The Mercedes-Benz EQC is one of the most important cars the company will ever release. It is the first entrant in an entirely new lineup of all-electric cars, the tip of the spear for a wholly different propulsion platform meant to help curb emissions around the globe. It’s been teased by the company for two years. And yet, on the day of its announcement, Mercedes-Benz completely whiffed on arguably the most important detail: how long the EQC’s battery will last.

One of the biggest obstacles since the early days of mass-produced electric vehicles has been range. It was one of the top “limiting factors” to adoption in a RAND Corporation study in 2012, and the term “range anxiety” — which neatly describes the low-level fear that EVs won’t be able to handle the amount of driving we may need to do on a given day — has been a popular talking point over the years as companies worked on increasing battery performance.

Range has been a concern since the early days of EVs

But more than 3.5 million electric vehicles have been sold around the world to date, and the adoption rate is steadily trending up, according to new research from Bloomberg’s new energy research division. The obstacles are obviously becoming more easily surmountable.

Let’s briefly set aside the discussion of whether 200 miles of range is sufficient or not and focus on what happened. In the official press materials for the EQC provided by Mercedes-Benz (and the accompanying email), the company said four times that the car is expected to have “around 200 miles” of range. It couched that figure as a “preliminary estimate,” and in one place, it even said “up to 200 miles.” But parent company Daimler said in its own press release that it expects the EQC’s battery pack to last around 450 km on a full charge, which works out to about 279 miles.

On paper, that’s a huge discrepancy. When most of the competition in the burgeoning luxury electric SUV space is sitting near 250 miles of range, you at least want to match, if not beat, that number. For a brief period on Tuesday afternoon, the Mercedes-Benz EQC seemed to live in a quantum state where it both fell far short of the range offered by the Tesla Model Xes and Jaguar I-Paces of the world and almost blew them out of the water.

The 279-mile range figure from Daimler has since been adopted by Mercedes-Benz as the correct estimate moving forward, with the latter telling The Verge that the 200-mile figure was “incorrect” and mistakenly scattered throughout the — no joke — 52-page press release and other assorted materials about the EQC.

Mercedes-Benz’s adjusted estimate is probably overly optimistic

In reality, though, the discrepancy is not as large as it seems, and the EQC will still likely wind up falling short of the range offered by the I-Pace and the Model X 75D. That’s because the 279-mile estimate is based on what’s known as the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC), a standard created in the 1980s that arrives at its conclusions through purely theoretical methods, one that the European Union calls “outdated.”

NEDC is actually in the process of being replaced by a new standard this month — one based on actual testing — called Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) that is supposed to be a bit more stringent. The United States Environmental Protection Agency performs its own testing to set range estimates for electric cars. The EPA’s range estimates have always tended to be lower than the NEDC and are considered to be closer to real-world performance.

If we look at the I-Pace as an example, Jaguar says the car has a WLTP range of 470 km (292 miles), and the company promoted an NEDC estimate of 500 km (310 miles) before its release. But the EPA says the I-Pace lasts about 240 miles, or 386 km, on a full charge. So even though Mercedes-Benz is now touting the 279-mile NEDC figure, the EQC’s real-world performance will likely be closer to the original estimate of “around 200 miles” that the company has labeled as “incorrect.”

“We use NEDC to evaluate range to facilitate comparisons,” a Mercedes-Benz spokesperson told The Verge. “The 450 km NEDC approximation is all we have at the time being.”

To be fair, range estimates are kind of all over the place

Whatever range the EQC winds up with, 200 miles is more than enough to cover most daily driving. The Department of Transportation says the average driver in the US travels 29 miles per day. That said, people like to buy cars that can cover as many different scenarios as possible, even if some of them rarely occur. Plus, plenty of people do travel more than 29 miles per day. Considering how far battery technology has come in the last decade, more than 200 miles of range doesn’t seem like the extreme ask that it once was. Just look at Mercedes-Benz’s competition, who — again — are all serving up around 250 miles or more.

There are many other factors that go into buying a car, especially an electric car, besides range. Price is still a huge issue, and so is charging time — especially for people who don’t have a space at home to charge their car overnight. But range is one of the most widely touted specifications when it comes to electric cars, which is why it was astonishing how Mercedes-Benz wasn’t ready with the right numbers for the debut of the EQC.

If range anxiety really is fading, perhaps this all won’t matter, and the EQC will become a perfectly capable EV from Mercedes-Benz that sets the tone for what’s to come. After all, SUVs are currently selling like car-sized hot cakes, and the EQC otherwise looks like a very well-equipped vehicle. But by slipping on this crucial detail, Mercedes-Benz made sure the initial focus was on range above all the rest. Now it’s up to the company to change the topic before the car ships in 2020.

Update September 5th, 5:31PM ET: Added comment from Mercedes-Benz.