Mercedes-Benz teases Vision EQXX electric car with a 750-mile range

As far as range goes, there's not much of a fight between electric car makers these days; Tesla sits firmly on the throne in most categories.

But that may change sometime in the (fairly distant) future. On Tuesday, while detailing its upcoming strategy, Mercedes-Benz announced the Vision EQXX, an electric car concept with an advertised 750-mile range.

Mercedes-Benz put the range in the context of a ride from Beijing to Shanghai "on one charge," which is a distance of roughly 750 miles. That kind of range surpasses even gas-powered cars with very large tanks and low gas consumption, and if it were to become ubiquitous, it would probably silence the range debates once and for all.

Nearly all details on how the company plans to achieve this are absent. A company presentation only showed a silhouette of the EQXX. “We have set up a group of our engineers to take on an extraordinary task: to build the longest-range and highest-efficiency electric car the world has ever seen,” Mercedes-Benz R&D chief Markus Schafer said during the presentation. The only thing we know is that the company plans to achieve this range (mainly) through efficiency improvements, and not improved energy density.

Mercedes-Benz recently announced its upcoming electric cars, with six new EQ models. Those models have very good advertised range, but it's nowhere near the range of the EQXX concept. For example, the Mercedes-Benz EQS, which is coming in 2021, will have a range of up to 700 km (435 miles).

In the present, Tesla cars are ahead of the competition when it comes to range. Tesla's Model S Long Range Plus can go 402 miles on a single charge, while the Model X Performance LM can do 351 miles.