Mercedes unveiled its Vision EQXX concept earlier this year as an experiment in making the most efficient long-range EV possible. Now, the company has shown its work, taking the EQXX on a marathon trip during which it did 626 miles on a single charge. Upon arrival, Mercedes says it still had 86 miles of indicated range.
Getting that far on a 100-kWh battery wasn't easy. While it's only about a hundred miles further than what a Lucid production car can do on a charge, each mile of extra range is harder to achieve than the last. For the EQXX, the most dramatic and notable reason for its endurance is the seriously sleek design. Mercedes claims a drag coefficient of just 0.17, a shockingly low figure. That's thanks to an extendable defuser that cleans up airflow at the back, a tight cabin, and a passive battery cooling system that requires zero redirected air in normal operation.
All of that enabled the EQXX to handle over 600 miles of driving on public roads—complete with traffic, mountains, and unrestricted autobahn sections where the car hit 87 mph—with record-low consumption. Mercedes said the EQXX consumed 8.7 kWh per 100 km, roughly half that of a Tesla Model 3. The company claims an absurd 95 percent total efficiency, which means 95 percent of the energy from the battery reaches the wheels and is used for propulsion. And while traditional EVs are already pushing 90 percent, Mercedes points out that the jump from 90 to 95 percent efficiency requires cutting energy losses in half.
Of course, this isn't a production car, so it should be more efficient than real road-going consumer cars. But Mercedes says that many of the technologies on-board, ranging from efficiency-focused diffusers (rather than downforce-generating diffusers) to passive battery cooling and in-house motor tech, will be coming to Mercedes production vehicles.
