I’ll never forget it. We’re driving to camp orientation and my daughter turns to me, a look on her face so serious I instinctively clench my stomach as I brace for whatever is about to spill out of her eight-year-old brain. In a voice that implies she’s carefully chosen each word, she says “I don’t care if it’s next week, next month, or even ten years from now. I want you to get another big van.”
My daughter has lived her entire life in this strange world where her dad occasionally picks her up from school, soccer practice, or whatever in an entirely different car from the one that dropped her off. Usually, this happens without any kind of warning.
I’ve been doing this for almost her entire existence and she’s never reacted as strongly to a vehicle as she has to the soft blue 2024 Mercedes-Benz eSprinter high-roof electric cargo van. And you know what? I’m with her. This van rules.
The Basics
As-Tested Price: $75,316
Battery: 113kWh usable capacity lithium-ion
Drive: Single-motor, rear-wheel-drive
Horsepower: 201 hp
Torque: 295 lb.-ft.
WLTP Range: 273 miles
DC Fast Charging: 115 kW
Curb Weight: 6,746 lbs
Why Does It Exist?
Mercedes-Benz is thought of as a luxury brand here in the United States due, mostly, to the fact that Mercedes has historically only sold luxury cars to Americans. It’s a little different in Europe and the rest of the world, where Mercedes has acted more like a full-line automaker that sells small economy cars, vans, trucks, and even big rigs.
The big Mercedes van was not sold here until 2002, though even then only as a Freightliner. This was the weird DamilerChrysler era and so the Sprinter was quickly rebadged as a Dodge product, though it was sold as both the Freightliner Sprinter and Dodge Sprinter simultaneously for no obvious reason. Eventually, Daimler spun off Freightliner into a new subsidiary and Sprinters became solely Mercedes-badged products in North America.
These are great-looking vans with a layout that is superior to the traditional American van (think Econoline) in many ways, generally offering more efficiency, comfort, and space for the wheelbase.
Mercedes has made expanding its line of electric vehicles a priority and a cargo van, especially one used primarily for last-mile/local deliveries, is about as good a use case for an electric vehicle as can be imagined (only an electric school bus makes more sense).
Why Do You Have This?
I’m quite active with my local Lutheran church and have served on our church’s council, which means I’ve seen summer attendance numbers. With everyone traveling, kids in camp, et cetera, we can sometimes lag just a little bit around the, oh, 5th Sunday after Pentecost.
The solution to the summer slows? An outdoor service at a local park with a big BBQ afterward. Because we’re a Lutheran church with a lot of Germans we need to transport our giant flat outdoor grill to cook too much meat and coolers/ice to hold too much beer (and Twisted Tea for some reason). I would never imply that the beer drinking and grilled meats are more important than the service, but the New Testament is generally pro getting together with folks and throwing down on some food and we very much embrace this spirit. 
 Usually, we’ve got a friend with a big truck who helps us move everything from our church building to the park but he was busy that Sunday so, knowing there was an eSprinter in the fleet, I volunteered to move everything.
What I didn’t expect was how much fun it would be to cruise around with my daughter. I initially thought she wouldn’t get to ride in it at all because the cargo van has no backseat and she’s still just light/small enough to probably need a booster seat.
Seeing the big blue van for the first time her even bigger and bluer eyes lit up and I knew that I’d at least have to let her drive with me to the local Electrify America station to top off the van before the weekend’s festivities. After studying the eSprinter’s manual and reviewing booster seat safety advice I finally measured everything with her in the van and realized that I didn’t even need the booster seat.
The Sprinter has an extremely comfortable and adjustable seat with a seatbelt mounting point that moves to accommodate passengers of different heights. While weight/airbags were still slightly a concern, knowing I’d only be driving on local roads.
She was so happy. I was so happy. There’s a certain kind of bonding that happens when your kid can ride up front with you and there’s no hypercar or truck that made her feel as cool as she did on that drive.
Neither of us wanted it to end. Knowing how much fun it was she immediately volunteered to get up early and go with me to the picnic. This was, I think, the first time I heard be this enthusiastic about getting up early on a Sunday.
How Does It Van?
I feel like loading up the truck we usually use for the church picnic involved some sort of complex, Tetris-like arrangement and we never seemed like everything fit in the bed. Some amount of prayer was involved in getting everything safely to the park.
That was not an issue this time. The Sprinter in this configuration has a 170-inch wheelbase and a cargo volume of 488 cubic feet. That’s to say it’s about as big as your average Manhattan studio apartment inside.
If no one told you this was an electric van I don’t think you’d clock it as one from the outside. I definitely got a few funny looks from other folks at the Electrify America station when I pulled straight into a spot.
Loading it up you’d also probably not have any idea this was an electric van. The cargo capacity is listed at 488 cubic feet, which is just a little shy of the approximately 530 cubic feet of space in an equivalent diesel Sprinter. I assume that’s because the battery and motor are slung underneath the floor, but in practical use I had no idea it was any smaller.
Unfortunately, there’s no frunk as Mercedes has utilized that space for some of the van’s electronic guts:
There is a little random storage where the fuel door is, however:
Driving it you’ll start to figure it out, with the eSprinter lacking the mechanical chug-chug of the four-cylinder diesel usually found in a non-e Sprinter. Once you adapt to that it drives better than any Sprinter I’ve ever driven, with plenty of low-end torque and power delivery as smooth as a Knight Rider-era David Hasselhoff. It does taper off as you reach closer to the 75 mph top speed, but it’s a van, what do you expect?
It worked perfectly as a van for moving church picnic stuff. Everything fit easily inside and, due to the low floor of the van, little thought was given to where stuff needed to go. And that’s even with a giant heavy box in the middle. Oh yeah, there was a giant heavy box.
Why Is There A Giant Heavy Box In This Thing?
Autojournalists can be a little simple and, especially here in New York, there’s no guarantee that you’re average hack has any idea what it’s like to drive a high-profile vehicle. For various reasons, I’ve put in a lot of miles on vans and trucks with a large enough surface area that they can be pushed around by the wind.
While the eSprinter has the advantage of a lower center of gravity owing to its floor-mounted batteries, it’s still going to drive quite differently on the highway and in high winds based on how much weight is in the cargo area. Nothing but emptiness can quickly turn a cargo van like this into a sailboat.
Rather than worry about what your average journo might conclude, Mercedes opted to put a crate with 400 pounds of weight in the back. It was actually quite useful as a divider to rest everything against when moving items so I never gave into the temptation to take it out.
I happened to pick up the van on one of the windiest days in memory and, despite the Volver-like gusts, the eSprinter barely flinched. I even drove over the Tappen Zee bridge and got smacked with a fist of wind while going about 55 mph and the van seamlessly engaged the crosswind assist and applied light brake pressure to keep me straight.
Is This Really The Best Mercedes EV?
I’ve driven the EQS, EQS SUV, and Mercedes EQB. None of them are bad on their own, but their overall inefficiency relative to the competition makes them mediocre by modern standards. I also don’t love the way they look.
The EPA doesn’t rate the eSprinter since it’s a cargo van, but on the WLTP test cycle it gets an estimated 273 miles of range and, on the city cycle, a whopping 329 miles. The WLTP cycle is historically way higher than the EPA, so my best guestimate is between 220-240 miles.
My fully charged eSprinter told me I could get 232 miles in the maximum range setting, which would correspond to an efficiency of about 2.1 miles per kWh. That makes it about as efficient as an AMG EQE 4matic and more efficient than a Silverado EV or Hummer EV. It’s even better than the equivalent Brightdrop Zevo purpose-built EV van.
Driving in a mix of highway and city driving I barely put a dent in the range, dropping the van to just 90% after approximately 45 miles of driving. If you press the paddles behind the steering wheel to D++ you get max regenerative braking and the range stays high. I could see this getting 300 miles of range if you keep it off the highway.
It’s not quite one-pedal driving, which would be ideal in this van, but it gets close enough that it makes cruising in traffic in this behemoth a lot easier. Seriously, cruising around in this big van is no chore. If I had just seven more children I’d definitely consider grabbing the passenger van version as a daily driver.
Did I mention the cupholders? Oh, right, I did a whole story on how this has more cupholders per person than any other vehicle on sale today. Couple that with a simple infotainment system capable of accepting Carplay and a few speakers and it’s quite the cruiser.
Here’s a video from a guy who does sound system reviews of vehicles, which is something I don’t care about, and he thought it sounded fairly decent for a cargo van. “I’ve been in full-size pickup trucks that are new that are worse than this,” says the DM Sound reviewer. I agree!
Does It Fulfill Its Purpose?
Hell yeah it does. It’s a big van. It’s an efficient big van. It’s blue.
What’s The Punctum Of The eSprinter?
The eSprinter is the only electrified Mercedes product I’ve driven that I think can fairly claim to be the best overall value in its segment. I know that $75k is a lot to pay for a fully loaded van, but I suspect this will be something that’s cheap to operate and maintain over the long term.
It’s also a superior driving experience to the diesel version so long as you’re not going on a lot of long trips, which is also not something that’s necessarily true of every product that offers both EV and gas-powered versions.
And even if you do have to go on the occasional long trip it’s not as range-limited as you’d expect. Upon returning the eSprinter I decided to make a detour to Tractor Supply Co. to return a giant stock tank I realized I didn’t need.
Because I was in a hurry and distracted I picked a location that was 30 miles beyond the TSC I meant to select in Google Maps. This added about 60 necessary miles to my trip.
Did I sweat it? Absolutely not. I knew the eSprinter could make that trip and, honestly, I was having a great time driving the van so I didn’t particularly care about the extra hour I was getting.
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This sounds a bit weird. I mean unless you don’t hamfist the brakes and use mostly the regen from the pedal, you should do better with next to no regen in the gas pedal. I think it’s already pretty well explained the physics behind it, if you do not need to slow down, you get no benefit. And when driving constant speed one’s speed easily wanders with regen, and range suffers as it’s not zero sum game. Altough some configuration options here would be nice, so that there would be no regen in very small liftoffs, but it would hit on bigger ones. So there would be a bit of coast option in the gas pedal.
Also I’ve noticed that in hilly terrain it’s quite much better for the range if one uses the energy from the descent to rise the other hill vs regen in the downhill. Also coasting in cases where fe speed limit drops (and it’s possible) vs actually breaking affects lot too.
Local delivery is a no-brainer for EVs. And I love the charging port behind the emblem in the front. It’s a better use than all the bullshit lighting MB’s been putting on it instead.
Man that company’s really lost its way.
If I needed a work truck that would never leave the metro area this would be the way to go, No need to buy diesel, no expensive oil changes.
Is it just me, or is having the charging port in the front a poor design decision? Cargo vehicles are almost always backed into their docking locations. Even at a public station, I would prefer to back in given busy cross traffic and the lesser rear-side visibility in one of these beasts.
Also, City of Toronto, make with the electric garbage trucks already!
Both would be ideal.
agreed, i think like 99% of EVs now have decided on either the driver rear or driver fender for charge spot
That is a compelling option for contractors. Sprinters are already expensive, but losing diesel fuel and maintenance off of the bottom line, and getting something that’s likely to be more reliable, that ain’t nothing!