The Mercedes Vision EQXX has officially raised the bar (again) for the electric car range in 2022.
The “road legal research prototype” – which is marketing to speak of a concept car – recently broke its own endurance record after traveling 747 miles (1,202 km) on a single charge from Stuttgart to the Silverstone race circuit in UK.
The premium automaker had already squeezed 1,008 km (626 miles) from its EQXX Vision electric vehicle (EV) during a two-day trip between Germany and France, but the car’s latest range record sets an even more impressive benchmark for Mercedes and other EV manufacturers in the years to come.
The EQXX Vision was first revealed at the CES 2022 as a project designed to “explore new frontiers of efficiency” for Mercedes, but despite being a concept vehicle on paper, the car comes very close to being a full production model.
Fundamentally, it features a scaled-down version of the battery found in the Mercedes EQS – one with physical size and weight reduced by 50% and 30%, respectively – that focuses on providing range over power.
Thus, the Vision EQXX can only gather a little inspirational 0-62 mph (0-100 km/h) acceleration time of 7 seconds and a top speed of around 87 mph (140 km/h) – but its range value of 1200 km is twice that of a Tesla Model S using the same amount of energy.
We spent some time this weekend with the new Mercedes EQXX, with a longer feature on how this new concept came about soon – but there’s a palpable sense of pride at Mercedes with the distance it’s managed.
Impressively, the Vision EQXX’s most recent run was also run in much warmer conditions – around 30°C – suggesting that an alternative, less demanding route may have resulted in an even greater range value.
While Mercedes isn’t releasing the EQXX as a production car anytime soon – explaining to that making it production-ready would take years, where this project was conceived and launched in 18 months – consumers I can expect a variation of its battery technology to appear in upcoming Mercedes EVs (and we’re sure something like this hyper-efficient vehicle will hit the roads in the future).
In the short term, the automaker will add a little more weight (read: power) to the batteries of its upcoming production-ready models, though it’s a sure bet that the EQXX’s industry-leading lineup will remain at the forefront of Mercedes. thinking as it strives to go all-electric by 2030.
