You get this welcome back to another video, and today we are testing out the brand new Mercedes Benz eqa, the baby EV for Mercedes Benz Ive, been driving in absolute silence. Ive been good to the Earth. Ive used. No combustion fuels, although people will keep saying yeah, but in order to run your EV, do you need s com to be burning fuel and all of that to be able to produce your electricity. But when you have load shedding and escom isnt giving you electricity, they arent actually burning any fuel. So maybe we are doing something good by driving these cars, but if you cant get them charged through a solar station, thats even better, so this eqa is based off of the GLA, but all theyve done is remove everything to do with the combustion engine and have Included everything to do with EV, so youve got batteries. Youve got an electric motor youve got a drivetrain to support. All of that and youve got all of the smart Tech to be able to make this EV as amazing and as cool as what it is, and the great thing about driving an EV is that youve got all of your power and torque at your right foot. At any given time so when you put your foot down, it goes theres no waiting for engines theres no waiting for turbos to spool nothing. It just goes so speaking of it just going. This EV is powered by a hundred and forty kilowatts and 375 Newton meter motor to a 66 kilowatt hour battery, so its not the most impressive stats from an EV point of view.

When you look at what there is available from EVS. But when you look at what this car is its its an eqa, its your entry level into the EV game from a Mercedes Benz point of view, and even from an EV Market, its going to be in South Africa, they arent a lot of other EVS around That are the size, small and compact, so it could be a good consideration if you are looking at getting into the Ed space. This is a front wheel, drive car, so your electric motor is mounted onto the front axle spinning those Wheels. Only you dont have the 4matic system, unfortunately, but you do get that in the other eqs this ones bigger brother and sisters, and thanks to the 66 kilowatt hour battery, you should get a range of about 370 kilometers off of a full charge. Mercedes Benz do say 400 kilometers on the site and the things that they claim, but when I did fill this at Samson recently, its kind of it gave me a full kilometer range of about 370 odd. So I think again, depending on your driving, depending on your environments, where youre going if youre going around town open roads and all that it has a massive effect on it. Even the weather, so whats pretty cool is that if you go onto the Merck website, you can actually see how much range you could potentially have available so theres, a cool slider that if you swap it between driving on country, roads or in Suburban areas, cities and Highways, the weather outside, and all of that it actually gives you a predicted range that you can get out of the car, but in order to get the most out of your battery, this car does have a regen system too.

So for me, thats whenever I drive an EV thats, the first thing that I switch on because I think its one of the coolest feelings was theres, not something that you get from a a normal combustion car. So what it means is that you can drive with one pedal. So when you are accelerating you go forward, but then, when you take your foot off of the accelerator, the car kind of breaks itself, because the motor is then working in Reverse. So its slowing you down but at the same time its recouping that energy and putting it straight back into the battery for you. But if the feeling of regen isnt for you and you prefer a normal Driving Experience, then you can use the pedals. So, as Ive said, this is based off of the GLA, so that steering wheel has pedals and you would normally change the gears with those, but because this is a electric motor you dont have gears. So what theyve now enabled these pedals to do is allow you to switch between the region breaking and generic driving. So at the moment, when I click the plus pedal, I put it into normal driving. So when I take my foot off of the accelerator, the car kind of slows down like it normally would. But if I use the minus the regen braking kicks in and I slow down to a it would be to a stop but Im currently going downhill.

But you get the idea. Another cool system that they built into this car is the thermal architecture, so the battery system and the motors produce a lot of heat so its in order to cool those batteries down and that sort of thing um. They pull that heat away from that system and push it into the car. So when you are wanting to heat up your system here, you generally would use a lot of battery power to do that, but instead the cars warming itself up so its taking heat that it would have normally made anyway and instead of wasting it and dumping it Out of the car theyre using it to heat up the car so again, youre using less of your battery power and more of whats being produced naturally, and then, from a safety point of view, you can get the full flat drop Safety Systems. Here too, you can get your lane keep assist your lane, departure your Ford Collision warning adaptive cruise control and all that sort of thing I mean its an EV, its a smart car. It needs to be doing all of those things. Ive also got blind spot monitoring here: reverse camera with Park sensors, but I dont have a 360 camera system. Although I think that is something that you can spec and then onto the drive quality, its a really nice drive. You do have additional weight in the car because of all the batteries, so it does feel a little bit more planted into the ground.

Um theres, not a lot of swaying going on, so it feels quite sporty too, but they fitted this with 20 inch wheels. So theyre not very forgiving when going over bumps and humps, and things like that, so you do tend to feel that shutter through the cabin quite often but hey, they look damn cool and then the driving position is also quite comfortable. Your steering wheel again its based off of the Gia, so its comfortable youve got everything you need around. You youve got quick access to your climate control down here. They have kept it separate. So you dont have to dig through your uh, your infotainment, to be able to access those settings and things like that. But obviously your settings do display on the screen, but you are able to adjust and change it accordingly. At the switch of a button, youve got comfortable armrests on each side. Here, both the soft touch, materials and padding. So your elbows are living their best life theres, just something so oral about driving an EV. You get this Music, its so futuristic its so cool man. So you do obviously miss the rumble and Grumble of a combustion engine, but I think this is just a different Driving Experience, so youre not yet to expect those sort of sounds you had to take in everything thats an EV, so you know the the instant talk. The quietness um the heavier planted vehicle because of the battery so yeah its a really enjoyable Driving Experience and then continuing with a look around the inside of the cabin, its obviously still a Mercedes Benz.

So youve got soft touch materials all over and because its an EV is what man made leather. So this isnt traditional cowhide that youve got around the cabinet. Its man made so youre. Staying with the the EV theme of trying to save the Earth and save the planet, so what youre sitting on is man made leather, its comfortable? I didnt think that it was man made and then I was there to believe that it was so thats a good sign, but it is all over the cabin across your dash across the front of your doors here on the sensor console and on the armrests. All the way into the back too so the back doors, the back seats and everything like that. You also have this black material across the entire of the cabin, so it does make it nice and dark and premium and luxury inside here, which is quite cool and because its quite dark theyve. Also given you a panoramic sunroof. So it takes up almost the entire length of the roof here, so theres heaps of light that comes in and if you need to close it just swap the button and again because its a Mercedes, Benz youve got ambient lighting the best in the game. Ill advocate for it every day, um, so youve got the same color systems and patterns that you would have in all of the other cars. So if you arent going for the multi colors, you can also choose from 64 individual colors to find the perfect Hue.

For you, the seats that Im currently in here are all manual, so I have to adjust moving it Forward backwards up and down the backrest, and all of that. So these arent automated but Im pretty sure that you can actually spec it with electric seats with program functions and all of that which you know when youre driving Mercedes Benz thats. What you want and then continuing with a look around the Dasher youve, also got these turbine lock vents that people have become familiar with to find their Mercedes Benz, which are really cool. I really like these. Its probably one of my favorite sets of aircon vents that you can get in the car. Well, if I could have a favorite, these are them, and especially with the ambient lighting, how I chance through them. It really looks cool at that and in front of me, Ive got two tennis displays. Ive got one for my entertainment and Ive got one for the drivers display when looking at the entertainment chair youve got access to your Maps, your settings, everything from your ambient lighting and your comfort, uh theres heaps of stuff that you can do through the screen on The left hand, side um, you also on the drivers side, have options to a whole bunch of different themes so from your sports and standard and a whole bunch of others, its quite cool. So you can change this and make it quite personalized to you as a person and a driver and in order to navigate through your entertainment, you can either do it through the touchscreen or you can do it through this.

Pretty cool touchpad down here with a whole bunch of quick access buttons too, so you can quickly get access to your cameras. Your vehicle settings, as well as your maps and radio and media youve, got your volume control as well, so quick access to your volume. Instead of having to try and figure it out on the screen too so thats pretty handy, but right at the center, you have almost like a mouse fan or like a track pad, so you can navigate through the different options on your screen simply by swiping. Your fingers and keeping it so thats quite cool, so you can also do that on this multi function. Steering wheel too youve got buttons on the left hand side here to do your infotainment, your home screen with a little mouse sensored mouse cursor. If you want to call it that, so by flicking your thumb across this it, it moves to the different functions on this. So you can access your infotainment through the steering wheel down here at the bottom or because its got phone mirroring. You can also just connect Apple carplay and enjoy everything from your phone and because youre driving an EV youre driving the future. You should have futuristic settings and things to look at. So there is a specific EV function that you can connect to here on the screen and its pretty handy, because you can check all of your things to do with the battery.

So you can check your consumption rate. You can see where your power is coming from. At any, given time, are you charging the battery? Are you regening the battery? Are you putting power back into it? Are you using battery power uh? What else is nice is that you can actually search for your closest charging point so theres a whole bunch of uh ones that pop up here it is connected now so itll pick up any of your closest charging points that you can, which is quite handy. You can also plan routes, so you can plan how long youre going to need to get there. Your charging points in between and all of that is also displayed on your dash in the frontier. So, at any given time you can see how much power youre using when accelerating. And if you take your foot off the accelerator, it shows that the needle is not in the regen phase. So it shows that youre charging the batteries which is quite cool. So again, a very different visual Driving Experience when it comes to an EV, its, not your traditional combustion engine, so yeah its a lot of fun to play with too with it being a Mercedes Benz. You also have voice assistant so by simply saying, hey Mercedes. How can I help cheers? Will you close the sunroof plan Im closing the roller sunblind on the sliding sunroof Music, so yeah theres a couple of things that you can do with the voice assistant? So it is quite handy, but I do find it questioning a lot of the things that I say: hey Mercedes.

How can I help please open up the driver window? Can you say that again, Music? Please, please open up the drivers window Im! Sorry, but I cant help you with it right now, but it doesnt often understand the requests I make, but hey, maybe its a South African accent who knows down in the center console just about your quick action buttons too. If you have a little bit of storage and if you open that up youve got two cup holders as well as wireless charging for your phone and then on to some other storage. You do have a glove box too, which is actually quite big. Its a little shelf to plunk some extra additional things as well. The door bins are also really nicely sized, so you can fit and US childish water bottle in there. If you need and theyre decent designs in the back too and then underneath my left arm, Ive got this comfy armrest. That opens up with quite a nice big cavity down here too, with some additional USBC charging points. Room in the back is also surprisingly good. Um Im quite tall, and I do fits in there quite comfortably so thats impressive and you do have a sense of almost that comes down with cup holders and a little spot to pass your cell phone or tablets, or anything like that. Headroom in the back is also pretty good uh. You do have the panoramic roof, so when it opens, it allows a little bit more space for your head as well.

For my head so yeah I do fit pretty comfortably back there and then theres living with an EV. So now you find yourself in a position where your batterys down youre at about 10 remaining. You need to go, find the charger. So if you are able to find a 150 kilowatt fast charger, um a DC one, you should be able to get from around 10 to 80 full in about 30 minutes. And then, if you find a 60 kilowatt rapid charger uh, you should be able to also get to that 80 capacity uh in about 50 minutes and then theres your conventional wall box that you would probably have installed at home if you do own an EV and That would probably be about an 11 kilowatt charger, so you might want to plug your car in overnight because it could take up to or a little bit more than about nine hours but thats fun, because youve come home from work. Youve plugged your car in its charging overnight you wake up. In the morning you get dressed, you get into your car, your batterys full Music. Unless youve had a little bit of load shedding, I mean load shedding isnt nine hours so, regardless of, if its a four hour slot a two hour slot, whatever it is, youre still getting a decent amount of hours to charge your car, so youre not going to Wake up in the morning with a dead battery, thats thats just cant happen, so I wouldnt really let s com and load shedding affect your decision to get an EV too much okay and then onto the looks of this eqa, and I must say, the EQ range Really looks nice to me: you get this flat gloss black front grill up front.

Obviously, you do not need the slats to let in additional air, because theres no engine that needs to be cooled down, so theyve kept it quite conventional looking, but by adding the gloss black front, I think it makes it look a lot more sophisticated and sporty. You also have the LED high performance headlights as one is. This LED strip that goes across the top of the headlights and when your lights are on, it actually goes across the whole of the front of the car. So it looks really really cool and then coming down the side. Youve got these 20 inch optional Wheels, which look really really nice um. It almost gives this car like a a race car toy bar when youre looking at it through pictures its its really nice. The side profile is also quite cool, um, its a squat short little SUV looking car, so I dont know it really appeals to me and in the silver I mean you, cant go wrong with a Mercedes Benz installed the canyon and then at the rear. Youve also got this LED strip light that goes across the back and when it illuminates it, it really makes the car look extra wide. So it gives it a lot more girth when that light is on and yeah whats wrong with having a dirty car from the back, the water, the bitter sorry about that and then on to pricing. So this eqa starts at 1.

16 million Rand, which is a lot of money for a car. But when you look at the tech and the research and development that goes into an EV, I think its understandable. In the long run, you might be saving some money on fuel, but thats in the very long run um but yall. I think for the price, the car that it is but yeah, I think, for the price of the car, for what the car is. The performance uh, the technology that youre getting, I think its warranted the next closest competitor to this in pricing, would be the would be the BMW ix3, its slightly more expensive, but not far too much more expensive. So I think, at the end of the day, then it comes down to are you a Merc fan or a BMW fan? Okay, so weve now come to the end of the review and its time to do the gdr test. So should you get the car? Should you drive the car, take it for test drive, or should you remove it from your list of cards that youre looking at and I would definitely go drive the car go see if its the right car for you, as Ive said there are other EVS in The markets that are around this price point, so I wouldnt necessarily say, go and get this car, but it is a small compact, completely EV vehicle. There arent a lot of them out in South Africa at the moment, but I think theres a lot more coming.

But if you do need to watch the space, especially with the likes of Peugeot Citron Kia, I think theyve got a lot of plans coming up. Oh and theres, a bowl with that little small Aura thing, Im, not sure what it is, but I know that thats, probably coming and thats, probably going to be a fraction of the cost of what this is. So I would go ahead and drive it go see if you enjoy the EV life. Are you willing to always want to go charge? The car, which I think isnt a massive hassle because if youre going shopping you just plug it in you also get preferential parking right up front forgot to mention that so yeah go drive, the car go enjoy it.

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