GIVEN A RAISE

The EQS SUV looks like an EQS sedan on stilts but it offers a lot more than that

- Pablo Chaterji

What weighs 2850 kg, is 17 feet long and over 6 feet wide, and can go from 0-100 kph in 4.7 seconds? Absolutely no prizes for guessing, but it's the car in these pages. Honestly, those figures border on the ridiculous - nothing this large and heavy should have any right to be so rapid, but there you have it. Physics? Pah, what's that?

In order to break these wellestablished laws, Mercedes has taken its EQS sedan and added stilts, giving it a height of just over five and a half feet, and ground clearance of 222 mm, which is genuine SUV territory; 21-inch AMG wheels come as standard and fill out the arches good and proper. This is one hell of an imposing machine, make no mistake, even though its exterior design is very much an acquired taste (a taste that costs 1.5 crore to acquire, mind you). The reason the EQS range of cars look like they're melting is down to one reason, and one reason only - coefficient of drag. The SUV's slightly bloated look belies the fact that its Cd is an astonishing 0.25, which is what matters with EVs that are this big. Still, that doesn't hide the fact that there's still a massive surface area up front that needs a tonne of power to move, but overall, its design is the result mainly of practicality, not aesthetics.