Mercedes rolls out luxury electric car in duel with Tesla

 a network of highway charging stations built by a group of major automakers.

Are Japanese car makers building such a network here? Falling behind in technology again I fear.

I should have been born 20 years ago, not almost 70. This is going to be a fun ride.

Cars like this are over the top for me. Call me a Philistine but I don't need a full width touch screen or a "Nap Mode" that sets mood music and projects stars on the ceiling to make my roadside nap more enjoyable. What justifies a high price for me is the hardware and how well the car performs. I miss German cars of the 1970s and 1980s. They were driver focused and hard edged. Some whined the steering was hard, the suspensions were hard, the seats were hard, but it all came together at 200kph on the Autobahn and the hard seats were comfortable after 500km in the saddle. Anyone remember when Mercedes was real big on making sure every switch in the car had a unique shape and operation so the driver could find and operate things by touch while driving? Most of the controls were right on the steering column where the driver (remember him or her?) could operate them with their fingertips while holding two hands on the wheel. The driver never needed to take their eyes off the road to operate anything. Now they put in a big touch screen that will force the driver to take their eyes off the road and look where to touch this touch screen to make things happen. BS. I am not impressed. It isn't the electric propulsion that bothers me so much. It's the "features" that repel me.

@happyhere Clearly you don't get out much. There are charging machines everywhere. Highway rest stops, michi no ekis. hotel parking areas, shopping/supermarket parking areas.

If you have driven a Mercedes Benz, then, It's Mercedes Benz or Nothing!

My Mercedes Benz Sports car is 20 years old, well maintained and looks and feels like new. I just can't let go of it.

Absolutely nothing about that shape attracts me. (Except the arrow designs perhaps).

Possibly high-powered business executives will drool over the outline(?).

Are Japanese car makers building such a network here? Falling behind in technology again I fear.

The article below is now quite old, but even 5 years ago, Japan had more electric charging points than petrol stations.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/10/japan-electric-car-charge-points-petrol-stations

Electric chargers required massive coal burning power sources. Hidden green. Trick the masses.

Finally, Mercedes is going to do what it should have done 20 years ago? Tesla has done what all the major automakers should have done.

@mountainpear

Clearly you don't get out much. There are charging machines everywhere. Highway rest stops, michi no ekis. hotel parking areas, shopping/supermarket parking areas.

That is what you say. But I rather believe the Nikkei Asia instead:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Datawatch/Japan-trails-Norway-and-France-in-EV-charging-stations-per-capita

A familiar scenario played out in early March as a line of EVs heading to Tokyo lined up at a lone quick charger in the Hasuda Service Area on the Tohoku Expressway.

@happyhere Believe whatever you like. Hydrogen is the future anyway.

Hydrogen is the future anyway.

Maybe. Maybe not. Another path being investigated by the maritime industry and big industrial users is methanation. The fuel is easier to store and requires less modification to existing engine designs to use. It can also power fuel cells.

Nobody drives according to the so-called "testing standard". The actual every day usable range of this vehicle out in the real world will be half that figure. That's not even taking into account the 20%+ drop in range after 5 years, which is being lenient. The stated range of this vehicle is pure marketing over-exaggeration.

It won't have that same range in the winter when the battery warmers are sucking trons out of the batteries even when the car is parked. A friend with a Tesla in a cold climate tells me the battery warmers use up half the charge in the winter. Throw in the greatly reduced speeds one must drive when using chains, which are mandatory in many places, and electric cars are maybe not so good for use outside of major cities with an abundance of charging stations in regions with cold winters.

If you have driven a Mercedes Benz, then, It's Mercedes Benz or Nothing!

Forty years ago that was true. Today? Mercedes is just another car. When engineers ran Mercedes Benz it used to take a decade for Mercedes to develop a new model fully and bring it to market. But in the early 1990s Mercedes brought in Japanese auto executives to teach them how to meet a three year product cycle. Sorry but I haven't liked anything Mercedes has made since then. They feel soft now, more Toyota than the hard edged drivers machines that were Mercedes hallmark. Audi did the same thing. I have a 1988 Audi 90 on the older B3 chassis and a nearly identical looking 1993 model made on the later B4 chassis. The 88 has an in line five, the 93 has a V-6. They feel like two different car companies made them even as their exteriors and interiors are so close to being identical. The 93 is soft where the 88 has hard edges and a coarse sounding (in a good way) engine.