The 2022 Mercedes-AMG EQS Feels Both Impressive and Intimidating

The 2022 Mercedes-AMG EQS Feels Both Impressive and Intimidating

Acceleration is overrated. People look at 0-60 and quarter-mile times on a new vehicle and decide whether it’s worthwhile based on that alone. As if every day starts with a morning clutch dump and ends that night when the drag chute is pulled. Life, however, isn’t simply an NHRA class. Other things matter. The 2022 Mercedes-AMG EQS Feels Both Impressive and Intimidating

It’s the other things that make the 649-horsepower 2022 Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 4Matic+ better driving all-electric car, even though its name is way too long and there’s no volume knob for the radio. Also, it’s not cheap. And it weighs a lot. The 2022 Mercedes-AMG EQS Feels Both Impressive and Intimidating

Because electric motors all have the same torque curve – there’s no curve, just torque – there’s a sameness to how electrics drive. A Nissan Leaf isn’t that quick, but it accelerates with the same linear progression of the ridiculously quick Tesla Model S Plaid. They all sound the same – quiet – and there’s never that anticipatory moment when gears change. Electrics all go like they’ve been dropped off the top of Hoover Dam. This isn’t so much a criticism as an observation that the effect of gravity and how electric cars move are similar. The 2022 Mercedes-AMG EQS Feels Both Impressive and Intimidating

But while the AMG EQS (omitting all the rest of the name from here out) doesn’t feel that much different while accelerating than a Tesla, the chassis feels far better sorted, with sharper handling. The EQS's structure feels more substantial, the car's interior has some daring design and the materials used to finish it all are more lavish and detailed. It feels, at least at first, like an electric, and then like a Mercedes. And then it feels like an AMG.

And all the time, it would be better if the outward visibility were better and there was more rear headroom.

As A.J. Baime explained in his gush about the Mercedes-Benz EQS– the “regular” native electric upon which the AMG version is based – there’s a lot of hardcore goodness baked into every EQS. This is Mercedes’ first native-electric platform with, as in the higher-end EQS580, an electric motor at each axle line and a big lithium-ion battery pack filling most of the 124.6-inch wheelbase. That’s a wheelbase only two-tenths of an inch shorter than that of a Mercedes S-Class sedan. The EQS, at 205.3-inches, is also only 2.9-inches behind the S-Class in overall length.

So The 2022 Mercedes-AMG EQS Feels Both Impressive and Intimidating