2022 Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 review: Rapid progress

SINGAPORE - What, another electric Mercedes? 2022, and the tail end of 2021, will likely be looked back on as the years Singapore crawled gingerly out of the Covid-19 hole, and when Mercedes-Benz started tossing electric cars of all sizes to the world./>

From the Mercedes-EQ EQA, Mercedes-EQ EQC, Mercedes-EQ EQB, and now the EQS, it’s conceivable that we will soon have an electric Mercedes-EQ car in any shape that you want.

The car seen here is the Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 4Matic+. Another very clunky name to get through, but this time the car itself is deadly serious. It’s the proper high-performance AMG version of the standard EQS 450+ luxury EV, itself a powerfully quiet statement on the state of luxury EVs.

Once again, we’ll reiterate that The EQS 53 isn’t an electric car with some ‘looks like I can go faster’ parts from the AMG body kit department bolted on. It’s in fact very low key in its execution, and the two visual indicators of this being a luxury EV with dynamics turned up to maximum are the bootlid spoiler on the tail and the fake slats on the nose. Even the metal body panels are identical to that of the base model EQS 450+.

Under the skin is where all the power is hidden. The car has a pair of electric motors, one at the front axle and one at the rear. Together they deliver a combined output of 658 horsepower, and a maximum torque of 950Nm. That’s more power than what you can find in a Ferrari Roma.

All right so the EQS 53 weighs in at a portly 2,655kg, but Singapore-specification versions also get the AMG Dynamic Plus pack fitted as standard too , which gives the car a short boost of power, up to a peak of 761 horsepower and 1,020Nm in race start mode. It’s fast, all right.

Interior and design

The other big talking point about the AMG EQS 53 is the crazy hyper screen dashboard. It’s a huge sheet of gorilla glass that features three seamless display panels set into it. There’s the usual instrument cluster, a centre screen, and here’s the big deal, a separate screen for the front seat passenger.

It normally shows a screensaver image and activates only when a passenger is seated, so that the driver doesn’t get distracted or tempted to reach halfway across the world to play with the additional screen when he’s driving alone.

That’s in theory anyway. We found that if you have a clueless passenger that is too overwhelmed by the extreme tech in the car, things can get a little crazy. That’s also because the car has the clever voice activated assistant, which triggers by default whenever you or your front seat passenger says, “Hey Mercedes.”

So if your buddy is blown away by the coolness of your new car and starts saying, “Wow, this Mercedes…” or anything with “Mercedes” in it, the car thinks it’s being addressed and tries to decipher whatever is being said next.  And of course your buddy will have no clue that the car is trying to follow verbal instructions right now, so he keeps talking.

And now the car may misunderstand and think you want the news headlines read out. Or the weather report. Or turn up the music. Or turn down the air conditioning. Or call your lawyer via your connected smartphone, which it proceeds to promptly dial and put on speaker phone.

With great power comes great responsibility. So just tell your passengers to never say “Mercedes” inside this Mercedes, or at least customise the trigger word to something else that no one will likely say out loud in passing. 

When it’s all sorted, you’ll find that the passenger screen displays much of the same information as the main screen. The good thing is that the driver can still see important information like navigation data while the passenger goes through radio stations or playlists on the secondary screen. Perhaps your passenger would like to customise the zany rows of colour-changing LED mood lights in the car too.

The front seats also feature massage functions, with modes chosen from the menus as well.

Legroom is expansive, as is in the base EQS 450+. We did however find the rear seats are set slightly differently from the 450+, with a steeper base and more upright backrest likely to accommodate more electronics under the floor.

It’s still properly posh and comfortable, but instead of exuding a chauffeur-driven vibe like the EQS 405+, the AMG EQS 53 feels all about the driver, but also with room for the family.

As mentioned earlier, the car’s exterior design is very understated  in that there are no big spoilers and flared fenders. The big wheels with bespoke tyres designed specifically for this car’s mighty power output and weight are pretty unique, but it also means that tyre replacements will not come cheap. 

Driving experience

Like all luxury cars these days, the AMG EQS 53 gets a list of selectable drive modes from eco to sport+. In its quickest mode the 0 to 100km/h sprint is covered in 3.8 seconds.

Find the Race Start mode, which really shouldn’t be used on public roads anyway, and the same sprint timing drops to just 3.4 seconds with a temporary extra power boost. 

No use having power and no control, so the car is fitted with active four wheel drive, adaptive suspension, and four-wheel steering for mind-boggling agility. As with all EVs since Tesla started the whole ‘press accelerator to launch instantly’ thing, the AMG EQS 53 delivers all of its power with a prod of the pedal, fast enough to feel like you’re being teleported.

You can drive it along at supercar pace if you wish, but on local roads you will very quickly run out of space. It has a claimed power economy of 23.0kWh/100km, though in real world use expect around 24.0kWh/100km, which is high for an EV. But this is a very powerful one, so we’ll live with it.

You can choose to have it jet about in total silence, which it really does, or activate a catalog of synthetic noises to make the driving experience a little more organic.

There’s a very menacing sport sound mode that really makes the car sound like a fast sci-fi spaceship. It hums with a slightly edgy character when the car is at a standstill, and whooshes along with your accelerator pedal input. It’s all generated digitally and piped in through the audio system of course. 

It’ll do stately cruising just fine, but it’s a real AMG EV, and is seriously quick with handling ability to match. It’s arguably more fun to drive than most of the Porsche Panamera lineup.

One quirk of the aggressive four-wheel steering system that we discovered is that it’s a double-edged sword:

It’ll help the car turn tight corners easily and makes it handle like magic on winding roads, but reverse parking in tight spaces gets confusing, because the rear end of the car moves sideways a lot more than you would expect. If you have a garage of different cars this one will take some getting used to when parking.

Conclusion

It’s luxurious, blazing fast, very intelligent, very shiny, filled with lights, computers, and all that jazz. Plus the liftback boot makes it a very practical load carrier too.

Until the BMW i7 goes on sale there’s no EV on sale here that can match what the AMG EQS 53 has to offer. While the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo seems like a worthy competitor it’s got a very different build philosophy, is actually slightly cheaper, and less powerful too.

Audi’s RS E-Tron GT posts similar performance to the AMG EQS 53, but is less techy in the cabin and has a driving range of more than 100km less per charge. Speaking of which, the EQS 53 does well with a claimed range of 570km.

You can expect just under 500km in real world use here, but even with that the Mercedes-EQ EQS series of cars has the longest driving range of any production EV on sale here now. The annual road taxes on EVs in Singapore are still heavy-hitting, but for now on tarmac, the AMG EQS 53 is the real heavy hitter.

This article was first published in CarBuyer.