An All-Electric Mercedes-Benz SUV

Is India ready for a luxury electric SUV? With the new EQC, Mercedes-Benz is betting that luxury car buyers in India are ready to move on from the IC engine, to electric power

- Rajeev Mathew

India still barely has any electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. Multi-storied apartments — even those in upscale housing societies — do not have any charging points for EVs, and you’d be lucky to find any charging options at all on major highways and expressways. That hasn’t stopped Mercedes-Benz from launching the all-new EQC 400 4MATIC in India. The most notable thing about the EQC is, perhaps, its engine. Or, rather the fact that it doesn’t have one. Instead, you get two asynchronous electric motors (one each for the front and rear axles), fed by an 80kWh lithium-ion battery. The electric motors have a total output of 300kW (408bhp) and 765Nm of torque. Impressive, right? Maybe doing away with that internal-combustion engine wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

‘With the EQC, the first fully electric SUV from Mercedes-Benz, we are flipping the switch. Electric drive is a major component in the mobility of the future. We are therefore investing more than €10 billion in the expansion of our EQ model portfolio, and more than one billion euros in global battery production,’ said Dieter Zetsche when the EQC was unveiled, back in 2018. Zetsche, who was Chairman of Daimler AG and CEO of Mercedes-Benz Cars at that time, was fully committed to electric power, and is said to have pushed the development of EVs in a big way at Mercedes-Benz.