ELECTRIC STAR

The Mercedes-Benz EQS 580 takes the idea of range anxiety and chucks it out of the window. Is it, then, the perfect luxury electric vehicle?

- DHRUV PALIWAL

When you are looking at a car segment that has the word 'luxury' prefixed to it, you better throw your sense of value out of the window. Why? Well, for one, they are essentially polar opposites. So, in keeping with this advice, when I drove the Mercedes Benz EQS 580 4MATIC, I decided not to think about its *1.55 crore (ex-showroom) price tag. Instead, I focused on two questions - how is it as an electric, and can it really be linked to the S Class in any way possible? I had 24 hours with the car, and here's what I found out.

IT’S A SPEC SHEET TO DRIVE 

I don’t mean this in a negative sense, but if you look at the spec sheet of the EQS and imagine what it would be like to drive, you wouldn’t be too off the mark. Now, electric vehicles have a notorious reputation for not being able to match up the on-paper range. According to ARAI, the EQS can do 857kms on a single charge – something to think about, isn’t it? Well, I am not saying that we got close to that number, but when I picked up the car from my office, it was at around 90 per cent charge and displayed a range of more than 650kms. And by the time we got done with it 24 hours later, it was at 62 per cent charge, with a range of around 330kms still left. For the first time in my life, while shooting an EV, I didn’t have to use my limited mathematical knowledge to figure out if it would be possible to find the next charging station before running out of charge. Honestly, it was a refreshing experience.