The Mercedes-Benz electric fleet: what a quiet car changes, and what it does not

Every class but one now has electric cars in it — Mercedes EQE, EQS and EQV, BMW i5 and i7. Here is what that means once the door closes: the silence, the smoothness, the charging you never see, and the days when we still send a car with an engine.

The first thing most passengers notice about an electric Mercedes-Benz is that nothing happens. The chauffeur closes the door, the car pulls away from the kerb, and there is no moment where an engine catches and settles. People who have never thought about the noise a car makes find themselves noticing its absence somewhere around the second set of traffic lights. This article is about that — what actually changes for you in the back of an electric car — and, just as importantly, about what we manage on your behalf so that the battery is never your concern.

The line-up, class by class

We did not build a separate “green” class. Electric cars sit inside the same three classes as their conventional siblings, at the same prices, and you book the class rather than the model.

• Business Class: the Mercedes-Benz EQE and EQE SUV and the BMW i5, alongside the E-Class and 5 Series. Up to three passengers and three bags.
• First Class: the Mercedes-Benz EQS and EQS SUV and the BMW i7, alongside the S-Class. Up to three passengers and three bags, with the rear seat as the point of the car.
• Van Class: the Mercedes-Benz EQV, alongside the V-Class. Up to seven passengers, captain chairs and walk-in headroom, on a battery.

The Mercedes-Maybach S-Class of our Ultra class is the exception; it is not electric, and it is booked on request rather than first come, first served. Every other class has electric cars in it, and you can ask for one when you book. We have written about the EQS in detail and about the EQV for those who want the individual cars.

What changes for the passenger

Silence, first. An electric car has no engine note to talk over, so a phone call from the back seat sounds like a call from an office, and a conversation between two passengers does not need to be raised at every acceleration. On a five o’clock airport run it also means the car that collects you from a sleeping street does not wake it. The tyres and the wind are still there at motorway speed, but the cabin of an EQS or an i7 at a hundred kilometres an hour is a quiet room.

Smoothness, second. There are no gears to change, so there is no gear change to feel — the car pulls from a standstill in one continuous movement and slows the same way. Our chauffeurs drive gently in any car; in an electric one, with the motor doing much of the slowing as they lift off, the stop-start of the Wibautstraat or the A10 ring at half past eight becomes something you can read through. It is the difference between a ride you notice and one you do not.

Then there is the fact of the thing. An electric car produces no exhaust at the kerb — none outside your front door, none in the canal ring, none in the queue at the school gate. We do not publish emission figures, because a number we cannot vouch for per ride is worse than no number. What we can say with certainty is what the car does not do while it waits for you.

What we manage so that you never have to: charging

The question we hear most about electric cars is some version of “will it need to charge during my ride?” For the rides we send electric cars on, the answer is no. The car arrives charged for the work it has been given, and charging between rides is ours to manage — in the same way that fuel was never your concern in an E-Class. Where an itinerary is long enough that the car would need a stop, dispatch says so when it quotes and offers a conventional car instead. If you have not thought about the battery by the time you reach your destination, that is the intended outcome.

At Schiphol nothing changes at all. The sign in the arrivals hall, the car in the garage nearest that hall and the sixty free minutes after landing apply regardless of what is under the bonnet. Water and chargers for your own phone — iOS and Android — are on board in every car, electric or not.

When a car with an engine still goes out

We are not dogmatic about it. There are rides where a conventional car is the better tool, and dispatch will choose it without fuss.

• Long distance. A door-to-door day to Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt or Munich is many hours of motorway, and the best version of that day has no stop that is not yours. For those routes dispatch may send an E-Class, a 5 Series, an S-Class or a V-Class so that the schedule holds from the first kilometre to the last.
• Multi-day arrangements. A chauffeur staying with you across several cities and several nights is planned around your itinerary, not around chargers, and the car is chosen accordingly.
• Availability. On a busy day the electric car you would prefer may already be on another ride. You have booked a class, and the class you booked is what arrives; where we can, we also honour the preference.

Say at booking if the powertrain matters to you — for a sustainability report, a client who has asked, or simply because you like the quiet — and dispatch will tell you honestly what it can commit to. Our long-distance service across Europe explains how those longer days are planned and quoted.

Choosing between them

For a working day in Amsterdam — Schiphol to the Zuidas, a meeting in the centre, back to the hotel — Business Class in an EQE or i5 is the sensible booking: quiet, comfortable and priced from €80 to Schiphol. When the ride is part of the impression, First Class in an EQS or i7 adds the rear-seat room and the calm that the flagship cars are built for, from €90 to Schiphol. When there are more than three of you, the EQV carries the group with the same silence. In every case the price is fixed at booking, the chauffeur is professionally dressed and English-speaking, and there is no meter and no surge.

Electric cars have not changed what we do. They have changed how it feels from the back seat, which was always the part that mattered.

Questions, answered

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