This is a story written about my trip to Madrid back in February 2020, I borrowed the Mercedes-Benz EQC for a huge test drive.

A certain course of events led to the point where I am now. With electricfelix I travel all over Europe to discover the best charging opportunities, prettiest roads and tastiest local bars. One of the flames that ignited the electric travel spirit was Sixt introducing the all electric Jaguar I-Pace to the Dutch rental fleet back in December 2018.

Flashback, November 2018. Friends invited me on their Schwarzwald trip and I recommended to splurge and rent the S Class (pictured below). It was easy to convince them and Sixt did not disappoint! The amount of comfort, the plush (massage) seats. Turning with you in corners. Taking over the wheel on the highway, all the subtleties. There was just no end to the luxury.

Just weeks later (December, 2018) I had my first I-Pace experience. The Jaguar convinced in many ways. The electric drivetrain has such a big impact on driving comfort, it’s hard to overstate. But the luxury of Mercedes is hard to beat. If not impossible.

Here we are. The EQC is ready for a huge international roadtrip. To see my beloved local team Ajax (Amsterdam) play just south of Madrid.

*S Class, November 2018. Schwarzwald (Germany).*

The flashback continues..

Moving on to March, 2019: with a couple of days left before the match I decided to try and drag the Jaguar I-Pace all the way towards Madrid where Ajax would meet the great Real Madrid. This turned out to be quite the adventure. Windy (wet) weather and suboptimal charging conditions.

Fast forward to February 2020: Ajax to play Getafe just south of Madrid. Mercedes joined the world of electric cars with the EQC. I politely asked if I could take a model outfitted with 19” wheels on an adventure; yes I could!

Signed up for the Mercedes Me service, cutting the ride virtually into two pieces left me with the idea to head south to Poitiers in France on day one. Plotting the trip in the app serves the following image below. A couple of 50kW DC chargers on the route to Paris.

Yet the EQC supports 100kW+ charging, on a long journey it’s very important to maximise the use of Fastned, Ionity and other so called High Power Chargers (150kW+). Since this is one of my favourite topics, planning the ride with ABRP creates the following advice.

This is a screenshot of Mercedes Me planning app on the phone.

I have yet to take control of a vehicle that serves routing & charging advice like ABRP does. There is no better way right now to get an idea of your international electric roadtrip. Yet I do change the settings quite a bit, lowering speed and consumption. Perfecting charging technique. This is almost realistic:

ABRP: Amsterdam to Poitiers driving the Mercedes-Benz EQC

As you can see this takes away over 50% of the indicated charging time from the Mercedes Me application. This is mainly by selecting all Ionity chargers on the route. A must when traveling around France in any EV (that supports CCS charging).

Time to start the trip. Monday morning, the 17th of February 2020 my friend Jascha and I jump on the train to The Hague.

It begins

In the real world we have to deal with the situation that we receive the vehicle uncharged at 13% SoC (State of Charge). Luckily there is a rapid Fastned station nearby, we start out using maximum regeneration settings combined with sporty driving. This to heat up the battery and indeed we almost get to 100kW speeds within minutes of our first fast charging session!

It’s during this session that I learn where the charging port even is, passenger rear side. And I quickly find out this works wonders actually with fast charging in particular. There is a button to stop the charge next to the charging port which works superb, and has been bliss all week. Also the protective plastics covering the charging port open depending on which one you touch (Type 2 only for an AC session or the one below for CCS fast charging) in one move. It’s details like these that I love. No fiddling!

I shared this shot on Instagram. The EQC charging up at Fastned Vrijenban. I use the charging session to gather data on our charging curve, when we are above 20% SoC we reach 100kW speeds, very nice results. To maximise our charging performance we leave as soon as I feel it’s safe to travel 100km south to Fastned Hazeldonk.

At Fastned Hazeldonk (NL-BE border) we repeat the fast charging technique. Since Ionity Froyennes (Tournai) is not that far, we only charge the necessary electrons. We set a personal record at the second charger of the day with 109kW charging speed. With a European made electric vehicle this is my fastest charging session yet!

With 6% SoC we arrive at Ionity Froyennes (Tournai). Another photoshoot! The session tops at 107kW speed. We need to stay for a while because the road to Paris is long and windy and most chargers are either down or slow.

And even more important on this trip: Ionity

Now it will get interesting, the wind has not been on our side today. Ionity Chartres is a huge leap of 300km+. Total is operating a HPC (High Power Charger) station just south of Paris and we decide to give it a go.

Unfortunately here comes the first disappointment of the day. After trying all four High Power Chargers, I found none that delivers over 18kW to the EQC. There is an older EVTronic machine available that does deliver 30kW+ so we stay connected to that one until we gained enough kWh’s to reach Ionity Chartres in the end.

-- It’s on Wednesday morning later this week that I will talk to Arnaud Peyois working for EVBox directly. He explains the V1 of the HPC’s that’s installed at the Total site (and other Allego sites in Europe for example) isn’t optimised with Daimler yet, tests are being done. Apparently a fix is close because at the Repsol site in Spain with V2 chargers we do get great performance. More on that later. --

Total built a great looking High Power Charging station. Great looking mostly.

It reminds me of 2018 when I ran into trouble with the Jaguar as well. Ionity had to work on a ‘clunking sound’ while charging Tesla Model 3’s last summer too. It’s to be expected with new vehicles and chargers becoming increasingly more complex. Daimler and EVBox already found a fix and can deploy this remotely, which should be done soon and I will go out and test it locally at Allego Nieuwegein!

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Waze

I trust the app Waze blindly when it comes to giving the best advice on the European roads. With the French autoroute there can be mistakes. After driving south on the local roads below Chartres we end up at a closed gate. We have to take quite the detour to make it back to the highway where Ionity awaits. At a moment when my co driver Jascha feels like going to bed, it wasn’t my best move. Keep Google Maps close when trying a detour, just to be safe. Or I should have trusted the Mercedes Navi here. Lesson learned.

After one more Ionity top up we arrive at our Poitiers hotel with an 18kW AC charger next door at the fire dept. This is where we do learn the hard way that 2-phase charging on the EQC doesn’t guarantee a full charge in a short night. I will factor this in on our next rides, it means a DC fast charger for fifteen minutes before exiting the highway would’ve already secured a perfect next day.

Overnight charging at the pompiers. — Overnight charging at the *pompiers*.

Day two: The road to Spain

In the morning (we almost made it to 70% SoC) we start at a local DC fast charger. Unfortunately what I didn’t realise is that the same software troubles of the Total charger apply here. Too early to connect the dots. It’s quite a popular charger that you can find in The Netherlands, Germany, France and Spain. As stated earlier Daimler and EVBox found the solution already that they hope to deploy remotely soon.

We head out for breakfast in the neighbourhood. One thing I love about the electric drive around Europe is you can get to know some of the sites you’re visiting by searching for more interesting food options.

We’ll take it slow to Bordeaux using the local (shorter compared to the highway) road. In between Poitiers and Bordeaux not a single DC charger is working (checked on Chargemap). This feels quite adventurous with the head wind we’re facing. The lack of French HPC infrastructure messes with our planning.

After some 100 minutes of 110km/h driving we still have 30%+ left of the 83% we started with back in Poitiers. Just before noon we arrive at our Bordeaux DC fast charger. You can juice up for free using the Freshmile badge (link to my French charging guide). Unfortunately local infrastructure is really letting us down today. I look at the Mercedes Me app (very happy to have it!) before lunch arrives and notice the message ‘charging break’. Oh, oh. Didn’t ask for this break!

I walk out of the restaurant to find the machine rebooting. I call the hotline that doesn’t speak English and they manually reboot the machine again. Their advice, wait five minutes and try again. Fifteen minutes later. The machine doesn’t come back online anymore.

Even visiting the paid charger that I had pinned as a backup because of last year’s experience at the Bordeaux chargers was also ‘hit & miss’, doesn’t help us. With less than 50% charge left ‘in the tank’ we decide to head south anyway in the direction of San Sebastián. The local chargers are slow, but I will keep on trying them anyway

South of Bordeaux where it’s always windy, a couple of (slowish) DC chargers await you. But their live statistics are in Chargemap at least so we do use them. It’s a mixed bag of anywhere between 25kW and 40kW speeds, we visit a couple, to check which one I will recommend future France EV drivers.

One of the fastest (35kW stable) but nothing in the direct neighbourhood to eat or drink. Looking for a toilet? You have options: the forest nearby!

Escource, south of Bordeaux, trying to charge up the laptop too.

Has a restaurant that you can spot in the picture but very specific French opening times. No more warm lunch (after 3PM) for us.

Saint-Geours-de-Maremne, the last charger in France. Link to the charger.

THE one. Pizza and chocolate nearby. Will end up in my travel guide to France.

An impression of our statistics for Poitiers-San Sebastián.

If you think about it with the heavy wind on this route, it’s quite impressive that we can stay below 250Wh/km. This is also thanks to the supplied 19” wheels, thanks Tristan! We do also really take it easy hiding between some bigger vehicles on the fully automated cruise control today.

It’s the end of the afternoon when we reach Spain and even though we could continue forever, nobody expects us anywhere before tomorrow (Toledo). So we decided to enjoy Donostia!

A night of tapas (or pintxos) ensues, checking the Ibil app before I go to sleep. The HPC that ABRP recommended seems to be ‘en mantenimiento’ in other words, they are working on it. This messes up our travel plan but I have an idea: hypermiling. 100km/h max and less when going uphill till we reach the Tudanca EasyCharger! YouTube drone video here.

Day three: San Sebastián to Toledo

When my co-driver suggests a coffee we are around the corner from the Repsol HPC’s and we take a look. EVBox mechanics sent out from the Bordeaux region are hard at work to fix the machines and they tell us that if we stay around for 30 minutes we can do a testrun! It’s too bad that I was taking special care of the battery, we are at a too high SoC % for a real fast charge session. Still the car impresses with over 50kW speeds at more than 60% SoC. The volts keep ramping up as we can see because the technicians are plugged in live to the system.

Visiting the Repsol HPC near Vitoria-Gasteiz. Link to the charger.

The rest of the day is a breeze, the sun starts to shine and our consumption gets better and better because of it. The closer you get to Madrid, the more and more charging facilities you’ll find. When the sun starts to set we enter Toledo! Our best day consumption wise so far! With the temperature rising it’s obvious this has quite the influence on range.

Stats for our best day on the road so far!

Thursday: Matchday

I start off the day with the drive to Getafe, the stadium.

*Where the match Getafe-Ajax will be played tonight. Mercedes-Benz electric and Ajax reunited.*

I also offered electric cabbie services to Arco who is one half of the team making the Pantelic Podcast about everything Ajax. The Ajax Media team (left) was jealous of his ride today.

*Ajax Media in the van. Arco (Pantelic Podcast) and friends in the EQC.*

The heart of Madrid, The EQC and Museo del Jamon.

All day I have been visiting local DC infrastructure to check on pricing and speeds and availability and so on. Different brands, old and new, pricing all over the place.

One of many fast chargers today. I also got consumption down below 200Wh/km with 18 degrees Celsius outside all day. Average of 52km/h with lots of city traffic. All in comfort mode. Expect a blog or video covering Madrid DC infrastructure soon!

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Buenavista, Madrid. Another DC fast charger. View from McDonald’s next door.

Local Mercadona supermarkets have perfect infrastructure ready, free of charge.

After the match we found a DC charger with a restaurant nearby, the ideal solution because we need a full battery in the morning heading back in the direction of Zaragoza/Toulouse.

Thanks to the backup camera in HD even parking where the size is very Spanish is a breeze. Getting yourself out is a different task! Local Toledo parking garage with just one charger. Later this year another parking garage will have two new charging spots sponsored by Nissan.

This night, a special spot for you, EQC!

Our adventure is about to reboot, the trip back home will be totally different compared to our arrival. We will visit some friends in Toulouse, I planned a ride straight through the Pyrenees! This adventure is just beginning.

Day Five: The way back, Toledo to Toulouse

Just look at this GOM prediction for today!

When leaving Toledo the GOM (Guess-O-Meter) indicates 419 km! After roughly one hour of driving we are left with 297km. Sunny weather and ECO driving yesterday have shown us the possibilities of long distance driving without the need for much (fast) charging.

Further down the road, stats as follows.

I’m really trying to get those ECO friendly stats in there! I love how Mercedes helps you out with these useful indicators.

The road to Zaragoza is long and Ionity has not finished constructing the Ariza Sur site. We shot a drone video at the Iberdrola 50kW DC charger very close to the Ionity one. Another day of hypermiling and I love it. With chargers as slow as seems common in Spain, today we have a 28kW example of underperformance. With these charging speeds the best thing we can do is to use our energy wisely. Uphill I join the trucks on the right side of the road.

Downhill I fully enjoy the flippers at the wheel and we coast along till we hit legal limits. Not all electric cars can fully use the freedom of coasting, for example the Jaguar I-Pace has a soft and hard regenerative braking setting and that’s it. The Mercedes is very happy when going downhill in full freefall. Video coming up!

Which in turn makes me very happy. As we head for an Ibil DC charger in downtown Zaragoza I get a scare because I notice a vehicle standing in our spot from far away. It’s not actively charging, just blocking the spot. And it’s a company car even. Of a competing energy company! By the way the Ibil charger totally underperforms (too) and the car predicts a full charge in over 2,5 hours.

Today is the best day yet to try all the facets of the electric Benz to the fullest. We have to drive in a very relaxed manner to even stand the chance of arriving in France safely. When in Zaragoza i check on the local Electromaps app to find out the charger I was planning to visit in a small town of Pont de Suert actually delivered problems to a local traveler recently. So even more careful than I was already planning on, we head uphill. GOM predicts 387km. We’re about to go on a 219km trip into the mountains.

Find the video of Pont de Suert charging session on YouTube.

It’s a beautiful trip and when darkness arrives the lights of the car shine extra bright. I leave everything to full automatic and we get zero complaints from people heading towards us. (That has been different with the Jaguar).

-- Browsing my phone I discovered yet another useful Spanish charging app: Charge and Parking. If you visit Spain I suggest you try it out! They are especially useful around San Sebastián, Madrid, Valencia, Alicante and Barcelona. Next time I’m in the neighbourhood they’re high on the list! --

Arriving in Toulouse

Dinner in a mountain town while charging is the best, with over 90% SoC charged we continue our drive to France, soon we enter a tunnel and from there on we’re just heading down the hills. Since we can feel the fast and trustworthy Ionity HPC infrastructure is near on the French highway, this is the moment for sport mode. Something you cannot always enjoy in these territories because of the slow chargers. The pedal reacts very differently changing modes with plenty of power constantly at the ready.

-- This might be a good moment to tell you a bit more about the pedals because they are definitely not standard. You can feel a lot of pressure, without force you won’t be able to speed up seriously. When changed from comfort to sport mode, every contact with the pedal has a direct response, lovely if you want to have more sense of speed. Even when in ECO mode, you can push for full acceleration any time. --

We can gain some speed where other cars around us slow down. It’s too easy to do a safe swirl around them. Regenerative braking is too much fun and so smooth in the mountains. Makes it lovely taking some fast curves speeding up and down and enjoying the amazing quiet in this vehicle. I haven’t even mentioned yet: this has been by far the most quiet long road trip I’ve ever done.

Later on the French highway we can trail some speedy locals. Finally consumption numbers go up a bit after having our best low consumption trip so far.

Hello French Highway! And look at those stats for today.

At Ionity we charge up from around 40% SoC to 80% in a good twenty minutes, before heading out to our friends in Toulouse. They are waiting with a quiche, there is no more time to waste!

End of the day stats after over 800km! Mountains, over 650km of highway. WHAT a day.

I’m amazed and super happy with these consumption numbers in (Spanish) winter. 800km drive!

Toulouse actually has quite some Type 2 AC charging infrastructure for the visiting audience.

Luxurious treatment again! Parked safely and charging up.

Toulouse2Paris: day six

Instead of believing in myself and the ability to drive ECO. Especially after a day like yesterday that should’ve boosted my powerful feelings. I still like to be sure we will make it today. Since we need to ‘jump’ from Ionity to Ionity with over 300km in between of more or less nothing when it comes to working DC fast charging infrastructure… A new challenge awaits!

Since we arrived in a country again where Ionity at least has a decent presence, we will have to try and make the most of it. If we would’ve followed the navigation on board anything might have happened, but we will not. This is our trip. Manual planning(!) to the max (except for the wonderful steering and braking by the car, ha).

Mercedes Me, the ultimate Ionity charging experience! This is the cheapest charging card for a Ionity charge in the EU.

To prove that I really behaved like a truck sometimes, here you go.

Electric truck driving, electricfelix is ready. In this photo you can again see the ‘progressive’ mode, that we enabled for the dashboard. I love this one in particular because of the %EQ Power gauge on the right. It indicates your power spending very precisely. This is a great way to drive ECO. I just tried to stick to 10% max all day, that way we were sure of low consumption. And superb performance still, at the same time.

As you can see, just drop your speed on a steep hill and you can get that EQ% power usage down to (close to) 10%. (I was aiming for 10% max all day, yesterday too).

We do make it, and marvellous charging speed is what we receive in return! (108kW).

Three Ionity chargers and we arrive in Paris! In time for dinner!

A night full of cheese and wine is the gift we were waiting for. My partner in crime for the ride turns thirty something at midnight. The friend we’re visiting has a birthday friend over. So it’s a double birthday bash soiree! Cheers.

One more shot of my favourite Parisian charger. We are connected using the ‘schuko/granny’ cable and this way receiving a steady 2.2kW all night. For free.

Sunday morning I went out ‘hunting for a DC charger’. This is quite the challenge in Paris. It takes me some time but I did end up finding one that works. My full list of Parisian recommended DC chargers is linked in my French charging guide.

Paris, Paris.. Showing some local DC fast charging infrastructure (left of the car).

The final ride home!

Pure excitement. I open a race on Glympse and have a clear idea of how to get to Amsterdam. The Benz navi doesn’t agree but that’s OK. Unfortunately my bets are on a perfectly located charger near Kortrijk. The only thing I forgot to take into account is the specific charger on that location (I hadn’t been there yet, one of the reasons why I wanted to try it).

So after a very adventurous and windy ride in Northern France we cross the border only to find a Belgian charger that has software issues with the EQC (It’s the same model of the charger south of Paris (Total) and the one in the morning in Poitiers earlier). Oops. Will be fixed soon.

Allego is closeby, we get cake delivered by a local hero, and head out to Ionity as fast as we can.

Meeting hero Stefaan. (A new Twitter-friend).

A recommendation for the people responsible for Benz navigation is to please take out the Tesla Superchargers as a destination. When we were looking for guidance to Fastned, it didn’t really help us (yet almost guided us to Supercharger). When we arrive at the border, look at booming Fastned business!

The weather is…. But at least it’s great to be back home when you look at our infrastructure. My love for Fastned and Ionity will just keep on growing because of far away road trips like the one we just made. NL & DE (and the Nordic countries) are lightyears ahead. Thanks Mercedes-Benz for this opportunity!

Legal racing consumption Paris-Amsterdam on a windy February day.

Half the day the ACC has been driving us. With the wind getting stronger the closer we came to Amsterdam it was interesting to notice nearly nothing in the car. Really rock solid driving by the Mercedes pilot. Only when I opened the doors of the car in Amsterdam to almost have it fly off the car, did I understand the strength of the wind that day!

The newest Total High Power Charger in Amsterdam! Liking the colour schemes.

Thank you for tuning in to #EQC2Madrid

I will be back one day with more electric road trips. You can always check on my (planned) trips here.

For a full log of our trip and charging sessions, check Polarsteps!

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Electric Mercedes road trip to Spain