MotoMan transports the 2022 Mercedes AMG EQS from Palm Springs to Los Angeles in this combo TECH REVIEW, FIRST DRIVE REVIEW & a pseudo round of our famous #OptionsGame only to learn this first ever EV by AMG not only adds more power, but fixes the ills of the Mercedes Benz EQS 580 on which it is based.
So an odd thing has happened over the past say two years we seem to have graduated from a world of electric cars that for lack of a better term drive like golf carts now yeah there’s the appliance that is the tesla wonderful in a straight line but if you want to turn there’s a problem then about two years ago we finally got an electric car that drives like a porsche
And then something very interesting happened this past summer an electric car that really wasn’t an electric car it was a luxury car first that happened to have an electric propulsion system which was all fine and good but now the folks at alfresh merchant spac they have begun tinkering with it so we need to kind of go back to the drawing board and understand
What that means for the eevee world admittedly the concept of tuning an ev especially for an in-house oem tuner is relatively new so what is going on here well the folks in alphaboc what they do is they take an eqs and not the 450 that’s two-wheel drive they take the all-wheel drive 580 so this is a 4matic that is the only way it is on offer and they make some
Significant changes really in two areas number one they borrow a page out of the tycon book so there with the turbo s and the turbo the inverter for the rear motor is different than in the 4s or the basic tycon but you can’t just stop there it’s much like tuning an alpena there we’ve driven the b7 and the b8 and yeah alpena tunes that 4.4 twin turbocharged v8 but
You can’t just stop there they add a different intercooler a couple of different coolant overflow reservoirs engine oil coolers and a transmission oil cooler and the idea there is to focus or at least remedy the increased operating temperature of a higher performing vehicle same concept in an electric vehicle just in a different format so they do change the cooling
In the eqs amg now that’s all fine and good but how does it impact output figures there it’s pretty sizable 649 horsepower and 700 pound feet of torque but there they had to add a couple of different loopholes the biggest one being an overboost function and that it goes up to 751 horsepower and 750 pound-feet of torque then there’s the battery it really hasn’t
Changed 107.8 kilowatt hour which translates to 277 miles of us epa rated range then there’s the whole reason for being of this vehicle and that’s the performance figures 0-60 3.4 seconds and v-max electronically limited to 155 miles an hour this is not lightweight hundred fifty 5854 pounds or depending on expression weights and measures two thousand six hundred
Fifty five kilograms with that oh yeah oh yeah uh kind of what we expected here yeah this makes up for the lack of i wouldn’t say lack of power but this is kind of the difference we were looking for from the 580 to this and here’s the thing the 580 it wasn’t slow that thing was downright fast this it’s more immediate it’s delivery of power it’s not quite what
A tycon turbo s is where that literally rips your face off and even some teslas they also rip your face off right now i’m in sport plus let’s go back down to comfort and drop the hammer it’s it’s not a huge difference in the way it delivers power but notice you don’t really hear anything there are different sound profiles depending on the drive mode one is in
So let’s slow down here we’ve got a lot of space in front of us a lot of space in back of us and let’s go back up to sport plus and there are two ways to do this you can do it over here which is very confusing with a haptic feedback button then you have to work with the screen or just with a toggle switch on the steering wheel thank you very much for that now i’m
Going to shut up listen to sport plus mode it’s kind of cool now in order for us to press on we need to be honest with ourselves and what exactly does that mean well this being almost 6 000 pounds this ain’t a track car so let’s look at driving dynamics based on that information uh this is more about the ride quality i’d go so far as to saying that some of the
Changes that amg made to this thing make this a more well-rounded package even driving it on a divided highway like this or driving it around town yeah it’s sharper around corners but this is not something you’re going to carve canyons with there’s good control over most planes of motions like for example i’m pushing it a bit hard on this road i can feel a little
Bit of flex in the back i can feel a little bit of lean in the rear end of the car considering the weight of the vehicle my guess would be that has something to do with the motor in the back being heavier than the motor in the front now with that let’s you and i do a recap of what’s underneath the eqs amg if you remember from our eqs 580 it’s a multi-link front and
Rear in the case of the eqs it’s a four-link multi-link setup in the front now something interesting about this specific vehicle the amg flavor now depending on what region of the world it’s either the eqs amg or eqs amg 53 however whatever the name the bushings as well as the mounts are specific to the amg does it make a huge difference in the way the car drives
I would say that’s probably the biggest difference in the overall ride quality change there’s more composure so if you were to look at this on a spectrum of compliance here and composure here an eqs even a 580 it’s a bit too much compliance for my liking this even on a rough not perfect road this is definitely more composure but it’s not to the point where it’s going
To push your intestines out of your body now something interesting about the car we’re driving this one has the bigger wheels and tires so there are two different options there’s 21 inches and 22s you would think that would have a huge impact on the ride quality here from the 580 we drove not really it’s still very much the same overall flavor in the way the thing
Executes its ride quality so i’d say this is kind of a push and oh yeah it looks cool but it doesn’t take away from the ride quality that normal 22s do if you remember in our 580 episode uh the steering the feedback was not good the weight was not good i asked for a change in the amg and it’s clear someone was listening because there’s definitely good weight to
This the feedback is good it’s as direct as an electric car can be now putting aside all of that the biggest change here is the rear wheel steering this is something mercedes-benz seems to be doing and taking as their technological advancement of all these large and even the new sl we drove actually we’re gonna drive that next month i can’t tell you about it until
Next month the rear was steering ranges from two percent in the sl to 10 in the s-class in this it’s nine percent huge difference when using it in like parking lots low-speed maneuvers however in situations like this this is where real steering pays more dividends most people don’t understand let’s say for the sake of discussion i want to change lanes this guy
Just passed me here i can do this at high speeds and i have a good amount of stability this is a vehicle that is very long normally you wouldn’t get that kind of response no it is not that time to play your favorite game on the options game because while we have a contestant we don’t have any pricing you see the back story is this the opportunity to drive this
As well as the new sl was at an international driving program they flew the cars over from germany but they didn’t fly over any pricing so the only thing we got was a list of options fitted to the car we are driving so what you and i can do is take these options and then take a stab in the dark as to what the price will be when they finally price the car say end
Of q1 2022. so the car we are driving is a 2000 i believe a 23 eqs amg maybe 2022 i’m not really sure on that part this car is above the eqs 580. so if we take a stab in the dark the 450 the two-wheel drive was about a hundred grand the one we drove the base price the 580 the all-wheel drive dual motor that was about 120. so i’m going to go on a limb and make a
Guess that the base price of the eqs amg in the us will be about 140 000 usd now the car we are driving is fitted with a stunning color the cardinal red which is part of the mercedes manufacture program it is stunning it is the best color i have seen on any eqs whether it’s a 580 or this one i’m guessing this is like a probably 2 000 paint job then the inside the
Black with the space gray napa leather that is fitted to standard i think the two-tone is maybe what’s optional here uh then there is the brown yacht design walnut trim with the aluminum lines stunning i believe this was about a thousand dollar option in other eqs then there’s the 22-inch amg turbine wheels i’m guessing this has got to be a three to five thousand
Dollar option and then there’s the exclusive package this has like different levels different flavors in the exclusive package it comes with an atomizer and air purification system that i’m guessing probably 500 to a thousand dollars then the amg performance steering wheel i’ve told you in many episodes why is it optional and this what will probably be about 140
000 car i’ve got to pay extra for the knob for the driving mode that’s kind of ridiculous hopefully that’s fitted as standard and this was just a misprint then the faux suede headliner they call it the black microfiber headliner very nice touch but there i’d like a different color you know you got this great color on the outside maybe like a two-tone saddle and
Black and have it like saddle on the headline or that would really pop then this one you know it’s think about what’s going on in the world for the past two years this one has the optional hepa filtration system and we have to press on to the only other factory option fitted to this vehicle which believe it or not a 110 volt home charger is not fitted as standard
To the eqs amg now that opens up a larger discussion and this is really something that surprises me about the eqs range in total not just this one it’s not 800 volt architecture like a tycon or even that ioniq 5 we’ve driven now the big difference there it’s faster charging with an 800 volt architecture this one’s a more traditional system and yes it’ll accept up
To a 22 kilowatt charger however the one that we’re paying extra for i’m guessing it’s going to be a couple hundred bucks is a 9.8 kilowatt charger which brings us back to the main event of this pseudo round of the options game if we could even call it that what do we think this thing is going to cost with all these options i’m guessing somewhere between 150 000
And maybe 160 000 usd if you said i had to put money on it i’m going with 160 000 us and that’s my story and i’m sticking to it an electric car with carbon ceramic rotors now in the porsche world that’s doesn’t sound funny in most of the eevee world that sounds kind of odd but here in the amg world i guess it’s something we’ve got to get used to and a couple
Of things going on number one the brakes you know they definitely work i can’t tell you that i’ve had a lot of time to do panic stops and test this vehicle because i got super minuscule amount of time with this vehicle so we’re gonna have to get this back at the hanger and spend more time to understand the brakes but in reality the pedal feel that i did get some
Time to understand in reality the pedal feel it’s okay like it doesn’t have the on off switch that an electric vehicle has but it doesn’t have the proper pedal feel that a carbon ceramic rotor system would have so i’m going to accelerate and i will really want to hit the brakes here glenn i can’t do so much on the freeway i just i don’t get that feedback i don’t
Get the there’s breaking performance let’s be very clear here but it’s just the feedback that needs to be dialed in a bit more and maybe that’s just some teething problems in adjusting these things to electric vehicles now with that said let’s you and i blend in with the traffic and discuss two items that are not necessarily related to the way the vehicle drives
Number one you can see on the screen here i’ve had this in front of you throughout the entire episode there are different graphics in the eqs amg notice i got this come straight from the amg world i can change the vehicle here i can even see an amg versionized of the energy flow so this is here and here but the biggest difference remember we talked about the fancy
Huge head-up display in the s-class and the eqs that’s still here but they’ve taken these graphics and applied it to this huge like costco-sized head-up display it is magnificent to drive with in this car i’ll admit i kind of like the idea of an ev with a tune but this isn’t a full fat amg experience there i’d say no rather it is a much better execution of the
Original eqs platform because if you remember when we drove the 580 very good especially that it was its own personality it was a real luxury car before being an ev but it left something to be desired in the steering as well as some of the ride quality this fixes all of that now granted it goes past the goal post it makes it a little bit stiffer which brings us
To the wish list and here i’d like to take the learning from this car and apply it to the basic versions of the eqe and any other eq platform vehicles that cascade down the line fix some of the steering and the tuning of the driving dynamics in the basic models from this amg experience and then perhaps make the amg experience in the eqs and the other ones a bit
More full fat and then of course i have to add my usual we need more knobs and toggle switches to make that lovely design on the inside a bit more user-friendly and safe but this is only one man’s opinion so i’m going to turn this around to you guys to a pin in the comments below or via our social media moto man tv onward moto man tv all one word facebook twitter
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Transcribed from video
The Mercedes AMG EQS is not a Tesla or a Taycan. It’s a Luxury Missile. By MotoManTV
