ELECTRIC DREAMS

Mercedes-Maybach's first foray into the all-electric motor market is a first for the luxury marque. Simon Clays travels to Vancouver Island in Canada's British Columbia to put its new SUV, the EQS 680, to the test.

-  Simon Clays

THIS MORNING THE LOCALS of Nanaimo, a small harbour city located in the lower rump of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, are in for a surprise. Normally, the city plays host to a daily throng of tourists chancing it on one of the tiny seaplanes that skit and wobble over from the mainland metropolis of Vancouver.

Today is different. This morning, the good folk of Nanaimo play host to an imposing crescent of cars. Mercedes-Maybach’s first launch into the all-electric luxury SUV market, the EQS 680. For a marque previously known for its meaty V-12 motors, it’s a refreshing tack. Not that this has the citizens of Nanaimo’s chins wagging; I don’t think they have the foggiest idea of quite what this two-tone painted tech behemoth they’re looking at is. If it wasn’t for the throngs of Mercedes-Maybach staff on hand, tomorrow’s local papers might well have been reporting panic, and the onset of an alien invasion from planet luxury. It’s easy to understand why: aside from the Mercedes three-pointed star, the EQS 680 shares little in common with its Mercedes brethren, the EQS SUV.

As I approach my allotted EQS 680, I have to concede the locals may have a point. It’s some juxtaposition: Mercedes-Maybach’s state-of-the-art electric wolf-in-mink’s clothing set against the primordial purity of the west Canada coast with its imposing raw peaks, fiddly inlets, and great gulf of inky ocean. This is magnified further when the Mercedes-Maybach recognises my key fob, automatically opens the driver’s while simultaneously beaming the Maybach ‘double M’ in bright laser blue on the ground adjacent to the door sill. If it’s pomp and circumstance you’re after in a motorcar, there’s no entrance like it.