Mercedes-Benz appears to have overestimated at least one of its new all-electric EQS’s abilities.
The German luxury marque’s new electric flagship has received a 350-mile range rating from the Environmental Protection Agency (h/t Inside EVs). That’s both good news and bad: While the rating makes the car one of the longer-range EVs on the market, it misses the company’s own estimates by about 50 miles.
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With the lower-than-expected pricing for the EQS announced last month, it was only a matter of time before the car’s EPA range estimate was revealed. The EPA gave the single-motor model of the sedan, the EQS 450+, a range rating of 350 miles after conducting its own tests. The powerful dual-motor version, the EQS 580 4MATIC, meanwhile, isn’t much further behind, with a range rating of 340 miles.
Mercedes-Benz
Brand proclamations aside, both ranges are unequivocally very good. This isn’t like the nightmare Porsche faced when the EPA released results for the Taycan (a mere 200-mile range) at the end of 2019. In fact, when the EQS goes on sale later this fall, it will be the fourth highest-range EV on the market, trailing only the Tesla Model S Long Range (which has a range of 405 miles), the Tesla Model X Long Range (360 miles) and Tesla Model 3 Long Range AWD (353). It will drop a spot when the Lucid Air goes on sale, since that EV has already received a record-breaking range of 520 miles from the EPA.
We’re guessing Mercedes won’t take much pride in finishing in the top five, though. Although its EPA rating was never going to match the 485 miles it got in WLTP testing—the European test is much more generous than its American counterpart—a figure in “excess of 400 miles” was being thrown around during preview drives in the spring and summer. The EPA rating comes in 50 miles short of that, meaning it missed the low end of that estimate by 12.5 percent. (Representatives for Mercedes-Benz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Still, there’s still hope for the EQS. Earlier this year, automotive information service Edmunds found that the Taycan beat its EPA range by 120 miles in testing that tried to replicate real-world driving conditions. Maybe 485 miles isn’t out of the question after all.
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