Mercedes-Benz EQB vs Subaru Solterra

The Mercedes-Benz EQB is £360 cheaper to buy. Running costs are almost identical - about £168 a year either way, at 8,000 miles on an off-peak home tariff. Add 5 years of charging and the two land within £280 of each other - effectively the same to own. These figures cover list price and home charging only - insurance, servicing, tyres and depreciation will move the real total.

EVcarsguide estimates a real-world motorway range of about 214 miles for the Mercedes-Benz EQB and 241 miles for the Subaru Solterra - both below their WLTP figures, because sustained high speed is the hardest case for an EV. The Subaru Solterra goes roughly 27 miles further between charging stops. A rapid charge to 80% takes around 32 minutes in the Mercedes-Benz EQB and 20 in the Subaru Solterra, so the Subaru Solterra loses less time at each stop. That makes the Subaru Solterra the stronger long-distance car.

The two are within 26 mm on width, so neither is meaningfully easier to thread into a tight space. In a standard 2,400 mm bay that leaves about 566 mm of total clearance for the Mercedes-Benz EQB and about 540 mm of total clearance for the Subaru Solterra. The Subaru Solterra also turns in a 0.5 m tighter circle, which helps with U-turns and multi-storey ramps.

Over a 8-year ownership window EVcarsguide's degradation model projects roughly 84% battery health for the Mercedes-Benz EQB and 84% for the Subaru Solterra. That is close enough that capacity loss should not decide between them. Both use NMC-type cells, so for daily use keep the charge limit near 80% to slow degradation.