Mercedes’s first all-electric car is the Mercedes EQC. I’m here to share with you my five favorite unique features about this Mercedes EQC.
Luxurious Interior
The number one item on my list has to start with the inside of the vehicle. I’ve been in quite a few electric cars over the last couple of years, and I’ve not seen a car that is more luxurious on the interior, than the Mercedes EQC.
They have custom stitching, all along the inside. There’s a nice mix of white and black leather. In our Tesla the whole things are white in one car, the whole things are black in another. Sometimes white doesn’t do so well with kids, and with blue jeans and different things.
It’s difficult to really tell you on camera, how comfortable it actually feels inside of this car. You can tell that the leather is of higher quality. the foam that they use inside is really comfortable. You can easily move the seat in multiple different directions. you also have the seat warmers and the ventilated air-cooled seats.
You have the white crossed-stitch pattern, the black leather up here. What looks like carbon fiber, with these accents of copper that go through it, to kind of represent the coils within the battery.
At night-time, there are the EQC blue lights that shine. but you can also customize the lights to have different mood lighting in the car. however, you want it to be.
Mercedes has over 100 years of experience designing seats inside of cars, and you feel it in the EQC. It just feels like a higher quality ride experience.
Windshield Heads-Up Display
The second thing that I really like about this car, has a little bit to do with the Tesla Model 3, and the Model Y, and the potential refresh, on the S and the X. If you’ve seen the way the Model 3’s screen works is that you have a giant screen, and that’s really all that you have. And it’s a really strange thing because you don’t have any heads-up display to be able to see how fast you’re going.
I’m not saying that the Mercedes screen that goes across is better, what I am saying, is that Mercedes did something inside of the EQC, that I think that could be a very simple thing for even Tesla to fix. It’s a heads-up display that projects onto the windshield. You can see the kilometers per hour, the direction that you’re facing, and a few other items that are just on the screen.
The way that it works is on the dashboard you have a box, and in this box is a mirror, and down inside is all of the display information. It projects onto the mirror, and then up onto the windshield. It does take a little bit of getting used to, and at the very beginning, it’s a little shocking to see that in the line of sight. After about 20 minutes of driving the car, it becomes less of a distraction. and it becomes more of something that helps you know how fast you’re going. I love this feature in the EQC. Totally useful.
Tow Hitch
I just want to show you this, because I think it’s really cool. First notice, no tow hitch. Nothing down here. You pull the tow hitch button located in the boot lid.
Recuperation Mode
The fourth thing that I really like about the Mercedes EQC, is the recuperation mode, a regenerative braking type mode. In some electric cars, they only have two options. Which is no regeneration. so basically when you let off the pedal, it just cruises. It’s actually using the motor to brake and it’s pushing energy to the batteries, and recharging the batteries in a way. It gives you a little bit extra range. so you can drive a few more miles.
This electric car has five modes of regenerative braking, but they call it recuperation. If I let off the pedal, the car just cruises, and it’s just coasting like you’re in neutral. If you put it on maximum mode, the car’s stopping. It can come to, basically a complete stop, without even using the brakes. and it’s charging the batteries back up.
Mercedes does a really good job on their display, and actually showing you what the battery and what the motors are doing. So you can see when I completely let off the pedal, everything lights up blue. Both of the motors are charging the battery at the same time, and the car comes to a complete stop without me even pushing the brake.
But there’s also a special one if you hold down the paddle for a few seconds, it says D Auto. The cool thing about this one is it’s using the topography maps and the GPS, and also how much battery you have in your car right now. It’ll change the recuperation levels based on the needs of the car, and the places that you’re driving.
If you’re going down a really steep hill, it uses the camera and sees cars in front of you. It will kick in the higher mode of recuperation, and slow you down as you’re going down the hill without you having to use the brake. So a really clever system, and this is something that I didn’t know that I was missing in my life until I drove the Mercedes-Benz. I need more recuperation in my life.
Very Quiet Vehicle
The fifth thing that I like about this Mercedes EQC. It is legitimately, the quietest car, I have ever ridden in. No joke, it is crazy quiet.
If you remember, back when I cut open a Tesla tire, we found some sound dampening foam inside of the wheel. That was pretty cool. Yesterday we met with the employee, that his entire job for the last year, has been to make the car ride as quiet as humanly possible. He decreased the decibels by nine decibels, from where he started. They took the motor, and they put custom-fitted foam all around it before they put the plastic cover over the motor.
The motor is obviously attached to the car, but they detached it from the frame in two different places. So they have little connectors, so that the vibrations, and the noise from the moto. hopefully, would not transfer over to the car so that you would hear it and feel it.
They have giant thick foam squares that are all within the car, between the inner systems and the outer frame of the car, especially around the wheel wells. It’s really really quiet. So it’s kind of a strange thing when you’re driving in the car. I really like the attention to detail that Mercedes did. To take additional steps to make sure that this car, is as soundproof as possible so that you don’t hear little squeaks and noises. This car is crazy quiet and peaceful to ride in.
The sixth and final thing that I really like about the Mercedes EQC. It has augmented reality, that is built into GPS navigation. What the GPS does, is when you are coming up to a place where you need to turn right, it utilizes the front-facing camera. The front-facing camera turns on, and then certain points of interest, or streets, or the way that you’re supposed to turn, will pop up digitally enhanced, over the video.
So it’s like a live video of the outside, but then you get these digital images that crop in, that help guide you. If you have a turn that’s coming up, a blue arrow will come out and be pointing forward.
One of my favorite parts about it was when it first came on we were super confused. Because you often see a rear-view camera that comes up, like say you put it in reverse, and you get the rear-view camera that shows what’s going on behind you. All of a sudden we saw a camera image of what was in front of us.
Such kind of got a little upset with that one. I was like, why in the world would I need a camera image on the screen, of what I can look out the window and see with my own eyes. It was kind of weird. But then we noticed that it was overlaying the directions on top of the map and like motion tracking it, you know with us in real-time. And then it turned into a really cool feature. That’s something I have not seen in a car, that I think is incredibly valuable, and maybe a glimpse of what we’re going to see in the future.
Electric cars are the future, and I like where Mercedes has taken those aspects of this vehicle. So the Mercedes EQC is rolling out, right now in 2020, it should roll out in the United States. I’m excited to get my hands on one in the United States. Do some more testing, make some more videos. Who knows? Maybe I can trade-in, or get rid of one of my electric cars, and swap it for this.
You may also like to read: Hyundai Ioniq 2020 Electric – Eager What’s New?
