• Pros

• Might be our favorite Mercedes. It’s not spectacular in any way. It’s almost as if the Mercedes engineers got drunk with Subaru engineers one night and made a car. The result is an eminently practical, small SUV. It’s not stylish. But the boxiness of the EQB provides benefits. It makes excellent use of its space. It has great headroom, decent hip room, it maximizes cargo space with a squared off back end. And, in a rarity these days, it has good visibility. Add to that a solid, and not overpowered all electric drivetrain, and you’ve got a very likable, very easy-to-live-with, small SUV.
• The way it all fits together. The EQB is the result of lots of compromises. Turning an internal combustion based vehicle into a BEV means limited space for a battery. Keeping the price in the $50-$60K range (i.e. cheap for Mercedes) means forgoing real luxury. But it’s precisely the practicality of the EQB that we love. It does everything pretty well. You get around 250 miles of range, 188 horsepower, reasonable comfort, a solid sturdy feel, good handling, an airy feeling interior, and a not-outrageous price. It’s a nice balance of usability, comfort, and competence.
• Hard controls for climate. Having driven a range of Mercedes products in recent years, we welcomed the actual, physical controls for temperature and ventilation.

• Cons

• Not high luxury. This is, in many ways, a mid market vehicle. It’s comfortable, but not posh. There are plastics that you don’t see on the E and S Class Mercedes. There’s a small screen, where newer Mercedes models are getting IMAX-like screens. You’ll find Apple CarPlay is not wireless, which is de rigueur in luxury cars these days. We can live with all that if you can.
• Touch screen and capacitive switches. I guess Mercedes couldn’t resist. Or they got a special on unusable capacitive switches and frustrating touch-pads, and are trying hard to unload them.

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