EQC Range problem or is it me......

[EQC2020]

Hi all, fist time post here so here goes and please let me know if its in the wrong section......

Been lucky enough to have just picked up a new 2020 EQC in the last 2 weeks with 8 miles on the clock and as the instruction manual says, best to charge to 80% to try to maintain battery life. Bit crap i thought if we need to start down that road but thought ok lets see what we get at that level of charge. Driving is 10 miles on the school run with country roads and using the regeneration D minus, minus rather than brakes with no hard acceleration and i mean none as you simply cant with all the twists and narrow roads. So given we dont want to run the battery down anything less than 30 miles and the car starts moaning at you from under 40, we charge it from around the 30 ish level. This allows us 2 full school trips and so circa 40 miles in total over two days before another charge to 80%. On an 80% charge it says we have around 145 miles from the start. Bit naff i thought so the wife needed to go further today and so we charged it fully to see and also to give her some peace of mind. Well, fully charged showed 225 miles and yet by the time she got 2 miles down the road it was showing 160 miles. There is no AC being used or heated seats and or demist. Just heating on 22 degrees. So im thinking is the weather at plus 4 degrees really the issue here or do we have a problem. This car is supposed to do around 250 and i know it will never do that, but though we would at least get 200. At this rate and from what i have seen, we seem to be around 120 miles if we are lucky. Any thoughts or other EQC experiences out there and thanks........

 

[WOODYTHEWISE]

Sorry, unable to help, but hello and welcome.

 

[raspy]

@EQC2020 It's the cold weather plus the fact that you used the heating whilst driving. Just the cold weather alone can knock 25% off an EV's range, comparing winter to summer temps.

The 225 miles estimated range is based upon how the car was driven previously, and shouldn't be relied upon entirely. Better to look at the % battery remaining rather than miles.

Are you in a position to pre-heat the car whilst plugged in at home before starting on your journey? That would maximise your range in these winter months.

There was a YouTube reviewer who managed to get 261 miles out of the EQC battery, but that was at 13.5C and I'm not sure what tyres were fitted (as tyres and wheel size can impact range too)

If you have the 21 inch wheels that will reduce range (compared to the 20 inch wheels)

 

[AJames]

Hi new member
I have the same issue, I got my EQC in the cold snap and I haven't ever seen over 200 miles when the car has been fully charged. I wasnt expecting to get 250 miles but I was hoping to see a number closer to that when fully charged (congratulations for seeing 225). I have tried the pre heating in the morning (when being charged) and it appears to make no difference, I too use the regenerative D-- option all the time in the eco mode as i assume this is the most efficient way to drive the car (I may be wrong). For me the lack of range also becomes about the amount of charging that needs to be done, 180 miles range becomes 100 miles very quickly (40 miles or so) and then you are continually thinking about charging again when the battery drains so quickly - net result I just wasn't expecting to have to charge it so much! As you will know this is not a cheap car, so I have checked mine back into the dealer to have a look at it and at the same time to register my dissapointment and although the driving exepreince so far has been awesome, I would struggle to make a recommendation if someones needs this car for more than just pottering around!!

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Hi new member
I have the same issue, I got my EQC in the cold snap and I haven't ever seen over 200 miles when the car has been fully charged. I wasnt expecting to get 250 miles but I was hoping to see a number closer to that when fully charged (congratulations for seeing 225). I have tried the pre heating in the morning (when being charged) and it appears to make no difference, I too use the regenerative D-- option all the time in the eco mode as i assume this is the most efficient way to drive the car (I may be wrong). For me the lack of range also becomes about the amount of charging that needs to be done, 180 miles range becomes 100 miles very quickly (40 miles or so) and then you are continually thinking about charging again when the battery drains so quickly - net result I just wasn't expecting to have to charge it so much! As you will know this is not a cheap car, so I have checked mine back into the dealer to have a look at it and at the same time to register my dissapointment and although the driving exepreince so far has been awesome, I would struggle to make a recommendation if someones needs this car for more than just pottering around!!

Sorry to hear of your disappointment. Can you see the percentage charge level before setting off?

 

[AJames]

Sorry to hear of your disappointment. Can you see the percentage charge level before setting off?

yes if it is charging it shows when you enter the car or you can view it on the EQ settings (but you have to find it)

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

yes if it is charging it shows when you enter the car or you can view it on the EQ settings (but you have to find it)

And does it show as being 80% or 100% before disconnecting?

 

[Londonscottish]

Hi all, fist time post here so here goes and please let me know if its in the wrong section......

Been lucky enough to have just picked up a new 2020 EQC in the last 2 weeks with 8 miles on the clock and as the instruction manual says, best to charge to 80% to try to maintain battery life. Bit crap i thought if we need to start down that road but thought ok lets see what we get at that level of charge. Driving is 10 miles on the school run with country roads and using the regeneration D minus, minus rather than brakes with no hard acceleration and i mean none as you simply cant with all the twists and narrow roads. So given we dont want to run the battery down anything less than 30 miles and the car starts moaning at you from under 40, we charge it from around the 30 ish level. This allows us 2 full school trips and so circa 40 miles in total over two days before another charge to 80%. On an 80% charge it says we have around 145 miles from the start. Bit naff i thought so the wife needed to go further today and so we charged it fully to see and also to give her some peace of mind. Well, fully charged showed 225 miles and yet by the time she got 2 miles down the road it was showing 160 miles. There is no AC being used or heated seats and or demist. Just heating on 22 degrees. So im thinking is the weather at plus 4 degrees really the issue here or do we have a problem. This car is supposed to do around 250 and i know it will never do that, but though we would at least get 200. At this rate and from what i have seen, we seem to be around 120 miles if we are lucky. Any thoughts or other EQC experiences out there and thanks........

If you're interested, Harry Metcalfe ran a Tesla for a while on his Youtube show, Harry's Garage.

Although he loved it, his unfortunate conclusion was that range anxiety stopped him using on long trips and he ended up using other cars.

 

[AJames]

And does it show as being 80% or 100% before disconnecting?

i have set it to 100% before disconecting when i charge

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

i have set it to 100% before disconecting when i charge

The forecast remaining range will vary based upon recent use and ambient conditions, just like an ICE car, so the range will be recalculated depending upon the type of journey.

If you haven’t tried already, I would suggest doing what you might do if you thought that your fuel consumption was too high when using an ICE engined car, by doing something like this:

1. Charge to 100%, the equivalent of “brimming the tank”. Before driving, reset the trip meter, noting the percentage charge, and calculated range.

2. Use the car as you would usually - ideally using most of the available charge - and before charging again, note the trip distance and range.

3. Add the trip distance to the remaining range to re-calculate the range yourself. Ideally you should maximize actual trip distance and minimise forecast range.

4. Subtract the remaining percentage charge from the starting charge to measure the amount of charge used, equivalent to calculating how much fuel you have used.

5. Divide the trip distance (not range) by the amount of charge used to calculate the distance covered per unit of charge, equivalent to calculating MPG.

Please forgive me if you’ve already done that. It will give you a repeatable measurable baseline, enabling you to measure energy usage and compare.

It’s what you might suggest if a friend said “My car is using too much fuel, I can only do about 100 miles on £20 of petrol”. You’d need to know how much fuel actually used and how far actually travelled to comment.

Good luck with your car, don’t let this put you off a great car

 

[zipdip]

Well from what I have read the EQC is good for 200 miles on a full charge,it looks a great car,I will never own one because I do not want to own a electric car and also the near £80 grand price tag is out of my comfort zone,I suppose electric car drivers are made of sterner stuff than me no matter if I have run a petrol or diesel car I never see the little yellow light come up saying 30 miles left in the tank,and so if I owned a electric EQC the real range for me would be 180 miles,but thats me.

 

[Wolfie1]

Is this not the second thread with someone complaining about poor range in a matter of weeks?

 

[grober]

Is the car kept inside overnight? If so how well insulated is the garage ? Ignoring the usual car interior/ demisting temperature demands for a moment, EV car batteries operate within a fairly restricted temperature range in order to flow high current demand. Most regulate themselves internally by using their own power to maintain their optimum running temperature-- I suspect its this extra demand for internal battery heating that reduces their range in cold weather??

 

[Deleted member 126969]

Drop in range at low temp is very much a 'feature' of a BEV and as it's an undesirable one, nobody really wants to talk about it that much...until it affects you I guess.

Even our humble C350e hybrid suffers around a 40-50% EV range drop when it's cold - a combination of battery performance and demand no doubt.

Saw a thing on pistonheads today re the Golf EV - cold night and a full charge got them IIRC 68 miles - about half of the published figure.

Different brands seem to suffer to different degrees depending on how good their battery management is it seems. Not surprised MB isn't great - they have little experience in the EV market. Don't think Jaguar are much better other.

 

[W1ghty]

An E220d is the ideal cost effective solution

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Drop in range at low temp is very much a 'feature' of a BEV and as it's an undesirable one, nobody really wants to talk about it that much...until it affects you I guess.

Even our humble C350e hybrid suffers around a 40-50% EV range drop when it's cold - a combination of battery performance and demand no doubt.

Saw a thing on pistonheads today re the Golf EV - cold night and a full charge got them IIRC 68 miles - about half of the published figure.

Different brands seem to suffer to different degrees depending on how good their battery management is it seems. Not surprised MB isn't great - they have little experience in the EV market. Don't think Jaguar are much better other.

Can you preheat the car remotely with your C350e, and if so does it offset much of the impact of cold weather?

 

[Deleted member 126969]

Can you preheat the car remotely with your C350e, and if so does it offset much of the impact of cold weather?

It does do pre-entry climate....which warms the interior and must have some indirect heating effect on the battery, even if it doesn’t actively warm it...and I usually have it plugged in anyway, so most of the energy comes from the grid and any taken from the battery gets replenished, also adding some heat, so it does help. Not by a lot though, it seems.

 

[ImmanuelK]

Few thoughts.

- Range definitely goes down in cold weather. Norwegian testing at minus 10 found the EQC lost about 25%. So at British winter temperatures it will be better than that. But noticeable.

- Don't take the range forecast too seriously! MB deliberately set it conservatively to avoid people getting caught out. Most of the time I've actually driven a long way, the reality beats the forecast.

- The 'range' made up of many small school runs in the winter will be dreadful. On mine, the implied range was about 105 miles. Main reason is that you're heating the battery up on almost every mile. Whereas on a long trip you get out of that phase and it becomes much more efficient. But I'd argue that range from many small trips is meaningless unless you're really penny pinching on electricity. Or don't have comfortable charging options (I find charging easier than using petrol stations).

- The range is easily good enough to go as long as you should safely drive for. And at 110kWh you'll get a lot of extra miles in as long as it takes to have a pee and a coffee. Then the question becomes is the motorway charging infrastructure good enough, and do you need extra range in order to compensate for that? Here I think there's more of an issue. It's decent in and around London. Quite a bit worse further out. But hopefully it gets better over time.

 

[bra10j]

Hi all, first post but i've been a Merc owner for some time with a W205 C63, G63 and now EQC.
I got my EQC back in mid-Dec and I love it. The zero fuss, no stress nature of the car is wonderful and I really enjoy the serenity of the silent cabin.
However, not all is perfect. I have a fairly serious range issue.

The car was fully charged on day of collection and showed 180 miles range. I pointed this out and the handover guy said it was due to the car being through PDI and that it would improve with use.
However since then I have never got above 167 miles of available range on full charge but 100% charge can vary from 155 - 167 miles I find.

Anyway, I have had an interesting experience with the car;

I set off on my journey with 100% charge (155 miles it said and it was cold circa 6 degrees C) and I was exactly 139 miles from my destination which was my father's birthday celebration. He and my mother were passengers in the car.
I had a number of emails to deal with so my father was driving and doing a steady 70 on the dual carriageways which made up 90% of the journey. He was using cruise control, had regen in D Auto and I had the car in long range/Eco mode. AC was on and set to 19/20 degree cabin temp.
Weather was wet, cold and getting dark.
I had the destination in the nav and it predicted we arrive with 12 miles of range remaining. I was cool with that but did keep an eye on it just to be sure it wouldn't be an issue later. Along the way i did toggle with turning the AC & fan on and off which made an 8 - 10 mile range improvement but with car full of people the windows fogged in moments.

Anyway, about 30 miles from destination the nav tried to take us off to a charge point and suggested a 20 min charge. We could easily have done it but i checked again and we were still due to arrive with 10 miles of range and I had charging planned at destination so felt there was no need. I cancelled the nav and we headed onwards.

Then with 2 miles to go and 9 miles of range 'in the tank' the car went into a reduced performance mode. I had predicted it would do this and had warned my father many miles beforehand that it may do this but given we were so close to destination and were now on an A-road the speeds were lower so I felt it would be fine.

The car was doing 50 mph for about half a mile without issue, then 45, 40, 30 and eventually literally a crawl. There were high verges on both sides of the road so pulling off wasn't possible and we crawled for another few hundred yards until the car literally stopped dead blocking one side of the road. We were 0.7miles from destination with 7 miles of claimed range remaining having covered just 1.3 miles in 'reduced performance' and the car wanted to move no more.

To add to the drama it was coming on for the rush hour and quite a queue was forming behind us. While I got Mercedes SOS on the phone in the car my father managed to turn the car off and on again and we eeked out another 50yds of juice to get us to a patch we could get the car onto. This opened the road up again at least but we still had the small matter of 650yds to make it to our destination in my 3 week old "fuel of the future" powered car and it looked like we would be doing so on the back of a sodding AA van!

However, after about 10 mins of reading manuals to see if there was a way to unlock this phantom 7 miles of range, and holding for the utterly useless Merc assist people, I managed to cycle the car again and the car allowed movement. So much so that I zoomed up to 50 in a moment, got all the way to the destination and into the agreed charging bay! Hurrah!

When I got the car plugged in it was down at 3% with 6 miles of range and took a full charge back up to 100% and 160ish miles.

So, an eventful trip and definitely pointing to something not being quite right as I have watched literally hundreds of reviews of EV's in general and every single one related to EQCs and any time a deliberate attempt to empty it is made they seem to run for much longer on the restricted mode.

Mercedes have agreed there seems to be an issue and have booked me in. For reference I called to book it in on 23rd Dec and they gave me the booking in date of 17th Feb. Brilliant. Seemingly a lack of trained people in Aberdeen to look at it. I'll update on the outcome.

Still, I bloody love the car.

 

[CoopsSA]

It's all dependent upon driving style IMO.

On my EQC, still only 3 weeks old, I'm seeing over 180 miles when charged to 80% and when driving it keeps to the range quite accurately. What I mean by that is that the predicted range remains accurate as my journey continues - for example it says 130 miles range at start and I'm doing a 50 mile trip, the new range remains within 1-5 miles of the 130 prediction.

I regularly drive with cruise control (70-75 mph on motorways), in D-Auto regen mode and in ECO drive mode - with this I am returning between 2.0 to 2.5 miles per kwh - my stats from start of ownership are:

Distance: 1715 miles
Average consumption 2.3 mpkWh

I presume that 2.3 mpkWh is driving my 180+ range at 80-90%?