Would a full-electric car handle your daily commute? It's a question any new car buyer should ask, and now Mercedes-Benz New Zealand has launched an app to help people find out - regardless of what car they currently drive.
The new EQ Ready app helps motorists decide whether it makes sense for them to switch to an electric car or hybrid. The smartphone app can record real journeys made by the user, analyse their commuting behaviour and compare it with numerous parameters of electric and hybrid vehicles.
Mercedes say this makes it possible to try out e-mobility in a virtual yet realistic way. The EQ Ready app also shows which alternatively powered model from Mercedes-Benz best matches the user's individual behaviour.
The new app is now available to Australian and New Zealand app users for iOS and Android. Mercedes-Benz customers were not the only ones involved in the development of the new app, members of Daimler's Board of Management also let their usage behaviour be examined for e-suitability.
"The general conclusion is that electric cars and hybrids in e-mode are much more suitable for everyday use than most people believe. Following their personal reality check with our app, even sceptics discover that an electric car or hybrid would satisfy their mobility needs," says Wilko Stark, Head of Daimler & Mercedes-Benz Cars Strategy and Head of CASE.
The smartphone records the journeys made by the user in their car to generates a realistic usage profile that is significantly more meaningful than a once-only test drive. The tracking features record speed, acceleration or longer breaks, as well as ambient parameters such as temperature and altitude to calculate the range and energy consumption.
The personal mobility behaviour is transmitted by wifi or mobile data to the Mercedes me server, where the relevant parameters of Mercedes-Benz electric cars and hybrids are stored.
Mercedes-Benz say privacy is a key aspect of the app. To stop a journey being recorded, the user can disable the tracking feature at any time and the app also regularly reminds the user that data is being recorded.
The name EQ stands for "Electric Intelligence". The first series-production model of Mercedes' new EQ product brand, the EQC, will be shown for the first time in September 2018.
-Driven