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Demon Time coming 2024
The good news is, it looks like a car. Mercedes's new ultra-range electric Vision EQXX concept car doesn't look like an SUV. And better yet it doesn't look like some science project.
You can imagine something not altogether different as an actual production car. Which is Mercedes's intention. Calling it a concept is colossally underselling it. It's not just a styling exercise. It's packed to the gills with radical new engineering, but all of it with an eye to genuine feasibility.
The aim here is to get a nice round 1,000km (625 miles) of range. Now the obvious answer to that would be a mahooosive battery. With today's tech that'd mean a vast underfloor box, which could only fit under an SUV. The weight and drag would spiral upward, and so would the price. Efficiency would plummet.
The EQXX's approach is the opposite. Low weight, low drag, sky-high efficiency. More range from a smallish battery. Every part and system has been given the beady eye, looking for savings in weight, aerodynamic drag, friction, heat and electrical resistance. Right down to the very
soldering between electronic components. Honestly.
So the EQXX should do about six miles per kWh. Which isn't far off double the efficiency of your normal EV this size and performance.
It weighs about 1,750kg. That's less than a VW ID.3 with the 266-mile battery option. The rear-drive motor gives 204bhp. Mercedes is giving no performance figures yet, but that power and weight in the RWD EQXX will mean a warm-hatch step-off. And with low drag, the high-speed acceleration won't be blunted like it often is in EVs.
Project head Klaus Millerferli tells me the efficiency won't remain just a claim, or simulation. Although a stupendous amount of computer simulation has gone into the EQXX's engineering. Early next year he'll be doing a long-distance demo drive to prove it. This is a real working car.
Pretty eh? OK, maybe that long tail might be (literally) a bit of a stretch, but the rest of it is designed to be pleasing as well as low in drag. Matthias Schenker of the advanced design department says he didn't want to get too much of an obvious teardrop shape – the VW XL1 and GM EV1 come up in conversation. And they were only two-seaters by the way.
