620 miles is the distance David Tracy would cover driving from his place in Detroit to the G/O media offices in New York City. The fact that he could do that trip in an electric vehicle without stopping to charge is next-level awesome. Mercedes-Benz claims that this seemingly impossible future is coming soon with the teaser of its upcoming EQXX electric machine. A real world range of 620 miles seemed utterly impossible just a few years ago, but these days I believe Mercedes.
Based on the teaser image Mercedes dropped on Friday, it looks like the three-pointed star is finally building the all-electric Volkswagen XL1 that I’ve been begging for. It’s time for an all-out assault on electric tech, and it seems like Mercedes is bringing the heat. According to the release associated with the teaser, Mercedes says the target is “a single-digit figure for kWh per 100 kilometers”, and when you convert that to real figures, it’s at least 6 miles per kWh. My 2011 Nissan Leaf achieves around 3.3 miles per kWh, so to be twice as efficient is really saying something. We’ve come a long way in just a decade of electric vehicle tech. Hell, Rivian’s upcoming R1T has been estimated to achieve as little as 2 miles per kWh, so this would be three times as efficient if Mercedes has its sums right.
Merc says it has been using its F1 knowhow to develop the EQXX with a “multi-disciplinary team including experts from Mercedes-Benz’s F1 High Performance Powertrain division,” and that this division is “making rapid progress towards the project’s ambitious goals.”
While we won’t see the full EQXX look until 2022, this teaser is pretty telling. It’s quite clearly going to be a compact coupe with a smooth flowing roofline, which tapers toward the rear. I wouldn’t expect the company to come out with an expectation of selling hundreds of thousands of these things, but focusing on efficiency with a no-compromise approach has just as much of an engineering background as an out-and-out track car or hypercar like the Mercedes-AMG One will. It may not be a track performer, but speed is only one aspect of automotive engineering. I look forward to seeing this no-compromise machine on the streets in the next few years. Let’s go, Mercedes!
