Mercedes-Benz EQS 53 vs Xpeng G6

What's the difference?

Maybe the EQS isn’t such a leap into the unknown after all. Check out a modern hyper-car. It will almost certainly have at least an electric element to its driveline. And luxury cars? Given the potentially silent, smooth progress offered, why the heck aren’t all luxury cars electric?

So does the EQS move the luxury car game on? In a way, but it also proves that the things that make luxury cars remarkable are less about what powers them and more about how they look after their occupants. And in that respect, the rear-seat accommodation, the ride quality and the user-friendliness seem to be a fraction caught up in the technology. Not that the 53 is not a proper luxury car, rather that the novel platform doesn’t seem to add anything to that element of things. Which is not, of course, to say that electrification isn’t a sure thing in this market segment. But it will be interesting to see how the other brands tackle the concept.

Throw the AMG badge into the mix, and the end result skews again. Where previous AMGs have been all blood and guts (mixed with the usual dollop of S-Class refinement) this car doesn’t seem to have nailed the same, extrovert brief. The performance is certainly AMG-spec, but the theatre seems oddly missing and the noise is just noise rather than the AMG symphony we’re used to.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with meals provided.

You never know quite what to expect when you jump into the first model from a brand-new brand, but the XPeng G6 was a pleasant surprise. And at this price, with these features, it should really give Tesla Model Y shoppers something to think about.

This whole car is an exercise in innovation and radical design. From the full-width glass dashboard to the rear-wheel-steering, synthetic `exhaust’ note and the use of electricity in a performance, rather than an economy, mindset, the EQS 53 will keep even the committed technophile entertained for years.

Every time you press a new button, there’s a blow-me-down moment as the AMG dips into its huge grab-bag of tricks and novelties. If, for instance, you’ve ticked the Energising Comfort Package box, the car will interface with your wearable device (most common ones, anyway) to give you a display of your vital signs. The car can also use the radar that controls its adaptive cruise control to 'see' down to the road for battery regeneration opportunities. New owners will be a long time learning this car.

Even the exterior design marks a new direction for Mercedes. Actually, it’s probably more of a refinement of a design theme that began with the original CLS of 2005 where the single-curve of the side-profile first became apparent. Either way, the `lozenge’ theme is set to become an M-B corporate look, and even though the EQS looks a bit ungainly in photographs, in the flesh, it’s not as radical as that. It does make a pretty bold statement, however, with the single, `Harbour Bridge’ sweep from its nose to its tail.

There’s more than a little Tesla Model Y in the XPeng’s exterior design, with the two sharing the same kind of soft-edged, swept-back SUV styling. 

It helps make the XPeng look familiar and inoffensive, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to call it ground-breaking, I think it has enough exterior flourishes to break up the body work, and I don’t mind the way it looks, and the way it sits on those big alloys.

Inside, it’s a spacious and pretty stylish space. This giant screen is super responsive, and is easy enough to navigate, with the key functions (like climate) glued to the bottom of the screen so you don't have to paw through menus to access them. The idea begins to fail when you have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto active, though, as you have to revert back to the car's home screen to access anything.

The XPeng uses its steering wheel controls to access air-con fan and temp controls as a kind of shortcut, but confusingly they change to distance adjustment when you’ve got the cruise control on. An easier, and much better solution would be to bring back buttons.

I also don't love the stalk-style gear selector, which doubles as a cruise control activator, and, with a double pull, as your autonomous helper. It just feels super old-school in a vehicle this modern.

What is a massive win though is the driver screen. Tesla fans can scream minimalist aesthetics all they want, but the drive experience is simply better when you can see your speed and other key info right in front of you.

The EQS’ interior is a trip right into the future. At least in terms of how it presents the multitude of function controls and information systems which, at first glance, seem a bit overwhelming. But even before you have a chance to be dazzled by the breadth of choices and configurations you’re faced with, the actual dashboard is guaranteed to grab your attention.

While multiple info-screens and animated displays aren’t new, the sheer scale of the EQS’ display is quite breathtaking. Stretching across the entire dashboard, the three screens are compiled as one to form a huge, 1.4-metre wide display.

The switchgear and controls have been laid out to enable individual preferences from user to user, but even so, there’s a phenomenal amount of info to take in. Mercedes claims the layout is also designed to reduce the need to menu-dive, but again, the outright mass of details to consider is mind-boggling and forces some switchgear to be less than immediately obvious. Even the steering-wheel controls are now so numerous that the tiller has grown an extra horizontal bar to accommodate them all.

Despite that, commonly used controls seem to be where you’d imagine they should be and the cruise control, for instance, operates more or less as you’re accustomed to.

The seating both front and rear seems pretty firm in the EQS and while the driver’s perch is multi-adjustable, the rear seat has lost some of its adjustability compared with previous S-Class Benzes. The electric adjustment for the rear seat is AWOL, although the four-zone climate-control has been retained. The rear seat seems a fraction tight on headroom for really tall folk, too. A full-length, panoramic sunroof gives an airy feel and visibility is generally good, especially from the driver’s seat.

The boot, thanks to that huge wheelbase, is vast with plenty of width, but crucially forms a long space that extends forward to accept huge suitcases. A total of 580 litres of boot space is there for the taking, and the load floor is flat the whole way.

At 4753mm in length, 1920mm in width and 1650mm in height, the XPeng fits into the fast-growing mid-size electric SUV space. 

And it ticks a lot of practicality boxes, like with its 571-litre boot, swelling to 1374 litres with the seats folded. But its real party trick is in the back seat, where the space is properly massive. 

I have another mid-size SUV, powered by a petrol engine, at the moment and our baby seat presses against the back of the passenger seat. In this it feels like I could fly a kite in the space between them.

It’s the same for passengers, too. Honestly, the real estate on offer is massive, and that includes for the middle-seat rear passenger, where the lack of a bulky tunnel eating into legroom means adults can sit there comfortably.

There's a pull-down divider separating the back seat that's also home to two cupholders, and there are twin USB connections, as well as air vents (though no temp controls).

There's no spare tyre, though, which means fiddling with the repair kit should you get puncture, or waiting for roadside assist.

Okay, first things first – what the hell is XPeng? It's been around for about 10 years in China, but only made its way to Australia last year. It was founded by some former car company execs and tech tycoons — one of whom is telecommunications billionaire He Xiaopeng, which is where that name comes from.

Anyway, this one is the XPeng G6, which launched in Australia with two trims – the Standard Range, which is $54,800, before on-road costs, and the one we’ve tested, the Long Range, which is $59,800. The difference is in the battery size, of course, but we’ll get to that in a minute. 

As of now, the new Model Y can be ordered for $63,400 for the Standard Range or $73,400 for the Long Range, which makes the XPeng a whole heap cheaper.

Outside, you get LED lighting all around (including the DRLs), a massive glass roof, auto door handles, an auto-opening boot, a V2L connection, which allows you to use your XPeng’s battery to power whatever you plug in and big 20-inch wheels wrapped in Michelin rubber.

You also get some cool high-tech features, accessed through the XPeng app, like the ability to drive your car out of tight parking spots remotely.

Inside, there are synthetic-leather seats that are heated, a heated steering wheel, dual-zone climate, a massive 18-speaker sound system (with speakers in the headrest), wireless charging and two very handy screens — a responsive 15-inch central screen with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, and a 10.2-inch digital dashboard.

There’s also more safety stuff than you can shake a crash test at, but we’ll come back to that in a second.

Big under-bonnet numbers have always been a high-end Mercedes-AMG thing, and the EQS continues that tradition despite not having a traditional driveline. Using two electric motors, one on the front axle, one driving the rear wheels, the EQS 53 in its standard form claims a combined power of 484kW and a monstrous 950Nm of torque. Compare those numbers with the most recent AMG S63 with 450kW and 900Nm from its twin-turbo four-litre V8 petrol engine, and you can see that the decision to go electric has at least as much to do with performance as it does the environment.

But there’s more. Tick the option box for the Dynamic package at an extra $8000, and suddenly, you’re in the realm of 560kW and 1020Nm of torque. Just as well that power and torque is split across two motors and, therefore, drives all four wheels.

The sheer size of the car has also prompted Benz to give it rear-wheel-steering which also works at speed for safer changes of direction at autobahn velocities. The result is a pert - for a 5.2-metre long car – 11.5-metre turning circle.

This G6 is a rear-wheel drive affair, with a single electric motor housed at the rear axle. It produces 190kW and 440Nm in Standard Range form or 210kW/440Nm in Long Range guise, which don’t sound like massive numbers — especially given the 2.0-tonne-plus weight of this XPeng – but it gets up and moving just fine.

The 100km/h sprint is a claimed 6.2 seconds, while the top speed is 200km/h.

Obviously, the EQS requires no fossil fuel to power it, but when you look at its power consumption, you can see why it’s mission-statement is not necessarily to save the planet. The fact is, the 53’s official appetite for Watts is 23.0 kWh per 100km. Compare that with a Hyundai Ioniq at 15.7 kWh per 100km and you can see what we mean. The comparison is the electrical equivalent of a petrol car that uses 10.0 litres per 100km against another using 14.6 litres.

Mercedes is quick to defend the car, though, pointing out the fact that it’s built in a carbon-neutral factory and even the batteries are produced in a facility with the same green credentials.

With a 107.8kWh battery, range is impressive at up to 585km.

The Long Range version of the G6 nabs a 87.5kWh battery (compared to 66kWh in the Standard Range), unlocking a claimed driving range of 570km. 

The official power use figure is 17.5kWh/100km, but I did a fair bit of driving on all sorts of roads and my number was more like 14kWh.

When it does come time to charge, the G6 is set up for 280kW DC fast charging which means, should you find the right fast charger, a 10-80 per cent charge should arrive in just 20 minutes. Home charging will take a lot longer, of course – we’re talking overnight plugged into a regular wallbox.

There’s absolutely no doubt about the EQS’ place in the world in terms of the actual driving. This is a big, imposing car with mega performance, and don’t you forget it. It feels big from the driver’s seat with a long stretch to the passenger’s side and then there’s that glass cockpit to get your head around. The head-up display is great, though; well-placed and utterly legible in all lighting conditions.

Of course, what you really want to know is what 1000-plus Newton-metres feels like, right? Well, it’s awesome. Period.

The response that results from having maximum torque from a standstill means there’s no requirement for a transmission beyond the basic shafts to take the drive from each motor outboard to the wheels. And that same response means that there’s no time needed to wind the thing up: You press the throttle, the world begins moving towards you. Quickly.

On the highway, you can stab the throttle as fast as you can to the floor and then immediately lift off, and the AMG will still gain 10 or 15km/h. Dare to hold the pedal down longer and the digital speedometer starts leaping numbers in multiples of five and ten as it struggles to keep up with the relentless thrust. Overtaking has never been as foolproof as this. Passengers may ultimately find this tiring. You probably won’t.

At the same time, the all-wheel-drive afforded by having a motor on each axle ensures that grip is never the limiting factor. Rather it’s the threat of a prison sentence and any shred of self-preservation you might have that will perform that function. And let’s not forget that even if that straight-line grip holds up for you, physics itself gets better and better at throwing yaw forces your way, the faster 2.6 tonnes travels.

The steering is natural enough to pass without complaint and although it’s light, it feels as though it’s not too pointy nor too keen to start all that weight shifting around unnecessarily. The suspension, however, is less convincing on the rough roads around the back of Canberra and Goulburn (in winter) where Mercedes chose to launch the EQS 53.

While air suspension has an obvious part to play in allowing for an adaptive experience in something this heavy, there’s a feeling that, even on the cruisiest setting, there’s still that air-suspension trait of being incapable of flattening those low amplitude, high frequency surface nodules that afflict many country roads. And, to be perfectly honest, there was not a whole lot of bandwidth apparent in the different settings. Fundamentally, shifting from Comfort to Sport and Sport Plus did very little in terms of altering the ride characteristics. And even if it’s still, overall, a very comfortable outcome, missing is that legendary `waft factor’ magic-carpet ride that has previously been such a part of the S-Class experience.

Curiosities? A few. The paddles on the steering wheel, for instance, freed of the requirement to select gears, are instead set up to vary the amount of braking regeneration the driver wants. In the most aggressive setting, there’s more than enough regen for single pedal driving. Brake pads are likely to last a long time in the AMG as the vast majority of braking is in the form of regeneration.

And then there’s the computer-generated soundtrack designed to give an electric car some umami. Filtering a synthetic sound experience into a car’s cabin is not new. But in the case of an electric car, it’s not done to sharpen the noise up or make it more palatable; it’s so that there’s any sort of audible backdrop to what’s going on.

AMG has developed what it believes is the appropriate accompaniment and maybe, with more exposure on our part, it might emerge thus. But at the moment, it’s sounds more like white noise – not unpleasant, but hardly tuneful either – that permeates the cabin in various volumes depending on what drive mode you’re in. Interestingly, Comfort mode culled the noise altogether and soon became our favourite.

It's not that the nose is unpleasant per se, rather that it’s difficult to form a mental connection between what is a flat hum (not quite a buzz) that actually threatens to drone on its loudest setting (Sport Plus). Depending on your level of mental flexibility, the noise will either remind you of sitting inside a taxiing twin-engined turbo-prop plane, or it will have you imagining Darth Vader is about to enter the room. It’s not terrible, it’s just different. Is it the future? Maybe.

How much you love your time behind the wheel of the XPeng G6 comes down to what you're looking for from your mid-size electric SUV.

Speed and sportiness? There's not much of either. But it does serve up tons of space and technology, surprising refinement and a calm and cosseting ride.

And I think you can mount a pretty solid argument that all of that is pretty important in a mid-size SUV, more so than the ability to carve corners.

I did some solid driving in the G6, including a round trip from Sydney to the start of the NSW South Coast, taking in every road type and surface imaginable, and XPeng proved super comfy, pretty quiet and very, very easy the entire time.

Sure, it's not one of those EVs that makes the scenery blur when you put your foot down. Its outputs and acceleration are a bit more user-friendly than that. But it also doesn't ever feel underpowered, with the plenty of poke away from the lights and even some in reserve for freeway overtakes at 110km/h.

The steering, even in its 'Dynamic' mode, is fairly soft, and you can never magic away the weight of the XPeng in corners, where that compliant suspension does allow for some roll, but it also doesn't feel entirely disconnected from the road below in that disconcerting way some vehicles can.

So, if comfort is mission critical in your SUV space, the XPeng delivers.

Oh, and I know that big screens aren't that uncommon these days, but the multimedia unit in the XPeng is a treat. It's super fast, even when scrolling across maps, and it's relatively user friendly, too.

The XPeng G6 wears a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating from assessment in 2024, owing mostly to a flood of active safety features that arrive as standard, including AEB (with pedestrian, backover, cyclist, motorcycle and crossing detection), lane departure warning, lane keep assist, speed sign recognition, driver monitoring and more.

But it could also lay claim to a unique record – the first Chinese EV in which the safety systems don't make you want to make you pull your hair out with their incessant chiming and bonging.

Only on the freeway, where an intermittent chiming incorrectly warned me I was leaving my lane, were the safety systems at all overzealous. Otherwise, they were entirely liveable.

If a crash is unavoidable, the airbag count runs to seven (dual front, front side, side curtain and front centre) and multi-collision brake is standard, to minimise the chances of a secondary crash following an initial impact.

EVs are, by and large, cheaper to maintain than the more complex conventional car, but dealership servicing versus an independent workshop will always involve a premium. While the EQS features the same factory warranty as any other Benz; five years/unlimited kilometres, the big concern for some EV buyers is battery life. To calm those nerves, the EQS 53 also comes with a ten-year and 250,000km battery warranty.

Benz also gives EQS buyers a three-year subscription to the Chargefox fast-charger network (which has just been acquired by a consortium of Australia’s state motoring clubs) and operates on 100 per cent renewable energy. Charge at home with solar panels or other renewable power, and the EQS will be keeping rich people rich.

Mercedes tells us there will be a fixed-price service program, but pricing details are yet to be released. Service intervals are every 12 months.

I'm scoring the regular warranty offering here, which is five years or 120,000km, with the battery covered for eight years or 160,000km. Keep an eye out for deals, though. At the time of writing XPeng was offering a 10-year warranty on both, for example.

Service intervals are 12 months or 20,000km. The cheapest individual service is $238, but over five years the total cost is $2064, averaging out to more like $410 per year.