ONE

Segment
Coupe

For many, the Mercedes-AMG Project One hypercar is the stand-out vehicle from the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show. And who can blame them? After all, it's an outrageously expensive, brutally fast road car with a detuned F1 car's engine and the aesthetics of a Group C racing car on steroids. However, as much as it pains us to say it, the Project One is not the most important car you'll find on the mahoosive Mercedes stand. That accolade, we reckon, is best reserved for the Mercedes-Benz EQ A Concept.

That decision is mostly justified by the platform this three-door hatchback design study sits on. As is the way with the 21st century motoring industry, it's a scalable and modular setup that's been engineered to accommodate various lengths, widths and drivetrain setups - thus making the technology underpinning the EQ A accessible across a wide variety of models in theory. As its name suggests, the Mercedes-Benz EQ A Concept previews the A-Class-sized EV for the near future, but the backbone of the car could also be used as the foundations for all-electric variations of vehicles akin to the B-Class, CLA-Class and GLA-Class if need be.

The electric drivetrain itself is also pretty handy - at least according to the details that Mercedes-Benz has officially confirmed. Despite only having two electric motors, rather than the four you'd likely expect from an all-wheel drive EV, the pair of motors does provide a pretty impressive combined output of 200kW - which translates into roughly 270 horsepower. Alas, the claimed range of 250 miles isn't amazing on paper (a Tesla Model S 100D can go nearly 400 miles on a single charge, for example), but the fast-charging capabilities the EQ A Concept possesses would hopefully remedy those issues somewhat in a presumed production car.

Arguably the most important aspect surrounding the EQ A Concept's reveal, however, was the accompanying declaration by Mercedes at Frankfurt about its investment plans for the US charging point provider ChargePoint. As well as expanding the charging stations available in the US, plans are also in place to set up an array of ChargePoint facilities in Europe - a territory that an EQ A production car would likely perform rather well in. As if it wasn't clear enough already, Mercedes-Benz has bold ambitions for its future EV fortunes - and it's pretty clear the EQ A and the complementary charging point push will be the driving force behind these plans.