Infotainment Mercedes-Benz EQE under test

All good things come from above: What is developed for the upper class automobile quickly trickles down into the middle or even compact class for most manufacturers. A good example of this is the new EQE from Mercedes-Benz, the electric equivalent of the E-Class with a combustion engine. The EQE benefits immensely from its bigger brother, the EQS, and that’s especially true when it comes to infotainment. The keyword hyperscreen immediately comes to mind here, i.e. the huge display with three displays, which spans from door to door over a width of 1.40 meters. At the market launch, the Hyperscreen was not yet available for every model variant of the EQE, but it is now generally available for an additional charge of 8500 euros. We drove the EQE with that gauge and infotainment in mind.

Beneath the Hyperscreen’s aluminum silicate glass with coatings to reduce reflections are unbalanced units that trigger a vibrating click when touched. The middle screen (17.7 inches) and that of the passenger (12.3 inches) are high-quality Oled panels with rich black levels and high contrasts. The digital cockpit (12.3 inches) uses a TFT display. The passenger screen shows a jewel pattern and only becomes active when the seat is occupied. The passenger can watch videos or television. However, when the driver looks in their direction, the image is dimmed for safety reasons.

Although the on-board system called MBUX largely dispenses with buttons, switches and rotary controls and relies on finger operation and touch, it is easy to use. The bottom third of the center screen is permanently dedicated to climate control settings, and there’s a house icon that takes you to a large-icon submenu. This is where the individual departments for navigation, media playback, vehicle settings and comfort are located. In addition, there is the “Zero Layer”: For many tasks, you don’t have to go to the submenus at all, but you get meaningful and obvious information right away on the top screen level.

Charging optimization benefits from the concentrated technology

Mercedes also relies on artificial intelligence and learning from user behavior, so that certain actions are suggested over time when the system has recognized a certain regularity. This is linked to the person, up to seven user profiles can be created, and up to 800 pieces of detailed information are saved for each user. A biometric fingerprint scanner makes switching easier. Since the respective profiles are stored in the Mercedes Me cloud service, they can even be taken from one vehicle to another.

The charging optimization of the electric vehicle also benefits from the concentrated technology, which uses eight CPU cores and 24 gigabytes of RAM in the substructure. The EQE not only shows the charging stations on the navigation map, but thanks to the online connection, it also knows what charging capacity is available and how many charging slots are still free. The fastest route is then calculated on this basis, whereby you can still intervene manually and prefer or exclude charging stations. Once the navigation destination has been recorded, the EQE shows the charge level when you arrive or drive to the next charging station. The value is almost always correct and takes into account driving behavior, topography, route, temperature and speed, but of course also the traffic situation. With a careful driving style and warm temperatures, we needed between 21 and 25 kilowatt hours for 100 kilometers and were always amazed at the navigation map on big city tours: It inspires with the real-time rendering of the buildings and the extremely charming visualization of the still free spaces in a parking garage . A bar in traffic light colors appears on the left side of the P symbol.

A bad-tempered language assistant

All in all, the on-board system in the EQE is as convincing as in the luxury class EQS. For the first time, we were able to use a super-fast cellular module with 5G in a Mercedes. The last driven EQS had to do without it. The head-up display, which costs a moderate surcharge of 1300 euros, is also a plus.

What we didn’t like: The control buttons on the steering wheel with their touch-sensitive sensor surfaces and the grumpy language assistant, which failed for days and only came on duty sporadically. During a longer tour in rainy weather, the high-beam assistant reported problems every minute. That’s not dramatic, but the gong that sounded a few seconds apart from the error message was an acoustic impertinence. Why can’t you mute such system sounds?

We would also like to mute the synthetic sound that is displayed in the stationary vehicle when the ignition is switched on. Another electronic error was that the Bluetooth music streaming from the iPhone kept dropping out. Only a temporary move to the radio department brought relief. The most important infotainment components are already part of the standard equipment of the EQE. If you want to add even more luxury to the beautiful luxury, treat yourself to the Burmester music system for an additional charge of 770 to 1320 euros.