Tested! The Mercedes-AMG EQE Electric Sedan Is Moving Quickly in the Right Direction

The raw accelerative capability of modern electric cars is widely known at this point, and although that type of performance is more than enough fun for many people, some buyers still desire more than a futuristic muscle car. When it comes time to make an electric car go around a corner like a sports car, that's where we usually find trouble. Many fine engineers are working on the problem, among them the speed brokers of Affalterbach who unleashed the 2023 Mercedes-AMG EQE Sedan.

The reason so many engineers are working so hard is simple: weight. Batteries are heavy, and weight is the enemy of performance. An electric motor's instantly available torque does wonders to accelerate heavy cars up to speed quickly, but once they're going, Newton's First Law takes precedence. Making a heavy car change direction is a lot more difficult and often much less graceful than making a lighter one do the same, and the 2023 Mercedes-AMG EQE electric luxury sedan we tested weighs 5,569 pounds. That's nearly 1,100 pounds heavier than a Mercedes-AMG E63 S sedan we tested, and it feels like it.

Thankfully, the AMG people have a few tricks at their disposal. Along with the usual stiffer springs, dampers, and anti-roll bars, the 2023 Mercedes-AMG EQE luxury sedan is also equipped with rear-wheel steering to limber it up. Additionally, the engineers went through the electric-motor control software and made the rear motor apply considerably more power than the front to give the car a rear-drive feel. Meanwhile, they maintained the front axle's ability to help pull the EQE out of a corner.

Using every tool at its disposal, AMG introduced considerable forces that act upon an AMG EQE in motion, but the mass whose inertia they hoped to alter was equally considerable. Still, they prevailed. The AMG EQE pulled an impressive 0.99 average lateral g on our skidpad, beating the 2021 E63S sedan (0.97 g average).

The electric car's prodigious weight may have been abated in steady-state cornering, but in a dynamic test like our figure-eight course with acceleration, braking, and turning in both directions, it reared its head. Here, the 2023 Mercedes-AMG EQE luxury sedan managed a quite good 23.8-second lap at 0.83 g average, but that wasn't good enough to beat the AMG E63 S, which laid down a slightly quicker 23.6-second lap at 0.87 g average.

The discrepancy is almost certainly in the transitions, given the fact the electric car accelerates quicker and stops shorter. The AMG EQE needs just 2.9 seconds to hit 60 mph, a tenth quicker than the gas-powered AMG E63 S. The less powerful but lighter E63 S is quicker through the quarter mile but just barely, needing 11.2 seconds and trapping at 124.2 mph to the EQE's 11.4 seconds at 117.2 mph. Bringing it all to a halt, the heavier EV stops 4 feet shorter, 105 feet to the gas car's 109.

Going entirely by the numbers, it would appear AMG engineers succeeded in creating an EV that eclipses its gas-powered peer across the board despite its extra weight. Drive both cars, though, and you'll see they still have work to do.

Data sheets are cold comfort when you're hurtling down a winding road at speed. Knowing the 2023 AMG EQE sedan can stop on a dime and pull substantial lateral g isn't the same as feeling confident finding out for yourself when your inner ear tells you this car is heavy and needs to be treated as such.

More than anything, it's all in the initial bite of the big carbon-ceramic brakes assisted by a powerful regenerative braking system. Simply put, when you stand on the brake pedal, the AMG EQE doesn't feel like it slows down as quickly as a car this size ought to. Instead it feels like the car is really heavy and you need to back up your braking points ahead of the corners in order to scrub enough speed in time. The data says different, but the data doesn't pay your insurance premium.

Not helping matters is the obnoxious moving brake pedal. We've yet to meet anyone who likes finding this pedal at a different distance every time you use it, and we wish we could disable the system—especially when driving quickly on a good road. We're at least happy to report the blending of the electrical and mechanical braking systems is quite good, so you get consistent stopping power regardless of which system is engaged and by how much.

You encounter a similar situation when you turn into the corner, though much less so. Here, all those suspension and steering tricks work their magic and make the car feel much nimbler than its weight was telling you moments ago under braking. It's still a heavy car and you sense this fact, but once you enter the corner, you don't worry about its ability to hang on. It's the initial setup, the braking and the turning into the curve, where your mind tells you to be conservative lest the car understeer off the road as the body in motion resists having its course altered.

To be fair, this is where every high-performance electric car struggles these days, and the AMG EQE luxury sedan is far from the worst offender. Find a way to increase driver confidence at corner entry, find some life lost in the electric steering rack, and this car could be well on its way to cracking the electric sport sedan code. Only Lucid has done it at this point with the Air GTP, though the Porsche Taycan is close. The AMG EQE is headed in the right direction and leading the BMW i4 M50, which drives more like a simulation. Within Mercedes, the AMG EQE is leaps and bounds ahead of the AMG EQS, the least AMG car the company has built in decades and one that would drag its door handles in corners were they not retractable.

On the rare occasion you'll drive the 2023 Mercedes-AMG EQE in such an aggressive, sporty manner, all the above matters. The rest of the time, it's effectively a standard EQE that rides a bit stiffer. Motor power is reduced in Comfort mode, so while it's still quite quick, it's only blindingly so if you switch to Sport+ before you hit the accelerator. The ride stiffness serves as a constant reminder you bought the sporty model but it isn't grating.

Otherwise, the same raves and rants apply. This luxury sedan is wonderfully quiet inside, and its driving range is on par with the competition at an underwhelming 225 miles. The rear seat is refreshingly spacious for a big-battery electric car, but it and the dashboard are difficult to see over thanks to a high beltline and steeply raked windows dictated by the aerodynamically efficient exterior styling and its visually unappealing jelly bean proportions. You can thankfully disable the artificial drivetrain sounds, as they mostly come across like noise for noise's sake. The MBUX interface remains overly complicated, and the unnecessary Hyperscreen isn't available on this car because it already weighs enough as is.

The 2023 Mercedes-AMG EQE's final enticement is that it's a good $5,000 cheaper than an AMG E63 S to start, ringing in at $108,050. This one is buttered up to $126,540, and most of it is cosmetic, shy of the 21-inch wheels and carbon-ceramic brakes. Previous driving experiences suggest you could drop those and still get good stopping power along with a better ride—and keep $6,500 in your pocket.

All said and done, the 2023 Mercedes-AMG EQE sedan might not yet drive quite as well as the AMG E63 S, but Mercedes has done everything else possible to make it enticing. If you don't plan to hit up a lot of twisty roads in your midsize sport sedan, you owe it to yourself to consider which of the two is really better for you.