Enlarge / And then there were four: after debuting the EQS sedan and SUV and then the EQE sedan, it's now time for the EQE SUV. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Mercedes-Benz provided flights from DC to Lisbon and back, plus three nights in hotels so we could drive the EQE SUV. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

LISBON, PORTUGAL—On the whole, Americans love SUVs. And Mercedes-Benz loves selling cars to Americans. So we weren't at all surprised when it first revealed an SUV version of the EQE sedan, nor when we learned the EQE SUV would be built in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

That's now underway, with cars arriving in dealers any week now. After spending a couple of days driving different models in the EQE SUV range, it's clear that Mercedes' engineers have been listening to and incorporating feedback as their ideas meet real-world driving conditions. The result is a competent electric SUV, if not one that necessarily gets the heart racing or demands you drive the long way home.

The EQE SUV is the fourth new Mercedes EV to use the company's EVA2 platform after the EQS sedan and SUV , and the EQE sedan . That much should be obvious when you see one—all feature ultra-streamlined designs that can resemble the "speed shapes" that some car showrooms use to show off different paint colors. That wasn't the design brief, though—making it as slippery as possible was. And the designers succeeded, with a drag coefficient of 0.25. In a contest of elegance, I'm not sure the SUV would triumph over the sedan, but then I'm not sure it's supposed to.

Enlarge / Our Creative Director didn't know that I have a fondness for the Ford Ka and still miss the one I sold before moving to America, but I like that he chose one for this graphic. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

As I look back on Ars' automotive year and the new cars, crossovers, SUVs, and trucks that we drove in 2022, I have started coming to a conclusion of sorts. And it's this: Forget the top-of-the-line, fully loaded, superduper electric vehicle; what you want is the least powerful, least expensive variant. And that's true whether you want an EV because you want to drive something that's very efficient or if you're a driving enthusiast who's going electric.

It's a thought I've alluded to more than once this year, and the effect can be seen when you look at a pair of first drives that bookended this year: the Kia EV6 (which starts at $48,500 for the EV6 Wind) and the Kia EV6 GT (a hefty $61,400). The extra $12,900 buys you a much quicker 0–60 time, and a twin-motor, all-wheel drive powertrain with much more power. But the GT uses the same battery as the cheapest rear-wheel drive EV6, and with its bigger wheels it only has a range of 206 miles compared to the RWD EV6 Wind, which can do 310 miles on the same number of kWh.

OK, so score one for the hypermilers. And for the enthusiasts, I have to report that the cheaper car I drove in January was more fun on the back roads. Because it's more fun to drive a slow car quickly than a quick car slowly.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

For some years now, the tech industry has been transforming the automobile. We often hear that consumers, enamored with their new smartphones, want some of that same functionality in their new car. Less is said about investors who have grown rich from software companies that sell a product and then charge customers a subscription or fee to unlock certain features. They really do want that functionality in their car company investments, so the era of being offered paid upgrades to your car is here whether you want it or not.

Today, Polestar announced a power upgrade for owners of the long-range, dual-motor Polestar 2 , whose two motors generated an equal 201 hp (150 kW) for a combined 402 hp (300 kW). That's more than sufficient to make the dual-motor Polestar 2 a quick car, befitting the new brand's stated identity of being focused on electric performance cars.

The only problem is those electric Volvos that share the Polestar 2's CMA platform. Both the Volvo C40 and XC40 have dual-motor battery-electric vehicles that, just like the Polestar 2, offer a combined 402 hp. With cars so utterly defined by the software that controls them, it's easier than it used to be to give them different driving personalities. But perhaps to create a bit more differentiation, Polestar has always offered a performance pack.

Enlarge / The Mercedes-Benz EQE sedan's shape has been designed to create as little drag as possible.

Mercedes-Benz provided flights from DC to Denver and back, plus two nights in a hotel, so we could drive the EQE sedan and the EQS SUV, which you'll be able to read about on September 29. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

DENVER—No one has more experience with launching new cars than Mercedes-Benz, the world's oldest existing automaker. The company is at the start of a new phase of its existence, as it transforms into a carbon-neutral company that mostly builds electric vehicles. But it's sticking to some tried and true strategies as it does.

So, like the smaller, cheaper E-Class that follows the S-Class sedan, the EQE sedan will arrive this fall in the US to follow last year's bigger, more expensive EQS sedan .

Built using Mercedes' new EVA2 platform for EVs, the EQE is obviously related to the EQS; the two cars look similar, having been optimized to the nth degree by the wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics. It's an evolution of the cab-forward "four-door coupe" look that the company pioneered on the CLS, but with any rough edges polished away to aid the air's passage over and around the bodywork as efficiently as possible. Mercedes hasn't published the EQE's drag coefficient, but I'd be surprised if it was higher than the EQS's remarkable 0.2, given that it rides on smaller 19-inch wheels.