paper but in practice it feels every bit as quick as the s500 in some countries outside of the uk mercedes will also offer the eqs 580 which has 516 horsepower and is good for north to 62 in 4.3 seconds fingers crossed we also get that version at a later date let's talk range now the eqs 450 plus has a massive battery pack it's 108 kilowatt hours and that provides a total driving range of up to 484 miles wltp that's basically london to scotland the only downside is that it's a big old battery pack so the car weighs a very hefty two and a half tons it's effectively it's as heavy as an suv but don't get it twisted if you like to drive enthusiastically the car can equip itself quite well let me use this pad down here on the center console uh knock it into sport mode acceleration is good noise is good chuck it into a corner look at that it's actually dealing with the bends really really well because all the batteries are located really low down in the floor it has a really low center of gravity and that means that when you get into a bend there's not as much body roll as you might expect the body control is really good and the grip is very strong and then you got huge amounts of torque as you exit a corner that noise listen you can actually have fun in an eqs plus mercedes are going to make an amg version as well there will be an amg eqs and that that should be an absolute riot okay there's one more thing i want to show you on this car which is related to the steering system it comes with rear wheel steering in other words the rear wheels will turn either four and a half degrees or 10 degrees in the opposite direction to the fronts to make your turning circle even smaller so let's try that out now you should be seeing pictures of my rear wheels doing something that looks very very awkward but the benefit of that is that you can turn around in exceptionally small spaces how cool is that one more thing to show you as well i'll actually engage this 360 degree camera so you can actually position the camera where you want to help you park and it feels a bit like you're driving in a video game you can look all around the car as you drive which is that's just so cool isn't it it's like playing gta or something so it's good for drivers but how about rear passengers well it's not too bad leg and headroom feel pretty similar to the s-class and the rear seats are plenty comfortable although there's no sign of the leg rest you get in the s-class but you do get a fold-down center console that doubles as an armrest and a storage area with a fairly useful wireless charging pad it's good but not all good so with that in mind here are a few highlights and low lights in the eqs starting with the good stuff charging this car will charge at a rate of 200 kilowatts not the highest that we've seen but mercedes reckon it can sustain peak charging for longer which means you can add 300 kilometers of range into the eqs in only 15 minutes this car has a really clever sat nav that can tell you where your local charging stations are but not only that it will actually show you how powerful the charges are whether they're free and also how much they cost you to charge very clever the eqs has a built-in hepa filter that's one of the reasons this bonnet doesn't open you can actually clean the interior of viruses and bacteria before you get into the car plus it will even recommend that you close the windows and the sunroof whenever you're driving through an area with a bad environment like slow these doors are very clever they have sensors all around so when they open automatically they won't slam into an object like james james my stunt man stand there please and i'll open the door and in theory he won't get hit look at that there's even another clever function james uh jump in please what happens when you close the door and you have a limb dangling between the door and the frame of the car let's find out if he loses a leg you ready will it stop will it stop will it stop boom yes right off you go the eqs can drive itself and park itself it can put itself into a parking space and remove itself from that parking space without the driver being inside unfortunately that feature isn't available in the uk now onto some of my not so favorite features the rear seat in position in the eqs isn't amazing you have batteries in the floor which means that your legs are pushed higher than they would be in the s-class which means that you end up feeling like you've got your legs up around your chest not ideal that fancy rear wheel steering system that i spoke about earlier well it's an optional extra i'm afraid as standard it will let you turn 4.5 degrees in the opposite direction but to turn the full 10 degrees you need to spend extra money for an over-the-air software update so this will cost you the build quality is not as good as it could be i know this is a prototype so i'm willing to forgive it but i found some little issues for example look at this you can see these controls rattling around oh six-figure car not so sure that's so good in this mercedes first attempts at building an electric car were pretty hit and miss the eqa and the eqc weren't exactly slam dunks this thing though i think is an absolute home run and it really shows what mercedes can do when they put their minds to it honestly this is the benchmark now s-class we love you but rest in peace [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: AutoTrader

Views: 507,092

Keywords: mercedes eqs, mercedes eqs review, mercedes eqs vs, eqs vs, mercedes eqs range, mercedes eqs acceleration, mercedes eqs interior, eqs rear seats, eqs seats, eqs doors, eqs self drive, eqs boot, eqs screen, hyperscreen, s-class review, new s-class, electric s-class, eqs vs s-class, Carwow eqs, eqs charging, Rory reid, autotrader, best electric car, eqs vs tesla

Id: iXrQsyC-kQg

Length: 20min 2sec (1202 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/cherlin]

Isn't the eqs an s class? Like isn't that what the S in eqS is for?