In the south of France, a reviewer on a family holiday plugged a nearly flat Mercedes into a hotel charger and nothing happened. Wrong voltage. He tried again at a Tesla V4 Supercharger and got the same answer: voltage too low. The GLB electric he has been running does not charge at 400 volts. Not slowly. At all, on his account, unless whoever ordered it ticked an £850 box on the configurator, and it cannot be added later.
That is the extreme version of something running through all five of today's stories. Every piece of hardware here is rated for a number it will rarely see, and the number that actually applies gets decided by whatever it is plugged into, usually before the owner was in the room.
Out of Spec's Gravity test is the polite version. The car asked for 420 kilowatts and the cabinet handed over 400, a rounding error next to the Mercedes. The run still returned 152 miles of highway driving after a 15 minute stop, but the ceiling that day sat in the charger, not the pack.
Kelley Blue Book arrives at the same place from the driveway. The R1S Quad will reach 60 in a claimed 2.6 seconds and will also sit on a 6 kilowatt home charger for more than 20 hours, which is why the review's most practical line recommends a 48 amp unit instead. And asked how fast EVgo's next generation charger will be, its chief executive would not give Tom Moloughney a number, only that it should last a decade.
The solar story is where somebody buys the headroom deliberately. Matt Goes Electric put 1,840 watts of panels into an 800 watt inverter knowing the ports will clip through July, because in December they will not. He is upfront that this technically risks the warranty. Pulling one panel off each input on a clear day dropped output by roughly 250 watts, the cleanest demonstration today that rated capacity and delivered capacity are separate things.
The thing to watch is who ends up holding the bill. On the network side it is EVgo, committing capex now against a power figure it will not publish. On the roof it was Matt, at £96 a panel, betting on December. In the Mercedes it is a used buyer three years from now, finding out the car's charging compatibility was settled by a stranger at a dealer desk in 2026.
The GLB Electric Will Not Charge at 400 Volts Unless You Paid £850
What Car? has an electric Mercedes GLB on long term test, and the review turns on a charging restriction rather than the way it drives. The 250 Plus covered here runs an 800 volt architecture with, the presenter says, an 85 kilowatt hour usable pack and up to 380 miles of official range. He says Mercedes claims a 320 kilowatt peak and 10 to 80 percent in 22 minutes, and that he has watched the car report 353 kilowatts.
The catch is the other kind of charger. He says the GLB simply will not charge at 400 volt stations, which on his account rules out Tesla Superchargers and much mid-power hardware. On a family trip to France he says he was caught out twice, at a hotel overnight and at a V4 Supercharger where the car reported voltage too low. The remedy is an £850 option specified with the order that cannot be retrofitted.
On price he puts the 250 Plus a little over £46,000, below the 220 mild hybrid petrol at almost £47,000, with the AMG Line Premium Plus on camera at £56,800. His spec pick is the 250 Plus in Sport Executive.
One consequence the review leaves alone: the option is order-only, so it is a permanent property of that car, and a used buyer inherits somebody else's decision about which chargers work.
Fifteen Minutes in a Lucid Gravity Bought 152 Miles
Out of Spec Reviews finally put a Lucid Gravity through its 10 percent challenge. Arrive at a charger with 10 percent left, plug in for 15 minutes, then drive at 80 miles an hour until the battery is back to 10 percent. The distance is the score.
The car is a 2027 Grand Touring in five seat form, which the host describes as roughly a 123 kilowatt hour pack on an unusually high voltage architecture, with 4,500 miles covered. He chose a site in Garner, North Carolina because its 400 kilowatt cabinets carry no load management.
The car requested 420 kilowatts and the charger gave 400. Across the 15 minutes he logs 68.6 kilowatt hours delivered at an average of 275 kilowatts, taking the pack from 10 to 62 percent. The drive returned 152 miles at 2.5 miles per kilowatt hour in mid to high 80 degree weather.
Two cars ran the same loop. A Porsche Cayenne took 80 kilowatt hours, managed 2.6 miles per kilowatt hour and covered 186 miles. A Volvo EX90, on what he calls its least aerodynamic wheels, reached 114 miles.
Four Panels, Two Ports, and a Deliberate Overload
Matt Goes Electric wired four JA Solar 460 watt panels, bought at £96 each, into an EcoFlow Stream 800 watt micro inverter, two in parallel on each of its two inputs. In series, he says a pair reaches 81.2 volts against a 65 volt inverter maximum, so it would not start. In parallel the voltage stays at 40.6 volts but current doubles to 28.86 amps, against a port rated for 16 amps continuous and 20 amps short circuit.
He is candid that this technically risks the inverter and the warranty, and says it caps at 16 amps rather than failing. His ports settle near 395 watts each instead of 600, with the system peaking around 795 watts. He reports about 6 kilowatt hours a day and 39.5 in one week, worth £12.36 to him.
On a 32 degree day the inverter cut out and rebooted, which he blames on heat. Disconnecting one panel per port as a test dropped output from around 790 watts to 537. That figure is the argument for the whole setup, and the winter number he cites, panels making 20 to 50 percent of summer output, decides whether the extra £96 a panel pays back.
The Quad R1S Is Much Faster Than It Charges
Kelley Blue Book treats the second generation Rivian R1S as an under-the-skin rework, with visible changes limited to lighting. The number everyone will quote is a claimed 0 to 60 in 2.6 seconds on a vehicle the host says weighs more than 7,000 pounds, though he is clear he did not attempt it on all-terrain tyres.
Charging is where the review cools off. He puts 10 to 80 percent at roughly 35 to 45 minutes, neither class leading nor badly behind, and notes the pack is large. The more useful warning is domestic: a 6 kilowatt Level 2 charger would need over 20 hours from empty, so he suggests a 48 amp unit. The charge port also sits front driver's side, blocking a neighbouring bay at older Tesla V3 stalls.
Off road gets the enthusiasm: up to 14.9 inches of ground clearance, wading quoted at 43 inches, no sway bars and no locking differentials, with a motor per wheel handling distribution. He names the Lucid Gravity as the other best three row electric SUV and the more road focused of the two, a comparison today's other test gives a number.
EVgo Is Building Bigger Sites and Will Not Say How Fast
Tom Moloughney's interview with EVgo chief executive Badar Khan is mostly numbers, describing a network changing shape rather than just growing. Khan says the company had roughly 2,000 stalls in 2022 and about 5,300 at the end of the first quarter, expecting around 6,500 by year end, 3,000 to 5,000 added a year within three or four, and over 15,000 in five.
Site size is the visible shift. Under 10 percent of sites had six or more stalls in 2022 and about a third do now, he says, with new builds typically 8 to 12 and GM branded flagships reaching 20 or more. He gives roughly two thirds of stalls as 350 kilowatt against 10 to 15 percent a few years ago, and says an internal reliability measure called one and done has moved from the mid 80s to about 96 percent.
Two answers stay open. Asked how fast the next generation charger will be, Khan declines to give a figure, saying only that it should suffice for the next decade. On network wide idle fees, he says the company is looking at options. On NACS he is specific: about 100 retrofits last year and roughly 400 more this year.
Bottom line: If you are ordering a GLB electric, tick the £850 box and stop thinking about it. It is a strange thing to charge for, and What Car?'s presenter says most manufacturers include it as standard, but it is the only version of today's problem a buyer can still fix. Everything else here is somebody else's ceiling. And take the Lucid number seriously. One hundred and fifty two highway miles for a 15 minute stop, on a charger that was not giving the car what it asked for, is the bar this segment now has to clear.
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