The one thing that most people are afraid of today when thinking about buying an EV is the range, and while the total number of miles you can travel in today’s all-electric sedans isn’t too bad, and most of them can be charged up to 80% in less than 30 minutes, the latest Mercedes VISION EQXX shows the world that a 1,000 km (621 miles) range on just one charge is just around the corner, and not just on a test bench but in real-life driving as the Mercedes engineers took their prototype onto public roads from Sindelfingen across the Swiss Alps and Northern Italy, to its destination of Cassis on the Côte d’Azur.
And the VISION EQXX has another trick up her sleeve to make the most of her battery reserves, the roof is fitted with a total of 117 solar cells that feed the 12-volt battery that is used for the auxiliaries systems in the car, like the navigation system, for instance, thus removing draw on the high-voltage EV battery, in the end, the engineers could calculate the use of the solar cells on the roof added another 2% to the overall range of this prototype, or about 25 km in the end.
Shortly before crossing the finish line in Cassis, the VISION EQXX gathered energy once more through recuperation. After 11 hours and 32 minutes of driving time, it ended its 1,008-kilometre road trip with a remaining range of around 140 kilometers. This means it could have set off again for a jaunt along the Mediterranean coastline without recharging.
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