Mercedes is credited with inventing the car, but such is the pace of change in personal mobility and electrification that legacy doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Investors love shiny new tech and agile start-ups rather than sepia-tinted images and entrenched ideas. So the EQS is more than another new Mercedes, it’s a once-in-a-generation manifesto for the future. This is the world’s oldest carmaker engaging hyperdrive.
A pure-electric luxury car, the EQS rewrites large chunks of what we know about cars and how they’re designed, manufactured and used. The headline facts here are a claimed range of up to 477 miles on a single charge, a new modular battery concept with a useable capacity of 90 or 107.8 kWh, and power outputs of 329 or 516bhp. These are impressive numbers. Mercedes has eight battery production facilities around the world and scientists, chemists and software programmers are now as important to the company’s progress as old-school designers and engineers. The