Mercedes EQS review | Auto Express

There’s plenty of space inside and rear legroom is as excellent as you’d expect of a luxury limo. What you wouldn’t expect, though, is that headroom is only okay at best. Tall passengers might find the upright rear seats feel a little cramped for a £100k-plus car. The seats are very comfortable otherwise, though, and the ride quality is excellent. 

The EQS is a big car and feels like it on UK roads. At over 1.9m wide and 5.2m long the Mercedes will be too big for many of the UK’s tight multi-storey car parks and even some width restrictors. That’s true of its rivals as well, of course, but if you need a smaller model then there’s always the very similar Mercedes EQE.

All versions of the Mercedes EQS are packed with safety tech – as much as you could really want, and without having to add optional extras. Mercedes doesn’t shout about it as loudly as Tesla, but its active lane keep and steering assist tech is – in our experience – better and more relaxing than its rival’s so-called ‘self-driving’ tech for keeping you in your lane on a long motorway trip.

Other safety kit includes a 360-degree parking camera, traffic sign recognition, active collision avoidance and mitigation tech and adaptive high beam assist. The car received an 80 per cent rating from Euro NCAP for safety assist, along with top scores in the other categories and a five-star overall rating.

Reliability should be a high point as well, since electric motors require less maintenance than a petrol or diesel engine. There’s no reason to believe the EQS will be unreliable over a typical ownership period.

The EQS didn’t appear in the Driver Power customer satisfaction survey this year, but parent brand Mercedes ranked poorly in the 2023 manufacturer’s poll, so the ownership experience might not be as good as that of Porsche, which came in 1st that year.

Mercedes EQS alternatives

The main rival for the Mercedes EQS is the BMW i7, but you might also consider a Porsche Taycan or a Tesla Model S if you’re looking for a high-end electric saloon car. All of these options bring a long driving range, a luxurious interior and a premium price tag to match.

The BMW i7 is the best of the bunch for pure comfort and luxury, especially for passengers, while the Porsche is by far the most enjoyable to drive. The Tesla offers an all-round appeal since it’s good to drive, has strong performance and is comfortable, but it doesn’t have the build quality of the German models and the cabin feels very plain next to these as well.