Test drive: Charging pains road-tripping in the Mercedes EQS SUV

It was a simple plan: Drive 238 miles from the Chicago suburbs to Stevens Point in central Wisconsin for a summer night with the guys; then drive 168 miles to Summerfest in Milwaukee to meet my lady, before driving 78 miles back home that night in time for next morning’s work flight. Total trip over 36 hours was 484 miles. 

Our noble horse was the road-trip friendly 2023 Mercedes EQS SUV 580, a posh three-row electric SUV that cruises so smoothly and effortlessly we would hardly be tempted to stop at a cheese shop. But even this lovely weekend warrior with 285 miles of EPA range was not up to the charge as effortlessly as in a gas vehicle. 

Now that early adoption has become mass adoption—EV sales accounted for 7.2% of all new cars sold in the first half of 2023—we’re still dealing with a nascent public-private patchwork infrastructure.

If time is money then road-tripping in an EV in the wide open spaces of Wisconsin was akin to sitting in traffic. 

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

Leg 1: NW Suburbs to lake house in Rudolph, Wisc.

  • Actual distance: 238 miles

  • Estimated remaining range at takeoff: 245 miles

  • Estimated battery charge at takeoff: 86%

An Electrify America (EA) DC fast-charger in Madison, Wisc., should have been our first stop if we did what every other EV owner does and map out our charging routes in advance. The Mercedes trip planner showed that this stop would add 45 minutes to our trip. 

But if we’d stopped there to charge, I’d have to charge in the morning at a Level 2 before heading back to Milwaukee, then DC fast-charge again in Milwaukee before going home late that night after the fest. 

I didn’t want to charge three times. That’s about two hours of charging time, including driving out of the way to reach chargers near malls or Walmarts that are not nearly as convenient as roadside gas stations. Two hours of charging over a 36-hour trip amounts to 5.5% of my holiday spent charging. 

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

The gas equivalent would be one 10-minute stop to fill up an all-wheel-drive 2023 Mercedes GLS 450, which has an EPA-rated range of 476 miles. It only gets 20 mpg combined but its truck-like 23.8 gallon tank would let me do the whole trip with one stop, wasting less than half a percent of my holiday weekend. 

We went rogue. Mercedes’ alluring Hyperscreen might have lured us into a false sense of belief, like all the stimuli of a Vegas casino. Three screens, including a central touchscreen, cover 56 inches of dash under a single pane of glass. The information in the trip display, the estimated range, the available charger lists and their max outputs, the crystal clear graphics and overall intelligence teased us into making a smart bet. 

Lesson one: Never leave EV charging up to chance.

The display showed four Level 2 charging bays near Stevens Point, about 20 miles shy of our destination. It would be close, but we could make it there. The other driver, piloting a Chevy Tahoe and bemused by our calculations and manipulations, agreed to pick us up there and take us back to the lake house. We could leave the EQS there to charge overnight to full, he’d drive me back in the morning. I’d only have to charge twice. 

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Leg II: Coloma, Wisc., to lake house  

  • Actual distance: 109 miles to charger

  • Estimated remaining range at decision point: 131 miles

  • Estimated battery charge at takeoff: 39%

The Mercedes EQS SUV 580 trip planner urged us to return to Madison, and bumped our ETA back three hours. Since range estimates are calculated on driving behavior over the past few hundred miles or so and subject to adjustments based on highway speeds, outside temps, cabin temps, we couldn’t be as cavalier as in a gas car with operable pumps at expected places. 

Once we set the Level 2 charger as our new destination, the system estimated a cushion of nine miles remaining once we got to the charger. That was too thin of a cushion. The estimate stayed the same whether we stayed in Eco mode with the air conditioning limited, or in Comfort mode. 

Welcome, charger anxiety. 

Another option appeared. The graphics listed 0/2 of 50-kw chargers available near enough to our destination. But we had no idea if the stations were operable, and without someone to contact on location, as you could at a gas station, we couldn’t leave it up to chance.

There was a 50-kw station listed at a Chevrolet dealership about 50 miles from our destination. We called, and the service center tech said he thought it was operable since he saw a car out there earlier. 

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

It was a Flo charger, out of Canada, with two open and operable ports. We sat on the curb in the shade under an eave of the dealership, and my zen navigator had a couple beers while we restored 22% of charge at 47 kw in about 35 minutes. 

Now that I accepted that I would charge three times, and I had enough buffers built into the next two legs, I relaxed. Or capitulated. I wanted it to be what the government and Tesla and automakers are promoting and promising: a charging experience as seamless as filling a tank of gas.

We’re not even close. I’ve been a proponent of electrification since late 2010, when the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid and Nissan Leaf electric hatchback came to market. My dad praises his Bolt EV; my brother talks about his Ioniq 5 as much as his three sons; my sister and her husband just swapped their Tesla Model 3 for a Rivian R1T. My siblings have both road-tripped in their EVs and they both agree it’s a pain. 

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My buddy and I eyed the gas station next door, with its bathrooms and rotisserie hot dogs and Ding Dongs and air conditioning, and wondered: How hard is it to install electric chargers in place of gas pumps? Why wasn’t capitalism working for EV charging?

Turns out it is. It’s silly expensive for an owner-operator to charge cars. Four vehicles charging at once could cost an owner $250,000 in utility fees, according to CNN’s interview with Jigar Shah, head of energy services at Electrify America. For DC fast-charging networks, demand charges at peak-use times such as summer holiday weekends can further drive up costs businesses incur from electric utilities, not to mention the steep installation costs. 

Some gas stations are adopting it however; as of last October, Kum and Go had chargers at 35 of 400 locations. Pilot and Flying J travel centers are opening 500 DC fast-charging stations rated at 350-kw as part of a collaboration with GM and EVgo. TravelCenters America has begun installing 350-kw DC fast-chargers in partnership with Electrify America this year, with 200 sites planned for the next five years. 7-Eleven plans to have the largest charging network in North America, and it’s already operating in four states. 

But we’re not living in the future. And it remains to be seen how the vast swaths of this country between metropolises will be covered. 

Leg III: Stevens Point to Electrify America in Milwaukee

  • Actual distance: 139 miles to charger

  • Estimated remaining range at decision point: 227 miles

  • Estimated battery charge at takeoff: 80%

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

Road-tripping in an EV requires a different approach, more calculated, more patient, more tolerant. The next morning the EQS SUV charged to 80% on a 62.5-kw-rated ChargePoint charger at an auto mall between Nissan and Ford dealerships in Stevens Point. Car dealers carried the charging mantle for me in Wisconsin, which ranks 27th in the country with only 70 available DC fast-charging locations. 

A couple road-tripping to Door County in a Nissan Leaf sat out their charge with a planned picnic, their dog running around in the shade of a grassy island. That’s how to do an EV road trip. 

The Nissan Leaf is a great talisman to show how far electric vehicles have come in a little over a decade, starting with a range of 73 miles back then and topping out now at 212 miles. It carries over for 2024, but it has all but reached obsolescence.  

Range anxiety was overcome with larger battery packs and ranges well exceeding 200 miles now. The Lucid Air Grand Touring has an EPA-rated range of 516 miles. How big is too big? What are the environmental costs of these huge battery packs?

The Washington Post recently joined a chorus of other voices asking these questions. 

“The U.S. Department of Transportation says that 95.1 percent of personal trips are less than 31 miles…and the average U.S. driver covers about 37 miles per day,” WaPo wrote on July 7. “The vast majority of big batteries will never be used — particularly if the owner has a place to plug in their car every day.”  

You don’t have a place to plug in every day on a road trip. Not now. With range anxiety addressed, we now have to address charger anxiety. Until charger anxiety is quashed, the interim answer is large battery packs with plenty of range. They’ll be favored by people who take longer trips and don’t want to have different cars for different use cases. 

Larger battery packs will soon be replaced by more energy-dense battery packs utilizing solid state batteries. The technology is evolving so quickly and we’re just at the beginning. No matter the pack size, however, the infrastructure needs to catch up. 

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV 580

The EQS SUV averaged 2.8 miles per kwh, which is good for an electric three-row SUV traveling at an average speed of 61 mph. It performed more efficiently than the majority of EV’s I’ve driven, and did a great job dispelling as much anxiety as it can control. 

What it can’t control is the problem.  

The EA charging station’s 10 bays were nearly full on a summer Saturday afternoon. More EV owners are taking more road trips, presumably. The future is almost now. But patience is required. The two bays that were open, the only two 350-kw ports, were inoperable.

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