Mercedes-Benz EQC 2021 long-term review
Our new luxury EV will get us there in style – so long as we don’t forget to charge it
*Why we’re running it: *The EQC won our EV SUV mega-test 12 months ago, but is it an Audi, Jaguar and Tesla beater in everyday life?
-Month 3 - Month 2 - Month 1 - Specs-
-Life with a Mercedes-Benz EQC: Month 3-
*A festive surprise - 20 January 2020*
Tesla’s ‘Easter Eggs’ are surprises that pop up if you press a certain combination of buttons, perhaps making your car look like a Mario Kart on the sat-nav or producing Monty Python’s Foot of Cupid on screen. Well, Mercedes has had a go too, offering a drive to Santa’s home town in the run-up to Christmas. I didn’t take it up, but it made me smile.
*Mileage: 2356*
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*Is it a Bentley? Is it a Rolls-Royce? No, it’s a Mercedes electric SUV - 23 December 2020*
Aaaand breathe. Many words have been written about the zen-like state that washes over you when you drive an EV, but I think the Mercedes-Benz EQC experience takes that to a whole other level – so much so that I actually get excited about driving it and can, no word of a lie, feel myself relaxing as I put hand to door handle and prepare to slide in.
How so? I have to acknowledge that 2020 must be playing a part, my commute having become the six steps from the side of my house where I sleep to the side of my house where I work. No question, leaving the front door has become significantly more novel and exciting than it once was or should be – but that’s not all.
While the interior of the EQC draws heavily on architecture found in other Mercedes models, it feels perfectly resolved, from the swathes of uniformly high-quality leather to the gloss finishes and the eye-catching touchscreen across the dashboard that takes in everything from the performance dials to the infotainment system.
It also helps that the seats are comfortable, there are all manner of adjustments for getting cosy and you sit high, magnifying the feeling of wellbeing as you imperiously glide along. That instant torque you get in an EV, so often referenced for its savage performance, is more noteworthy in my book for giving you total control of the accelerator. There’s no estimation required as to how much pedal travel is needed, as progress is deliberate and linear.
Design flourishes, such as the copper-colour air vents that mimic the look of an electric circuit, add a bespoke touch, too. Drive for an hour and it will even suggest a change in the colour of the mood lighting, plus play 10 minutes of uplifting music to keep you alert. I know how crass that sounds, and it’s easy to be cynical, but I find this actually works, too, even if only by shaking my conscience.
This is no Bentley or Rolls-Royce, but the EQC’s interior is so special that those aren’t ridiculous brands to draw a parallel with. Certainly all that I’ve described elevates it above and beyond a mainstream Mercedes experience and puts it, in some ways, into a realm I previously associated with only very top-end cars, as it eases 10% of life’s strains away and makes you feel special.
*Love it:*
*Pleasant reminder *The EQC has made driving joyful again for me, albeit with calming emphasis.
*Loathe it:*
*Energy draining *I’m a huge fan of heated seats – until I see how much using those in the EQC saps its range.
*Mileage: 2789*
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-Life with a Mercedes-Benz EQC: Month 2-
*Range estimates still not that accurate - 25 November 2020*
With the EQC reckoning it had 225 miles’ worth of charge, the Holder family set off on an 85-mile-eachway trip to Seaford, near Brighton, for a last pre-lockdown walk on the beach on the windiest, wettest of days. Alarmingly, we arrived with 111 miles of predicted range remaining – but disarmingly got home with 30 left. How so? Incredibly, I can only put it down to the wind direction.
*Mileage: 1436*
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*Heart-stopping incident calls safety systems into question - 11 November 2020*
Stomp. Honk. Thump. In less than 10 metres, my early morning drive had escalated from mundane school run to fullblown disaster.
The young lad, who moments earlier had emerged from a driveway at pace on his bike, popping out onto the road from behind a parked car, was now flat out, just ahead of the EQC’s front-right wheel.
It had been quite an impact, him having turned out looking only for traffic behind him, me filling all the road space as I negotiated my way down a residential street with parked cars on either side. Thankfully, I’d just passed a refuse truck so had slowed as workers wandered to and fro, not necessarily tuned in to listen for an electric car, and therefore had enough time to both stop before the boy hit me and sound the horn, so that he could both brake and pull the sort of face that you think is the sole preserve of hammy actors.
As I jumped out of the car, leaving a one-time critic of what I’d hitherto thought were absurdly slow 20mph zones behind for ever more, the boy leapt up, insisting he was fine. His slow walk to the pavement, where he took a seat, suggested otherwise. The binmen and I dusted him down, checked him over, suggested the helmet attached to his handlebars might be better affixed to his head and… he got back on the bike and cycled off as fast as he could, I suspect fearing a telling off. In truth, I’ve never been so glad for a scratch on my car.
Even so, although I was able – just – to stop before impact, there’s no escaping the harsh truth that everything I was doing or did might not have been enough to save him from injury a few seconds later.
That, in turn, got me thinking about the EQC’s safety systems. Just two weeks earlier, they had instigated an emergency stop as a mother and three young children walked on the pavement near the car. Yes, the kids were weaving about, but at no point had I thought they would spill onto the road. It was an experience that had left me shaken and grateful that there was nobody behind me. Now after the boy-on-bike incident, I was wondering why those same systems had this time done nothing to try to help me.
I know the driver must always take responsibility, but this mish-mash of intervention and non-intervention, each perfectly at the wrong time, has left a deep impression. While I know there’s more time and effort to be expended, it certainly raises further questions about the capabilities of self-driving tech and the risk of it causing incidents by over-reacting or not reacting at all, as the various radar systems evidently don’t have a good enough line of sight or make the right decisions.
I was lucky enough to get the best-case outcomes from the worst-case failures: no rear-end shunt from that emergency stop, no motoring into and over the boy and his bike. If, conversely, it ever steps in at the right time, I’ll forever be grateful.
But I have never relied on safety tech, and nor can I imagine doing so in my lifetime. Proof, to my mind at least, that the step from laboratory to real life is fraught with more complications than many imagine.
*Love it:*
*Interior *The scene-stealingly futuristic cabin is as plush as you could want.
*Loathe it:*
*Form over function *There are too many controls that are hard to access.
*Mileage: 1261*
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*How far between pedals? - 28 October 2020*
The EQC is far from the only culprit, but the scourge of the offset pedal needs highlighting. In this two-pedal set-up, my right foot is forced too far to the side to line up with the accelerator, prompting a kneegrinding pivot to come across to the brake. It doesn’t slow the movement down so is perfectly safe, but it does grind on my middle-aged joints.
*Mileage: 1082*
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-Life with a Mercedes-Benz EQC: Month 1-
*Talk to me - 7 October 2020*
I had high hopes for Mercedes’ voice recognition. But it’s proving a bit hit and miss so far; sometimes it picks up my commands – even complex postcodes – but at other times it gets confused. It’s early days, and I’m finding a more relaxed chatting voice is more effective than a carefully enunciated one. Let’s hope we learn to get along better in time.
*Mileage: 698*
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*Welcoming the EQC to the fleet - 23 September 2020*
Sometimes it takes a little jeopardy to push boundaries. Just the night before, I’d done a radio phone-in about electric cars, suggesting that they’re generally hugely capable and that for many more people than are buying them, they could be the perfect means of transport. And then I went to bed without checking my schedule for the next day.
So it was with no little amount of horror that I then awoke to discover that – after six months of commuting 12 paces from my bed to my chair – I was due in Northampton, 89 miles away, and that I hadn’t charged the rather lovely Mercedes-Benz EQC overnight. Did I grab the keys to my wife’s trusty 10-year-old Honda Civic, or did I live the change I wanted to see?
I’ll admit that my hand flicked from one set of keys to the other more than once but, after a calming few minutes online researching charger locations, I knew I had to live by my own words. My almost-calamitous organisation meant I had to leave 30 minutes earlier than otherwise but, if all went well, I’d be on time and have enough electrons whizzing around beneath my feet to get home again.
And – surprise, surprise – I drove, I stopped and a 35-minute stop at an Ionity/Polar charging station just off the M1 delivered around 70 miles of charge. Naysayers take note: there were 11 fairly-high-speed chargers at this well-known location, and I was the only one using them; come a short distance off the motorway these days and it feels like you’re never far from a chance for a rapid top-up. And while I waited, I was able to go online and clear my emails, so even having to leave early had upsides, too.
So now experience means my personal comfort zone on how far I’m prepared to go when I’m out and about is greatly expanded – and I can look forward to really enjoying the merits of the EQC, Mercedes’ first effort at an all-in electric vehicle and a pioneer of the firm’s EQ sub-brand.
Sure, it might look familiar to anyone who has ever clapped their eyes on a GLC, bar the coupé-like rear end and some nifty design flourishes, from the XL-sized badge, wheels and light arrangements through to the copper-coloured finishes on the air vents (to look like the internals of circuit boards, naturally), but Mercedes is far from the only one to have gone for a relatively conservative start to this journey.
The EQC is a car that has been eagerly anticipated on our fleet for some time, not just because it carries a large price tag and the promise of premium refinements and some cutting-edge tech, but also because it was declared the winner of an all-electric showdown with the Audi E-tron, Jaguar I-Pace and Tesla Model X by our road test team last year. It edged the verdict on account of being much the easiest of the cars to live with, as well as delivering decent, if not class-leading, quantities of those sometimes most diverse of characteristics: driver involvement and comfort and practicality.
No question, this is a car that makes you go ‘wow’. Since it arrived 10 days ago, there has been a line of passing kids peering through the windows (one of the more enjoyable distractions of working from home is earwigging on what future generations think about the cars on my driveway), and that in itself is clear proof of the journey that Mercedes, not so long ago the favoured choice for anyone who considered string gloves the height of fashion, has undergone in recent years. It’s also a trajectory that cars like the EQC must accelerate if this so-called ‘legacy’ car maker is to remain relevant into the future.
First impressions? To drive, it’s a cut above the average electric car – which means relaxing or fast on demand, with a frisson of dynamic excitement on offer, albeit one that can never hide its 2495kg kerb weight and sits short of what the I-Pace achieves. It’s a joy to be in, from its comfortable, beautifully upholstered seats to its abundance of practical cubbies. The massive, dasbhboard-length infotainment-and-instruments screen and the head-up display give a futuristic air, although I suspect it’s going to take time for the array of screen, dash and steering wheel buttons to all fall to hand intuitively. The voice-controlled ‘Hey Mercedes’ system helps with that but isn’t infallible as far as my southern English mumbling is concerned.
Range will be interesting, too. As it dials into my driving style, an indicated 210 miles is being shown, rather than the official 232. Consider also that it seems to be rating its capabilities around 5% too highly and you end up with a car that records a sub-200-mile figure; that’s potentially 25% short of what I’d consider ideal and less than the Kia e-Niro offers for half the price. It will be interesting to find out if I can learn to use the various driving modes more efficiently and dial my driving style into the car better, too.
Most exciting of all is the fact that the EQC is already pushing the boundaries of what I thought I knew about EVs or was willing to do. Question is, is it going to lead me down a path of fulfilment or trouble?
*Second Opinion*
I’m most interested to find out how Jim gets on with the EQC’s various driving modes and semi-autonomous driving aids. It’s a complicated thing to get on terms with, as I discovered on the international press launch in Oslo and on a group test. It just shaded its electric rivals in the latter, mostly by being the most multitalented car on the day. But the way the regenerative braking system manages itself around town if you leave it in Auto mode certainly raises some drivability quirks.
*Matt Saunders*
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-Mercedes-Benz EQC 400 4Matic AMG Line Premium Plus specification-
*Specs: Price New* £74,610 *Price as tested* £77,200 *Options*
Driving Assistance Pack £1695, Designo Hyacinth Red metallic paint £895
*Test Data: Engine* 2x AC synchronous electric motors *Power* 402bhp *Torque* 561lb ft *Kerb weight* 2495kg *Top speed* 112mph *0-62mph* 5.1sec *Battery* 80kWh *Range* 232 miles *CO2* 0g/km *Faults* None *Expenses* None
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