The EQS SUV is a stylish creation by Mercedes chief designer Gorden Wagener, with none of the brashness of some rivals

Mercedes-Benz has made an electric luxury SUV quite unlike any other, and we love it

One of the fears of anyone who has been appreciative of high end automobiles the last years or decades is that electric cars, while having zero tailpipe emissions (although they still do have a carbon and environmental cost in their manufacture and sourcing of electricity) will lack an essential character.

When every car is electric, this argument goes, they will all essentially be more or less the same thing with a different brand attached – accentuated by the fact that electric vehicles also have advanced and highly developing technological interfaces, which are largely sourced from the same suppliers, like all digital technology.

We remember speaking about these matters with the legendary Mercedes-Benz designer, Gorden Wagener, a few years back; Gorden insisted that there would be as much differentiation in the design and feel of Mercedes’ electric vehicles as there has been in their conventional cars.

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The EQS is a SUV – a type of car usually associated with massive emissions. It is fully electric though, so no worries on that front, at least during its daily use. It also achieves a remarkable goal of being very big SUV that does not look either aggressive or lumpen. It is smoothly designed and seems to shrink on the road, meeting no hateful looks from the resentful brigade.

The real revelation, though, is in the way it drives. Many SUVs set out to try to emulate the driving experience of the regular saloon/sedan cousins, something made almost impossible by their high centres of gravity and inherently massive weight – most of them weigh above two tonnes and a luxury SUV can weigh close to three tonnes.

This means that not only can they not drive like sports cars, but the passengers’ experience can also be compromised, with manufacturers left in a hard place between making the ride firm and unyielding (theoretically improving the dynamic qualities) or softer, but then allowing the forces of physics to dictate something that can be quite difficult to stomach in terms of a wallowing feel, particularly in association with the rapid but silent acceleration offered by electric cars.

The Mercedes-Benz ESQ SUV has a sophisticated and contemporary driver’s environment

That’s where the EQS is unique. Shoot off in the EQS (like all electric cars, it’s fast, although the 450 model we drove is not the fastest), and you have a delicious feeling of being cosseted – this is not a car aimed at setting record track lap times. Passengers felt the same. There is a luxuriant, old school refinement to being on the move in this car: objectively that is down to a ride that absorbs bumps and bits of broken road.

There is huge refinement in terms of what car companies call NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) but also a feeling that the engineers who made this car just really understand what makes a luxury car. Step out of the EQS into any other electric vehicle and you will notice the difference on this front.

So, a point of difference and a significant one given that this is a luxury car.

The technological interface is also sophisticated and easy to use, although this is much less of a differentiator these days. And while the design feels are highly up-to-date, we wonder if Mercedes has gone a little too far or making the interior feel “contemporary“ rather than “luxurious“. It’s as if the engineers did their bit brilliantly in the way the car rides and drives, but the interior designers were a little bit wary of making it look too traditional. Shame, because no major manufacturer does interior luxury like Mercedes. Functionality is for Teslas.

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But the most important element of a car like this is the feeling of quality, and the way it rides and drives. The EQS has one of the best electric mileage ranges of any car – although range is a technology that will constantly improve – and it is a car that you wish to sit back and luxuriate in, whether as a driver at the helm (and it really does feel like a helm, in the best luxury Mercedes, type of way) or passenger. So bravo Mercedes for having the bravery to create something that is truly – we think – what do your clients will want. Next, just add a bit of Palace of Versailles – or even Schöbrunn, if you want to keep it Germanic – to the interior for that ultimate touch of baroque ‘n’ roll.

Find out more: mercedes-benz.co.uk/suv/eqs/

Due to the technological revolution, design is more integral to our daily lives than it ever has been; but creativity will always be a fundamentally human trait, says our columnist, Gorden Wagener.

Gorden Wagener, Chief Design Officer at Daimler

The world is changing rapidly and the pace of change keeps accelerating. Because of that, there is a growing awareness about the details of every aspect of your life. The fact that our knowledge is shared globally, instantly, has created a greater awareness of design and the things that surround us. What everybody is aiming for is to create their own perfect world, and design is a key part of achieving that.

You can see this happening in the design of cars. Just 15 years ago, you would have a car, add some instruments and surface details and that was it – there was no design at all. Now, the complexity of this process has increased by a factor of about 100. We design each and every little detail. The seats and their surfaces are very design-driven, and so is all the digital stuff. The satellite navigation screens have become such a big topic. Previously, the headlamps were just there to illuminate and it didn’t matter how they looked; now each one of them is a super-complex little piece of art and technology. And, of course, good technology always has to work hand-in-hand with good design – think of your smartphone.

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Gorden Wagener in the studio

All of this has made the world change utterly, and it’s cool to be part of that movement. When I studied design, it was very much a niche. But now you see how powerful it is to the point where it’s actually transforming the world and it is reshaping multibillion-dollar industries like ours in a dramatic way. It also means there are other areas where designers can focus.

Mercedes-Benz is not just a car company but an international luxury designer label. It’s important to create a holistic brand experience that extends from the product to the retail stores (which we design) and to selected luxury goods – to create an entire world, in fact. On the one hand, that positions us well as a luxury company, and on the other, it gives us feedback from other creative design disciplines, which in turn influences our own work and opens new doors to let us create things differently.

Gorden Wagener with a Mercedes-Benz concept design

In the past three years we have moved from being a traditional luxury company to being a modern luxury company – from the parents’ generation to the next generation, and it seems to have happened in an instant. Our aim is to attract our consumers into a total world so that they never leave Mercedes. We design their apartments, their homes, their cars, their commercial airplane, their boat and private jet, the Mercedes Me Store where they can go for dinner, and so on. It’s about creating a world that completely surrounds you.

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Our philosophy of Sensual Purity is a new movement; no-one has combined emotion and intelligence, the two basic tenets of humanity, within a single design movement before. Our designs are becoming more simplistic while keeping their sex appeal, which is again a natural thing. In the end, simplicity is always longer lasting than drama.

Emotional intelligence is deeply enmeshed in modern luxury and it is something a computer cannot have. A computer may have more intelligence than a human one day, but emotional intelligence is different. And to this day, we still make our key sketches on a piece of paper and only then do we digitize them and render them into 3D. Humans still lead design, despite the technological revolution.

Gorden Wagener is Chief Design Officer at Daimler, parent company of Mercedes-Benz. ‘Sensual Purity: Gorden Wagener on Design’, published by Condé Nast, is available at good bookstores worldwide.