Muscat is humid and sits on salt air; an hour inland at Nizwa the heat is dry; up on Jebel Akhdar it is cool enough to need a jacket. A pack driven over one weekend can see all three, and each of them stresses a different part of it.
For the Mercedes-Benz that matters, because it is bought through the dealer here, and the early EQ cars are now out of warranty. We handle EQ high-voltage systems, air suspension that works hard on the Nizwa road, and MBUX coding in Muscat, and test the pack against all three conditions rather than the one the car happens to be parked in. The climb to Jebel Shams asks more of a battery's cooling than anything on flat ground does, and the descent runs almost entirely on regeneration. That is easier on the brakes than it sounds — so much easier that the discs corrode from disuse rather than wear out, which is a fault we look for here specifically.
