Mercedes EQS SUV | Doubling Down on Tech

The Mercedes EQS SUV. It's an electric vehicle in an SUV platform. And aside from the foam sticking out of the seats and some of the other weirdness of this cabin, I would say you wanna know what you're spending $2,500 a month on a lease. Well, the EQS SUV starts around 105 with the 450 plus package. If you go all the way up to the 580, which I'm in, it starts at about 125 and goes all the way up to 150,000, which is a lot of money. And at 125 to 130, you don't even get soft closed doors. So this is one of those cars that's not a value product. You're buying it or you're leasing it to spec it out the way that you want, which when you do that, you look at some of the interior color palettes and all the things that you can do to it. It's pretty special looking on the inside at least. The outside is hyper conservative. And I would say, you look at this and you told me it's 130 to 150, I'd laugh at you. Even like this white paint color is like a $1,000 option. It's really weird. It looks very, very sedate in most angles. I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing. It doesn't stand out, but I would think that I'd want, I'd want something to look at that felt like I was driving an expensive car. And it just does not look that way. The inside is a mixed bag. The build quality, aside from, like I said, the foam on the seats and just me cutting my finger on here, sticking out, it's pretty good overall. It's a very quiet space. If you option out the acoustic laminated glass, which has some UV rejecting, it's a very serene spot to be in. With the EV drivetrain, you don't hear anything unless you have the fake engine noise on. And it really brings out some of the highlights of the audio system, which I'll get to in a minute. So you're buying this generation of luxury cars because you like technology. BMW and Mercedes are jamming it down your throat. However, since these cars don't drive themselves yet, they're trying to wow you with screens. And Mercedes implements this hyper screen. And it's basically a bonded piece of glass across the entire dashboard with three screens embedded. The gauge cluster, the center infotainment, and of course the passenger screen. And honestly, I turn them off when I'm driving. I turn off the center and the passenger screen and it's a more calming experience. My thing is, is if you're somebody that lives in front of a phone, a laptop, or a tablet all day you're gonna get in here and you're gonna hate it. It feels oppressive to me. If you're not used to that and you're just out and about and you don't care, you might think this is really cool. The ambient lighting, all of that does have a big wow factor on the interior. Namely, if you spec out the leather and all the textures and woods the way you want it, it does feel pretty neat, although gimmicky. So the problem when you turn off all the screens is you put a mirror on the center part of the dashboard, which means when you're driving in reflective areas like tree lines, lights at night, overhead lighting, everything reflects off of it. It's really distracting. I find myself driving and I'm like, oh, what's that? And it's just a reflection on the side of the car that maybe might be something outside. So that's something to note. Almost 90% of this cabin is haptics or touch, which means you are constantly taking your eyes off the road to look down at what you're touching. There's no way to do muscle memory. Even the center console area, which is haptics, you literally have to take your eyes off the screen or off the road and look down here to tap at it. It's the biggest drawback of this generation of technology, I'm not gonna lie. Other than that, the comfort is really good. The seats are very comfortable. If you get the massaging option, that's, again, it's part of the luxury experience. If you go to the top trim level, you get a reclining rear seat in the back and infotainment in the back. And then this can be a three-row vehicle as well. Although I only have the two-row option and the cargo capacity in the back is enormous. It's really deep. It may not have the height overall, but the depth is great. You're gonna store most of the stuff in here. So it could be used as a family vehicle if that's what you're looking to do. At 125 grand, this comes standard with the Burmester 3D audio system. And based on the objective testing with the 3D setting off, it's average. It's really bass heavy. If you're somebody that likes bass, you're gonna like it. And you'll see there's almost like a 20 dB swing from like 100 decibels all the way down to like 80. And there's some just fluctuation there and you hear it. It's not the cleanest sound experience and you have to play with the EQ quite a bit to get that tuned out. So I'm lowering the bass, trying to raise the mid and the treble a little bit, but after the mid range, it's pretty clean at the rest of the area. But again, everything else in here is average Mercedes stuff aside from, you know, it does have a vault feel to it. It's very quiet, but I'm gonna send you to the shop now where Jack's gonna talk about some of the mechanical things about the EQS. In the shop with the Mercedes-Benz EQS 580 SUV. So what do you need to know? Well, this is on Mercedes-Benz modular EV architecture known as EVA. This underpins products like the EQE sedan and SUV, the EQS sedan, and of course this EQS SUV. That's on the identical wheelbase of the EQS sedan and largely shares most of the same suspension, hard points and basically hardware. However, everything's been recalibrated and retuned to fit this SUV body. So you have multi-link front and rear suspension. All the links are aluminum. You have all the aero panels you saw on the EQS sedan and you have a very similar design philosophy. It is function first. It's built around the coefficient of drag to make this as slippery as possible to be more efficient. And of course, to be quieter. The air ride, which is standard on the SUV has a range of adjustments so you can take this thing off road. It has off road mode, which tries to fix the power output front and rear to maintain a more off road SUV vibe to the all wheel drive programming. And the other thing to bring up as well is the software changes. Because they've been working on this platform for a while, they've added something that you'll see in sedans in the future. And that is the ability to turn off the front electric motor to keep this thing as efficient as possible. When it comes to the battery size, yes, it's still the same 400 volt architecture. It has the same battery size as the EQS sedan, the 107.8 kilowatt hours. Total electric motor output is a little over 500 horsepower and over 600 foot pounds of torque. And it's good for zero to 60 in the mid fours. This is a very heavy SUV at over 6,000 pounds, but that's what you've come to expect in electric vehicles. It has a heat pump as standard. Mark will post somewhere on the screen what the charge times are, but past that, I think it's time for us to go take this thing for a quick drive. EQS 580, Mark, this is the SUV. Feel that electric Mercedes power. Wow. Put this back in a comfort. I need you to tell me, okay, so I already talked about this on the interior segment. We know about some of the tech, we know about the price, we know about kind of why you would buy this, but what does it do good? You spent a lot of time in this. I've driven the EQE, I've driven the EQS sedan, and I've now driven this. What this does well is what all of those cars do well. Isolation chamber. You don't hear anything. You feel essentially nothing, and it is a Mercedes experience. If you like the S-Class, you'll probably like this, which means at night, it feels like you're in a disco. During the day, you have all these screens going on all the time, and it's a very technology-focused vehicle. Do I think it makes it a better luxury car than something like a BMW iX or i7? I don't know, but I do think this is better than any of its EV alternatives from startup companies. Yeah. And of course, it's already asking me questions, because I think that the fit and finish, the build quality, the quietness, the dynamic elements of this, they feel fairly well thought out. Okay. So I think since, obviously, if you don't like the technology aspect of this, this is a deal breaker instantly. Instantly. It's basically a circus show in here with all this ----, but I will say, if you can deal with the technology, let's talk about the way that this thing rides. It's body control, all the things about the drivability of it from, because you're buying this because it's an EV, right? Otherwise, you just buy a regular S-Class or the traditional internal combustion version. What does it do good in terms of being an EV and its suspension and isolation? The drivetrain calibration, starting with how all the inputs work, at least in this department when you're accelerating, it's very linear. There's no weirdness, no herky-jerky sensation there. The brake pedal still does what it did in the other EQ models. Depending on where you are with brake regen, it'll pull away from you, which is a bit concerning to say the least because you don't, you're unable necessarily to always judge the same amount of braking force necessary. So if you put this in a higher regen or strong recuperation, the pedal is being pulled away from you before you press the brake pedal. We've talked about this in the other EQ models. That's not the best sensation, because there's almost no feedback from this car in any department. So not being able to judge your braking distances consistently is annoying. The body control, there's not a lot of it. It still wallows around. It's a big, heavy car. But unlike the EQS sedan, where you expect it to handle a little better in this SUV because it's higher off the ground because of its off-road pretensions, you don't really care as much. It doesn't bother me anywhere as much, and it feels nimble. The rear steer, due to how aggressive it is, gets you in and out of parking spots easier. It gets you through corners fairly well. Is it natural feeling? Hell no. Nothing about this car is natural feeling whatsoever. But does it work well? Yeah. I mean, just look. Corners, and unlike the Kia or Genesis products, Mercedes has a better understanding of body control and driving dynamics. You can tell they've spent more time focusing on the finer details. So the pros of this, from your perspective, obviously, I spent far less time in these because it's a not for me. I really, I appreciate certain parts of it, and I hate other parts of it. So I'm not a good judge. I can't be objective about this. So from your perspective, what are the pros of this? Why would you spend an insane amount of money on this as a luxury vehicle? It's quiet. It's quieter than an internal combustion vehicle because you don't have any drivetrain noise. It rides really quite well. The body's nice and rigid, so none of the NVH makes its way into the cabin. And of course, the main reason you're buying this over something like an iX is you like the interior design. It's not for me. I don't think it's for many of our viewers, but if you like the screens, you like the crazy light show on the inside, this is sort of the most extreme interior from that regards. It's far more extreme than even the BMW iX. That's why you would pick this car. If you don't value that, you don't like the styling, you're not gonna buy this vehicle. Okay. And then what are the cons? Well, the cons are it's so distracting at night. And if you are using the systems, like this has AR, augmented reality navigation, where it pops up in your heads-up display, it pops up on the screen. You find yourself looking down all the time. You're not paying attention to your surroundings as much as you should be, particularly in a big, heavy, fast SUV. But to me, it's hilarious just sitting in here. I mean, not even for five minutes. Like I can't be on the phone when I'm driving, it's illegal, but yet you have all this ---- in here. It's just funny to me, the level of distraction from all this. I can't even pay attention to the road because I'm so overwhelmed with everything that's shining and you know, it's so weird. And with a lack of any physical control, if you need to change things, like you wanna activate your massage, you're going through three separate menus and you're looking down. You wanna change the HVAC controls, where they're coming through. You have to go through a climate menu. You have to tip tap. Yeah. That's the problem with this. And to me, you know, Mercedes is trying to focus on the safety first element of EVs. You know, they're moving to level two or level three autonomous driving. If you have to look down all the time, naturally you're gonna be distracted, probably at the wrong time. You know, you've had a long day at work. You're a busy person. You're probably a busy person if you can afford $139,000 disposable SUV like this. Yeah. It's counterintuitive from their design philosophy to what they're trying to do. But you know, I think that's the reality where we're at with some of this EV stuff. It feels like a beta product. You feel like they're trying to figure out what EVs are supposed to be. Are they gonna be more like phones? Are they gonna be more like traditional luxury products? But if you like what they're doing, you'll like this car. All right, Jack, let's get into the final thoughts. You can sum it all up. All right, let's do it. Final thoughts on the Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV. This is a 580 model, which means it's quite expensive. It's tested. It's around $140,000, which is a lot of money. So what are its pros and cons? Starting with its cons, the first has to be the UX. We beat it to death at this point with all the EQ products we've done already or any of the high-end Mercedes products. There are too many screens. A lot of the software is largely gimmicky. It doesn't add a whole lot to the actual experience, particularly the AR. The menu structure is a bit of a nightmare to get around, and there are no physical controls, which means you're constantly looking down and tip-tapping at everything, which, again, is distracting. It does sort of take away from this whole image of safety first, because sooner or later, you're probably gonna hit something because you're not looking at the road. That said, if you can look past that, because that's really a problem with all current or modern Mercedes products, how does it function as a EV luxury SUV? Well, to drive, it feels ultra-expensive. The fit and finish is excellent. The touch points feel and look expensive. It's a very isolated car. It's one of the quietest vehicles I've been in. It rides exceptionally well. The seats are good, and it's a car that is the farthest thing from fatiguing possible. When you compare this to the EQS sedan, I think the EQS SUV is a stronger product. It's more usable. You don't care about some of the dynamic deficiencies. Because it's an SUV, it's already big and tall, so the fact that it's wallow-y isn't a big deal. It still feels every bit as nimble due to the rear steer, and it's just a better product, at least to me, at least compared to the EQS sedan. How do I think it feels against some of the other luxury competitors? Well, it's a lot of money. I think the BMW iX, in some ways, does things better than this. However, they're both on 400-volt architectures, which means they're both sort of here-and-now products. These are both kind of beta luxury EV products that are soon to be made irrelevant by future technology. So this has gotta be a lease-only product. When you compare it to some of the internal combustion luxury SUVs, I think things like the new Cayenne, the new Range Rover, some of the BMW and Mercedes internal combustion products do a better job than this entirely. You aren't limited by the EV infrastructure, and honestly, if you're spending north of six figures, you don't care how much gas costs anyway. I personally would rather spend my money on something like a Cayenne or a Range Rover, but that's just me. With that said, thanks for watching. I hope to see you soon. Oh.