Gadgetory

now notice the b-class is not some super small city car even though it's electric and often you think of those two going together it's compact it's got a people mover profile but it's a full five seater with good cargo capacity because mercedes is looking at this as being a vehicle that accommodates the suburban American lifestyle okay now the guts of this car which is really what makes it interesting being an Eevee only model in the u.s. this is a Tesla powertrain that's always a pretty good headline to have these days horsepower is 177 torque is 251 foot-pounds that's a really good number and electric cars tend to be very good in that area makes them fun to drive it's backed up by a 28 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery now the EPA hasn't banked the range on this officially yet but Mercedes is talking somewhere around 85 miles in ideal conditions zero to 60 s being quoted at seven point nine seconds but seven point nine in an electric car feels different than in a gas car quicker you can get a full charge in three three and a half hours from almost dead on a 240 volt what they call a level two outlet which isn't hard to get installed in your garage if you got to go by and use a household outlet obviously it's going to take like half a day but that's a survival mode anyway there is no level three or what you might call a Tesla supercharger outlet Nissan Leaf has that Tesla has that but not this vehicle this car has a gauge I've never seen before they call it the e sale gauge it shows you whether or not you have the full potential of maximum power as the battery gets very low or conditions are very high or low in temperature this would drop and say you can't get full power right now it's not a measure of battery charge that's a different game a cell indicates whether you can get maximum power transfer now under way you've got sort of the standard Mercedes shifter here on the column very simple put it and driving off you go you've got some other drive controls to be aware of E and s eco and sport makes a big difference really brings on the inverter when you hit sport you can tap into a lot more of that battery but notice what happens on the dash the projected range goes down a fair amount the b-class battery is one big low broad unit set up under the belly that gives you a nice low center of gravity and leaves cargo and passenger space alone couple that planted 'no Swit the spirited nature of its sport mode and you've got a car that is by no means sleepy nor is it trending toward AMG levels of aggression the other thing is you've got paddles on the wheel negative on the left positive on the right those puts you into two different regen modes so I'm in Auto Drive right now if I tap the negative one I'm now locked down into a heavy regen mode so it's going to really regen hard as I lift off the throttle if I tap it again I get to standard D and then if I tap positive on the right I get to more of a freewheeling mode so now it's regen unless it's going to put less juice in the battery but I'm going to glide in Khost more I'm not sure how well Mercedes will be able to train drivers to use D D Auto D minus D plus and while we're talking regen this car has what I believe is a first a radar in the front grille that will automatically apply some regenerative braking if you're closing too fast on traffic in front it figures why not you need to slow down anyway I may as well recapture some energy while doing it for you they are doing a credible job of creating the Mercedes of electric cars it has Mercedes straight it has a comfort mission it's got great isolation of noise and sound that is unpleasant and the creature comforts inside are very Mercedes you'll recognize it immediately as a modern Vance now as I mentioned this beat class is coming to the US as this only this electric drive model they sell them as combustion engine cars and other markets around the world but here they're trying to use this new shape to make a new statement that Mercedes has their first electric vehicle now aside from ride quality and torque and charge time and range as another reason Mercedes is going to still an Eevee it's to satisfy the regulations in California and other states that require they sell an increasing number of zero emissions cars or face penalties price will be around forty one five roughly before you start adding some options on top well detail that more later when it arrives summer of 2014 as you've seen this B class has plenty of Mercedes DNA throughout it compare that to the BMW i3 which if it didn't have the famous badge you might not know as a BMW so the Battle of German electrics is now on and pitting two very different playbooks