Thanks for the honest review. That is quite expensive for the mileage you traveled. Even at a modest 3mi/kw, you should have only used about 467kw. Tesla Supercharger rates in my midwestern area are typically 0.37/kw, which would have cost you $173 for the trip.

As others have mentioned, stopping your charging at 80-90% might have saved you considerable time vs going all the way to 100%. That’s the nature of EV charging curves. In the end, if you need to “cannonball” a lot of distance in a limited number of hours, ICE may still be your best bet at this point.

You got a big pig of a luxury ev, with a huge battery and poor range and bad efficiency, then took it on distance road trips. EVs are not great for long distance tripping vehicles, yet. An efficient EV can get about 150 miles on 30 mins charge, which is not really that bad, and tolerable for tripping. A hybrid would have served you better. You bought lemons and expected lemonade.

As others have said, the charge time/efficiency is best between 10 and 70%. Look at efficiency as well, the benz is ideally getting 2 miles per kWh, horrible efficiency. A polestar should be getting double that, and can get 300 miles on a smaller battery, which charges faster as well…

Pro tip: You can greatly reduce your cost of charging by paying for the dumb EA membership for $4 (IIRC). You’ll get it back in the first charge.

I thought the EQB had almost a flat charge curve till 90% SOC

Own an EV for 2 years. Driving an EV locally and driving an EV for a roadtrip is totally different. All EV’a perform badly in longer trips and in winter weather with slower charging and reduced range. For local driving with home charging nothing beats an EV, even one with 100 mi range and slow charging will do well.

EV’s are always great and worry free for <200 mi trips. Anything more than that especially in winter, just rent an ICE and have peace of mind and enjoy the trip rather than worry about charging.

Dc fast charging generally do not save you much if any money. The real savings comes from charging at home.

I will be honest on road trips ICE is just easier. I take my EV because it is the nicer car but road tripping it is generally more inconvenience.

The EQB is a short-range car with slow charging compared to something like a Tesla or the new Kia.

Chargers for the Mercedes are half as available as they are for a Tesla Model S and the range is barely half and it charges at half the speed. Overall, you’d have had a much more pleasant experience in a Tesla.

Then you chose to charge to 100% (which means almost 1 hour charging stops, yikes).

The “cannonball run” across the US is won by a Model S, which drives down to 5% and then charges up to about 60%. Above that, it slows down a lot.

That makes for 15-20 minute charging stops.

At least you didn’t end up in a Mazda or a Chevy Bolt, they’re far worse for road trips than the Mercedes, but the Mercedes is a decidedly bad road trip EV.

I shaved off a few hours by always running the car down to the last couple miles and charging it to 100%

You may have made your trip longer. Most recommend not running battery to below 10% and not charging above 80% as your charges will be faster. Last 20% can take as long as first 80%.

With just 232 in range, figure 150 in winter cold so you are going to charge frequently on a long trip in that vehicle.

Did you try and use https://abetterrouteplanner.com/ It says your charging should have bee about two hours total and Chicago to Omaha a 10 your trip with no stop longer than 20 minutes.

I can run a Bolt EV on a road trip in 40% more time than would take an ICE vehicle.

Your charging strategy was not optimal for the EQB.

I should totally teach a masters class on this topic, The number of folks that get twisted in this area, is astounding.

That is why PHEV is the best of the two worlds

OP, I’m sorry but it is on you to do your research before planning such a long trip during the busiest travel season of the year (especially in Midwest winter)

No matter what, that experience was going to be rough. Expectations needed to be tempered and you should have planned accordingly.

Some things that you should take note of, which some other users have already written out:

• EQB is not a good road trip vehicle. Has slow charging and pedestrian range. Combine that with cold weather, the amount of stops was going to eat into your trip a lot regardless.

• Charging curves are a thing. It differs per vehicle, but in general, the higher SOC you get to, the slower the charge will be. Charging from 10-80% will be roughly the same if not faster than charging from 80-100%. Not only did you spend more time charging than needed, but you also may have clogged a charging spot for others (bigger deal with non-Tesla than Tesla SC) I get that range anxiety is a thing, but if everyone on the road charges like that, it makes the experience for everyone worse. There’s a reason why cars get charged idle fees.

• EA charging you $50 is likely a holding fee, and will be changed to the correct amount shortly. I had this happen too, and saw the correct amount charged in a few days. Honestly, not on you here, but just a PSA since it’s a common question that gets brought up.

Not harping on you specifically, as non-Teslas just aren’t there for road tripping in general, but some prior research and planning could have made it a bit easier.

We wanted to buy an EV but wanted to see how they fair on road trips in the midwest.

You rented one of the worst road-tripping EVs made; don’t allow that to turn you off from EVs in general. The EQB 300 is a low-efficiency first-generation EV from a company that is only recently getting into EV production. And it uses a charging network renowned for its poor reliability. And the icing on the cake is doing 0-to-100% charging, which is hurting your overall driving time tremendously. But I am sure the on-board route planner wasn’t really helping matters since Mercedes’ software is so poor.

You need to try it again with a Tesla. CCS is in a deplorable state right now.

I shaved off a few hours by always running the car down to the last couple miles and charging it to 100%

That actually made things much worse. Batteries are most efficient charging in the 10-80% range. I would only push it to 100% if I had a BIG frontier to get across, like Rawlins-Evanston Wyoming.

You had a bunch of things going against you:

1. EQB is a fairly low range EV.
2. EQB only has mediocre charging speed.
3. You charged to 100%. Charging slows down drastically above 80% in pretty much all EVs, so the fastest way to road trip is to drain the battery down to 10% and only charge to 60-80%, making more frequent, but much shorter stops. It requires a different mindset than filling up your gas car completely, but it works.
4. It was probably very cold, which is the worst case for EV efficiency.

If you were in a longer range EV with faster charging and didn’t charge so high, charging probably would have only added an hour to your 6 hour trip in cold weather, and maybe 30-40 minutes in warmer weather, which can be offset by eating and using the restroom during those charging breaks.