A rare look at Mercedes-Benz’s first next-gen electric car: Concept EQ

We haven’t had the chance to get a very good look at Mercedes-Benz’s Concept EQ, its first next-gen electric car (its first EV built to be electric from the ground up).

The vehicle serves as the basis for the first Mercedes EQ vehicle, Daimler’s new electric car brand, but the concept hasn’t been around much. Now we get the chance to see it move thanks to a Youtuber.

The all-electric SUV will be called ‘EQC’. The prototype is equipped with two electric motors on the front and rear axles for a total power output of up to 300 kW. Mercedes says that it will be able to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h (0 to 62 mph) in under five seconds.

The German automaker says that its battery pack has a total capacity of over 70 kWh for a range of ‘up to 500 kilometers’ (310 miles). Of course, that’s based on the NEDC standard and the real-world range or EPA-rated range would be expected to be significantly less – around 250 miles.

Daimler is part of the group of 5 major automakers joining forces to deploy 400 ultra-fast (350 kW) charging stations for electric vehicles in Europe and the ‘EQC’, which is supposed to hit the market in early 2019, is expected to take advantage of the network.

Youtuber ‘WHAT’S INSIDE? FAMILY’ was invited by Mercedes to hang out at a production shoot for the vehicle’s concept and managed to grab some good footage of its features:

Forget the clickbait headline (that’s Youtube for you) and what the guy says about the specs because that’s misleading, but it’s actually a rare and pretty good look at the upcoming vehicle:

Electrek’s Take:

I hope that the production version loses at least 90% of those LEDs. It’s just ridiculous. Earlier this month, I spent a few days in the Bolt EV and I was already getting annoyed by that blue LED strip running all the way along the dash.

Legacy automakers have that weird tendency to add LEDs to everything when it comes to electric vehicles, even though it’s tacky and most people don’t like it – or at least not that many of them.

Other than that, it actually looks like an awesome electric SUV, especially the roof and the doors look gorgeous.

But of course, it’s still only a concept and we expect that the production version will lose a couple of those more high-tech features.

Nonetheless, we are pretty excited by the upcoming launch of the EQC. It’s truly Mercedes-Benz’s first electric vehicle. They brought a few things to market in the past, like the electric B-Class, but those vehicles were built to be gas-powered and were later modified to incorporate an electric powertrain, at one point even built by Tesla.

So now it will be their first opportunity to really show what they can do in the EV space.