TG's best electric concept: the Mercedes Vision EQXX

What is it?

It’s what the Germans call a stromlienwagen. Streamlined-car. The Mercedes EQXX answers the question ‘what would a C-Class look like if its absolute priorities weren’t tedious inconveniences like parkability, packaging, or the need to look as inoffensive as possible so we sell a sodding heap of them?’

This is as aerodynamic as it’s possible for a four-door saloon to be. Well, apart from the mirrors. How did they slip through the wind-tunnel unnoticed?

Anyway, if you’re going to make a battery-powered car as efficient as possible when it comes to long-distance range, the slipperier the better.

Give me some details about the Mercedes Vision EQXX.

Improved battery chemistry means the 100kWh unit powering the EQXX is half the size and weighs a third less than the monster cell buried in Merc’s own EQS. It’s 95 per cent energy efficient – even AMG’s champion F1 hybrid V6 is ‘only’ 50 per cent efficient. Nous from the British-based Mercedes High Performance Powertrains is shot through the EQXX: thermal energy from the drivetrain is harvested to warm the cabin, similar to how Lewis’s racer turns heat into electrical boost.

Good for 6.2 miles per kWh, this four-door teardrop is twice as efficient as the best current EVs.

Why should I care about the Mercedes Vision EQXX?

Mercedes has for some time nursed a dream to build a car capable of cruising from Beijing to Shanghai on a single charge. That echoes the design brief of the Audi A2 – to take four people from Stuttgart to Milan on one tank.

These days, the money buying luxury German saloons comes mainly from China, so the soundbite benchmarks have shifted. The EQXX claims a nice, round 1,000km endurance, or 620 miles. Deeply impressive. Pity Shanghai is a 745-mile schlep from the Chinese capital…

Still, London to Edinburgh and back to the Midlands without visiting a charging station? Admirable. This car definitely has a longer range than your bladder.

Why did you give the Mercedes Vision EQXX an award?

Because it’s very easy to become blasé over concept vars. Car that just exist to grab a few headlines and allow designers to come up with cars that couldn’t possibly be sold or crash-tested or parked in the real world.

But the EQXX isn’t actually all that pie-in-the-sky. Carmakers have been using aerodynamics to make cars more efficient and faster for almost a century. The EQXX just takes those traits and maximises the results with 21st Century design solutions.

It’s the most range-anxiety-proof car it’s possible to make in 2022. And it’s lessons from this that are much needed if the transition from a fossil-fuelled road transport system to a battery-powered one is going to be as smooth as all governments would like to think it will be…

For the full story pick up the Electric Awards issue of Top Gear magazine