Mercedes EQE Review & Prices

This is the latest in a growing line of electric saloons, the Mercedes EQE. It’s a car to consider if you’ve shopped around for a Porsche Taycan or Audi e-tron GT.

If the Mercedes EQS is Dr Evil of Austin Powers fame, the Mercedes EQE is like Mini-Me. It’s a near-identical clone of the big luxury car, albeit cut down to a smaller scale.

It’s perhaps to a fault just how similar the EQE is to its larger counterpart. It’s remarkably close upfront, with near-identical headlights and bumper. Even down the side, it has the same not-quite-coupe, not-quite-traditional-saloon silhouette.

As standard, you’ll be able to have the Mercedes EQE AMG-Line with 19-inch alloy wheels. Higher-spec AMG Line Premium and Premium Plus will get 20- and 21-inch units, while Exclusive Luxury trim gets a more subtle 21-inch design.

The shrunken EQS theme continues to the back with its LED lightbar, gloss black diffuser and slight spoiler on the boot. It’s not exactly an exciting looking car, and being so close to the EQS doesn’t do it many favours, but it’s certainly not offensive.

Hop inside the Mercedes EQE and you’re met with fake leather upholstery. Go for a Luxury car though and you will get Nappa leather. 

Dominating the dashboard of some continental EQE cars is the huge Hyperscreen infotainment system, though this is not yet confirmed to be coming to the UK. You’ll need to make do with a smaller system, but more on that shortly.

Mercedes EQE 300 AMG-Line cars that will be coming to the UK will get subtly pinstriped wood inserts on the dashboard, though it also gets ambient lighting surrounding the dashboard for a bit of a classier feel.

As for the screens, there’s a 12.3-inch digital driver’s display while the central system measures at 12.8-inches and contains Mercedes’ fantastic MBUX infotainment tech. This is super responsive and has the rare inclusion of a genuinely decent voice assistant in a car.

If you’d prefer to mirror your phone, both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are supported, too.

You’ll be able to seat three in the back of the Mercedes EQE, though you might want to keep this to two adults at most. The backrests are tilted quite high and because the seats have been mounted low, there’s not a whole lot of space to stretch your feet out.

Headroom in the back isn’t all that generous either. It’ll be fine for kids for sure, but taller adults might find it quite tight — especially with the sunroof blind closed. 

As for boot space, the Mercedes EQE gets 430 litres. That’s a touch better than the Porsche Taycan’s 407 litres and Audi e-tron GT’s 405 litres. However, both of those cars have extra storage under the bonnet — which the EQE doesn’t offer.

In the UK, you can currently only order the Mercedes EQE in 300 guise, or in expensive AMG EQE 53 form. The 300 comes equipped with a single motor producing 245hp, with a claimed 0-60mph time of 7.3 seconds. The AMG 53 model gets two motors, four-wheel drive, and 625hp. 

Other markets will get the 408hp Mercedes EQE 500, but no word on if or when that will be coming to these shores.

Both versions use the same 90kWh battery, though. In the EQE 300, this is claimed to return as much as 384 miles. Realistically though, that figure will likely be closer to the 300-mile mark in real-world driving. The AMG version manages a claimed 290 miles between charges. 

Where the Mercedes EQE best excels is out on the motorway. Its super-supple air suspension makes light work of bumps, and its cosy front seats are a great place to chew miles up.

It’s not going to be the last word in fun, though, coming in quite heavy and wafty. If you’re wanting a more involved drive, the Porsche Taycan will be the way to go.

Ultimately, the Mercedes EQE is a car to consider if you’re looking for a tech-filled electric way to chew miles up and down the country. Just don’t expect it to turn that many heads.

If you want to get a Mercedes EQE, you can through carwow, as well as other Mercedes models. You can lease a Mercedes through carwow as well, while you can get used Mercedes models here too. To help you change your car altogether, you can sell your car, where you can get carwow's trusted dealers to get you the best price for your car.

The EQE is billed as an electric E-Class, but it’s significantly more expensive than Merc’s traditional saloon mainstay. In fact, a basic EQE 300 is around £20,000 pricier than even the plug-in hybrid diesel version of the E-Class. Then again, you are getting genuinely cutting-edge battery and electric tech, and way more range than anything else on the market can currently offer (aside from the Tesla Model S, but while you can order one of those at the moment, Tesla won’t confirm a price until closer to the delivery date). 

It’s more affordable than an Audi e-tron GT by around £10,000, but then the e-tron GT is not really the EQE’s direct comparison. That will come in the shape of Audi’s all-new A6 e-tron, but we won’t know more about that for some time yet. Interestingly, a basic Porsche Taycan has almost exactly the same starting price as an EQE, but is less roomy inside and has considerably less range unless you opt for the bigger, more expensive battery (it is quite a bit faster than the EQE though).

You could spec a smaller Tesla Model 3 up to almost EQE price, and it offers about the same range but for the same (slightly less, actually) money it will have four-wheel drive and more power, plus access to the Tesla-only Supercharger charging network, which is very handy. 

Perhaps it’s best to think of the EQE as an EQS for less cash — the two cars share the same battery, motor, and infotainment technology, as well as a common chassis, but the EQE is around £25,000 less than an equivalent EQS.

The EQE is super-smooth and refined, although the standard suspension isn't as good as the optional and expensive air suspension

In town

There are a lot of expensive options for the EQE, but one of the best and the one you really should consider is the Airmatic air suspension. That comes as standard only with the pricey AMG-Line Premium Plus and Exclusive Luxury models, but it is worth the outlay as it makes the EQE pretty much as comfortable and smooth as the bigger EQS luxury electric saloon. Mind you, the standard model on steel springs is pretty decent — you will feel some lumps and bumps around town, but it’s not too bad. The EQE also has quite a good turning circle, so tighter streets and car parks aren’t a major issue, but rear visibility isn’t great, thanks to that swooping roof line. 

The light, direct steering and decent forward view help though, and there is a fantastic camera and sensor setup to help with parking, and an optional self-parking system too. The EQE’s brakes are much better than those of the EQS as well. Although they’re still a bit strange, and the electric regenerative braking still actively pulls the pedal away from your foot as it works — which never stops feeling weird — the EQE has a much more natural and sharper braking feel than the EQS, so you feel less like you’re going to pile into the back of the car in front. The head-up display is very useful, especially if you’re trying to navigate your way through an unfamiliar town, but it’s standard only on the top two trims.  

On the motorway

Here’s where the EQE really comes into its own. Again, the optional air suspension really helps, keeping the big electric Merc absolutely rock solid even at the sort of silly-high speeds you can legally do on German Autobahns, but with just enough flex left in it that the car never feels uncomfortable. Equally again, the standard steel springs are just fine, although you will notice things like expansion joints a bit more. 

Refinement is spectacularly good, as that low aerodynamic shape means that there’s hardly any wind noise and Mercedes has done a very good job of eliminating tyre noise too. Get up to those Autobahn speeds and you’ll drain the battery pretty quickly, but at UK speeds things are a lot more sensible, and the EQE should stick to around 300 miles of range on one charge even with lots of motorway miles. The electronic driving assistants — radar guided cruise control and lane-keeping steering — are both among the better of their kind, tracing a fairly straight path between white lines and not panicking if another car pulls in front of you. The automated speed limiter is also handy, but check to make sure that it’s reading the right speed limit sign — at one point, we noticed the EQE read a much lower limit on a slip road and started to suddenly slow down on the motorway.

On a twisty road

On tighter roads, the EQE loses out to the far-sharper Audi e-tron GT and Porsche Taycan, both of which feel considerably more nimble and responsive than the Mercedes. The EQE is hardly disgraced (and the AMG model is pretty explosive, to be fair) but it’s more of a floaty, boaty thing than a back-road blaster.

Roomy up front, a little less so in the back

Practicality

There is plenty of storage space in the front of the EQE, thanks to big door bins, and almost endless cubbyholes on the big centre console. The front armrest has a split, side-hinged ‘butterfly’ lid and there’s lots of space for phones, wallets, water bottles etc. Underneath the central screen, there’s a lidded storage area with adjustable cupholders, a wireless phone charger and USB sockets, and under the centre console itself there’s another massive storage space, open at the sides, with yet more USB connections. Honestly, you could store a stack of encyclopaedias down there. There’s also a reasonable glovebox. 

The front seats are excellent, and have that traditional Mercedes trick of being firm enough to support you on long distances, but still with just enough squish that you feel they’re luxurious. There’s plenty of adjustment in the seat and the steering wheel, and we like the way Mercedes puts the electric seat adjusters up on the door, where you can see them rather than having to fumble around down at the sides of the seat. The only drawback is that in models without the full-width ‘Hyperscreen’ dashboard, the front-seat passenger is just left with a big slab of wood trim — it feels like maybe Mercedes could have put another storage area in there, which would have been more interesting.  

Space in the back seats

The rear of the EQE is a little more mixed than the front. Again, if you’ve gone for the air suspension then you’ve got the same exceptional ride quality and the same sense of silent refinement, which is lovely. Overall space isn’t too bad and there’s acres of legroom even for the tallest of passengers in the back. 

The standard panoramic roof does rob a bit of headroom, though. It’s not too bad if you have the sun-blind open, but close it and taller people will find that their hair is brushing the roof. The combination of that arched roofline and the bulky front seats can also make the back of the EQE feel a little bit dark, especially compared to the more airy rear seat of the bigger EQS. An odd thing is the angle of the rear seat backs — unlike in an E-Class, where the rear seats are just nicely reclined, the EQE’s seats feel kind of bolt-upright, and there’s no option of reclining them nor adjusting them. It’s not terribly uncomfortable, but it does feel a bit odd. 

You will struggle slightly to fit three people in the back, too. The flat floor does help in that regard, and the cabin is wide enough, but the way the back seat is sculpted means that there’s not a lot of room for someone in the middle. That flat floor, and the low-mounted seat, also means that taller passengers will find that their knees are sitting up higher than they might like, and there’s not a huge amount of space to get your feet under the front seats. 

Boot space

The EQE’s boot is actually on the small side. 430 litres is reasonable, but it’s not fantastic and it's dwarfed by the 744 litres that a Tesla Model S offers. You can fold the back seats, to expand the space to 895 litres but the EQE definitely suffers a bit from having a separate boot, rather than a fastback hatchback like the bigger EQS. You do get tie-down points, and a useful little netted-off area at the side, but there’s quite a big loading lip. The rear seats split in 40:20:40 layout, which does help with overall practicality, but when you fold them the floor isn’t totally flat so long items will slope upwards as you shove them in. The EQE also suffers from not having a front-boot (froot?) unlike the Audi e-tron GT, the Porsche Taycan, and the Tesla. The nose of the EQE, like that of the EQS, is actually totally sealed off, and doesn’t open at all — there’s just a little pop-out flap on the side for topping up the screen wash.

Terrific quality, sporty style, unimpressive screen

You can’t actually buy an EQE with the massive, full-width Hyperscreen dashboard at the moment, which is a shame as it’s wildly impressive with three big screens (one is for the front-seat passenger) under a single glass panel. Doesn’t bear thinking about how much it would cost to repair a broken one, of course…

For the moment, all EQEs come with a separate 12.3-inch digital driver’s display, and a big, square 12.8-inch infotainment screen that reclines back at an angle in the centre of the dash. There are hardly any physical buttons in the cabin, as even the ones on the steering wheel are touch-sensitive pads — and very fiddly they are, too. The big screen is much better to use than the steering wheel buttons, and the angle at which it sits seems to make it less visually distracting when you’re driving.

The menu layout is pretty sensible, and the heating and air conditioning controls are always displayed at the bottom, no matter what the rest of the screen is up to. There’s a little fingerprint scanner button at the bottom, which allows you to recall your pre-sets for the heating, sat-nav, sport or comfort settings, and even driving position which the car works out for you based on your height. The scanner is a bit hit-and-miss, though — we often had to log into the system with a four-digit pin instead. 

The optional head-up display is great, especially in how it adds big blue arrows for sat-nav directions, and those are mirrored on the centre screen where the system can actually overlay those arrows on a live picture from the forward-facing camera, so you never miss a turn. That camera also includes a traffic light function, flashing up a display which shows you a high-set light that might just be outside your line of vision otherwise. Meanwhile, the digital dials have several different display styles, from full sat-nav map to classical analogue dials, to a futuristic sports setting. 

Overall, quality seems to be very good — as you’d expect from Mercedes — but the corners of that big, wooden dashboard panel are a bit creaky, which isn’t so confidence inspiring. The style of the dash is nice, though. We don’t often talk about air vents but the way the central vents are almost hidden in the top of the display looks neat, while the ones at the outer edges look like jet turbines. There’s also an ambient lighting system that not only allows you to pick different cabin lighting colours, but can even switch colours disco-style as you drive.

While that swoopy body means that the EQE isn’t the best-looking EV around, its low aerodynamic drag does mean that it’s one of the most efficient. That means that the EQE can extract serious mileage from its big 90kWh battery. Fully charged, Mercedes claims that you can go for 384 miles in the EQE 300. You might not quite manage that, but even with a long day on mostly motorways, we managed to get 300 miles out of an EQE before it needed to be recharged.

The standard single motor, with 245hp, has adequate performance but no more than that, although the smooth instant urge of the motor makes it feel a bit more brisk than it really is. You can fast-charge the EQE at up to 170kW, which means you can add as much as 264 miles of range in a 30-minute charger from a sufficiently powerful public charging point. Slower chargers will take time to top up that massive battery, though. 

Clearly, the EQE AMG 53 is going to be much, much faster than the standard 300, and a 0-62mph time of just 3.5secs (that’s Ferrari Roma pace…) proves the point. It’ll only do a claimed 290 miles on a charge, though and that will fall much further than that if you’re on an Autobahn… 

Both EQEs are currently free when it comes to road tax.

The EQE hasn’t yet been crash-tested by Euro NCAP, but the larger EQS — which shares all of the EQE’s basic structure — has and it scored five stars out of five, with a 96% rating for adult occupant protection. The EQE will likely be in the same ballpark, and Mercedes’ reputation for making safe cars is arguably second only to Volvo’s.

The Driving Assistance Plus Package brings tech including radar-guided cruise control, active lane-keeping steering, a side-impact system that uses the air springs to raise the car up and away from an incoming impact, automatic speed control, traffic sign recognition (which also picks up red lights), and emergency steering assistance that helps you to swerve away from danger. It’s standard on all but the basic AMG-Line model.

Mercedes is clearly confident in the EQE’s battery — most other car makers offer an eight-year battery warranty, but the EQE’s stretches to ten years, and 155,000 miles. The rest of the EQE comes with a standard three-year, unlimited-mileage warranty with a 30-year warranty against perforation from corrosion, and three years’ roadside assistance. 

The EQE and the technology it uses are both very new, so it’s tricky to judge how reliable a car it will be in the long-term. On the upside, Mercedes has a generally solid reputation for reliability. On the downside, that reputation was tarnished on occasion from the early 2000s until quite recently by some models that were too flaky or poorly built. We’ll have to wait and see what kind of Mercedes the EQE really is, but the initial quality of the cars seems to be encouraging — added to which, electric cars have fewer moving parts so, electronics aside, there’s less to go wrong.