What's all this about?

You know how the Mercedes EQC is just a GLC with all its polluting, oily bits removed and replaced with a saintly electric drivetrain plus smoother exterior styling? And the smaller EQA does much the same trick, only this time using a GLA as its basis? Well, say hello to the Mercedes-EQ EQB (no, we didn't spot the 'Mercedes-EQ' thing until now, either); this is a Mercedes GLB with an EV powertrain and seven seats.

Wait, what? It's electric but it retains all seven seats of the regular SUV?

Yes indeedy. That makes the EQB one of the very few zero-emissions vehicles in the world which can seat seven, although temper your expectations about who can sit in row three of the Merc EV. Only people of 5ft 4in or children can sit back there, but even so it's an achievement and something of a USP for Mercedes to have crammed all the seats and all the electric gear into a machine which is basically on the same platform as an A-Class. The company has even managed to preserve most of the boot space, the EQB's maximum figure of 1,620 litres being just 60 litres down on the same metric in the GLB.

That's very impressive. What else can you tell me?

A few key points. The GLB will be put together at Mercedes' Hungarian plant, not at Rastatt (Germany) alongside the similar EQA model, but the GLB gets a more potent powertrain to kick us off in Europe. It will launch as a 292hp EQB 350 4Matic, capable of up to 260 miles on a single charge and using energy at a WLTP-certified rate of just 19.2kWh/100km. Mercedes says more variants will follow, with both front- and four-wheel drive, various power-output ratings and also battery packs that will start from a usable 66.5kWh. The company also claims it is working on a 'particularly long-range version', although we'd be ready to bet that if it needs a massive battery to achieve such distance, it might have to sacrifice its two rear seats in the process.

Anyway, beyond this, it's mainly what you can see. The EQB has a black-panel front grille with a large three-pointed star logo, full-width LED light strips at both the nose and the rear of the vehicle, a smoothed-off tailgate thanks to the repositioning of the back number plate, aero-optimised alloy wheels and active aerodynamics (for a 0.28Cd figure), and also a blue tinge to the LED headlights. Inside, the Widescreen Cockpit interface with the Mercedes-Benz User Experience comes with 'Navigation with Electric Intelligence', which works out your fastest journey time to include charging stops if required.