Mercedes EQE 300 - long-term review

This is not going to make pretty reading for Mercedes. I called up a Mercedes dealer pretending to be a disgruntled EQE customer wanting out of electric. I wanted to know what my car was worth as a trade-in against a new E-Class estate. Bear in mind this EQE 300 is a fully loaded Premium Plus with a list price of £86,345. When I made the call it was three months old and had covered 4,500 miles.

“I’m prepared to be frightened,” I told him. “Just as well, things are pretty frightening out there for EVs at the moment,” came the reply filling me with confidence, “let me have a word with my manager and see what we can do.”

Let’s not tease this out: the answer was £45,000. “That’s the best I can do, we’ll only be able to shift it on at £47-49 grand.” I’ll come on to discuss whether there are bargains to be had in the used EQE market, but first let’s deal with that depreciation, because I’ve never seen anything like what’s going on in the premium EV market at the moment. It’s a bloodbath. The EQE has lost getting on for £500 per day. Let that sink in, because it is horrifying.

If you need some perspective on that, try this: every watt of electricity it has consumed covering those 4,500 miles comes to £823.01. I’d worked out that due to high electricity prices it was no more financially economical than a petrol doing 34.7mpg, and that had shocked me. But this? Wow.

What’s going on here? Distrust of EVs and range anxiety, government rowbacks ruining consumer confidence, high purchase costs, and business users that bought EVs as a tax dodge and are now flooding used ones back onto the market. It’s everywhere you look: Taycans for under £50k, e-tron SUVs for half that. Feeling brave? How about a four year old Jaguar I-Pace for £22k? None have done many miles, most look immaculate.

But even against that, the EQE has plummeted. Should you buy now, bag yourself a bargain? I don’t think so. I’m afraid EQE values are only going one way for the foreseeable future. Cars that are already down around the £25k mark, those e-trons and I-Paces, they currently look like better buys. I suspect that’s where the EQE's depreciation curve will level out too.

Put simply, the EQE – like many, many other electric cars – is way too expensive when new. Launched into a market experiencing a cost of living crisis, it was on a hiding to nothing from the get go. I feel sorry for all these marques that have been unstitched by market conditions, government wavering and infrastructure underinvestment. But equally, they needed to arrive with the right product.

Was that the EQE? I don’t think so. One of the other questions I asked Merc was ‘who is the car aimed at?’, because it leaves me a bit cold this bloated, mildly futuristic E-Class. And all Merc could tell me was that it’s aimed at “luxury customers with a high interest in technological progress”. Which is what everyone says about everything these days. I look at it alongside Audi’s handsome e-tron GT (which isn’t much less practical) and think it’s a missed opportunity.

Merc has already said the EQ badge is heading for the skip. I doubt we’ll be seeing a facelifted EQE in the meantime. I don’t want this to be the farewell, so I’ll write another report summing up life with the EQE, its ups and downs. But this is a very, very big down.