Parked on the pristine coastline of the Nqileni village, where even diesel and petrol-powered vehicles are few and far between, a Mercedes Benz EQB tackles the Traneki’s dirt roads charged up on coastal sun.
As my partner and I navigated the roughly 600km stretch from our rest camp near Hankey to the Bulungula Eco Lodge, we stopped twice to refuel our old diesel-heavy Land Rover. After the second stop on what was meant to be an eight-hour drive – that turned into 12 hours behind the wheel and a fair amount of bundu-bashing in the dark – we started discussing the difficulty of even undertaking such a long journey in an electric vehicle. The previous week a Mercedes EQS SUV had arrived on test and caused a somewhat anxious weekend as we looked for a charging station near Montague. Thankfully, there is a 22kW DC charging point at the Montague Country Hotel. Your next best bet on the way back to Cape Town would be Worcester.
Related: Bedeo hands classic Land Rover Defender an all-electric makeover
The reality is that between 400-500km is what you can expect to get from Merc’s EV range, driving normally, and after about 400km out of a city, charging stations are not exactly easy to find. So it was quite a surprise to wake up at the Bulungula Eco Lodge (we set up in the dark) to a Mercedes EQB 350 4Matic, fitted with a Thule roof box and looking like it had just spawned next to one of the huts. I just couldn’t imagine where it would have last charged before getting to Bulungula.
Closer inspection would reveal that the compact seven-seater SUV is fully solar-powered. Since 2004 Bulungula’s electricity has been supplied by solar panels, and in 2012 a second large solar system was bought. The panels live on the roof of the first store room and above the bar, as well as right next to where we had set up camp, at the entrance to the lodge.
The lodge is 100% owned and managed by the Nqileni village, a Xhosa community, and boasts a carbon-neutral status. Outside of running on solar-power, the lodge makes massive efforts in water conservation while also running a recycling initiative and ushering in a new generation of mangrove trees to the area. You can read more on Bulungula’s sustainability efforts here.
Bulungula uses the Wild Coast sun to run lights, music, a satellite phone, computers, water pumps, battery chargers and a very impressive electric Mercedes, sponsored to the lodge – according to the sticker on the door – by “The Industrial Development Corporation, Aeon Investment Management, the Lion and many friends of Bulungula”. The EQB 350 4matic is the range-topping EQB, ahead of the 250 and 300, and runs an all-wheel drive system using a pair of electric motors. At the time of its release in South Africa, towards the end of 2022, Co-CEO of Mercedes-Benz South Africa, Mark Raine, described it as “the perfect outdoor-lifestyle-oriented SUV for families and young couples”.
While the low ground clearance does make the EQB an interesting choice for the rocky Transkei roads, the seven seats and luggage box fitted to the roof make it a useful adventure vehicle, and the all-wheel-drive system would aid traction and handling over the stretches of dirt and gravel. Granted, there are easier routes into Bulungula than the two hours of rock-crawling that we did in the dark of that first night. Just don’t use Google Maps; the directions on Bulungula’s website will serve you much better.
We started a week-long journey through the Wild Coast at the Bulungula Eco Lodge, and it is a must-visit if you are interested in exploring the Transkei and observing the awesome sustainability efforts being made by the local community. Keep an eye out over the next few weeks for stories on the other locations that we visited.
Mercedes Benz EQB 350 4Matic at a glance
- Price: R 1381 250
- Powertrain: Electric motor
- Power: 215 kW
- Torque: 520 N.m
- Driven wheels: Front and Rear
- 0-100 km/h: 6,2 seconds
- Top speed: 160 km/h
- Usable battery capacity: 66,0 kWh
- Combined fuel consumption (WLTP): 19.4-18.1 kWh/100 km
- Range: Up to 423 km
*A special thank you to Goodyear South Africa for providing our car with the tyres needed for this trip, as well as to KwikFit Stellenbosch for servicing the vehicle before we departed on over 2000 kilometres of driving.