Was coming out of work and battery malfunction

tried the whole lock, unlock, lock, unlock, lock and wait 20 minutes
nothing

got the vehicle towed to dealership and he says

’here’s a loaner, we’re going to have to replace the entire battery, it’s close to a $30k job’

1) WOW, I’ll never drive an EV without warranty. Thank goodness MBUSA has a 150k mile warranty on the battery

2) it’s a bit concerning how unreliable / unusable a car can be when the battery acts up. Like the car is either working or not working, no in between

How long does the dealer expect to have your SUV in the shop for the HV battery replacement?

I'm thinking if you had to pay out of pocket for an entire battery replacement for an EQS, it would be way more than $30K.

There's probably a high core value on the original battery which will be rebuilt for a future warranty claim. I wonder if the HV battery warranty continues until the vehicle reaches 155K miles or 10 years.

2-3 weeks mminimum, longer if they have to get the battery from Germany and not Alabama

my SA said at $30k they’re not making money

I suspect if this was out of pocket it’d be like $40k

Another huge downside to EVs that EV cheerleaders don’t like to admit. My understanding of the core is that if it gets replaced, it has scrap value only.

Yes way more, even a Hyundai EV battery is $60,000 CAD so about 42,500 according to current conversion rate let alone a EQS battery:

I looked up the part number/battery for a 2022 EQS 580 a year or so ago...I posted it somewhere on this forum. The part was $78,000. That's retail, but still...the SA is either wrong or has played some mental gymnastics figuring in stuff we don't know about like core value, dealership actual cost, etc. Plus, there's the labor part, and I doubt this is a 4 hour job. I believe our old I Pace was like 21 hours just to take it apart.

Yikes so probably over 90,000 USD to do a battery swap?

Wrong again. EV cheerleaders are well aware of battery replacement costs.

What do you think the cost would be to replace an engine in a SL63? Or is that something that ICE cheerleaders don't like to admit or should I say another thing that they are in denial about?

One of the AMG W213 forum members had to have the transmission replaced at 2k miles on a 2023 vehicle. I bet that cost a pretty penny! Oh, and he also had the engine replaced on a AMG W212 vehicle.

Xpeng is now selling an EV for $16,800 so Mercedes must be adding a zero to the price of the pack. They can't be that expensive.

Chinese EV battery production is heavily subsidized by the Chinese government, which is why new Chinese EVs are so inexpensive (and why so many countries have imposed stiff tariffs on Chinese EVs). I suspect that the true cost of producing this car is more than $16,800.

And besides, its battery capacity is probably much less than the EQS's 106 kWh. So, you really can't deduce much about the true cost of an EQS's battery from this.

That is not all. The other thing is postal service. For example I found that it is cheaper to ship something from them to Canada than it is to ship something locally/domestic from Canada and to within Canada.

Lol...denial. Good one. So, is this guy saying we're in denial that a battery could go bad? The warranty only covers 10 years and 150,000 miles? What?!? I'm out. Glad this was cleared up and I'm no longer in denial. I still have my M273 engine which could grenade at any moment with no warranty, but at least there's no denial.

And that will leave you stranded and forced to get towed to the dealer just like a dead EV battery pack. Even a completely dead 12v will force you to get towed because I can assure you that a AAA tow truck driver isn't going to remove your driver's seat to replace your 12v battery. The inconvenience is all the same with a major component failing, except the EV battery warranty (8yrs, 100k mi 10yrs, 155k mi) is 2x longer than ICE components. Sure the battery pack is pricey as h3ll but I don't think anyone is paying out of pocket for it.

Minor adjustment to your post. The 8 yrs 100K would apply to like a Porsche Taycan. As noted above, the Mercedes EQS battery warranty is an industry leading 10 years 155000 miles.

Thanks for clarifying. So Mercedes went above and beyond. I think the 8yrs and 100k is federal minimum so I just assumed it was the same.

And Google tells me this (so EQB is the federal minimum):

• EQB: An 8-year/100,000-mile battery limited warranty
• EQE, EQS, EQE (SUV), and EQS (SUV): A 10-year/155,000-mile battery limited warranty
• Plug-in hybrid models: A high-voltage battery warranty of at least 6 years or 62,000 miles, but may be extended to 10 years or 150,000 miles in some states
• Wet cell batteries: A 48-month/50,000-mile coverage period

It's fairly easy for me to deduce that the price of EV batteries is coming down and will that cost will continue to decline as production ramps up. It's also fairly easy to deduce that Mercedes charges waaaaaay too much for parts.

Besides, this is about saving the planet from global warming and environment catastrophe. The more planet saving subsidies the better. You should be thanking China for saving the planet, not penalizing them with tariffs. Letting the planet go to heck in a handbag because you don't like Chinese people is dumb and racist.

I totally agree with the spirit of this. The only thing that might (might not) give me pause is the racism part. To me the whole tariff's thing is about political power (which in my mind translates to money), but you may well be right, that there could be a racism component in there as well.

China, saving the planet?
They would only be saving the planet according to the alarmists, if they were doing it by accident.
On average they open a new coal fired power plant every 1 to 2 weeks.
They are importing shipfulls of coal from Australia/New Zealand.
They don’t discriminate against high sulfur or dirty coal either.
In large cities in China, there is so much coal dust in the air, citizens were wearing surgical masks long before the rona made them fashionable.
When China hosted the Olympics, they had to suspend operations at their coal fired plants in Beijing to avoid appearing to be enviro bandits.
And what is all this racist pablum?
If you criticize a country for their policies, that makes you racist? That is the most reductive logic possible.
The environmental effects of their battery mining operations alone would never be allowed by the US EPA.

If is good to point out that the manufacturing of batteries using coal (or any fossil fuel) is undesirable and should be driven to sustainable sources of energy. Same with the environmental impact of their mining and disposal. To that end what should be done is impose requirements of carbon emissions limitations on their manufacture. This would require entering in global agreements that would need to be mutually beneficial. Of course this principal should also be applied to all sources of carbon emissions.

I also agree with the comment regarding the criticism of a countries policies. That of itself doesn't make you racist or anti-Semitic for that matter.

Now lets have some fun with math.


The chart above shows how much CO2 is required to produce a battery in various locations around the world. Too lazy to come up with a weighted average, but using the Jiangsu Province since it produces the largest amount of batteries, the battery production cost is 60 kg/KWh
Ok now let's compare the rate of emissions including the upstream of car, CO2 cost of running an EQS580 vs a SL63. This comes out to 145 vs 666 (devil's number) g / mile.
The EQS580 battery is 108 kWh. It costs 6048 kg of CO2 to produce.
So how long do you have drive before the EQS580 battery pays for itself? At 521 g/mile difference that would be 12000 miles. So even using dirty ole China coal energy batteries, over the life time of the car a big ole EQS is a clear winner in terms of CO2 emissions compared to an SL63.