We drive a gilded lily: The 2024 Mercedes-AMG EQE SUV

A couple of months in the past, we examined out Mercedes-Benz’s EQE SUV, the German automaker’s latest midsize electrical car. It was a stable performer—not precisely thrilling however snug and outfitted with one of many business’s finest infotainment programs. Now it has been given the AMG therapy, labored over by Mercedes’ in-house tuning division. There are some refined styling tweaks, suspension upgrades, and new AMG-specific electrical motors that improve energy to 677 hp (505 kW). But has the makeover from Affalterbach managed to infuse extra pleasure into the EQE SUV recipe?

You can inform you’re trying on the Mercedes-AMG EQE SUV and never the common Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV in a couple of various methods. The black panel on the entrance is new, with chromed vertical strakes that recall to mind the radiator grilles on air-breathing AMGs. The entrance bumper is sportier, and gloss black accents are used instead of chrome, in addition to on the aerodynamic bits like the varied air vents and diffusers.

There’s an AMG badge on the hood instead of the same old three-pointed star, and the spotlight of the AMG therapy, to me at the very least, was the black 21-inch AMG alloy wheels, which come wrapped in EV-specific Michelin Pilot Sport tires. But general, the tweaks are refined and unlikely to be seen by a informal observer.

If you disassembled an AMG EQE SUV, on the entrance and rear axles, you’ll discover barely totally different completely excited electrical motors to those that propel the common EQE SUV, with new windings and laminations. Modified inverters and a larger present translate to a larger motor pace, and there is additionally elevated cooling—together with a liquid-cooled rotor shaft—to permit for repeated laborious acceleration with out operating into thermal issues. There’s additionally a customary warmth pump.

Power and torque peak at 677 hp and 738 lb-ft (1,000 Nm), though solely within the “race begin” mode—successfully launch management—with the enhance perform lively. Without the enhance, energy is capped at 617 hp (460 kW) in race begin and sport+; sport mode offers you 555 hp (414 kW), consolation limits this to 493 hp (368 kW), and do you have to want the slippery-surface setting, the AMG EQE SUV restricts you to simply 308 hp (230 kW)—50 % energy.

The battery consists of 360 lithium-ion pouch cells, with an AMG-specific wiring harness and energy-management software program. It has a usable capability of 90.6 kWh, and it may well DC fast-charge at as much as 170 kW. Charging occasions and an EPA vary will not be out there till nearer to the automobile’s arrival within the US in Q3 2023, nonetheless. Driving on a mixture of again roads after which the freeway from San Diego to Santa Monica, I averaged about 2.5 miles/kWh (24.9 kWh/100 km).

Yet extra work has been carried out on the suspension. The AMG EQE SUV has new adaptive dampers, wheel carriers, suspension hyperlinks, and electromechanical roll bars that may be decoupled for consolation or stiffened to enhance dealing with, relying on one’s temper. As you would possibly count on, the suspension is firmer in sport and sport+, which additionally lowers the experience by 0.6 inches (15 mm). (This additionally occurs in Comfort if you happen to exceed 75 mph/121 kmh.) Mercedes has additionally chosen to suit rear-wheel steering as customary for US-spec AMG EQE SUVs; this will steer at as much as 9 levels, turning with the course of the entrance wheels above 37 mph (60 km/h) for better stability, and in the wrong way to the fronts beneath that threshold to extend agility.

On roads and highways in California, the AMG EQE SUV’s experience felt noticeably stiffer than the conventional EQE SUV, notably over enlargement gaps. There was a truthful quantity of street noise, too, though in sport and sport+ modes the powertrain makes growly noises that remind you you are driving one thing with a lot of oomph. And it does have loads of oomph in these modes—simply sufficient to pin you as a passenger to the again of your seat ought to the motive force give it full throttle. In a racing begin with the enhance, you may count on to hit 60 mph in about 3.4 seconds.