Living Large In The Electric GLS

It’s been six years since the Mercedes-EQ line of battery electric vehicles first rolled into Paris in concept preview form (the Generation EQ concept, if you need a refresher). Two years later, the first member of the family, the EQC, brought the Generation EQ concept to the production line, though only European and Chinese consumers could buy the SUV. The EQC was followed by the EQV minivan and EQA subcompact crossover, and like it, both are only available in China and various European countries.

Then, there’s the EQB, the GLB-based EQ SUV currently making a splash outside of the U.S. For those of us in the land of bald eagles and fireworks, though, we’ll be getting the EQB as a 2023 model soon. It just won’t be the first Mercedes-EQ in our showrooms. That honor belongs to the EQS Sedan, the first of the EQ lineage to be built upon a dedicated EV platform, dubbed EVA.

Rolling into U.S. showrooms almost a year ago, the flagship EQ sedan brought with it the lowest drag coefficient of any mass-production vehicle in the world, very important when range anxiety is still — sadly — a thing. It also has rear-wheel steering, a range of 340 to 350 miles between charges (depending on if you choose the 450+ or the 580 4MATIC), and even an AMG version with 649 horsepower and 700 lb.-ft. of torque to leave you breathless when you punch it down the open road.

However, the U.S. is still very much a truck-and-SUV party, a fact Mercedes is quite aware of. That’s why the EQS SUV is the next member of the family to arrive upon our shores.