[Pacific Auto Network Review Channel] When I went to Germany to report twice, I took the opportunity to take a day to go to the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart to collect materials. In the four German century-old museums in Baden Württemberg and Bavaria in southern Germany, the

It is precisely because of Betha's support that Mr. Mercedes-Benz finally brought car products to the market and opened up a new era.

The right side of the picture below is Benz Model 1, and the stronger on the left is Benz Model 3. The building behind is Carl-Benz Gymnasium Ladenburg, Germany. This is the place where Mr. Benz made his fortune and eventually died. It is located in the northeast of the starting point of the Betha Memorial Road.

For us car fans, Mercedes-Benz is not just a luxury brand, it does not just symbolize wealth and status. More importantly, this brand symbolizes brave attempts and support from family.

However, the public always stubbornly believe that successful brands will always be addicted to the glory of the past, and establish their "starship" in their hearts again and again in their hearts towards the rare products of their museums.

In everyone's impression, traditional car companies are so prevalent, but in reality, the Mercedes-Benz Museum has a large number of new energy research and development cases. For example, the BMW and Audi next door have also developed new energy for nearly half a century. Porsche Dr. Porsche built the world's first hybrid car in 1900, and General built the electric lunar rover used by Apollo in the 1970s...

As mentioned earlier, the Mercedes-Benz Museum is both tiring and tiring, because there are many concept car exhibits that have not been displayed in China. Mercedes-Benz has made very extensive explorations of new energy in the past half century, such as hydrogen fuel internal combustion engine cars, hydrogen fuel cell cars, pure electric supercars, hybrid cars, and solar car .

The greatest thing about Mercedes-Benz is that , as the inventor of internal combustion engine cars, has been "revolutionizing its own life" in the course of a century of history, constantly seeking higher-efficiency energy sources and methods of conversion.

Mercedes-Benz had filmed a short film paying tribute to women using the story of Betha driving the Mercedes-Benz 1 as the background. It was called "The Journey That Changed Everything". The passers-by A, B, C and D in it regarded Mercedes-Benz 1 as a mechanical monster that exhaled exhaust gas, and Betha, who controlled the Mercedes-Benz 1, was called "witch".

You can click on this link to B station with Chinese subtitles to watch:

The masses are born with resistance to unknown things.

For example, there are many words in the field of Western art that are derogatory, such as Baroque ("vulgar and messy" in Spanish ), Impressionism (Academic painters satirize Monet by their impression), Fauna (it is disgusting at first glance), abstract school (psychopaths have a wide range of ideas)...

But if a new genre is accepted by the mainstream group, people begin to think that these new genres are positive words, and think that the old genre is old-fashioned.

In fact, we don’t need to worry about which traditional car companies or new forces is the mainstream of the future automobile market. After all, Mercedes-Benz 1 and Mercedes-Benz 3 are also a "new car-making force" in the era of crowded carriages, and Mr. Carl Mercedes-Benz never intended to eliminate carriages and dominate the entire travel field.

From a historical perspective, Mr. Carl Mercedes-Benz was able to become a great man because he did not have the utilitarian spirit of a capitalist. He was an extremely pure mechanical engineer. Elon Musk is an anxious capitalist who can express his willingness to eliminate gasoline cars in public. The brand name of the " Tesla " he used is Nikola Tesla, a poor Serbian-American mechanical engineer. Tesla was so poor in his later years that it made the most valuable patents in his life public to the whole society for free, so that everyone can enjoy the efficiency brought by alternating current.

"noble" is the most appropriate word I thought of to describe Mr. Carl Mercedes-Benz and Nikola Tesla.

To be precise, the car Mr. Carl Mercedes-Benz built was not luxurious at the time. He was just a devout technician and had no special attainments in aesthetics. What really promoted Mercedes-Benz to become a luxury brand was the second wave of industrial revolution that Germany caught up with after the unification of 1871.

is the national power behind heavy industry. The unity of the entire German has promoted many development advantages, such as a unified education system, unified weights and measures, unified market access rules, unified transportation line network, unified industrial planning, and unified national consciousness. These advantages give Mercedes-Benz Motor the soil for corporate startups. After all, an agricultural country cannot give birth to the automobile industry. The entire industrial chain from metal smelting to parts procurement cannot be planted in the land.

is just a German dish that has just been industrialized, so the British made a Made in Germany to distinguish the unreliable British excellent industrial products from German-made ones. In 1887, the British Parliament passed the Trademark Act, requiring that all products imported from Germany must be marked with Made in Germany.

What’s ridiculous is that after more than a hundred years of growth and decline, the reliability of British cars is now not good, and Made in Germany is the king of quality.

The author thought many years ago that Mercedes-Benz, as a luxury brand, undoubtedly took advantage of Made in Germany's dividends, but now I rejected my previous way of thinking, and then believed that Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, and Porsche, these German luxury brands are complementary to Made in Germany - only those with superior performance and excellent quality control are equipped with the reputation of luxury brands, which ultimately makes Made in Germany a golden sign.

Mercedes-Benz's luxury brand heritage is not accumulated in one day, a week, a month or a year. Instead, 's cutting-edge development, precision manufacturing and sincere service spanning three centuries, finally gaining reputation for customers, making Mercedes-Benz a luxury brand entrusted by everyone.

This is different from the current ideas of many Internet cars. The latter prefers to do PPT first to sell stories, while traditional car brands have gone through decades of market hardship before they are finally recognized as luxury brands by the public.

Today I spent half of my time interpreting several short stories about this brand to introduce Mercedes-Benz EQS (inquiry on the lowest price | check the matching) this new large pure electric luxury sedan. The author is not to let everyone judge how much this car is worth, why it is worth so much, is the configuration table full enough, can it work for new forces and other topics. I don’t sell cars, I am only responsible for talking about my thoughts after spending three days in Sanya, Hainan from a car fan’s perspective, about how Mercedes-Benz used to think about building cars, and now how they think about it.

Many consumers like to divide cars into various factions, electric/gasoline/plug-mix/hydrogen fuel cells, independent/American/Japanese/German/French, domestic/imported/joint venture, SUV/MPV/squad/hammer/pickup trucks... Actually, I want to divide cars into good/bad cars. For example, Wuling Hongguang MINI EV, is it bad? It's a bad drive, but this is cheap, so it's a good car.

So our focus should be on whether Mercedes-Benz EQS can "make Mercedes-Benz's status continue to stand firm."

After three days of driving experience, I think it is really contrary to the original intention of the R&D team to use the Mercedes-Benz EQS as an electric car.Electrification is actually just the first step of the new four modernizations. The second step is intelligence and networking, and the third step is sharing (not the "sharing" of shared cars).

One-sentence car review summary: EQS's task is to simultaneously achieve electrification, intelligence, and networking, and give young front-row buyers in the original Mercedes-Benz S-Class market another option.

The above sentence hides some key points. The author analyzes one by one:

EQS named

, but I never understood why Mercedes-Benz had to add an SUV behind the SUV version, such as GLA-class SUV and GLB-class SUV, until I found that after all models are electrified in the future, EQA and EQA SUV do represent different models.

So, the EQS SUV is the electric version of the GLS SUV, and the EQS in front of us is the electric version of the S-class sedan.

It is no exaggeration to say that in the era of gasoline cars, the S-Class is the weather vane of the global automobile industry. Luxury models such as Rolls-Royce Phantom and Lamborghini Aventador cannot represent the highest technical level of the entire automobile industry at all. There are only 5 car companies that can build full-size luxury cars on five continents - Mercedes-Benz S-Class (Sindelfingen, Germany), BMW 7 Series (Dingolfingen, Germany), Audi A8 (Nekasulm, Germany), Lexus LS (Aichi Prefecture, Japan), Jaguar XJ (Birmingham, England). The name of

EQS is equivalent to Mercedes-Benz setting up a flag for itself, which clearly stated that EQS has received the S-class truth.

From a brand perspective, EQS is a full-size luxury sedan that is shoulder to shoulder with the S-Class during this period of powertrain energy alternation; from a technical perspective, EQS represents the highest mass production level of all electrification, intelligence and networking technologies of the Mercedes-Benz brand at present.

electrification

Mercedes-Benz has tried many ways to replace clean energy with traditional fossil fuels. Electricity is obviously a relatively ideal one, but battery technology has always been difficult to break through during the bottleneck period. 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the mass production of lithium-ion batteries. Today's powered lithium-ion batteries have physical properties that are enough to enable the user experience to meet the needs of Mercedes-Benz customers. At this time, the launch of EQS is the most correct choice. During the three days of

shooting EQS, we ran three highways, and there were many stops and stops in the city, and we had never charged once, because this model with the tail label EQS450+ is equipped with a 107.8kWh NCM811 formula battery, which can reach a maximum range of 800 kilometers under CLTC conditions. The curb weight of

EQS450+ is about 2.5 tons, which is equivalent to the S-class of the W223-generation V12 version, but the power consumption is only 20.4-14.2kWh/100km, which is a very attractive data. Driving the EQS450+ is a very easy thing. The entry-level version has a 4.5° steering mechanism with a standard rear wheel, which allows me to easily move this 5.2-meter-long monster into the left lane in the turn-in position (the rest of the versions have a maximum steering of 10° of the rear wheel). The foot feel of the electric and brakes is extremely popular in the Mercedes-Benz style. It is as smooth as the Dove at the entrance, as smooth as it has been washed, and is smoother than the Audi e-tron and more stable than the Porsche Taycan.

EQS will make you forget that this is an electric car. When we evaluate electric cars on a daily basis, why do we always emphasize that it is an electric car? Because the advantages and disadvantages of electric vehicles are so obvious that people who like them like them very much, and those who hate them hate them very much. EQS is a luxury car without labels and does not require labels - electric vehicles are just one of its product implementation methods, not its purpose. The way the

EQS power system is as elegant and easy-going as its customer base. Perhaps people and cars with sufficient knowledge reserves/resource reserves prefer this way of expression. As the saying goes, you know horsepower from a distance. It translates as "You only know that you need high horsepower when you run a long distance." At this time, the rear-drive EQS450+ will give you very timely, not radical, and ease-of-minded feedback. I also had the same feeling when I was testing the Rolls-Royce Yaoying 6.6T V12 in Shenzhen many years ago.

日本 powertrain is much more than what EQS wants to convey.

EQS I hope customers don’t worry about battery life, because the S450L’s fuel tank is “only” 76L. The new 3.0T 6-speed machine will drink more than ten liters of gasoline for 100 kilometers, and the battery life is not the EQS450+ competitor. In addition, the DC charging power of EQS can reach 200kW, and it can be charged 300km (WLTP) in just 15 minutes.

EQS hopes that customers will not be disturbed by external noise, so the air resistance coefficient of the whole vehicle is only Cd 0.20, which is the lowest among mass-produced cars in the world. A special-shaped component is placed at the connection between the A column and the hood to reduce noise. The sealing strips of doors and windows are specially optimized for high-frequency wind noise. The shape of the panoramic sunroof will not cause too much wind noise after being specially designed.

EQS hopes that customers can have a low-carbon and environmentally friendly social backbone label. Therefore, the entire value chain of EQS is produced in a carbon neutral manner, with renewable energy and recyclable materials accounting for the majority, the cobalt content of NCM811 batteries has been reduced to less than 10%, and the vehicle is produced at the S-class S-class S-based factory.

EQS hopes that customers will not worry about the quality control issues of this new product, so they ran about 5 million kilometers to verify the reliability of its software and hardware.

EQS hopes that customers can have more driving space, and electric vehicles no longer need a slender front, so the whole vehicle uses a cab tilt design, the A-pillar is particularly front, the C-pillar is extended to the rear, the rear is smooth and round, the passenger cabin is spacious, and the front and rear suspension is very short. When parking these days, you will find that because the wheelbase is too long (it is convenient to place the enlarged battery pack), the rear wheels pressed against the parking stop lever, and the front of the car is protruding from the parking space. I took a photo of my phone casually, please forgive me for the poor quality of the picture.

Intelligent and Networking

In fact, I dare to use ACCh like this because Mercedes-Benz ACC has a very good reputation in the industry, which is a truly mature automatic assisted driving function. These days, I also like to use ACC when driving EQS because it has extremely accurate identification and judgment of road objects. Even small e-donkeys running around can accurately identify and avoid them in advance (after all, the one riding e-donkeys is the eldest brother, I can't afford to offend them).

Just two months ago, the author went to Daimler China R&D Technology Center to attend the opening ceremony of Daimler China R&D Technology Center. He saw the L3-level autonomous driving car built on W223. The sensor matrix of mm wave radar , ultrasonic radar, high-definition camera, lidar and other sensor composition matrix provides sufficient redundancy.

Daimler China R&D Technology Center is now the technology base of Mercedes-Benz in China. It is equipped with an electric drive laboratory, a charging laboratory, a volatile organic compound (VOC) laboratory, a chassis laboratory, a noise vibration and sound vibration roughness (NVH) laboratory, an engine laboratory and an environmental laboratory, and can accommodate more than 300 test vehicles at the same time.

However, even if the R&D depth has reached this point, Mercedes-Benz believes that it is not mature enough to launch the market at this stage.

Everyone will find that Mercedes-Benz is a very cautious company. As long as L3 has risks, it will not appear in mass-produced cars. Therefore, the EQS is equipped with the Driver Assistance Component Enhanced Edition (P20), which is a comfortable and comprehensive L2 driving assistance system equipped with NVIDIA Xavier chip, with intelligent piloting function, preventive safety system (PRE-SAFE?), PRE-SAFE? seat pulse side impact protection and other functions. The system redundancy of the DRIVE PILOT driving assistance kit also includes lidar sensors, which improves the perception ability of traffic participants. How intelligent is

EQS and how redundant is system? Here is a cold knowledge: the top-end EQS has up to 350 sensors.

Of course, most consumers will not carefully examine where so many sensors are and what they are responsible for. Everyone will be attracted by a huge curved screen first, which is the MBUX Hyperscreen superconnection that extends from this A-pillar to that A-pillar. It has a seamless curved surface design of 1.41m, with a clarity of up to 210DPI, and the pixel points are very delicate. Here I also saw the highest-definition reversing images I have seen since doing the media...

This MBUX Hyperscreen superconnection uses 650°C thermoforming process for three-dimensional bends. This glass production process was previously used to produce camera lens and smartphone glass.

car machine is undoubtedly very smooth, with 8-core CPU, 24GB of storage, 46.4GB bandwidth per second, 6 screens in front, middle and rear can be linked, and there is also a large HUD in front of the driver, which is still very clear in the fierce sunshine of Sanya. If you configure it upwards, you can also get a 77-inch super large head-up display with AR augmented reality technology, integrating HUD into the real scene ahead, and the first product of this technology is W223.

In addition, EQS also supports OTAs throughout the life cycle, including MBUX system, BMS battery management system, EV sound, rear wheel steering function, etc.

Front row buyer

Regarding S-level, too many media have written this topic. At present, the opening work of the W222 series in "Thorough Research" written by U-Car, a Taiwanese media media in Taiwan, is ranked first in my mind - "Backs in Backseat Love in the Mainstream Choice of the First Century".

It is true that since the beginning of the invention, the car has not been a professional machine that is easy to operate. In 1888, Betha repaired the chain, replaced the brake pads, and dealt with the short circuit, and finally drove the Mercedes-Benz 1 for nearly 200km.

For a long time, buyers of top luxury car products have been reluctant to drive by themselves, but three things are on both sides of the scale: First, the chassis of the car is getting better and better, and technologies such as electronic anti-roll bars, magic carpet air hanging, four-wheel steering , and automatic assisted driving have fun or more convenient to drive luxury cars; Second, the car is getting more and more powerful, such as AMG S63/S65 owners will feel that they are happy to be the driver and have to pay. If they don’t pay, they do not comply with the contract law ; Third, the society’s recognition of the combination of “driver + VIP” is far less than before. Car owners drive themselves can make your social label more avant-garde and friendly.

I remember that I participated in the global debut of W223. I found that the side of the W223 is actually very similar to the W222. The luxury of W223 has not improved much. What it does is to make the back row buyers the front row buyers, because the Chinese market is Mercedes-Benz's largest single market. Chinese luxury car consumers are a whole generation younger than developed countries. Young luxury car owners want to drive by themselves, so W223 has a series of new smart cockpit technologies and intelligent assisted driving configurations to make the car better. They have changed the electronic and electrical architecture and can even realize L4-level unmanned parking in the parking lot.

Similarly, EQS's goal is to attract more front-row buyers, and its customer base is younger than W233. Perhaps it is the group of Maserati President and Porsche Panamera. This is a group of super young rich people who have insufficient exploration depth in the S-class.

Therefore, we can feel the relatively light body from the EQS. After all, ordinary trams are 500kg heavier than oil cars of the same level, while EQS is only 200kg heavier than S-class. The unsprung weight of this car is not enough. Therefore, the guidance mechanism of the front double A-arm rear multi-link is still quite effective in executing driving instructions. The air suspension also greatly reduces the frequency of vibration, giving VIPs a sense of driving on the sea. The Berlin Voice stereo sound matrix consisting of

S class

In EQS, we can see the direction of future automotive design: for example, engine compartment does not need to be so big, the passenger compartment can be larger; for example, automatic assisted driving function and smart cockpit are gradually becoming practical, and front-row buyers may become mainstream; for example, the improvement in the luxury field is too introverted, and to maintain the brand tone, customized services must be emphasized. The author happened to interview the heads of Bentley and Lamborghini in the Guangzhou Auto Show at the end of November. This is what their views gather.

Even though the brand strategy of "full electric" has been released, Mercedes-Benz has never intended to use electric cars to kill the necessity of gasoline and diesel cars. The two are not an either-or relationship. The real open attitude of large-scale manufacturers provides customers with more choices. For example, the existing W223 S-Class will be more domineering, and the rear-row buyers prefer it; the new EQS is updated sharp, better, and more convenient, and the front-row buyers may be the main consumer force.

In the mature automotive R&D, manufacturing and sales system, two different views can coexist. There is often more than one truth in the world. Large companies like to look at this industry from a more calm, objective, peaceful and comprehensive perspective. This is also the reason why Mercedes-Benz manufactures EQS and continues the production of the new S-Class.

Starting from 2025, Mercedes-Benz will release 3 pure electric model architecture platforms, and all newly released model architectures will be pure electric platforms; in markets where conditions permit, Mercedes-Benz will be fully prepared for full pure electric by 2030; Mercedes-Benz will work with partners to build a battery cell production capacity of more than 200 gigawatt hours and plan to build an 8 battery cell factory.

and above strategies declare Mercedes-Benz's courage to promote new technologies. It is not electrified for the sake of electrification. Political correctness is not as correct as technical correctness. At this moment on the 30th anniversary of the mass production of lithium-ion batteries, the advantages brought by electrification of power systems have changed from implicit to obvious, which is the right time, place and people.

EQS is a brand new beginning for this brand. During the three days I have been driving it, I have been thinking about a question. Why do every time I ask people who stop and watch by the shooting location, everyone compares EQS with commuter cars such as Tesla, GAC Aion, BYD , and gives a low price that I definitely can't buy when I ask everyone about the psychological price.

A sister at the scene gave part of the answer I wanted. She said that electric cars make the brand gap very blurred. Now BYD can also accelerate like Mercedes-Benz's top product line, and the audience of million-level electric cars will be relatively narrow.

Because of confidentiality, I couldn't take her into the cabin to experience or even test drive, so she didn't experience the interior parts polished like crafts, the large sofa that didn't want to get up when you fell into it, the majestic power reserve, the braking texture that wouldn't make people motion sick at all (this is something that most electric cars can't do), the MBUX system that can understand your wishes, and the customized customer service provided by Mercedes-Benz.

electrification revolution has indeed made automobile manufacturing easier. Many cars worth more than 300,000 yuan can also create acceleration results similar to the 4.0T V8, but the experience of manufacturing full-size luxury cars is really the five companies mentioned above in the world. Now even Cadillac and Lincoln cannot touch this special, niche and top-level field. The series of professional knowledge involved in raw material selection, grinding technology, chassis calibration, quality monitoring, intelligent security, etc. are destined to be ununderstood by most people.

When I was driving the EQS on Haitang Bay, drivers kept anchoring their eyes on the EQS body. I suddenly remembered Mrs. Betha Mercedes-Benz's No. 1 tour in 1888. There were always people who didn't understand this Mercedes-Benz, and there were people who fell in love with Mercedes-Benz after a glance.

EQS made me deeply feel that this is a great opportunity to turn "electric vehicles" into a compliment.

Previously, we bought electric cars because the energy consumption per kilometer is lower. As long as we drive enough every year, we can save the higher price of the tram than the oil truck. The tram is defined as a car that lives a life.

After a series of technical iterations, the electric drive system has become a more suitable luxury car power system. Electric luxury car buyers will not buy EQS because the electricity bill is cheaper than fuel bills. They will buy EQS because it is more comfortable and surging than traditional fuel luxury cars.

electric is just the way to achieve it, and becoming a good car is the ultimate goal.

Recall, why did I go so persistently to the Besha Mercedes-Benz memorial path back then?

At the beginning, I was thinking of paying tribute to an era that was about to end.

Later, I gradually figured out that the pattern could be bigger. What we pay tribute to is the spirit of creating an era, like Betha, who personally proved that cars can travel far.

At the macro level, the ancestors reshaped the earth from this starting point. They have shaped a new industrial chain composed of many oil wells, petrochemical plants, gas stations, automobile factories, and highways, accelerating the development rhythm and progress speed of almost all mankind. It can even be said that they have re-divided the global industrial pattern, re-divided the power of various countries, and re-divided the territory of various countries in the world.

All this started with Betha's great long-distance trip.

episode has come to this point, so can the Mercedes-Benz EQS become the Mercedes-Benz No. 1 in the 21st century? Just like the Mercedes-Benz No. 1 driven by Betha Mercedes-Benz in 1888, it provides extremely important inspiration to the industry. I think everything is too early to make a conclusion. After all, gasoline cars finally became mainstream in the market 30 years after Mr. Carl Mercedes-Benz was invented in 1885.