Speaker 1: CES is kicking off in style with this insane Mercedes vision, EQ X X electric vehicle, a thousand kilometers of range mushroom leather. You gotta check this thing out
Speaker 1: A real quick history. Before we jump into the details. 10 months ago, Ola Lanius, which is the head of Mercedes tasked the company's designers with a huge challenge design, an EV that could go a [00:00:30] thousand kilometers on a single charge without needing a massive battery, carry four passengers like a standard sedan would and use tech that could feasibly make its way to a massive used car. That's a pretty huge ask, but the designers at Mercedes were up to the task. They went to the drawing board and spent 18 months coming up with what the company announced today. The vision EQ XX, a not quite concept, not quite series car that the company says can drive a thousand kilometers [00:01:00] using a single battery charge. That's about 620 miles for us Imperial system users. That's impressive. As a quick comparison, the recently refreshed Tesla model S tops out at 375 miles or 600 kilometers of range.
Speaker 1: So that would be a really big deal in the world of EVs, but credit where credits do the model S is a production car being mass produced as you're watching this video. So like I said, we [00:01:30] have to give them points there. This thing has all the hallmarks of a crazy concept car, except unlike concept cars, it's functional. And Mercedes says, it's going to test out a road legal version and prove it's 1000 kilometer claim by driving across Europe, sometime in the spring and what a site, it will be for anyone the EQ X X passes by it's got a very aerodynamic design specifically created to help achieve that big range. [00:02:00] The tail in particular has a retractable rear diffuser and is narrower than the front of the car by a couple of inches. Mercedes says the drag coefficient on the EQ X X is just 0.17, which is pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: If accurate. Another interesting thing that's on the exterior is a small solar cell array, which Mercedes says might buy you another 10 miles of range or so by helping power, the ancillary systems in the car, if the striking [00:02:30] design wasn't enough for you, the interior of this car has a lot going on. Tons of new, interesting features are inside of the EQ XX, but let's start with the obvious one that screen it 47 and a half inches long, eight K resolution, and offers real time 3d navigation tools who that's pretty, but while I'm always Gog eyed for a gorgeous screen, it's some of the materials created and used inside the EQ XX that [00:03:00] I'm most excited about. Mercedes leaned in hard to sustainability when figuring out how to finish the interior, the carpets are made of bamboo fiber while floor and door trim pieces rely on recycled pet bottles.
Speaker 1: The interior also uses something called U B Q material, which is made from land waste. And then there are these really cool leather alternatives, desert techs, which is made from cactus fibers and Milo, which is created from mushrooms, [00:03:30] my cm, fungi seats. Okay. Maybe I'm old, but that just sounds fricking cool. So when can we all buy are very own vision, EQ XX for ourselves? Well, that's the bad news research cars like this usually have parts that are too expensive to be mass produced or are impossible to meet current safety standards, sort of like how the Tesla cyber truck originally didn't have side mirrors and now does [00:04:00] WAMP, but the EQ X X is a kind of roadmap with features and options that you can expect to see in future production models. And that's pretty exciting. Mercedes calls this EV a research car because it's intended to test out technology designed to make its way to the mass market. LAN says the bad to re tech will be used in sir cars. Pretty much one to one starting in 2024, which isn't all that far away. This research vehicle is just [00:04:30] so, so cool. It makes me really excited about the future of EV tech.
