2022 Mercedes-Benz EQB 350 4Matic review: First drive

Sticking a premium badge on a compact SUV is an exercise fraught with danger. It’s difficult to make something small and tall feel especially premium, especially in terms of refinement and ride.

Now, Mercedes-Benz’s nuggety little seven-seat GLB does a pretty good job of squaring that circle. But the new Mercedes-Benz EQB 350 4Matic does a better one. This little Mercedes SUV is almost as relaxed and refined to drive as an S-Class.

The secret is what’s under the bonnet. Or, rather, what’s not under it.

The EQB 350 4Matic shares much of its basic architecture, body, and interior with the GLB lineup currently on sale in Australia. But instead of a 2.0-liter turbocharged inline four – which punches out 120kW in the entry-level, front drive GLB 200, 165kW in the GLB 250 4Matic, and 225kW in the full-fat AMG GLB 35 4Matic – it’s powered by two electric motors.

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At the rear, driving the rear wheels, is a newly developed permanently excited synchronous e-motor. Up front is a less powerful asynchronous e-motor. Between them, they deliver a total system output of 215kW and 520Nm.

That’s enough, says Mercedes-Benz, to punch the 2175-kg EQB 350 to 100km/h in 6.1 seconds, neatly splitting the difference between the GLB 250 4Matic’s 6.9 seconds and the AMG GLB 35’s 5.3 seconds.

Let’s get the elephant out of the room: The EQB’s e-motors are powered by a 66.5kWh battery that, on the European WLTP test cycle, delivers a range of 419km. Though that translates to a reasonable 6.3km/kWh, the EQB 350 can’t match the 507-km range and 7.2km/kWh efficiency of the dual-motor Tesla Model Y Long Range.

The Tesla’s quicker, too, taking just 4.0 seconds to get to 100km/h, helped by its 286kW and 510Nm powertrain and the fact it’s almost 200kg lighter.

In truth, the blocky EQB 350 is a very different sort of SUV to the soap-bar smooth Tesla. The Mercedes is shorter and narrower and has 61mm less in the wheelbase than the American SUV, but is 82mm taller overall, with a roofline that extends back to a near-vertical hatch rather than the Tesla’s coupé-like swoop. If you want to carry seven people – or a lot of gear – the EQB is a more practical design.

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Though the FWD-optimized internal combustion engine architecture of the MFA2 platform underneath is betrayed by the short dash-to-axle and longish front overhang, the conversion from petrol to battery power hasn’t compromised the interior packaging at all, which means the EQB comes with the same seven-seat capacity as the GLB.

And whereas the Tesla Model Y’s optional third-row places passengers’ heads right under the glass of the rear hatch, the EQB’s third row passengers have steel over their heads.

What’s more, Mercedes-Benz makes it abundantly clear that to ensure maximum protection in the event of a rollover it considers the EQB’s third row suitable only for those 1.65m or shorter.

In truth, the blocky EQB 350 is a very different SUV to the soap-bar smooth Tesla ... If you want to carry seven – or a lot of gear – the EQB is more practical

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The second-row slides fore and aft 140mm, and in the rear-most position, there’s a ton of leg and knee room for 1.8m adults.

There’s plenty of headroom, too, even though the rear seat H-point is higher than that of the front to give rear passengers better all-round visibility. Load space ranges from 495L with the third row in place, to 1710L with the second and third rows folded flat.

It only takes a couple of kilometres behind the wheel for the EQB 350 to establish its credentials as a luxury compact SUV in terms of refinement and ride. None of its internal combustion engine rivals can match the smooth, silent surge of power from the dual e-motors, nor the quiet composure with which it goes down the road, especially with the adaptive dampers set in Comfort mode.

In terms of its EV competition, the EQB 350 is nowhere near as busy on poor roads as the stiffly sprung Volvo XC40 Recharge, and generates a lot less road noise than the Tesla Model Y.

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It’s no hot hatch, but the EQB 350’s steering is direct, nicely weighted, and provides decent feedback. Braking is smooth and linear, the transition between regenerative and mechanical retardation seamless.

There’s a ton of traction out of corners courtesy of the well-planted multi-link rear axle, with the front wheels playing the perfect supporting role. Nail the accelerator and the Mercedes scoots away from the apex with surprisingly little understeer.

The power demand between the front and rear axles is optimized 100 times per second, depending on the driving situation. The more efficient rear motor handles most of the workload, the front motor contributing only when needed.

There’s a ton of traction out of corners courtesy of the multi-link rear axle ... Nail the accelerator and the Mercedes scoots away from the apex with little understeer

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You can feel the front axle help pull the EQB 350 out of corners under hard acceleration, though there’s virtually no corruption through the steering. Max power standing starts on snowy forest roads near Munich (our test car was fitted with winter tyres) saw the EQB 350 leap away from a standstill with minimal traction interventions and tracking straight and true. It’s a brilliantly easy and surprisingly enjoyable thing to drive.

There are three driver-selectable lift-off regen levels, actuated via the paddles on the steering column. There’s also a mode that allows the car to use navigation data, traffic information and speed sign recognition to automatically adjust the regen level itself. The EQB felt nicest with the least amount of regen selected, more natural, more fluid in its forward progress.

Our 340km test drive included a 260km run along the autobahn from Stuttgart to Munich, the rest on country roads and village streets. It was a breezy winter’s day, the ambient temperature right around zero and snow flurries in the air, which explained why the EQB’s MBUX system was predicting a maximum range of only 342km as we pulled out of the hotel garage.

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But as the MBUX nav system not only showed where EV charge points were, whether they were fast chargers or not, and how many were free, there was no point holding back on the autobahn.

The EQB happily whooshed along at 130 to 140km/h, with occasional bursts to an indicated 164km/h (claimed top speed is 160km/h). Not surprisingly, the battery charge plummeted, hitting 52 percent after just 100km.

A stop at a 300kW fast charger – though, disappointingly, the EQB will only charge at a maximum rate of 100kW, and in the cold weather, it ran at 70kW – saw the battery topped up from 52 percent to 82 percent in 25 minutes. The nav predicted a likely range of 267km, a maximum range of 327km, and that we’d arrive at the 150kW charger at our waypoint 158km away with 25 percent charge remaining.

The EQB 350 has other charms. It’s roomy and practical for its size, well-equipped and well-finished, and it really does ride and drive like a small luxury car

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Not quite. We arrived with 21 percent charge and between 56 and 80km of range remaining. A 34-minute stop with the EQB sucking down electrons at the rate of 75kW brought battery charge back up to 82 percent.

Now, freezing weather, heavy acceleration events, and sustained high speeds made our trip an extreme duty cycle for an EV, which explains why the EQB 350 struggled to deliver much more than 3.2km/kWh. Driven normally, under normal conditions, you could probably bank on averaging at least 5.2km/kWh, which equates to a range between 340km and 350km.

Okay, that’s not class leading. But the EQB 350 has other charms. It’s roomy and practical for its size, well-equipped and well-finished, and it really does ride and drive like a small luxury car. And Mercedes-Benz is aware of the range issue. It’s working on long range version of the EQB, which may sacrifice the third row in favor of extra battery capacity.

The Mercedes-EQ EQB 350 4Matic is top dog in a lineup that includes the EQB 300 4Matic with 168kW and 390Nm and the front drive EQB 250 with 140kW and 375Nm, which will go on sale in 2022.

In Europe, the EQB 350 4Matic is priced at a 13 percent premium over the GLB 250 4Matic, which would suggest a recommended retail price in Australia of around $90,000, excluding stamp duty, rego, and dealer delivery.

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