The 2027 Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+ fixed its biggest flaws and became a 539-mile cruiser
Most EV owners have experienced the dashboard predicting plenty of range, only for a steady motorway climb to chew through the battery twice as fast as promised. We've got used to doing mental math on the fly, subtracting twenty percent from whatever number the brochure promised just to stay out of trouble. When an automaker claims its flagship luxo-barge can cross a small country without touching a plug, the natural reaction is to doubt and wait for independent road testers to run the battery flat.
That's why the latest evaluation from the testing team at Edmunds is worth paying attention to. They took a 2027 Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+ out on their standard range loop and drove it until it covered 539 miles on a single charge. That crushes the official EPA estimate of 467 miles by 72 miles. That single run made the updated EQS 450+ the longest-range electric sedan Edmunds has ever tested, pushing past the Lucid Air and claiming second place overall on their all-time leaderboard. The only vehicle that has ever gone farther in their testing is the Cadillac Escalade IQ, a huge truck that achieves its distance by having a battery pack the size of a small studio apartment.
Plenty of range tests involve hopping on an empty interstate, locking the cruise control at a steady speed, and praying for a tailwind. Edmunds takes a much more realistic approach that mirrors how people actually use their cars during a normal week. They run a predetermined route across Southern California using a 60% to 40% split between city streets and highway stretches, working out to an average speed of 40 mph. They set the automatic climate control to a comfortable {{72ºF}}, toggle the car into its Eco drive mode, and set the regenerative braking to its strongest recovery setting.
Under those conditions, the big Mercedes proved very frugal with its electrons - the EQS 450+ consumed just 26.9 kWh of electricity for every 100 miles of travel, beating the official EPA consumption rating of 28 kWh. Back when the same team tested the 2025 model, it needed 29.1 kWh to cover the same distance. That improvement comes down to a slightly larger 122 kWh battery pack - stepped up from the old 118 kWh unit - with new internal cell chemistry that loses less energy to heat.
Of course, driving for eight or nine hours straight is only half of the test; eventually, you have to pull over and plug the thing in. Earlier versions of the EQS were solid cruisers let down by older electrical architecture that capped out at a peak charging rate of 208 kW. For 2027, Mercedes upgraded battery hardware to an 800V architecture, allowing the EQS 450+ to hit a peak charging speed of 350 kW. During the charging session, the car maintained an average rate of 222 kW from low state of charge to full, jumping well ahead of the 175 kW average recorded by the older model.
When you translate those numbers into actual time spent standing and waiting, the difference is big. Edmunds tracks charging performance by measuring how many miles of range a car can pack into its battery over an hour of connection time. The 2027 EQS 450+ clocked an average rate of 825 miles per hour, pouring 100 miles of fresh range into the pack in about seven minutes. That is nearly double the turnaround speed of the 2025 car, putting the big luxury sedan third overall on the charging leaderboard behind only the smaller 2027 Mercedes-Benz CLA 250+ (833 miles per hour) and the ultra-slippery 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6 (926 miles per hour).
Out on the test track, the entry-level EQS proves you do not need to pay for a twin-turbo V8 badge to get some pace. The older 450+ used to be a single-motor rear-wheel-drive model, but Edmunds pointed out that the test car delivers 402 hp and 372 lb-ft of torque through a two-motor all-wheel-drive setup. That output is enough to go from zero to 30 mph in 2.6 seconds, 45 mph in 3.9 seconds, and 60 mph in 5.4 seconds on its way to 75 mph in 7.6 seconds. The EQS covers the standing quarter-mile in 13.7 seconds at 104.7 mph, stops from 60 mph in a tidy {{108 feet}}, and pulls 0.93 g on a {{200-foot}} skidpad. None of those numbers will worry a proper sports sedan, and you still have to put up with Mercedes' annoying habit of making the brake pedal move underfoot by itself during heavy regenerative braking.
Inside, the car is a rolling showcase for every screen and microchip Stuttgart can source. The dashboard is still dominated by the three-screen MBUX Hyperscreen, now powered by the latest MB.OS software architecture with built-in Google navigation and artificial intelligence helpers. Mercedes even tweaked the exterior styling slightly to make the car look a bit less like a melted lozenge, though it still lacks the presence of a petrol S-Class. Engineers have also been showing off a new steer-by-wire setup paired with a rectangular steering yoke, though buyers in the United States are spared that particular piece of gimmickry for now.
All of this engineering raises an interesting question about where the luxury electric market goes from here. The base EQS 450+ starts at £75,000 including destination fees in the US, and the well-equipped test car rang the register at £88,524. The full lineup features pricier and more powerful EQS 500 and EQS 580 variants, but the base model actually makes the smartest argument for itself.
Mercedes has turned an awkward early design experiment into the ultimate long-distance electric cruiser by fixing its charging speeds and stretching its real-world range well past the 500-mile barrier. There's an interesting lesson here - the most desirable luxury EV is no longer the one with the most absurd horsepower figure. It is the base model that lets you drive across a state without ever thinking about a charging station.
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