2023 Mercedes EQS 450+

Test Drive Notes Library

Pros
New luxury. If Bonfire of the Vanities were written in 2023, bond trader Sherman McCoy would be driving a Mercedes EQS SUV. It’s today’s defining luxo-barge. Powerful, quiet, smooth, and isolating, it’s a wonderful vehicle to drive, and will keep the elite from ever having to mingle with the hoi polloi in their pedestrian Lincoln Navigators.
Powerful. The EQS 450+ is the mid range version, with a 355 hp, rear-wheel-drive motor set up. It feels like plenty to us. Even though the thing weighs nearly two tons, we never felt a lack of power. Like all EVs, power is instantly available, quietly delivered, and plentiful.
Comfortable. The EQS is designed to isolate, and it gets the job done. It’s vault-like quiet inside. The seats are supportive and business-class spacious. There’s even a fluffy pillow attached to the headrests, like in a first class cabin. We kept thinking there was a fly in the car, landing on the back of our head, and then remembered, oh, it’s the fluffy pillow. Rear seat room is good, as is cargo space in the back. The ride is soft. Bumps and imperfections on the road can be largely ignored. Among the many amenities you can add, Mercedes offers massaging seats if you’re not already feeling sufficiently pampered.
Range. The 450+ version of the EQS has a stated range of 350 miles, which put it at the high end of today’s offerings. In reality, we never saw quite that much in real life. But even with lots of highway driving, we saw over 300 miles of range, which is great. Because of the not-quite-state-of-the-art charging infrastructure on the EQS, we were unable to use the fastest available 350kW chargers, but a 50kW charger took the EQS from about 90 miles to full in about an hour.
Impressive screen tech. The nearly 18-inch OLED center screen dominates the dashboard. And while we don’t love the MBUX operating system, it does seem to be improved, and we mostly got used to it. The enhanced reality head up display, a $2,000 option, is particularly impressive. It projects information out at the end of the hood, and even (seemingly) onto the road in front of you. So when you’re following GPS directions, animated arrows move to show you where to turn. Unlike capacitive volume controls (ahem, Mercedes), this is a new technology that’s actually useful to the driver.
Good for U-Turns. This is not a reason to buy the EQS, but we were surprised to discover that it has a great turning radius, something few luxury barges can boast about.

Cons
Some tech not helpful. We absolutely hate the capacitive touch switches that Mercedes uses, especially for volume control. That’s something you use literally all the time. And it always seemed to be guesswork as to whether the capacitive switches would do what you intended them to. They obviously want this vehicle to scream “high-tech.” But in our opinion, high-tech is not necessary luxury. In the future, it will be luxurious to be able to touch real, solid-feeling knobs and switches, and use those predictable, tactile switches to control things. The capacitive touch stuff will be associated with cheap junk. Mercedes, get ahead of the curve and give us real luxury — starting with a substantial volume knob. The EQS also uses flush door handles that pop out when you need them. We found them a bit finicky. New technology is great, until your neighbor sees you yelling at your door handle.
Brakes. The brakes on EVs are part traditional friction brakes and part regenerative. So there’s software involved in switching between the two. Mercedes needs to put a little more work into its software. The brakes did not inspire confidence. They worked fine, but they made us feel like the vehicle was so heavy, it preferred to keep going. There are two modes you can select for when you’re stopped at a light. One mode is called “creep mode.” That has nothing to do with who’s behind the wheel. It lets the EQS creep forward as you let off the brake — just like a gasoline powered car with an automatic transmission would do. We found it hard to keep the EQS stopped. It was too eager to creep. Turning off creep mode presented the opposite problem. The car stopped and held, and then required you to tap the gas to move at all. Neither one was perfect. Again, software.
Visibility. The EQS has very thick A-Pillars (at the outside edges of the windshield). They tended to block our view, particularly when making turns in urban areas.
Option prices. This is more of a heads up to potential buyers. You might not be shocked by the $104,000 list price. But by the time the optional equipment was tallied up, our test EQS 450+ rang the register at nearly $143,000. You could buy a loaded Honda CR-V to tow around behind you for the price of those options. So brace yourself before you sit down with your salesperson.