PARIS MOTOR SHOW: Mercedes-Benz Generation EQ

After more than two decades nibbling at the fringes of the electric-car market, the world’s oldest car-maker is about to attack it with everything it’s got.

While Daimler has had the smart electric drive on its books since 2007, it will soon have a fleet of pure electric Mercedes-Benz-branded cars, and the Generation EQ will be the first.

The groundbreaking concept car is said to be closer to production-ready than most Benz concepts and it debuts everything from Benz’s new battery-electric brand to its powertrain and chassis strategies.

With up to 300kW of power and 700Nm of torque, Benz claims the Generation EQ concept will be able to stretch to 500km of driving between recharges, even as it pulls beyond 100km/h in less than five seconds.

It uses high-density lithium-ion batteries from its subsidiary, Deutsche Accumotive, to give it more than 70kWh, while its chassis uses a mix of steel, aluminium and carbon-fibre.

All of its major technologies, from its lithium-ion battery pack to its chassis and suspension architecture, will be scalable from small to large cars, making the four-seat Generation EQ the harbinger of Benz’s electric future.

Like BMW’s i brand, the 'EQ' badge will stand alone as Mercedes-Benz’s battery-electric division, creating not just a range of cars but a unified collection of all its electric operations that Benz dubs its “electric mobility ecosystem”.

The EQ badge will sit on everything from the cars themselves to wallbox chargers to home-based lithium-ion energy storage units.

“In 2007, the e-smart was a pioneer of electric motoring,” Daimler CEO, Dr Zetsche, said.

“We’re now flipping the switch. We’re ready for the launch of an electric product offensive that will cover all vehicle segments, from the compact to the luxury class.

“The mobility of the future at Mercedes-Benz will stand on four pillars: Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electric. Generation EQ is the logical fusion of all four pillars.”

Zetsche promised the Generation EQ’s core engineering pieces could (and will) easily transfer to SUVs, sedans, wagons, coupes, two- and four-seat convertibles and more.

With help from the HERE digital mapping organization it owns with Audi and BMW, Mercedes-Benz will make the EQ further down the road from electronic driver assistance systems towards fully autonomous driving.

It also bends the HERE mapping with a new 3D digital interface that highlights chosen destinations, showing only those buildings that are important to help the driver navigate.

But it won’t just be its on-board capability that helps, even though Benz claims the EQ will know the curve, radii and surface characteristics of every corner and roundabout it’s about to drive on. It is also fitted with Car-to-X capability so it can take information from other vehicles, buildings and infrastructure.

The Generation EQ is part of a wave of electric cars that show European carmakers are finally seeing the zero-emission powertrains as economically viable. That doesn’t mean they were sitting idly by and ignoring the technology, though. The first two generations of the A- and B-Class hatches were designed with a sandwich floor to take a battery pack, which they never did on a broad basis on cost grounds.

With the success of Tesla, BMW about to flesh out its two-model i range and both Audi and Volkswagen arriving with near-production electric cars, Daimler has really been left with little choice but to declare that the time is right. The other driving factor is the EU7 emissions regulations that will make engineering a diesel passenger car in 2021 every bit as expensive as engineering a battery-electric one.

“The emission-free automobile is the future,” Dr Zetsche proclaimed. “And our new EQ brand goes far beyond electric vehicles.

“EQ stands for a comprehensive electric ecosystem of services, technologies and innovations,” he insisted.

Dr Zetsche insisted infrastructure, and not just economics, had come to battery-electric vehicles, with the introduction of the European standard Combined Charging System (CCS), with between 50kW and 150kW of charging capacity.

It is pre-engineered for 300kW, which would be enough to deliver 100km of battery range inside five minutes, and Porsche even has an 800kW charger in development to make “refueling” times similar to fossil-fuel cars.

Visually, the new car is surprisingly clean, thanks in part to being shorn of traditional door handles and replacing exterior mirrors with cameras.

“Generation EQ is hot and cool,” Daimler design boss Gorden Wagener claimed.

“Its fascination lies in a reinterpretation of our design philosophy of sensual purity, the aim being to create an avant-garde, contemporary and distinctive electro-look.

“At the same time, the design of the visionary show car, which has been reduced to the essentials, reveals an alluring progressivity,” he explained, with only partial success.

It clearly combines SUV stances and philosophies with a more sporting rear end, and the rear three-quarter view does have touches of Porsche Cayenne about it.

Riding on 21-inch wheels, the Generation EQ loses the traditional Mercedes-Benz grille (whose cooling properties it no longer needs) in favour of a black panel grille insert flanked by LED lights.

The asymmetrical cockpit focuses on the driver, which is a bit odd for a car with an autonomous future.