![]() With time I’ve become very familiar with the car’s infotainment system, too, and now use the small touch-sensitive pads on the steering wheel for almost everything. I just love it, especially with the 64-colour ambient lighting that can also subtly cycle through the colours, which I find oddly pleasing – mostly because my three-year-old daughter thinks it’s the best thing in any car, ever. ![]() The single-piece screen, the heavily bolstered seats, the classy analogue clock, the general lustre and feel of the cabin – all that characterises the car far more than its powertrain and, I suspect, is why you’d go for the Mercedes over its rivals. Still, even when it’s not pre-heated, the interior in the E-Class is a huge selling point. I have a cheap off-peak tariff, but don’t want to faff about with a cable at midnight, so being able to plug in when I get home but delay the charge is critical. But not having basic timed charging – a ‘charge in these hours’ option – is a huge oversight. I can even set the dial design and ambient lighting from my phone more importantly the app has been great at connecting to the car and updating me on the charging state. To me this feels like the ultimate luxury in the misery of winter. I’ve connected the ‘Mercedes me’ app, which I’m enjoying because it makes it easier to adjust the climate pre-set and get the car toasty before I set off in the morning. Other than that, I have to say that our E-Class is just a delight. This has only happened a handful of times but can be a tad alarming. Go for a rapid getaway in electric mode and the E-Class can also have the odd big hesitation as it decides whether to fire up the diesel engine. It’s nothing unexpected given the soggy weather we’ve had, but enough to make you think twice before pulling out sharply since you have to factor in a bit of wheelspin fun. Both of them will do 0-62mph in less than six seconds and have more than 300bhp, so there’s no great surprise that I’ve been getting a few issues with traction in our de. Mind you, the electric motor does make these plush executives rapid. You can read the complete details in our sister magazine DrivingElectric and on its website, but both cars are fine company, and the lesson is that you must plug them in regularly to benefit from the tech. A huge win for our de, then – but it’s not as much as you’d expect, and doing the maths over three years suggests that the lower insurance cost, depreciation and leasing costs of the E 300 e offset a significant chunk of those fuel costs and make a cost comparison over 30,000 miles closer than you’d think. ![]() In reality, the disparity is bigger than you might imagine the petrol E 300 e managed some 20mpg less than the diesel when we tested both. These official figures are fairly useless for gauging real-world economy. The two versions have an identical claimed electric range of 31 miles, and we’ll ignore the official combined economy of 217 vs 188mpg for diesel and petrol respectively. Such is the life of a car that is often the support vehicle to photoshoots or a commuter car into central London.īut one of the most interesting aspects of the plug-in E-Class is that you can have a 2.0-litre petrol engine instead of this diesel. Not bad, given that I do a fair bit of slower urban stuff as well as motorway miles. It’s the reason you’d opt for the diesel plug-in hybrid Mercedes E-Class, and so far we have seen it average 49mpg excluding the battery running. The fuel economy on the E 300 de has always been a focus for our test. ![]()
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