First Drive in an All Electric Mercedes – Whats Under The Hood?!

To be honest, I used to be the kind of person who had no interest in

electric

cars until I rode one and became a believer. Mercedes has just started rolling its new all-

electric

EQC off the production line and invited Dan and I to Norway to see it from the inside. Let us begin. Mercedes has been around for over a hundred years, and although this is its

first

fully electric vehicle. They have taken that experience and quality that they have gained over the last hundred years and incorporated it directly into the EQC. They're even building the EQC off the same assembly lines they build gasoline-powered vehicles on.

It is all-wheel

drive

with an electric motor in the front and another electric motor in the rear. Taking a look inside the EQC. Leather everywhere. Elegant seams on the sides and many buttons. If you are familiar with driving a Mercedes, you will feel right at home because all the buttons are exactly the same. All aspects of the seat are motorized, along with seat heating and ventilation. And my favorite part about the EQC is that... since it's an all-electric vehicle, it has some details along the sides that mimic electronics, like the fins on a heat sink or the patterns on the circuit board. a motherboard.

The same type of circuits that we see inside mobile phones. We have the same dual screen that we saw inside the G-Class. You know, you have your navigation right here and then your speed and power here. I'll talk about regeneration in a second. And up here we have a small hole in the dashboard where the front screen shines through. And the nice thing about the head-up display is that if you're sitting here, you can't see the screen, but as soon as you're in the

drive

r's seat, that head-up display is placed right in your field of vision. .

The head's up display is something I haven't seen in many other vehicles, but it's right there on the glass, projecting from the dashboard toward the windshield. So you don't have to be distracted by looking around at, you know, your navigation system when it's right there projected in your field of vision. It takes a second to get used to, but it's not distracting...or as much as I thought it would be. But yeah, the quality and attention to detail inside the Mercedes is crazy. Leather stitching throughout. I really like the heat sink and electronic circuit board design on the whole thing on this vehicle.

Coming towards the back of the car. We get the same stylish seats with leather stitching, rear air conditioning and speakers built into the doors. And look at the back. Lots of space for activities. Electricity plugs. The seats fold at the touch of a button. And one of the coolest things I've seen about this car is that if we press this button here, a trailer hitch drops down here at the bottom, which is completely hidden until we press the button again. And it should go back up. It's kind of like the hidden pop-up camera on the OnePlus 7.

Speaking of pop-up cameras, every time we put the Mercedes in reverse, there's a rear pop-up camera sticking out of the Mercedes logo. Very cool. So people aren't going to buy an electric car just to "save the planet." They will only buy an electric car when the benefits exceed those of a gasoline car. And honestly, I think we're at that point where electric vehicles are overtaking gasoline vehicles. They are more powerful, have enough autonomy and the features are better in electric vehicles. Take this example, in the Mercedes EQC, there is something called regenerative braking or recuperation. So instead of using the brake pedal, the car will use its electric motors to slow the vehicle and use that inertia, that energy, to return to the battery.

It's great. So while Dan is driving, on his screen we have this super wide screen of the dashboard right here. We can see that when he accelerates, we have the energy that is being used. And then when you decelerate, we see recovery or regeneration where you're actually charging the battery as you decelerate, rather than using the brake pads. So while we're driving, the front of the two motors is the more efficient motor, and that's what we're using now, but when we accelerate, it activates both motors at the same time. And then when we do regeneration, we use both motors to slow the car down and put power back into the battery.

So, let's say you're driving through a mountainous area and you're at the top of the mountain and you start to descend using recuperative braking, you could end up with more charge in your battery at the bottom of the hill than you had at the top of the hill because charged all the way down, using gravity and inertia to return all that energy to the battery. Which brings me to another advantage of electric vehicles is that they require almost no maintenance. Yes, there is coolant running inside the battery to keep it at an optimal temperature, but it's not something you need to change, like changing the oil in a gas-powered car.

And since it also uses recovery or regenerative braking, brake pads are something that almost never needs to be changed in an electric vehicle. So, there's a reason almost every automaker is releasing electric versions of their vehicles: it's because electric vehicles really are the future. The same kind of cultural change that happened when cars were invented, you know, going from a horse to a car, to a gasoline-powered car, is the same change that occurs from gasoline-powered cars to cars. electrical. The amount of power, efficiency and speed you get with an electric car is much better. Did I get close?

Yes, you were too close! It was beeping at me like dee-dee-dee-dee! Well, when we're charging, there's an 80 kilowatt hour battery in the bottom of this Mercedes, and it lasts about 220 miles, give or take, depending on how you drive. Obviously, more conservative driving equals greater autonomy. And there are more than 300,000 charging points compatible with Mercedes vehicles. And the nice thing about this is that when you put your payment information on the car, it simply bills you once a month for all the charges you make outside of your own home. Now obviously the ideal situation is to be able to charge it in your own home, drive home at night, plug it in and have a full charge ready to go the next morning.

Just like you would with your cell phone. Pretty simple and easy. I think in the past, when people thought about electric cars, they said, "Oh, but on road trips we have to sit and charge forever." This Ionity supercharger network can charge the car in just 40 minutes, which is quite fast. You know, stop for lunch somewhere and then the car will be completely ready to continue the rest of your road trip. Let's see how it works. So while you're driving, when it knows you're approaching a charging station, it will preheat the battery to optimal conditions, so it can receive more power into the battery.

Charging a cold battery takes longer than charging a hot battery. And it's ready for us. So now I can go out to the plug itself. We can grab the plug and plug it in. And now it will tell us that we have 70% of the battery left. And from inside the car, it shows us that we have 71% and it will take us 18 more minutes to charge up to 100%. And then, when you're done charging or have enough power to get to your destination, simply press stop, unplug, and go. So one advantage that electric cars have over gasoline cars is that they are much quieter.

There are no engine noises or revs, and because of that, you can hear road noises a little more. And Mercedes has taken a couple of additional steps to quiet road noise inside the EQC. Behind me we can see the front of the car with the front electric motor, which is the more efficient of the two motors, and then we have the battery compartment in the center and the rear motor. This is the back of the car, and it's inside the wheel cover, so you can see the recycled materials here and the big foam pads to keep the noise down.

And the rear engine here also has a lot of foam around it to keep the engine noise down. Thus, this foam perfectly encapsulates the rear engine. Behind me is the battery pack for the EQC, which is located in the floor of the vehicle because it gives it a super low center of gravity. There are 384 pouch-style lithium-ion cells inside this, which is pretty much the same as what you see inside your cell phone. Each of the individual bags is connected together in a module and then placed into the larger battery pack located beneath the EQC. One thing we've learned from all the cell phone teardowns I've done is that the lithium ion cells, which are inside this battery, can become damaged.

So Mercedes has created this crumple zone around the outside, so that if, for whatever reason, the EQC gets into an accident, the impact will be on it and not the battery itself. Although this is Mercedes'

first

fully electric vehicle, we won't have to wait long for the rest of the models. They plan to have 10 more electric vehicles by 2022, because electric vehicles are the future. So as we drive, the names of the streets and where we should turn overlap. See those arrows that just appear? He is literally telling us to turn down this street. It can see the road in front of us and has a blue arrow on the video feed that tracks live motion and places the street exactly where we need to turn, with arrows where we need to turn.

And it is shown live in real time. Under the

hood

we have this nice, very large plastic cover. So there's no frunk like we've seen in other electric cars. Under this plastic cover we should see some hardware because Mercedes is making this EQC the same way it makes its other gasoline-powered vehicles. Here we see the electric motor inside its own chassis, which is disconnected from the vehicle's frame. And this is to deaden the sound, so that the noise of the engine turning does not enter the cabin because it is an electric vehicle and it must be quiet.

Therefore, electric cars are the future. The car you're driving now may not be electric, but the... but the next one you buy might very well be. My friend Dan here has transitioned to all-electric vehicles. It has been difficult? I mean, we have 3 electric cars, my wife and I drive them, and every day in the city is fantastic. As if they were much better than gasoline cars. I just feel like they are. They're comfortable, fun to drive, and just get up and go. Um, the only time I would say it's kind of a pain is when we go on long road trips, like 10 hour road trips.

The range just isn't as good as I expected. Maybe 400 miles would be good... 500 miles. And also loading takes a little time. So you have to be patient, but I'd say that's only 5-10% of my driving time. The rest is simply the best and I love electric cars. I really don't see us ever coming back. And the more electric cars we see appear in space, the more competition there will be and the more autonomy everyone will have. That's why it's great to see Mercedes, a luxury vehicle manufacturer, launch an all-electric vehicle. The more competition there is with manufacturers, the better it will be for us, the consumers.

If you have any questions about the Mercedes EQC, leave them in the comments. Be sure to check out Dan's video on his channel. He made a list of his top 5 favorite things about the EQC, so check it out here. And yes, thank you very much for watching... Oh, and if you saw any drone shots in this video, I explain a little bit in my video... why... how we got them and it was quite complicated. . Yes, we had a drone... I'm interrupting you! Yeah! Thanks so much for looking. See you there!