Mercedes-Benz: EQS arrives with a comprehensive charging concept

With the presentation of its first all-electric luxury sedan EQS from a new electric platform announced for August, the car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz has also announced further changes and services in charge management. For example, the Plug & Charge function is to be available at public charging stations suitable for the technology, where the charging process starts when the charging cable is plugged in, similar to Tesla, and no further authentication is needed. Communication between the vehicle and the charging station takes place directly via the charging cable. As before, me Charge customers will benefit from the integrated payment function with automatic payment and debit process, even abroad.

In addition, the provider wants to ensure charging with green electricity. Electricity from renewable energies is a significant factor in the lifecycle of an electric car to avoid CO2 emissions. This is because around 50 percent of the CO2 footprint of a battery-electric vehicle is incurred during the usage phase with the current EU electricity mix, due to CO2-laden charging processes. Green charging is possible at all over 200,000 public charging points of Mercedes me Charge in Europe. In detail, the manufacturer uses certificates of origin for the "greening of the charging process", whose quality is defined by a green electricity label. This ensures that an equivalent amount of electricity from renewable sources is fed into the grid for charging electric vehicles. This, in turn, creates incentives to invest in renewable energy systems, according to the argumentation.

Currently, the Mercedes charging network comprises 500,000 AC and DC charging points worldwide, of which over 200,000 are in Europe. Here there are over 400 different operators of public charging stations, whose charging points the customers of the manufacturer’s charging service have access to with a single contract, as advertised.

Bidirectional charging in Japan: EQS as intermediate storage

In Japan, bidirectional charging will also be possible with the electric sedan, meaning charging in both directions. The local charging standard CHAdeMO ("Charge de Move") supports bidirectional charging, which is the prerequisite for applications such as V2G ("Vehicle-to-Grid") and V2H ("Vehicle-to-Home"). Thus, the EQS could serve as an intermediate storage for electricity from a home photovoltaic system or supply power to the household in the event of a public power grid failure.

The EQS will be launched shortly after the conventional S-Class, but it is based on a new, scalable E-architecture with its own design and space concept. The EQE and the SUV variants of EQS and EQE are to follow in quick succession. For the electric flagship, ranges of over 700 km (according to WLTP) are promised. Wheelbase and track width as well as all other system components, especially the batteries, are to be variable thanks to the modular system kit.