The Mercedes-Benz EQS prototype and the engineering team
Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz is ready to put range anxiety in the rearview mirror.
The German luxury marque just revealed that an EQS prototype equipped with a solid-state battery completed a 749-mile drive on a single charge. Even more impressive, at the end of the journey, the EV still had range to spare.
Anyone familiar with EVs knows that range is just as important a performance indicator as horsepower. American drivers want their EVs to be able to travel 300-plus miles on a charge, even if most of us don’t clock hundreds of miles on our daily commute. Regardless, consumers worry about their EV running out of power without a charger in sight, something which may be related to the U.S.’s charging infrastructure lagging far behind those of China and Europe.
Mercedes-Benz wants to allay these concerns by using more efficient solid-state battery technology that will increase range without making its already heavy EVs even heavier. In February, the company announced plans to start testing EVs with a lithium-metal solid-state battery pack developed by Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains that uses cells from U.S.-based Factorial Energy. It said it was targeting a range of 620 miles, which would represent a high mark for “real-world conditions.”
Now, six months later, the results are in, and the lightly modified EQS used to test the technology fared even better than expected. The automaker says the prototype was able to complete a 749-mile journey (1,205 km) between Stuttgart, Germany, where it is headquartered, and Malmö, Sweden, without stopping once for even a single quick charge. In doing so, it beat a previous record, which was set by the EQXX concept traveling between Stuttgart and Silverstone, England, by nearly two miles.
The EV traveled 749 miles between Stuttgart and Malmö
Mercedes-Benz
The EQS’s battery also had some juice left when it reached Malmö. In the announcement of the record-setting run, Mercedes claims the EV could have traveled a further 85 miles. That brings the total range of the prototype to 834 miles, which is well over double that of the longest-range production EQS, which can travel 390 miles on a single charge.
The announcement also notes that the record-setting run highlights the technology’s “potential” for future production vehicles. Sure enough, InsideEVs reports that the company hopes to start building and selling EVs with solid-state batteries by the end of the decade.
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