• Pros

• Fun to drive. A lot of electric cars are perfectly competent transportation machines. Most of them even have parlor-trick acceleration. But not many have characteristics that make them truly fun to drive. The AMG EQE does. The car feels balanced and sporty. And when you add in the instant acceleration, you won’t miss internal combustion at all.
• Acceleration. By the numbers, the AMG EQE uses its 90.7kW battery and dual electric motors to create 617 hp, unless you want more. If so, there’s a boost feature that can temporarily add another 50 hp. We’re not sure what for. On paper, that’s crazy. But on the road, it all feels usably quick. There’s a confidence in the handling and suspension that makes the power feel controllable, rather than overwhelming or dangerous. Also, passing a dual FedEx truck on the highway has never been easier.
• Handling. The AMG EQE feels absolutely planted. It’s reassuringly battened down. Neither low nor higher speed turns throw it off, or cause any concern for the driver. It also has rear axle steering, which adds to the feeling of agility. It sticks to the road in the way you wouldn’t expect a 5,500 pound vehicle to.
• Comfort. The EQE provides a firm but very comfortable ride, with the AMG’s air suspension doing a lot of great work. The seats are supportive. Ride is well damped and bumps are easily absorbed. Front seat room is good, rear seat room is fine. The skateboard chassis makes room for an elongated cabin. Materials are very high quality, and the cabin remains quiet at all speeds — unless you turn on the artificial noise.
• Display. Mercedes EVs have gone to a huge, 13-inch, portrait style center display. It’s a little confusing to use at first, but with some practice, it’s less confusing. Navigation maps look great on it. Wireless Apple CarPlay works well with the system, and it’s fairly easy to switch back and forth between your phone display and the Mercedes system. There’s also a 12-inch instrument display that can mirror navigation, or other information.
• Smooth stopping. We’ve driven a bunch of electric vehicles that, for some reason, have a hard time coming to a complete stop smoothly. It may be the regenerative braking software, combined with the lack of “idle acceleration” you get with an ICE engine. Somehow, Mercedes made the AMG EQE stop perfectly. There was no jerky finish at traffic lights. No thought, really, given to coming to a completely smooth stop with passengers in the car, and whether they might give you the side eye after bumping their forehead on the dashboard. They nailed it. Hope it spreads.
• Pretty quick charging. We had no trouble using a DC quick charger on the EQE, which allows for up to 170kW/hr. That’s not the fastest available. But we were able to go from 40% to 70% charge in 30 minutes while eating a burrito.
• Looks. We’ll put this in the things we like category, but feel free to move it down below yourself. Mercedes has clearly decided that this is what the future of luxury EVs looks like. It’s an extreme cab-forward, cab-backward, ovoid look that some may not see as status-worthy. We grant you, it’s weird. But in our opinion, it’s handsome in its way, unique, and has a presence. Beauty, as usual, is in the eye of the monthly payment maker. You decide.

• Cons

• Range. All that power comes at the expense of range. Mercedes estimates you’ll get only 225 miles on a full charge, which is, as they say in baseball, perilously close to the Mendoza line.
• Huge A-pillar. The elongated cabin design results in a long, sloping A-pillar (the pillar on each side of the front windshield). And the AMG EQE has a big, fat one. It’s thick enough to hinder visibility when turning left through an intersection. Even though you might not be troubled by taking out a few commoners in your new Mercedes, your insurance company won’t like it. Someone needs to come up with a higher strength material that can be used to shrink the girth of the A-pillar.
• Controls. Yeah, we know you’re getting sick of us saying this, Mercedes, but the capacitive touch controls are a pain in the lug nuts. You know what real luxury feels like? A dial that feels heavy and solid in your fingers. A rotary switch that clicks into place. Trying to rub your finger tip against a flat surface and hoping that something changes is not real luxury, in our humble opinion.
• Price. We just thought we’d mention that the base price is around $107K, and our tester rang the register at $118K. Ceramic brakes accounted for more than $5K of that option list, and perhaps that contributed to positive feeling about the braking system. That price is actually not crazy for the performance you get, but would feel easier to justify if the car got another 50-75 miles of range (which some of the slower EQE models come close to). Also, Mercedes offers a 10 year/155,000 miles warranty on the battery.
• No head up display. Odd.

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