You got a big pig of a luxury ev, with a huge battery and poor range and bad efficiency, then took it on distance road trips. EVs are not great for long distance tripping vehicles, yet. An efficient EV can get about 150 miles on 30 mins charge, which is not really that bad, and tolerable for tripping. A hybrid would have served you better. You bought lemons and expected lemonade.

As others have said, the charge time/efficiency is best between 10 and 70%. Look at efficiency as well, the benz is ideally getting 2 miles per kWh, horrible efficiency. A polestar should be getting double that, and can get 300 miles on a smaller battery, which charges faster as well…

The EQB is a short-range car with slow charging compared to something like a Tesla or the new Kia.

Chargers for the Mercedes are half as available as they are for a Tesla Model S and the range is barely half and it charges at half the speed. Overall, you’d have had a much more pleasant experience in a Tesla.

Then you chose to charge to 100% (which means almost 1 hour charging stops, yikes).

The “cannonball run” across the US is won by a Model S, which drives down to 5% and then charges up to about 60%. Above that, it slows down a lot.

That makes for 15-20 minute charging stops.

At least you didn’t end up in a Mazda or a Chevy Bolt, they’re far worse for road trips than the Mercedes, but the Mercedes is a decidedly bad road trip EV.

I shaved off a few hours by always running the car down to the last couple miles and charging it to 100%

You may have made your trip longer. Most recommend not running battery to below 10% and not charging above 80% as your charges will be faster. Last 20% can take as long as first 80%.

With just 232 in range, figure 150 in winter cold so you are going to charge frequently on a long trip in that vehicle.

Did you try and use https://abetterrouteplanner.com/ It says your charging should have bee about two hours total and Chicago to Omaha a 10 your trip with no stop longer than 20 minutes.

I can run a Bolt EV on a road trip in 40% more time than would take an ICE vehicle.

Your charging strategy was not optimal for the EQB.

You had a bunch of things going against you:

1. EQB is a fairly low range EV.
2. EQB only has mediocre charging speed.
3. You charged to 100%. Charging slows down drastically above 80% in pretty much all EVs, so the fastest way to road trip is to drain the battery down to 10% and only charge to 60-80%, making more frequent, but much shorter stops. It requires a different mindset than filling up your gas car completely, but it works.
4. It was probably very cold, which is the worst case for EV efficiency.

If you were in a longer range EV with faster charging and didn’t charge so high, charging probably would have only added an hour to your 6 hour trip in cold weather, and maybe 30-40 minutes in warmer weather, which can be offset by eating and using the restroom during those charging breaks.

You didn’t rent a Tesla :-)

We wanted to buy an EV but wanted to see how they fair on road trips in the midwest.

You rented one of the worst road-tripping EVs made; don’t allow that to turn you off from EVs in general. The EQB 300 is a low-efficiency first-generation EV from a company that is only recently getting into EV production. And it uses a charging network renowned for its poor reliability. And the icing on the cake is doing 0-to-100% charging, which is hurting your overall driving time tremendously. But I am sure the on-board route planner wasn’t really helping matters since Mercedes’ software is so poor.

You need to try it again with a Tesla. CCS is in a deplorable state right now.

I shaved off a few hours by always running the car down to the last couple miles and charging it to 100%

That actually made things much worse. Batteries are most efficient charging in the 10-80% range. I would only push it to 100% if I had a BIG frontier to get across, like Rawlins-Evanston Wyoming.

Pro tip: You can greatly reduce your cost of charging by paying for the dumb EA membership for $4 (IIRC). You’ll get it back in the first charge.

Sorry to pile on but charging to 100% on DCFC is far from ideal.

EQB’s charging speed drops a bit around 50% and then significantly at 85%: https://insideevs.com/news/492300/mercedes-eqv-dc-fast-charging-analysis/ So you’re wasting a lot of time to get that last little bit of charge.

You really wouldn’t add many more stops if you charged only to 80% or so. And then when you’re staying somewhere for the night – hotel, house, etc. – that’s when you go fully to 100%, because you’ve got the time and Level 2 charging (well, Level 1 too) doesn’t slow down at the top of the battery.

EQB also isn’t great at fast charging but you can make it work. I have a Kona and it’s even worse at fast charging, but it doesn’t bother me. We’ve never needed more than one DCFC per direction on a trip anyway.

I am sorry to hear this. The main problem was you picked a vehicle that is well below average for road trips. If you went with a model 3 instead your range could have been 50 miles greater, Charging would be over 50% faster and the number of places to stop would have doubles or more. If an Ioniq 6 you would have had the long range and even faster charging but less chargers to choose from for now.

Kind of like renting a van when you needed a 3/4 truck. Wrong vehicle for the job.

I shaved off a few hours by always running the car down to the last couple miles and charging it to 100%.

I think you may have added a few hours!

Try the same trip in a Tesla. Night and day.

ABPR shows me that you would have done the trip in a Model 3 LR in 6hours 44 minutes

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan\_uuid=1523e8c5-47db-4d77-8083-6c7436d593db

I am blown away by people who want to buy a car by its NYC to LA performance numbers. If you’re gonna drive across the country you rent a Van. No sedan, SUV is a comfy as a fully loaded Odyssey or a loaded AWD Sienna. But do you really want to drive a van 24/7? I wouldn’t mind but many people don’t want minivans.

1400 miles in a non telsa and you expected to have a good time?