In April, the company’s stab at “the silver bullet to the electric road trip” completed a 626-mile trip on a single charge. But after driving from Stuttgart, Germany to Cassis, France, the electric vehicle’s battery sat at about 15 percent capacity. This prompted the engineering team to wonder how much further the EV would be able to go.
Cue take two: a 14.5-hour trip that took the VISION EQXX from Stuttgart to Silverstone, UK across two days. The team strove to imitate real-world conditions as much as possible, enduring everyday challenges such as summer heat and high traffic density. Nyck “The Dutchman” de Vries, who races for the Mercedes-EQ Formula E team, conducted the end portion of the trip as a guest driver. De Vries took the VISION EQXX up to its maximum speed limit of 87 miles per hour during 11 trips around Silverstone’s famous race track before exhausting the vehicle’s charge on the pit lanes.
“Yet again, the VISION EQXX has proven that it can easily cover more than 1,000 km on a single battery charge, this time faced with a whole different set of real-world conditions,” said Markus Schäfer, Chief Technology Officer for development and procurement at Mercedes-Benz. “As Mercedes-Benz strives to go all-electric by 2030 wherever market conditions allow, it is important to show to the world what can be achieved in real terms through a combination of cutting-edge technology, teamwork and determination.”
(Photo: Mercedes-Benz)
Single-charge EV ranges floated around 250 miles at the beginning of last year. Mercedes had to triple this median in order to bring the VISION EQXX to the level of success it saw last week. While the easy answer would’ve been to build a bigger battery, this would have weighed the vehicle down. Instead Mercedes tried its hand at using lightweight materials to create a unit that didn’t sacrifice size for capacity. The result was an energy-dense battery that was about 30 percent lighter than the one it started with, and half the size.
The battery doesn’t have to power the EV’s interior, either. Rooftop solar panels power most of the interior technology—which, by the way, makes the VISION EQXX look like something out of the 1964 New York World’s Fair. White seats, brushed steel accents, and cool-toned ambient lighting combine for a sleek aesthetic to match the vehicle’s impressive range. Mercedes says it used animal-free textiles, like cactus fibers, mushrooms and vegan silk, to craft the attractive yet practical interior.
The VISION EQXX is a concept vehicle and isn’t currently slated for production. That being said, the vehicle—which the company is calling “the most efficient Mercedes ever built”—presents a likely irresistible challenge to other EV makers, including Tesla, whose cars currently max out at about 400 miles on a single charge.
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