The Mercedes EQA 250+ entered the MotorBeam fleet in December and stayed with us for a month. I drove this car for a little over 1000 km, including a trip to the automaker’s Chakan plant for the launch of the G580 and EQS 450 SUVs! How was my experience living with a Mercedes EV? Read on.
I’m a sucker for compact cars, thanks to Mumbai’s congested roads, and I really welcomed the EQA as my daily driver. It’s a nicely proportioned car and isn’t too cumbersome to drive. It feels quite compact and easy to manoeuvre. The first thing I did was set up my phone with wireless Apple CarPlay and adjust various other settings, like the follow-me-home lights. I also switched off the honk on car locking and, of course, turned off the automatic brake assist feature. Thankfully, on the EQA, once you turn this off, it remembers the setting, so you don’t have to disable it every time you start the car.
I spent the first couple of days commuting to work, experimenting with the various drive modes and regeneration settings. In Sport mode, the car felt very eager off the line, but that also resulted in too much wheelspin, and the TCS kept blinking a little too much for my liking. Eco mode made the car feel very dull, so Comfort mode became my default choice. The car drives really well and feels linear in its power delivery, both in the city and on the highway. Sure, 180 HP is just about okay on paper, but honestly, for day-to-day usage, this much is enough. Unfortunately, the top speed is locked at 160 km/h.
There are three regen levels on this car—Normal, Strong, and Max. I used Max regeneration while driving in the city, and trust me, it worked wonders for the range. The car decelerates nicely when you lift off the throttle. Initially, it takes some time to get used to this behavior, but once you do, the whole experience feels rewarding. On the highway, Strong or Normal regen modes work well.
The claimed range of the EQA 250+ is 560 km, and I was keen to see how much I could actually extract. The launch event at Mercedes’ Chakan plant was the perfect occasion for this. Initially, I was a little apprehensive about driving the car from Kandivali to Chakan and back, and I even requested the automaker to arrange for charging during the event. However, I ended up not charging the car at all.
I left home at 7 AM with 93% SOC and a displayed range of 501 km. The plant is 160 km from my home. After the first 55 km, the SOC was 82% and the range was 435 km. When I stopped at the food court before the ghats, the SOC was 73%, the distance covered was 85 km, and the range was 384 km. I still had close to 90 km left. I reached Chakan with a range of 253 km and an SOC of 53%. That’s when I decided not to top up the car.
I left Chakan at 2:30 PM and encountered some traffic before hitting the expressway. Over the next 50 km (until Lonavala), the SOC fell to 43%, and the range was 205 km. After 20 km on the downhill ghats, the range increased to 209 km, and the SOC went up by 1%. I finally made it home with 321 km on the trip meter, 26% battery, and 150 km of range left. I was pleasantly surprised by this and continued using the car for two more days for my work commutes of 30 km per day. A realistic range of 400-450 km is thus easily achievable with the EQA.
I do not have a charging setup in my parking yet, so I rely on Jio-BP fast chargers, which are placed at many locations in Mumbai, including all BEST bus depots. There’s one really close to my home, so I usually charge all EVs there. Mind you, the charging cost has gone up from Rs. 16 per kWh to Rs. 20 per kWh, and a full charge on the EQA cost me Rs. 1,400. Thus, the running cost was close to Rs. 3.50 per km, which is still reasonable.
Enough about performance and range—let’s discuss a few other things now. As I mentioned earlier, the EQA is a compact car, and that translates into limited space for rear-seat passengers. A tall person like me wouldn’t be too happy sitting at the back of this car. The boot is also not too big. In terms of features, I’d say the EQA is decently loaded, and I loved the Burmester audio system. However, the screen is small in size. The seats are comfortable, and the upholstery is a mix of fabric and leatherette. Ventilated seats would have been a boon for sure.
Soon enough, it was time to say goodbye to the EQA. I liked the car for its easy-to-drive nature, range, quality, and comfort, but I feel the pricing is steep at Rs. 70 lakh (OTR Mumbai). It’s a FWD car with a 70.5 kWh battery, and a price tag somewhere between Rs. 50-60 lakh could change the fortunes of this car. There has been an onslaught of new EVs in the past few weeks, each one trying to outdo the previous, which is why pricing and packaging play a major role now.
