The new S-Class will soon have company at the top of the Mercedes-Benz sedan lineup. It will be joined by an electric flagship model named EQS that will give buyers a zero-emissions alternative brimming with tech features. The firm released a dark preview image to provide an early look at the flagship before its online debut.
While the preview image keeps the sedan’s full design largely hidden, it’s clear that stylists took advantage of the electric powertrain to draw an unusual silhouette. They positioned the wheels near the outer edges of the body to extend the wheelbase and carve out a generous amount of space in the cabin. Going electric makes this possible, because a motor is a lot more compact than a straight-six or a V8 engine. The arch-shaped roofline gives the EQS an almost fastback-like look, while its front end is expected to borrow styling cues from the EQC crossover.
The interior will be just as futuristic as the exterior. As we previously reported, the EQS will be optionally available with a mammoth infotainment screen appropriately named Hyperscreen that will take up the entire dashboard. It’s 56 inches wide, and it’s powered by an eight-core CPU with 24 gigabytes of RAM. Artificial intelligence technology will help users navigate the latticework of menus by learning the functions and features that they use the most.
We don’t (yet) have X-ray vision to tell you what’s under the sheetmetal, but the Vision EQS concept introduced in 2019 gave us a decent idea of what to expect. It was built on a 100-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack that powered a pair of electric motors (one per axle). Mercedes-Benz quoted 470 horsepower, 560 pound-feet of torque, and a sub-4.5-second sprint from zero to 60 mph. The production version should land near those figures, and it will offer approximately 435 miles of driving range when tested on the WLTP cycle used on the European market.
Due out for the 2022 model year, the EQS will make its global debut online in the coming weeks, and Mercedes-Benz told Autoblog that deliveries will begin during the first half of 2021. Pricing will start above $100,000.
Mercedes-Benz isn’t worried about the EQS overshadowing the new S-Class. It will sell both sedans side by side in the foreseeable future, and it will let its customers and their wallet decide what should power its flagship.