Mercedes EQE review 2026: the executive EV that’s quietly got cheaper to lease

A used Mercedes EQE now starts at £37,028. The same car, new, opens at £69,365. That gap — very nearly half the sticker price wiped off — is the single most interesting number on the Carwow EQE listing as it stands in July 2026, and it changes the entire calculation for anyone eyeing an executive EV this summer.

When it landed, the EQE was pitched as the electric E-Class: the sensible, slightly smaller sibling to the moon-shot EQS, aimed squarely at company-car drivers and long-distance executives. Priced new, it asks a lot. But the market has quietly repriced it, and the version of the EQE that makes sense in 2026 is almost never the one on the showroom order sheet.

What you actually pay in 2026 (Mercedes EQE review)

Let’s put the real UK numbers down, because this is where the story lives. New, the EQE 350+ Sport Edition is the entry point at £69,365. Step up to the EQE 350+ AMG Line Edition and you’re at £74,615. Load it properly — the EQE 500 4MATIC AMG Line Night Edition Premium Plus — and Carwow’s range tops out at £94,615, though What Car?’s review stretches the full published spread to £115,870 once you count the range-topping AMG derivatives and options.

Those are big, confident, German-executive prices. And almost nobody should pay them in full. On a lease, the same car opens from £798 a month on a four-year (48-month) personal contract hire deal at 8,000 miles a year, per What Car?’s live deal listings as of July 2026. Treat that as a representative starting figure, not a finance offer: it is subject to status, and the monthly price you are actually quoted will depend on your circumstances, your initial payment, your annual mileage and the broker. What matters is the direction of travel — an executive Mercedes saloon with genuine long-range EV credentials, advertised from under £800 a month, is a materially different proposition to a near-£70k cash purchase. That’s the figure that has moved.

The EQE didn’t get cheaper to buy. It got cheaper to use — and for an executive EV, that’s the number that actually decides things.

And if you’d rather own than rent, the used route is where the depreciation works in your favour rather than against it. From £37,028, you’re buying a two-to-three-year-old EQE for a shade over half its original list — while the first owner absorbed the brutal early-life drop that hits every premium EV.

Which EQE you’re actually getting

The UK line-up has thinned out, and that’s worth understanding before you sign anything. At the accessible end sits the EQE 300 — a single motor, 245hp, 0–60mph in a perfectly adequate 7.3 seconds. It’s not fast in the way an EV can be, but it’s brisk enough for the job and it’s the efficiency play. At the top, the AMG EQE 53 goes the other way entirely: dual motors, four-wheel drive, 625hp. That’s a serious performance saloon wearing a sensible suit.

The 350+ badge you’ll see across most of the pricing is the sweet spot for a reason. It carries the larger 96kWh battery, and that’s the one that unlocks the EQE’s genuine party trick: a claimed 431 miles of range. Real-world, plan for a comfortable 300-plus miles — which, for a car this size and this heavy, is properly impressive and puts long motorway runs firmly back on the table without range anxiety doing your thinking for you.

Go for pace instead and the maths shifts. The EQE 500 and the AMG 53 run the smaller 90.6kWh pack: 342 miles claimed for the 500, and 290 miles for the AMG 53. Still respectable, but you’re trading touring range for shove. Here’s how the three that matter line up on the one spec that decides it:

That’s a real fork in the road, and it’s the first question I’d ask any buyer — do you want the miles, or do you want the moment? For most executive buyers doing genuine motorway distance, the 96kWh 350+ is the honest answer.

The company-car angle you can’t ignore

This is where the EQE stops being a heart decision and becomes a spreadsheet decision, so let’s actually work it rather than wave at it. A fully electric company car is taxed on a Benefit-in-Kind percentage of its P11D value, and EVs still sit at a low single-digit BiK rate that no petrol or diesel executive saloon can touch — a comparable combustion E-Class is taxed at north of 30% of its list price. On an EQE with a P11D value in the £70,000 region, the difference is not marginal: a low EV BiK percentage puts the taxable benefit in the low thousands of pounds, where the same list price on a 30%-plus petrol car is taxed on more than £20,000 of benefit. For a 40% taxpayer, that’s the difference between a company-car tax bill of a few hundred pounds a year and one running into five figures over the cycle.

Because the exact EV BiK percentage steps up by one point each tax year, you must read it against your tax year, not a rule of thumb. Mercedes publishes the derivative-level tax detail directly; the EQE 500 tax breakdown lays the P11D and the current banding out for the range-topper, and you can switch derivative to match the one you’re actually pricing.

My honest read: if you’re a higher-rate taxpayer running this through a business, the lease-plus-low-BiK combination is the whole point of the car. That’s the buyer the EQE was built for, and the recent softening in monthly rates has only sharpened the case. Pull the BiK figure for your exact derivative and your tax year before you commit — it’s the number that makes or breaks the deal, and it moves every April.

Where the EQE gives me pause

I won’t pretend it’s flawless. The styling is divisive — that smoothed, aerodynamic jelly-bean silhouette buys you range but costs the EQE the sharp-suited authority a petrol E-Class carries into a car park. It reads as tech-forward rather than status-forward, and for some executive buyers that’s exactly the wrong trade. The interior is a screen-heavy event that dazzles on day one and can nag on day three hundred.

And the depreciation that makes the used and lease numbers so attractive is the flip side of a warning: this is a car that loses money fast. Buying new with cash is, on the current evidence, the least sensible way to own one. The market is telling you, in plain figures, to let someone else take that hit.

Buy used, lease, or walk away?

Here’s where I land. If you’re a company-car driver or a higher-rate business user, lease it — the sub-£800-a-month entry combined with the electric BiK advantage is the strongest case the EQE has ever made for itself, and it’s stronger now than it was a year ago. If you want to own outright, buy used from around £37,028 and let the depreciation curve do you a favour instead of a disservice; hold out for a 350+ with the 96kWh battery so you get the range that justifies the badge.

The one thing I wouldn’t do is walk into a dealer and buy a new EQE 350+ for £69,365 in cash. Not because it’s a bad car — on the numbers it’s a genuinely good one — but because the same car, a couple of years and one owner later, will cost you a Range Rover’s worth less. What would change my mind? A new-car offer that closes that gap, or a personal-contract-purchase deal that prices in the depreciation honestly (again, representative and subject to status — read the total cost, not the headline monthly). Until then, the smart EQE is the used one or the leased one. The showroom price is the one number here I’d simply refuse to pay.