mercedes eqs – The Thrill of Driving

Although EV’s are not the focus of this blog, there’s quite a bit happening on the EV front so that I feel it’s worth giving you a small round-up of what I believe to be the most important recent developments. The first thing to point out is obviously that the long awaited jump in EV sales is now really happening. The below graphic gives a nice illustration of where sales are surging (China, Europe and the US in order of importance) and where not (somewhat surprisingly Japan, where EV’s make up less than 5% of all EV sales worldwide. Japan has a lot of hybrids however). Putting these numbers in context shows that EV’s hereby represented 12% of all cars sold in China, approximately 11% in Europe (including PHEV) and 3% in the US. So the growth is clearly there and accelerating, but we’re still not at the point where EV’s are close to taking over.

Tesla claims the two top spots in the US with its models 3 and Y, and the Model 3 is the best selling EV in Europe as well, ahead of the VW ID3, the Renault Zoe and the VW ID4. In China the top seller is a car I’m sure you’re all familiar with – the Wuling Hong Guang MINI EV. No? The Wuling is a Chinese mini electric car, the size that actually makes most sense for an EV. It’s ahead of, yep, the Tesla Model 3 and Y. It’s worth noting that not only do the two Teslas claim the top spots in most markets, they are also by far the most expensive of the EV top sellers, making their numbers even more impressive. It’s also interesting that even in the US, the two other models S and X don’t see many buyers anymore.

*The leading Chinese EV is rather small and not very aerodynamic*

So much for existing sales, but much more interesting is looking at the new market entrants, and there’s quite a few of those. I’ll focus here on the ones I for different reasons believe are the most important: Mercedes with the EQS and other EV models now being rolled out as representative of the the in my view leading traditional brand, Lucid Motors as the most exciting new EV brand, and to round it off, why not a couple of electric pick-ups?

Mercedes-Benz landed a real PR punch a few weeks ago when it became the first car maker to receive the approval for level three self-driving in Germany. This is a major snub to Tesla but certainly not a coincidence. MB’s Swedish CEO Ola Källenius is not only using social media to the fullest, he’s also repositioning MB as a car maker that will exclusively be building EV’s by 2030. The EQS that came out a few months ago is the flagship in this regard, with the EQE (E-class) and other models now following. I’ve had the opportunity to study the EQS inside and out several times although I haven’t driven it yet, and it’s very surprising to me hearing how various commentators put it on par with the “normal” S-class. Let’s be clear, and take my word for it: if you forget the giant screens and look at other interior materials and perceived quality, the EQS is nowhere near an S-class. At the same time it’s however far ahead of Tesla and other EV’s, but so it should, given it’s also quite a bit more expensive at around EUR 200′ fully equipped. You get a pretty fully equipped, “normal” S-class for that kind of money…

*Keep your eyes on the screens – what is below is less fun…*

Lucid Motors is the new star on the EV sky and perhaps one that can challenge Mercedes on the luxury EV throne. Lucid’s CEO Peter Rawlinson was previously part of the senior management at Tesla, and the Lucid Air of which a few thousand have been delivered by now is an impressive large sedan that scores high both in quality, space and materials (although given what I mention on the EQS above, I’d like to be the judge of that first). The drive train is no less impressive with up to 1111hp in the top model Air Dream Edition, and a range of around 800 km (in ideal conditions). Interestingly the battery pack operates at 900V which complemented by its size helps speed up charging, something Lucid is happy to talk about. The company comes from California, the cars are built in Arizona and plans are to open up in Europe soon. There’s obviously always a risk with new brands, but Lucid has a lot going for it (including around USD 1bn of Saudi money).

*The Lucid is a large car, however not a hatchback as you may think.*

We will not see many of the other two EV’s I’ve chosen to mention here in Europe, but the US readers will have the opprtunity to enjoy them. They are both pick-ups, the first being the Hummer EV, easily recognized as a Hummer, meaning it still looks cool and is now fully electric. The roof can be removed in four different parts, and the Hummer also has a lot of other gadgets of the kind that seem to appeal to EV buyers. It’s also the only EV (actually, any car) in the market that can do the crab walk, meaning it can move forward diagonally. I have no clue what the practical side of that is, but I’m sure it’s fun. The second is less known until now, it’s also a US pick-up from a new brand called Rivian. The company has been around for ten years but it’s not until last year they showed their first car, the fully-electric R1T. It’s an interesting concept with quite a few interesting features which are new to the EV world, and it comes at an interesting price point around USD 75′ in the US.

*The Hummer EV certainly looks the part…*

Finally, let me bring you some stories of what life with an EV is like during the winter months in Europe. This is not some I’ve spent hours googling about, rather things I’ve picked up from friends or read about. It’s also not out of a wish to be mean to the EV collective, but it seems important to me that if the plan to have the whole world drive these, we need to know what’s going on out there – even in the European winter.

A colleague of mine set out from northern Europe to the French Alps in his Model S for a week’s skiing with the family. With around 1.000 km to drive, they needed to charge three times on the way there, as the real range in the winter months is only 250-300 kms. When they picked up the car from the (unheated) parking a week later, the battery was almost empty as it had lost a few km range every day by just being parked when it was cold outside. They just about made it to the next charging station.
A friend of mine put his Model X on support charging in northern Sweden as you’re supposed to, however the smaller, second battery that powers notably the screens froze, making the car unusable. I don’t know whether this was his fault or not but as a result the car had to be transported back to Stockholm on a tow truck, over 500 km away, since there was no garage in upper Sweden that could assist.

*Not ideal when you’re 500 km away from the nearest garage…*

A lady in Germany wanted to pick up her new electric VW herself at the factory in Wolfsburg to save the EUR 700 delivery costs VW required for sending it to Munich where she lives. That was a bad idea. The 600 km back home took her more than 12 hours with three charging stops. She was also freezing cold during the whole trip since the car apparently warned her from turning on the heating, as it would cost too much energy. VW told her she should have planned her charging stops better – but perhaps VW should build a car that would save her the work, as Tesla has been doing now for close to 10 years?

Let’s be clear on a couple of points. EV’s are an interesting alternative with a more efficient engine than a classical combustion engine – under certain conditions. In cold temperatures they are very far from the range claims being made, and also run into various other issues. Range anxiety during the winter months is thus very much still an issue. Also, some of the above problems could probably have been avoided by more informed buyers and owners, but as EV’s as rolled out in large numbers, we can certainly not demand of all drivers to be EV experts. Issues such as the above need to be solved by manufacturers, as spending 12 hours in an unheated car in the middle of winter shouldn’t be the future thrill of driving!

Readers of this blog know of my scepticism towards EV’s, not as a concept but as a solution to climate-related issues. I wrote about this in a recent post you can find here, so I won’t repeat myself. To be fair, things are moving in the right direction at least with regards to some of the issues raised, as I also highlighted in my recent post about Mercedes’s new EQS (see here). It does however remain the case that even if EV manufacturers become climate-neutral in their production, as long as the country they produce in is not 100% based on green energy, what they achieve is basically nothing put pushing the dirty energy consumption on to the next guy.

*Even the steel is said to be climate neutral in a few years in the production of the EQS and other MB EV’s*

There is however another BIG issue around EV’s that no one seems really keen to talk about, namely what on earth we’re supposed to do with the millions of fully functional cars we currently have on our streets, if the plan is to roll out EV’s for all? Don’t laugh, the question risks becoming very real as various European governments start fixing end dates for the sale of new combustion engines. A logical next step is then to start discussing bans on existing cars. But what is the plan for millions of existing and fully functional cars, and even more, what is the carbon footprint of destroying millions of existing cars and building new EV’s? Funnily, this is an aspect that is completely absent from the discussion.

I’m of an optimistic nature so I’d like to think that realism will prevail in the end – a realism that for me needs to be based on a future for traditional mobility – especially (and I’m finally getting to the topic of this week’s post), since traditional mobility doesn’t necessarily mean traditional fuels going forward. The development of so called e-fuels is progressing rapidly, and this week we’ll look at whether they are the solution that will allow for a more reasonable solution to the issue of traditional, personal mobility.

*A new 12-cylinder will never be built, but it would be nice if we could still save the old ones!*

Electrofuels, also called e-fuels or synthetic fuels, are produced exclusively from renewable energy. Without going into the technical details, in the case of car fuel it means producing hydrogen from clean energy, to which CO2, extracted from other sources, is added. The result is emission-free hydrocarbon, and the resulting synthetic fuels are no technically different to conventional fuels. They can thus power the same cars without modifications and also use the existing fueling infrastructure. A further big advantage is that e-fuels don’t compete with food production, a big problem for example with ethanol production that isn’t very compatible with the world’s need to feed another 3bn people until 2050, using less resources. Disadvantages? Unfortunately, there are a few, and they’re rather big.

Firstly, e-fuels don’t solve the issue of clean energy going to its use as long as the full economy doesn’t use clean energy, as you’re basically just pushing the emission onto someone else. As we’ll see below the clean energy used for e-fuels is produced very far away and thus not cannibalizing on anything else, but this is not a viable, long-term concep. Secondly, e-fuels offer far less efficiency than electricity, as long as electricity production is local. This is however an important point given that, as noted, most countries are still not 100% green in their energy production. So either you push the emission problem onto the next user as noted above, or, and this is not unrealistic, we’ll start importing for example solar energy from a sunny place such as the Middle East. If that becomes the case, then hydrogen all of a sudden becomes very competitive in terms of efficiency as it can be transported much more easily. Thirdly and lastly, as you will have guessed, the production process for e-fuels is far from cheap, and it will still take time and probably also some further technological innovations to solve both the cost and thereby also the required scale issue.

*Wind turbines of Project Haru Oni off Chile’s coast*

A number of automakers are looking into e-fuels as an alternative or complement to EV’s, none more than Porsche which currently runs a project called Haru Oni off the coast of Chile (where it’s very windy). They do so together with notably Siemens, and the logic for Porsche is that because of the points above and others, conventional electricity alone will not be enough to move to a clean car fleet fast enough, in view of other – rising – electricity needs in the world. The project is still in its early days but by removing CO2 out of the air through wind power and combining it with hydrogen, it aims to produced 130.000 litres of fuel next year, and 550 million litres in 2026. As a reference, around 23bn litres of fuel were consumed in Germany last year so although a lot, it would take many more such installations to get anywhere near the volume required to make this a viable alternative on a larger scale. The cost so far remains a mystery, but it’s clear that it’s nowhere near being a reasonable consumer alternative at this stage.

So at least for now, it remains at best unclear whether e-fuels will give a future to combustion engines. It’s however good to see that some thinking around fuel alternatives is going on and who knows, as so often before, maybe there will be other innovations along the way that allow for even better solutions in the end. It would however be high time for some realism to enter the discussion around EV’s and our future mobility. It would also be desirable with some political willingness to engage in discussions on where the electricity is supposed to come from in the emission-free world, when many countries in parallel wish to phase out nuclear? This can’t possibly be something only a few engineers at Porsche have thought about? And finally, perhaps someone can tell us what the plan is for the many millions of fully-functioning cars in the world? Reality is slightly more complex than what the current debate would have you believe and the sooner we’re mature enough to engage in a difficult but highly necessary discssion on it, the better.

The Thrill of Driving

Tag: mercedes eqs

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