The Mercedes-Benz van you see here is still nearly a year away from a proper reveal. We don’t even know its name yet, which is why the only name you’ll see here is Van.EA. While Van.EA sounds like a shady website streaming bootleg NFL games, it’s actually a brand-new electric-vehicle architecture that will eventually underpin all corners of Mercedes-Benz’s van empire. Mercedes, aware of current consumer hesitancy, has a complementary combustion-engine platform in the works too. But the most interesting part of Van.EA is that this effort is going to result in a high-end people mover aimed at both China and the United States.
Not (Just) a Mall-Crawler
If you’re familiar with JDM-fanboy favorites like the Toyota Alphard and Lexus LM, that gives you an idea of what Mercedes is cooking up. Something that can serve as high-end VIP transport, chauffeuring—things beyond trips to Target.
It’s worth noting that, while this type of vehicle is popular in China, the current U.S. market for luxury minivans is, well, pretty much nonexistent. We have minivans, but not a lot of them, and none that really lean into Benz-level luxury or try to cater to buyers outside the confines of the middle-class nuclear family. The old Metris had a passenger variant, but its commercial roots were obvious; its high-and-forward driving position felt more like that of a Sprinter than a GLS-class.
That’s what Van.EA aims to change. Private-use vans, as development head Andreas Zygan put it, will no longer “have to carry the burden” of so many commercial-grade components and hard points; that would immediately put a six-figure minivan into “hard sell” territory with discerning buyers. In fact, to further push it away from its roots, the M-B vans team started collaborating more closely with coworkers from the passenger-cars division.
The hope is that the new high-end people mover built on this Van.EA architecture will become favored transport for shuttling VIPs of all stripes. But Mercedes surely wouldn’t be disappointed if you also see many of these suckers stuck in a mile-long pickup line at your local private school.
What Can You Tell Us About the Van?
In terms of straight facts and figures? Not a ton.
Van.EA will run on an 800-volt architecture, which means it should be pretty quick at the DC fast-charger. If you’re charging at home, the platform’s onboard unit can accept AC juice at up to 22 kW, which is almost enough zap to grant sentience to your circuit-breaker panel. Dual-motor all-wheel drive and rear-axle steering will be available. We don’t have any powertrain output figures, nor do we have knowledge of the battery chemistry or motor types, but we do know that Mercedes is aiming for an EPA range estimate north of 300 miles.
If electromobility isn’t your hang, worry not. Van.EA will be followed by Van.CA, which will be a variant of the platform dedicated to internal-combustion powertrains. CA shares approximately 70 percent of its components with EA, and they’re able to be built on the same production line, so think of it less as a separate platform and more of an internal-combustion analogue. Even kissin’ cousins would be too distant.
The two diverging roads in this yellow wood will offer several variants to suit all sorts of needs. The new platform won’t be limited to six-figure moonshots; there’ll be plenty of commercial models and middle grounds to fill the gaps. But we may have to wait a few more months to get the full skinny there.
How Does Van.EA Drive?
To give the new electric van a very, very early shakedown, we headed to Mercedes-Benz’s winter testing grounds outside Arjeplog, Sweden. With Van.EA being in the middle of development, its exterior was entirely camouflaged, and the interior was a rat’s nest of ethernet cables and shrouds to hide the bits that were further along and closer to production spec.
One thing we can tell you is that three large displays occupy the entire width of the dashboard. There’s a gigantic gauge display, and two similarly sized screens next to it—one for traditional infotainment duty, the other for the passenger. It’s like a more upright and symmetrical Hyperscreen.
First, we tackled 10 and 15 percent grades, with one side of the vehicle on dry pavement and the other half on ice. A brake-hold feature prevents the van from rolling backward, and all we needed to do was lightly apply the accelerator and let the stability system dole out the torque to the wheels with the most grip. A little bit of wheelspin later, we made it up with barely any lateral deviation.
Then came the low-friction braking. We ran the van up to 62 mph, which admittedly did take awhile on solid ice, but it tracked straight as the stability-control light blinked its little heart out. As we approached a piece of dry pavement, we put half the van on it and slammed the brakes as hard as we could. ABS did its thing, and the ESC once again held the vehicle surprisingly straight. Engineers told us that the goal was to ensure the driver needed no more than a 90-degree steering input to keep the vehicle tracking straight under that kind of braking; we only needed a couple dabs in the 30-degree range.
The last two pieces of the puzzle involved pretty simple stuff. Cones were set up in a square so we could see how tight the turning circle was (the answer: impressively). Then we were set loose on a long stretch of icy pavement, as well as a large skidpad-style plot, to see how well the stability control keeps things in line. While you can definitely turn hard flicks of the steering wheel and unnecessary right-pedal tomfoolery into lurid snowy drifts, the ESC sure as hell doesn’t want you to. Half the time, it was already well on its way to sorting us out before we finished our steering corrections.
But, of course, in driving a car for the first time, there’s plenty of ancillary stuff to pick up on, too. The seating position was more carlike than in most vans; you sit in it, rather than on it, although the pedals still felt a little too close when your author set the seat for his six-foot frame. Visibility was solid when the camouflage wasn’t in the way. The ride over ice and snow was smooth; as we careened over a large dip, the body slowly and surely recombobulated itself without any annoying nautical float.
The biggest issue with Van.EA’s major upmarket push won’t be the van itself—the foundations seem solid, as one would expect. Instead, the challenge will be convincing well-off Americans that they want this instead of a traditional SUV, especially if that SUV already wears a three-pointed star. To Mercedes, part of what makes something luxurious is a feeling of spaciousness, and a van delivers that in spades. Whether people are willing to accept that shape into their predefined mental image of luxury is a different story.
Cars are Andrew Krok’s jam, along with boysenberry. After graduating with a degree in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009, Andrew cut his teeth writing freelance magazine features, and now he has a decade of full-time review experience under his belt. A Chicagoan by birth, he has been a Detroit resident since 2015. Maybe one day he’ll do something about that half-finished engineering degree.
Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com
