Gadgetory

Full disclosure, I used to be the type of guy who had zero interest in electric cars until I rode in one and became a believer. Mercedes just started rolling their brand new, all electric, EQC off the production line and invited Dan and I out here to Norway to check it out from the inside. Let's get started. [Intro] [Music playing] Mercedes has been around for over a hundred years, and even though this is their first all electric vehicle. They've taken that experience and that quality that they've obtained over the last hundred years and put it right into the EQC. They're even building the EQC off of their same assembly lines that they build the gas powered vehicles on. It's all-wheel drive with one electric motor in the front and another electric motor in the rear. Taking a look inside the EQC. Leather everywhere. Fancy stitching on the sides, and a lot of buttons. If you're familiar with driving a Mercedes, you're going to feel right at home in this cuz all the buttons are the exact same. Every aspect of the seat is motorized, along with heating and ventilation of the seats. And my favorite part about the EQC is that it's...since it's a fully electric vehicle, they have some detailing along the sides that mimic electronics, like the fins on a heat sink, or the circuit board patterns on a motherboard. The same type of circuits we see inside of cell phones. We have the same dual screen that we saw inside of the G-Class. You know, you have your navigation sitting right over here and then your speed and power over here. I'll talk about regen in a second. And then up here we have a little hole in the dash where the heads up display shines out of. And the cool thing about the heads up display is that if you're sitting here, you can't see the display, but as soon as you're in the driver's seat, that head's up display positions itself right in your field of view. The head's up display is something that I haven't seen in a whole lot of other vehicles, but it's just sitting right there on the glass, projected from the dashboard onto the windshield. So you don't have to be distracted looking around at, you know, your navigation system when it's just right there projected in your field of view. It does take a second to get used to, but it's not a distraction...or as much as I thought it would be. But yeah, just the quality and the attention to detail inside of the Mercedes is insane. Leather stitching everywhere. I really like the heat sink and the electronic circuit board design all throughout the theme of this vehicle. Coming around to the rear of the car. We have the same fancy leather stitch seats, rear air conditioning, speakers built into the doors. And check out the back. Plenty of room for activities. Power outlets. The seats fold down with just a simple button press. And one of the coolest things that I've seen about this car is that if we press this button here, that drops down a tow hitch down here at the bottom, which is completely concealed until we press the button again. And it should go right back up. It's kind of like the hidden pop up camera on the OnePlus 7. Speaking of pop up cameras, any time we put the Mercedes in reverse, there's a rear pop up camera that sticks out of the Mercedes logo. Pretty cool. So people aren't gonna buy an electric car just to “save the planet.” They're only going to buy an electric car when the benefits outweigh those of a gas powered car. And honestly, I think we're at that point where electric vehicles are taking over the gas powered vehicles. They are more powerful, they have enough range, and just the features are better on electric vehicles. Like take this for example, on the Mercedes EQC, there's something called regenerative braking, or recuperation. So instead of using the brake pedal, the car is going to use it's electric motors to slow the vehicle down and use that inertia, that energy, to put back into the battery. It's pretty cool. So while Dan is driving, on his display we have this super wide dashboard display right here. We can see when he accelerates, we have the energy being used. And then when he decelerates, we see the recuperation or the regeneration where it's actually charging the battery as he's slowing down, instead of using the brake pads. So while we're driving, the front of the two motors is the more efficient motor, and so that's what we're using right now, but when we accelerate, it engages both motors at the same time. And then when we do regen, it's using both motors to slow down the car and put power back into the battery. So let's say you're driving through a mountainous area and you're up at the top of the mountain and you start coasting down using the 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 it charged up the whole way down, using gravity and inertia to put all that energy back into the battery. Which brings me to another perk of electric vehicles, is that there's hardly any maintenance. Yeah, there's coolant running around inside of the battery to keep it an optimal temperature, but it's not something you even need to change out like changing your oil on a gas powered car. And since it uses the recuperation, or the regenerative braking, also, brake pads are something you almost never need to switch out on an electric vehicle. So there's a reason pretty much every single car manufacturer is coming out with electric versions of their vehicles, it's because electric vehicles really are the future. The same type of cultural shift that happened when cars were invented, you know, going from a horse, to a car, to a gas powered car, is the same shift that's coming from gas powered cars to electric cars. The amount of power, efficiency, and speed that you get with an electric car is just that much better. [Music playing] [Dan] Did I get close? [Zack] Yeah, you were way too close! [Dan] It was beeping at me like dee-dee-dee-dee! [Zack] Okay, so when we're charging, there is an 80 kilowatt hour battery in the bottom of this Mercedes, and it is good for about 220 miles, give or take, depending on how you're driving. Obviously more conservative driving equals longer range. And there are over 300,000 charging locations compatible with the Mercedes vehicles. And what's cool about it is that when you put your payment information in the car, it just bills you once a month for all the charging you do outside of your own home. Now obviously the ideal situation is to be able to charge in your own home, drive up to your house at night, plug it in and it has 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 were like, 'ah, but on road trips we have to sit and charge forever.' This Ionity supercharging network can charge the car in just 40 minutes, which is pretty quick. You know, stop for lunch somewhere and then the car is completely ready to go for the rest of your road trip. Let's see how it works. So while you're driving, when it knows that it's coming up to a charging station, it will preheat the battery to the optimal conditions, so it can, you know, receive more power into the battery. Charging a cold battery takes longer than charging a warm battery. And it is ready for us. So now I can come out here to the plug itself. We can grab the plug and plug it in. And now it'll tell us that we have 70% battery left. And from inside the car, it shows us we have 71% and it's going to take us 18 more minutes to charge all the way up to 100%. And then when you're done charging, or you have enough power to make it to your destination, just hit stop, unplug, and you're good to go. So one perk that electric cars have over gas powered cars is that they are so much more quiet. There's no rumbling engine or revving, and because of that, you can hear the road noises quite a bit more. And Mercedes has gone through a couple extra steps to quiet down the road noise inside of the EQC. So 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. So this is the rear of the car, and this is inside the wheel covering, so you can see the recycled materials here and the large foam pads to keep the noise down. And the rear motor back here also has a lot of foam around it to keep the motor noise down as well. So this foam perfectly encapsulates the rear motor. So behind me is 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 of this, which is kind of the same thing you see inside of your cellphone. Each of the individual pouches are all wired together into one module and then placed into the larger battery pack that goes underneath the EQC. One thing we've learned from all the cellphone tear downs I've done is that lithium ion cells, which are inside of this battery pack, can be damaged. So Mercedes has made this crumple zone around the outside so if, for whatever reason, the EQC does get in a wreck, that gets the impact and not the battery itself. While this is Mercedes first fully electric vehicle, we won't have to wait long for the rest of the models. They plan on having 10 more electric vehicles by the year 2022, because electric vehicles are the future. So as we're driving, it overlays the street names and where we need to turn. See those arrows just pop up? It's literally telling us to turn on this street. It can see the road in front of us and it has a blue arrow on the video feed that does live motion tracking and puts the street exactly where we need to turn, with arrows where we need to turn at. And it shows up live in real time. So underneath the hood we have this very large nice plastic covering. So there's no frunk like we've seen in some other electric cars. Underneath this plastic covering we should see some hardware because Mercedes is manufacturing this EQC on the same lines that they're manufacturing their other gas powered vehicles. So here we see the electric motor right here inside of it's own chassis, which is disconnected from the frame of the vehicle. And this is for sound dampening so that the noise of the spinning motor doesn't enter inside of the cab because it's an electric vehicle and it's meant to be quiet. So electric cars are the future. The car you're driving right now might not be electric, but the one...but the next one you buy could very well be. So my buddy Dan here, he has transitioned to all electric vehicles. Has that been hard? [Dan] I mean, we have 3 electric cars, and my wife and I both drive them, and every day around town they are fantastic. Like they're way better than gas cars. I just feel like they are. They're comfortable, they're fun to drive, and they just get up and go. Um, the only time when I would say that it's kind of a hassle is when we go on long road trips, like 10 hour road trips. The range just isn't as good as what I would hope. Maybe 400 miles would be good...500 miles. And also charging does take a little bit of time. So you have to be patient, but I would say that's only 5-10% of my driving time. The rest of it is just the best, and I love electric cars. I don't see us ever going back really. [Zack] And the more electric cars we see showing up in the space, the more competition there will be, and the more range they'll all have. So it's great to see Mercedes, a luxury vehicle manufacturer, coming out with a fully electric vehicle. The more competition there is with the manufacturers, the better it is for us consumers. If you have any questions about the Mercedes EQC, leave them down in the comments. Make sure to check out Dan's video over on his channel. He made a list of his 5 favorite things about the EQC, so check that out right here. And yeah, thanks a ton for watching... [Dan] Oh, and if you saw any drone shots in this video, I explain a little bit of that on my video...why...how we got those and it was pretty tricky. [Zack] Yeah, we had some drone.... [Dan] I cut you off! [Zack] Yeah! Thanks a ton for watching. We'll see you around! [Music playing] [Nature sounds]