Potential EV buyers still suffering from range anxiety should find comfort in the news the Mercedes-Benz Vision EQXX Concept just finished a wandering journey from the suburbs of Stuttgart, Germany to France’s Côte d’Azur on a single charge, a run of 1,000 kilometers, or 621 miles.
That’s a clear record at a time when most battery-electric vehicles deliver 200 to 300 miles and even the most efficient struggle to top 400 miles per charge. But that’s not what EV fans really should be focusing on.
The EQXX prototype was designed to explore just how efficient an electric vehicle can be — in other words, how many miles it can squeeze out of a single kilowatt of energy. The answer? A lot more than what today’s production EVs are delivering.
EV range keeps growing
Mercedes is one of the many manufacturers entering the battery-electric vehicle space. It’s first long-range model to reach U.S. shores, the EQS, is the all-electric equivalent of the brand’s familiar S-Class sedan. Depending upon the version a buyer chooses, it can deliver up to 350 miles from its 108 kilowatt-hour battery pack.
That’s a reasonably good figure when considering the Audi e-tron gets no more than 222 miles out of a 98 kWh battery pack.
At a time when there are relatively few public charging stations, range has been the central focus of EV buyers and owners, as well as the automotive media. In reality, the typical American clocks less than 75 miles a day and rarely drives more than 300 miles at a time, even on vacation. And most EV owners now charge at home, a practice experts anticipate will remain the norm, even as more and more motorists shift to electric propulsion.
But motorists tend to buy vehicles that can handle the sort of situations they imagine they might eventually need to deal with, And, when you do take a long trip, who really does want to keep stopping to charge up, anyway.
Taking range out of the equation
As battery technology improves, we can expect to see range continue increasing. The new Lucid Air Dream Range edition managed to get an EPA-rated 520 miles. Cadillac President Steve Carlisle has said he expects the norm for future luxury models will be in excess of 400 miles. That would handle a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco or nearly from Boston to Washington, D.C. Try to find a gas vehicle that could achieve this on a single tank.
The Mercedes Mission EQXX Concept would make it the 807 miles from San Francisco to Seattle on a single charge, with energy left over. Oh, and it had about 87 miles of range left when it did the run from Germany to the Côte d’Azur, so it actually could come close to running all the way from Los Angeles to Seattle without plugging in.
But that’s almost secondary to what Mercedes has actually demonstrated. The EQXX Concept used only 8.7 kilowatt-hours for every 100 km it traveled. In a metric likely more familiar to Americans, it got roughly 10 miles out of every kWh. That’s mind-boggling efficiency.
Efficiency matters
The new GMC Hummer gets barely 1 mile per kilowatt-hour, and even more mainstream products, such as the Volkswagen ID.4, the Kia EV6 and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 come in at around 2.5 miles per kWh. The most efficient production models, like the Tesla Model S Long Range and that Lucid Air, are nudging 4 to 5.
This would be like having a luxury sedan with a gas engine managing to reach 100 miles per gallon.
“The Vision EQXX is the most efficient Mercedes ever built,” the automaker’s chairman Ola Källenius, said. “The technology program behind it marks a milestone in the development of electric vehicles. It underpins our strategic aim to ‘Lead in Electric.’”
How Mercedes made it work
To achieve such numbers, Mercedes targeted a number of ways to improve the efficiency of the EQXX. That started with improvements to its aerodynamics. Cutting wind resistance is one of the best ways to boost range, as well as performance, its engineers noted when the concept debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show last January. The prototype has a 0.17 coefficient of drag, far more wind-slippery than anything now in production, whatever the source of power.
Cutting mass is another area of concern. Weight is a definite problem with EVs because battery packs can add 1,000 pounds or more. The EQXX weighs in at just 3,869 pounds. The EQS starts at 5,467 lbs.
Substantial attention also was paid to the efficiency of the EQXX prototype’s electric drivetrain, among other things, reducing losses in its electronic power control system, as well as in the motors driving the vehicle.
Other steps included the development of new Bridgestone tires with an extremely low rolling resistance.
How this translates into production
While range may be the central focus for EV buyers today, energy efficiency — the electric equivalent of miles-per-gallon — could become the hot topic tomorrow, much as fuel economy is for gas-powered vehicles today. And for good reason.
While EVs have far lower energy costs than gas-powered models, it still adds up over time. If you drive the typical 12,000 miles annually with an EV getting 2.5 miles per kWh, you will consume 4,800 kilowatts of power. Charging at home at the typical $0.15 per kWh will cost you $720 annually. You’d spent barely $180 if your electric vehicle were as efficient as the EQXX.
Don’t expect to see a production version of the EQXX. Many of the engineering tricks Mercedes used wouldn’t translate well into a consumer vehicle. But it offers up some useful ideas for future retail products.
Indeed, Mercedes engineers say they already see ways to make the concept vehicle even more efficient, estimating they could add up to 15 miles of range using solar panels on the roof. And that power would be entirely free.
They’ll move from range anxiety to monthly payment anxiety.
Jim, read the posts of the last few weeks. EV prices are heading down…quickly. In turn, ICE vehicle prices will continue to rise. The transformation is real. The negatives are going to fade, if not vanish.
Paul E.
San Francisco to LA on a single tank is not that big of a deal. My (now former) GMC Sierra 1500 Denali could do that, as can my Porsche 911. San Francisco to Seattle on a single tank, that would be something. Of course, the difference is, there are gas stations every few miles and it takes 5 minutes or less to fill up. EV charging stations are less frequent and take a lot more time. We just went on a 2200 mile driving vacation last week in the Denali. It would have added a lot of time if every time we needed gas it was a 30 minute stop instead of a 5-10 minute stop, and instead of seeing a range of over 500 miles after filling up, we saw like 200 or 300 miles.
Paul,
I’m not discounting your point but the Sierra Denali’s range is an outlier, not the norm. The typical vehicle will get in the area of 250-350 miles/tank, and data show motorists typically stop well before that, most typically for restroom breaks. There’s no question that you will take longer to fill, but the typical stop for a vehicle with an empty tank is closer to 7-8 minutes, including the time to handle payment. It can be longer if you go inside. As to EV charging, getting 200 miles is beginning to come down; the Porsche Taycan, the Kia EV6 and some others with 800-volt electrical architectures are starting to get into the 20-minute range. And that is likely to be the norm, especially if your vehicle plugs into one of the newer, more powerful public stations. As I reported a year-some back, GM Pres. Mark Reuss said they’re targeting 10 minutes to reach 90% state-of-charge, though he cautioned that won’t happen until later in the decade.
Now, here’s the twist. You DID have to go to a gas station at some point in your trip, even if just when you started out. A typical BEV owner will start the day with a full “tank” since they’ve charged at home or office. And, if they go to a hotel with a charger (which is quickly becoming common), they won’t need a stop on the way back if the trip is within range.
Again, I’m not dismissing the issues BEV owners face on longer trips, but the search for charging stations will be less of a headache. And both range and time charging will become more owner-friendly.
Check out this report, by the way: https://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2022/01/porsche-taycan-sets-coast-to-coast-charging-record/
Paul A. Eisenstein
Publisher, TheDetroitBureau.com
Range with BEV’s and ICE is strongly affected by driver/passenger bladder control and/or baby diaper needs.