Mercedes-Benz EQC 400 Review: Electric Dream

Since it's anxiety inducing and the charging infrastructure in Malaysia is a mess, why bother with a half-hearted review of an EV where we drive around the block and call a day?

When Cycle & Carriage Mutiara Damansara reached out to us to experience a Mercedes-Benz EV, it was honestly the first time we even considered it. How much anxiety can you feel in a Mercedes that costs almost RM400k, right?

So, to properly give an EV a go, we agreed and they graciously supplied an EQC to take on a roadtrip to Melaka. The EQC was Mercedes' first mass produced EV and its first fully-electric SUV.

The EQC is based on the GLC—itself a success story for Mercedes—and retains much of the same good looks.

What we really appreciate was the subtlety that Mercedes has designed their first EV with. Unlike KIA or Tesla that go out of their way to over design their cars to knock people over the head that they've got EVs, the EQC's design is understated and mature.

The doors aren't hidden like in a Smart #1, there's no overtly fake grille like the Cherry Omoda 5, and the interior isn't just a big panel like in Teslas—there's physical buttons and levers here! We'd argue a little too many buttons since you can control almost everything on the steering as well as the centre console.

We do have to highlight that screen though as it's bright, sharp, and colourful. It still remains clear under bright sunlight and there's hardly any reflection on it that we can recall. We like the screen and we're sad that the screen in most cars aren't like this.

How much do these screens cost the car manufacturers anyway? When an iPad Air costs RM2,899, how much would just the screen cost?

Speaking of the iPad, the EQC does not have wireless Apple Carplay or Android Auto. We're really confused by the metric here for car manufacturers. How much would it cost to put in wireless CarPlay when you can get it in an RM90k Honda City?

The vent motif circling the front passengers is a nice bit of design that makes you feel safely ensconced in the car. We're not sure if those vents will be easy to clean in the future, but hey, if you can afford this car you have people who can handle that for you.

Internal combunstion engine (ICE) car drivers need to remember one thing: the car is completely silent when you turn it on.

It's weird that all we've ever wanted was to reduce NVH in cars, but when a car starts up without any noise or vibration at all, we feel weird. The car actually displays a notification to tell you the car is on whenever you turn it on.

The car is also heavier than a traditional ICE vehicle and picks up speed fast. Without gears, whenever you lift the throttle, the car disengages and if you're sensitive you can feel the car pull back whenever you lift the throttle.

As the driver, we personally didn't feel this effect but our passenger definitely felt it.

Having driven the C43 and E200 in the past, we're familiar with the joy of driving a Mercedes-Benz and much of that joy is found here as well. Acceleration is smooth and the car feels planted on the highway.

You won't find a hint of NVH here and it's as close to floating on a cloud as you can get. Maybe a tad bouncy over bumps, so you'll need to slow down over speed bumps.

That said, the lack of feedback when you hit the throttle is something that may feel jarring. There aren't any fake acceleration noises here so you'll be going at top speed but there's no audio feedback.

The other thing ICE car drivers should note is the weight of the vehicle. The battery alone weighs 650kg and accelerates from 0–100km in just 5 seconds (the Honda City does that in 10 seconds, so the Mercedes is twice as fast). This means the brakes bite hard and it also takes further to come to a full stop.

It's not as if you'll feel unsafe in the EQC, but you do need to watch accelerating and braking in the car. It's not a big problem, otherwise we'd see EVs in accidents all over the place.

What you get with the EQC is Mercedes' signature luxury, but in an electric package. The SUV isn't exactly made for you to take corners around Genting, but it's comfortable and fast enough for every situation on the road.

Though not exactly fun, what you're paying for here is the feel of driving a Mercedes with an electric motor.

The range of the EQC was advertised as 400km and was eerily accurate. It's about 150km from where we were to our accommodation in Melaka and the battery drain wasn't really affected by how quickly or slowly we drove.

Through spirited (read: over the speed limit) driving and slow crawls (read: jam), the car's on board meter accurately predicted the range we had left. This accuracy is both good and bad.

Good, because you know exactly when you need to charge, and bad because, you'll be thinking about how much you need to charge almost all the time.

We don't think about our fuel because those fuel bars are kind of a nebulous system for telling you how much fuel you have left anyway. Like, you may know vaguely over weeks of use how much range you have per fuel bar in your car, but in an EV, there's no uncertainty in the amount of battery you have left.

Even when the yellow light comes on the dashboard in a petrol car, you'll still think "I can probably make it". When the battery hits 10% on an EV you start cursing every contractor dragging their feet installing chargers.

Speaking of the government dropping the ball once again, it still takes a concerted effort to drive an EV beyond the constraints of the city.

From here to Melaka, there's only 1 EV charging station on the highway and within Melaka, there's only a handful of charging facilities.

If you're not familiar, there are AC and DC chargers and AC Chargers take a few hours to charge your vehicle to full and the DC fast chargers can take up to 20 minutes only to charge to full. It seems like we should only have DC chargers available, but hey, the people in power know better.

To charge an EV, you need to download many apps to find one that you can use with the EV charging facility. Here's what it actually looks like:

1. Download PlugShare to find available EV charging stations near you 2. Create a trip from starting point to end point to find a list of charging stations in your route 3. Filter that by location and by type: AC/DC 4. Then filter that again by what charger is that: chargEV, ParkEasy, JomCharge, and many more in the future

You need at least 4 apps to start with before you can think about charging your vehicle. The entire experience is tedious and unless you live a routined life with predictable stops, charging in Malaysia is a pain. For our two cents, ParkEasy is the worst to use with the ugliest UI. Mind you, all of the apps mentioned are terribly designed and even worse to use.

We haven't even gotten to the mental gymnastics you have to go through at the charging station to actually charge. It feels like you should plug it in and then pay. But you actually have to pay first then plug it in.

There are no clear instructions for how you should charge or pay and there's no way to tell if your car has been charged fully without physically checking in on your car.

Intuitively, you feel like you should be able to tap your credit card and simply plug in the charger and walk away. Instead, you need to have an account, have credit, link a credit card, and do generally cumbursome tasks just to pay someone to charge your car.

All of the charging stations have different methods of billing, some per minute of use and some per kW, and for chargEV that we used, they charge per minute. Even if the battery is full, you'll still be charged for using the station and there's no cap.

All of this isn't the EQC's fault mind you, it's just the reality of owning any EV.

We took about 4 hours to fill the battery from 30% to 80% and it costs us RM52. If nothing else, the EQC helped us realise that in an ideal world, where EV charging was simple and prevalent, we'd all be safely adopting EVs.

For all of the infrastructure failings of EV charging in Malaysia right now, the EQC still provides a model that's worth imitating for car manufacturers.

The EQC provides a great driving experience and overall package with a good range and good battery consumption that alleviates some range anxiety. You can see the ideal future provided by EVs when you drive the EQC, but as it stands, Malaysia has a long way to go before we see mainstream adoption.