Worth the $100,000 price tag_ _ 2022 Mercedes Benz EQS Review

After years of wondering when the Germans were going to show up to the all-electric fight, we're finally getting our answer from Mercedes with this, the EQS, a full-size, all-electric sedan designed from the ground up. Now, it's been a decade since Tesla launched the Model S, so was this worth that wait, or is this one egg that hatched too soon? Let's go find out. What's up, folks? I'm Dave Underkoffler, editor-in-chief of Autolist.com, a sister company to CarGurus. Today we're testing this. It's a 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+. Now, that's the base version of the EQS, and it starts at a tick over $100,000. So as you might be able to tell, this EQS is the all-electric counterpart to the Mercedes S-Class. It's basically the exact same size, but a very different shape. Not only does Mercedes want to tell the world that this is no S-Class, but the sleek shape also has one of the lowest drag coefficients of any car on the road today. Only the Tesla Model S Plaid and Lucid Air can compete. The problem is the car ends up looking, well, like this. While it's certainly sleek, and sleek matters when you have an EV trying to make it as efficient as possible, it doesn't have the same proportions as the S-Class, and that matters. So design-wise, things actually start off pretty good in the front of the car. You've got these intricate headlights here, you've got the grille behind which are an array of sensors for the driver assist systems. The hood doesn't even open. There's no frunk like there is in a Tesla Model S. You can't even open this for any other reason if you needed to. So maybe you're thinking, where do I put my windshield wiper fluid? Well, that goes here. Moving along the side here, we've got 20-inch wheels. Now, these are a no-charge option. You can get larger, up to 22 inches if you like. These are an aero-focus, and you can see they've got lots of little Mercedes TriStar logos built into them. Along the side, you've got EQS badging and pop-out door handles, just like Tesla. Another thing like the Model S are frameless doors, and what that means is the B-pillar here is thicker, and that really eats into visibility. We'll talk about that more a little bit later. Moving down the side, this is where the proportions really sort of start to fall apart. They look kind of heavy and bulbous. Yes, I know it's more aerodynamic, but it comes at the expense of the more traditional sedan look that we're used to. Now, that focus on aerodynamics also means that this is actually a hatchback, not a sedan, much like the Tesla Model S. The benefit of that is it gives you a lot of functionality for the interior, almost as much as you would have in a crossover or SUV. The seats fold down flat. I had a full-size bike in here the other day. It's extra handy without going the SUV route. All right, now to the interior. Now, this is the base Model EQS, the 450 Plus, but it still starts at $103,000. That's a lot of money, so for that money, this interior is good but not great, so let me explain. Standard features include heated and ventilated front seats, a panoramic roof, this little biometric sensor where you can store your driver settings, a 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster here, a 12.8-inch OLED touchscreen here, augmented video for navigation, and touch-sensitive steering wheel controls. Now, all of those features are well and good, and they're certainly nicer than I have in my car today, but what that $103,000 doesn't get you is what Mercedes calls the Hyperscreen. To get that feature, you've got to bump up to the Mercedes EQS 580, which is $120,000. That Hyperscreen integrates three separate displays into a single screen that measures 56 total inches. The driver's display is 12.3 inches, then you have a 17.7-inch center touchscreen, and then another 12.3-inch passenger display in the dash. So that Hyperscreen sounds cool, and it is, but it should come on this base $103,000 model that we're testing. You shouldn't have to jump up $120,000 to get it. Elsewhere around the cabin, this model just didn't feel like it was as posh as it should be, or as a rival S-Class for the same money really is. In addition to some of these features not being up to par, considering the price tag, there are some design things that I really don't think make a lot of sense. The biggest one is that this panel is flat plastic, and it kicks off a lot of glare throughout the day while you're driving, and that can be really distracting. So what do you guys think? If you were buying the Mercedes EQS, would you go with this 450 Plus and this interior as you see it, or would you spend the extra money for the 580? Let us know in the comments below. Now, the back of the car, much like the front, has plenty of space. It's very comfortable to sit. I'm 6'1", so I've got this seat where I wouldn't have it if I were driving it. I've got plenty of room behind myself, especially for my legs, my knees. Headroom is good, unless I sit up really high and my head hits a little bit. But generally, this is great. A lot of space back here. But what I don't like, as I mentioned earlier, is that this is a $100,000 car, and it really doesn't feel like it in the back. You've got too much flat plastic. It doesn't feel warm or luxurious as a Mercedes S-Class does for the same money, or any other car really at that price point. This center portion here, you've got vents. Sure, that's nice, but again, too much flat plastic really doesn't do anything. There's no controls here as there should be for a car this expensive. You do have two USB ports down below, but again, pretty underwhelming for what this car should be. All right, so what's under the hood of the EQS? Well, as we told you earlier, we actually can't show you, so we're just going to have to tell you about it instead. This is the 450 Plus, so it has an electric motor with 329 horsepower and 419 pound-feet of torque. This is a rear-wheel-drive-only model. Meanwhile, the all-wheel-drive 580 has 516 horsepower and 631 pound-feet of torque. The 580 will do 0-to-60 in 4.1 seconds, while this 450 Plus will do 0-to-60 in 5.9 seconds. When it comes to range, this 450 Plus is rated by the EPA at 350 miles. The 580 goes down 10 miles to 340 miles of total range. Now, we've been driving this car for about a week, and so far we're seeing that 400 miles on a single charge is probably more realistic, and that's pretty nice. Both EQS models get a 107.8 kilowatt-hour battery. A 9.6 kilowatt onboard charger is standard. Mercedes says that you'll be able to charge the car from about 10 percent battery to 80 percent battery in 30 minutes using DC fast charging. Otherwise, charging from about 10 percent to 100 percent battery will take just over 11 hours using AC charging. All right, so what does all that add up to when you're actually driving the car? Well, first thoughts are you get in it, and it is an entirely serene, comfortable, quiet experience. That's what you would want out of any $100,000 luxury car, but particularly a Mercedes, so that's good. That's the good part. So what don't we like about driving this car? Well, for one, the biggest thing is it needs more horsepower. 329 horsepower is just not enough for a full-size, all-electric sedan. A rival Tesla that costs about the same money has double the horsepower, so this is a big, heavy car. When you floor it, when you get on on-ramps or passing situations, it doesn't have that push-you-back-into-the-seat kind of power that it absolutely should, and that's a pretty big disappointment. Another thing that we don't like about driving this car is that the visibility out of it is particularly awful. If you remember earlier, we showed you that B-pillar, that really wide B-pillar between the two doors, so now that's my shoulder. If I look over that shoulder to change lanes or see if there's a car there for any reason, it blocks a lot of the view that I actually need. Also bad is the view out the back. If I look in the rear-view mirror, it's almost as if I'm holding one of those cardboard tubes from a roll of paper towels up to my eye. You really can't see nearly as much as you should be able to. One more thing we don't like is the brakes, so there are three different settings for the energy regeneration that you can have this car in. There's Strong, which we have it in now, and that sort of allows almost one-foot driving. You can keep your foot on the gas. The minute you come off the gas, the regenerative braking is strong enough it'll slow down the car, so that's the strongest. Then there's a Normal setting, and then there's a Fully Off setting. The problem is when you have it in the strongest setting, which we do now, the brake feel, if you do actually need to reach for the brake pedal, doesn't feel good at all. It's very odd. It's off-putting. It's hard to feel what the car is actually doing for a quick minute, and that can be disconcerting when you're actually trying to stop the car. Otherwise, the rest of the drive experience is exactly what you'd expect from a full-size Mercedes and a full-size electric car. It's quiet, it's serene, it's very comfortable, and the suspension in this car is tuned brilliantly. It's a heavy car. It's not easy to do, so kudos to Mercedes for that. When it comes to safety, the EQS comes standard with a variety of safety equipment that you'd expect on a $100,000 Mercedes. This includes adaptive cruise control with steering assist, blind spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alerts, lane keep assist, parking assist with surround view camera, parking damage detection system, front collision warnings with pedestrian detection, safe exit warnings, and stop-and-go function for its adaptive cruise control. Higher trim levels add features such as heads-up display and an adaptive high-beam headlight. Another cool trick up the sleeve of this EQS is that it has rear-wheel steering. Now, that's a feature you're hearing about in more and more cars today, but this has up to 10 degrees of steering, and what that does is it makes this car unbelievably versatile and able to just turn around in very tight situations, tight parking spaces on the street, what have you. It's pretty cool. All right, so what are the competitors to this EQS? Well, there's not a lot of them, and they're sort of a disparate group, too. On the sporty side, you have Porsche's Taycan, maybe Audi's e-tron. On the more luxurious side, BMW is going to be rolling out an all-electric 7 Series. You also have the Lucid Air and, of course, Tesla's Model S. So how does this EQS stack up against its competitors? Well, it has less range and is less fun to drive as Porsche's Taycan or Audi's e-tron. Lucid's Air certainly is going to cost more money, but it also has quite a bit more range. Tesla's Model S obviously is going to have more range and more horsepower, but its interior doesn't quite match up to this interior, and that's despite the shortcomings that we've already talked about with this interior. All right, so there you have it, the 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+. The pros? Well, it's got great range. We saw almost 400 miles on a single charge. It's got great practicality, those rear seats fold down and the hatchback in the rear, and it's got that serene, smooth ride that you'd expect from a Mercedes-Benz. Cons? Well, look at it. It's got sort of an awkward profile to it, and that's all because of the aerodynamics. And 329 horsepower just isn't enough for this EV. But most of all, the biggest disappointment on this car was the interior. It just didn't live up to the standards that we would hope to see on a $100,000 fully electric luxury car. All right, that's our review. Be sure to like and subscribe so you'll get alerts every time we've got new car reviews on this page, and for car reviews, buyer's guides, and listings of this EQS or anything else you're shopping for, be sure to check out CarGurus.com. We'll see you out there.