Mercedes EQXX Record Drive: Riyadh to Dubai Single Charge 1000+ km Range [video] | Hacker News Reader

Mercedes EQXX Record Drive: Riyadh to Dubai Single Charge 1000+ km Range [video]

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https://group.mercedes-benz.com/innovation/product-innovatio...

It describes the details:

Start Mercedes-Benz Center, Riyadh, 8 March 2024, 4:15 a.m. (AST)

Arrival Mercedes-Benz Brand Center, Dubai, 8 March 2024, 7:57 p.m. (GST)

Travel route Riyadh, Haradh, Al Batha, Abu Dhabi, Dubai

Driving distance 1,010 km (627.6 miles)

Total driving time 14:42 h

Ave. speed 68.7 km/h (42.7 mph) including vehicle static (1:57 h due to border crossing and driver change); 79.4 km/h (49.3 mph) in motion

Max. speed 140 km/h (87 mph)

Ave. consumption 7.4 kWh/100km (8.4 mi/kWh)¹, equalling around 0.9 l/100 km or 282 MPGe for a petrol-fuelled vehicle

Thanks for the link, according to the article the EQXX still has about 300 km range still in the tank (battery) when it arrived in Dubai, if the car had carried on it will reach the town at the northern tip of UAE or Ras Al-Khaimah.

>Having left Riyadh at 4:15 a.m. with a full battery, the VISION EQXX still had 309 kilometres (192 miles) of range left when it arrived in Dubai at 7:57 p.m

The German brands are quietly doing a lot of impressive hard engineering in the EV space. Look at the charging speed on Porsche, the actual real world achievable highway range on Porsche / BMW / MB, etc.

Will be a wonderful thing as this tech makes its way into cheaper models and brands.

At a certain point if the car can get ~350mi at 70mph highway speed, and you can charge 10-80% in 18 minutes like the 2025 Taycan, then you are in pretty good shape for 99% of road trips. If you leave home fully charged (EV advantage), then you can travel ~600 miles (NYC to South Carolina with) at 70mph with only a single 18 minute charge in 8.5 hours of driving. I don't know about you, but my bladder is more of a limiting factor at that point.

As a kid we used to road trip from Northeast to Florida and made.. far more stops than an EV of this spec would require us...

At this point again the issue remains just ubiquity of chargers, that you can make that single 18 minute stop somewhere easily, and land at your destination below 10% charge, confident of access to charging.

As a person road tripping Europe with a 2 year old Taycan, fast charging not being fast enough is never a problem. It's always software / payment / availability / compatibility (not working).

I just went to a Shell recharge station in France, and mobile payment / my debit cards / Porsche charging card / My Porsche app weren't working, so I payed cash to a nice person who had a shell recharge card. The app wasn't working because I don't have a French bank account to connect it to, and in my country where I have bank account shell recharge is ,,coming soon''.

In another place in Spain I went to a 350kWh Porsche fast charger in a Porsche sales center recommented by the online Porsche navigation app, and the charger was out of service, and the dealership didn't take any accountability, just told me to go to another station. They didn't even realize that they should make sure that it's offline in their navigation app at least for their own chargers.

I had many places where there were no wifi / mobile net available for me (or extremely slow), and most of the time was taken not by charging the car (which can happen while I'm in the restaurant / bathroom), but by waiting for the 100MB app to download and register with all my details.

Quite often it takes 20 minutes to just start charging / 5-10 minutes to get to the charging station by going down from the highway.

Yes the ubiquity & reliability of chargers remains a large problem.

Americans are under an impression Europe is dramatically better at this and, from my experience traveling as well.. it is not.

When we get even close to the distribution and reliability of gas stations, things will get dramatically better. In theory US is heading there with all this IRA spending, but remains to be seen. Musk RIFing his entire supercharger team as Electrify America continues to flail does not inspire confidence.

Case in point - NJ signed some sort of deal a year ago to make EvGo the exclusive charging network at NJTP rest stops. Nothing is installed yet, and meanwhile the existing slow, 2 stall chargers at a handful of rest stops have been taken out of service.

The other American charging problem is they tend to be located well off highways in the back of shopping centers, which is more useful for regular fast charging (if you don't have home charging) than it is for road trips.

This sounds really frustrating. I've not owned an electric car, but am all for them. Can you not charge without the specific app for each brand of charger? Does your debit card not work?

I did a 10 day, 12 country road-trip around Europe once in a Jap supercar and the trickiest bits were persuading the Italians who want to pump your gas that I need to add some octane booster because their gas was so crappy (the land of the supercar?), getting kidnapped at a Shell station in France, and getting shook down by Hungarian cops.

Are you enjoying the trip otherwise? I would think it would be a blast in a Taycan. Did you do the Alps? Does your car have a speed governor? I thought 145mph on the Autobahn would be good, but everyone drives on their limiters and I was a traffic hazard; I had to stay above 160mph to be "safe".

Bit OT, but the video is hard to watch. I wanted to see the car but the video is extremely chopped.

What does range of one off concept car with non functioning doors matter? Its like Musk was boasting about Falcon 9 ~4K km range to sell Teslas.

Non-functioning doors?

Yes. Rear doors are fake, like fake air vents on modern Hondas.

https://youtu.be/hFrKzH2UZ1c?feature=shared&t=89

Doest stop Mercedes from calling this a four-door-sedan.

Nice! That happens to match the range on my very ordinary F150 pickup truck with an extended 'contractor' gas tank (40 gallons).

I assume that is with the V6 twin-turbo? I know a couple people with that one and they get shockingly good mileage for a full-size pickup.

Personally I think this is entirely the wrong direction for EVs. What a waste carrying such a huge battery around, and of course tire wear and pollution is now a recognized issue which is much worse for heavier vehicles.

Who drives 14h without a stop? And then when you stop, if there are ubiquitous chargers, you just charge at each stop.

So we really only need 150-200km range, if that, and should focus instead on standardizing chargers, and putting them 'on every street corner', ie making them cheap, and ubiquitous.

Aaaaand they are not selling it. How typical for ICE car manufacturer.

The EQXX is a research vehicle / concept car. Mercedes Benz (and others) use these vehicles to explore new technologies, ideas and designs. They are often not intended for future mass production but elements of them may find their way into later production models.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Konzeptfahrzeuge_von...

Notice has nearly all electric and self driving car demonstrations are in places which have no cold temperatures and no inclimate weather.

Yes, it's well known and established that cold climates has negative effect on batteries. Of course if you're trying to get the best result you optimize the conditions. Just look how most sports records and times are set with best conditions available.

Does warm climate not have a pretty significant impact on battery life (as in: total lifespan) also?

I’d definitely call 38-39 “inclement”!

They did this distance before in Europe, namely from Stuttgart to the French mediterranean coast and from Stuttgart again to Silverstone, in the UK. [1]

[1] https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/autokatalog/marken-mod...

That's the point: to illustrate what is possible. Isolating variables is the most basic scientific principle.

Similarly, demonstrations of gasoline engines aren't usually done in high altitudes, where the oxygen levels would constrain the engines.

> no inclimate weather

Last time I was in Dubai the outside temperature was 41C. Wind “chill” took that up to 49C.

Lol. Yep. That's pretty much the average temp all year. It's why everyone has a driver over there... take me from the door of point A directly to the door of point B :(

This isn't a demonstration... It's a record.

Is it a surprise for you that setting a record requires optimal environmental conditions? It shouldn't be...

It's like when radio network devices claim "35 mile range" with a VHF link... but that was only possible because both of the transceivers were on top of mountains. Not a surprise but not useful information either.

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