A crowd-pleasing, American-made SUV follows Mercedes’ first two electric sedans.
/ The 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV is an all-electric three-row and will be built in Alabama.Mercedes-Benz
The next all-electric Mercedes-Benz was revealed on Tuesday morning. It’s called the EQS SUV, and the name says it all—after releasing two sedans, the company’s latest electric vehicle will be a large SUV with up to seven seats.
The EQS SUV will come to the US in two powertrain configurations. The cheaper of the two will be the single-motor, rear-wheel-drive EQS 450+, which generates 355 hp (256 kW) and 419 lb-ft (568 Nm). The more powerful EQS SUV is the twin-motor, all-wheel-drive EQS 580 4MATIC—this one packs a combined 536 hp (400 kW) and 633 lb-ft (858 Nm) from its permanently excited synchronous motors.
The single-motor and twin-motor EQS SUVs use a battery pack of the same size, in this case, one with a useable 107.8 kWh. That should be sufficient for a WLTP range of more than 373 miles (600 km)—an EPA range estimate should follow as the EQS SUV gets closer to arriving in the US toward the end of 2022. Mercedes seems pretty sure of its battery, too; its warranty covers 10 years and 155,000 miles (250,000 km) rather than the industry-standard eight years or 100,000 miles (160,000 km).
The EQS SUV will DC fast-charge at up to 200 kW, and Mercedes says it should take 31 minutes to go from 10-80 percent state of charge if supplied with that much power.
When the EQS sedan was revealed last year, the most eye-catching feature wasn’t its super-slippery drag coefficient; it was the massive 56-inch “Hyperscreen” for the car’s infotainment system. Unsurprisingly, this feature returns for the SUV version. The MBUX infotainment system is quite good at minimizing distractions thanks to extremely effective natural language processing, but with eight CPU cores and 24GB of RAM, it has the power to dazzle when it needs to.
The EQS SUV dash features the same 56-inch display as the sedan. Mercedes-Benz
Until now, the Tesla Model X has been the only game in town if you needed an EV that could seat six or seven. That changes when the EQS SUV goes on sale. Mercedes-Benz
Disc-like wheels show that Mercedes has worked hard to minimize air resistance. Mercedes-Benz
Unlike the EQS and smaller EQE sedans, the EQS SUV won’t be built in Europe. Instead, the SUV goes into production at Mercedes’ Tuscaloosa factory in Alabama, with batteries made locally at a new site in Bibb County, Alabama. Mercedes says that its flexible production system means that the all-electric EQS SUV will run on the same assembly line as its models with internal combustion engines.
Pricing should be revealed closer to the EQS SUV arriving at dealerships.
Keyword: Mercedes-Benz’s next EV is this 7-seater EQS SUV