Gadgetory

it's the unofficial vehicle of Hollywood car chase bad guys it is the sinister anonymous black Mercedes sedan but this Mercedes e-class is packin a clean diesel so I guess it's the official vehicle of eco-conscious green thinking Hollywood card shades bad guys I'm Anna Swan good one let's hop behind the wheel of this 2014 e250 BlueTEC and check the tech now in the cabin you've got a nice blend of materials and some nice seats which is pretty much what you'd expect from a car that starts at about 51,000 dollars but Mercedes is gonna nickel-and-dime you want some of the options for example this push button starter $650 option that's something that comes standard on a Hyundai Veloster you'll also pay extra for the ventilation and the seats and a little bit extra for this driver's seat which has massage settings and some active bolsters that are going to kind of cup your side's when you go into a corner it's a little weird but I do like that feature and I don't mind paying a little bit more for it now the standard infotainment system in this car is going to be Mercedes's command system and haven't changed very much in the past ten years and that's a very bad thing because we don't really like the thinner face a lot and it's kind of hard sometimes to tell exactly where things are hidden in this navigation system for example if you want to stop a route you don't go into route you go under destination you want to change your audio source you pop into your audio source and then you don't get a list of sources you have to come down underneath this sort of drop-down menu and scroll through all of your audio sources and admittedly there are a lot of audio sources we have ipod connectivity but Mercedes still uses a 30 pin connector and you can't plug lightning to USB adapter into the standard USB port so you're gonna have to buy a 30 pin two lightning adapter and that's gonna actually give you some pretty bad sound quality and we don't really like the fact that Mercedes is doing that but you also get a pretty good voice command to this vehicle you can actually press a button and say the entire address and one go the problem is that when you're on the road and you've got road noise I found the system needs a lot of correcting you can also get Mercedes as Mercedes apps and their embrace telematics system in this vehicle that's gonna add things like Facebook integration or Yelp integrations but we found that it's really sluggish and really annoying and you definitely don't want to spend your money on it now the tech that you won't want to skip is the safety tech we've actually got one package a driver assistance package that's going to add a lot of this in one fell swoop and in that you're going to get Mercedes with Distronic plus system that's their adaptive cruise control / pre collision detection system that's going to use a forward-facing cameras and radar to a look out of the front of the vehicle and maintain a safe driving distance from the vehicle in front of you and if a pedestrian steps out in front of you can detect that too and even bring the vehicle to a stop if you're going at a slow enough speed or slow you down a little bit for this you don't completely plow over the guy now that Distronic plus system is also going to tie in Mercedes's steering assistant system and lane keep assist systems so that when you activate the adaptive cruise control those systems come on automatically it doesn't just beep at you when you start cruising out of your lane and into the next one it'll actually add a little bit of steering to actively keep you in the middle of the lane we've also got another option package that's gonna add Mercedes's Park Assist system that's there automatic parallel parking system that you can activate to allow this vehicle to steer itself into a parking spot and that's also going to add a really cool around view camera system similar to the one that we've seen on Infiniti and Nissan vehicles but it adds a couple of different camera view is a detailed front view a detailed rear view and you kind of scroll through those with the command wheel and it's really good for just kind of nudging and squeezing your car into a really tight spot those cameras are very cool you're gonna take control of the 7-speed automatic transmission not with a console mounted shift lever but with this steering column outer lever it's a little bit of a three on the tree here but instead of one two third gear you've got the Park reverse neutral and drive now the e-class is a big sedan with a lot of room in the engine bay for a big engine but don't let this giant plastic cover fool you underneath it is a pretty small 2.1 litre twin-turbo diesel engine that's a four-cylinder engine the output is going to be 195 horsepower which is pretty impressive if you're comparing it to a Honda Accord but that torque is gonna be 369 pound feet of torque coming out of the thing and that's impressive no matter how you slice it that's gonna be made it to a-1 option 7-speed automatic transmission and that's gonna get you an estimated 28 miles per gallon in the city but this is a diesel it's meant for cruising so the big number here is the 45 miles per gallon that you would expect to get on the highway when you just kind of cruising down the road that's a really good fuel economy number for a vehicle of this size now while we're at the front of the vehicle let's take a minute to look at the headlamps we've got equipped a $1500 headlamp package that's gonna add LED headlamps that's a full LED array to replace the standard HID lights now these lights are going to steer into the turns when you turn the wheel when you're going down the road we've also got a $0 option which is a rarity in this car at the Sport Package it's gonna add a sport-tuned suspension and a unique front end with a unique grille and the sort of chrome the front wing now I'm on the road in the 8250 BlueTEC and man it is nice to be a bad guy this is a comfortable car now the interesting thing about the diesel engine is there's not a lot of power on paper but if that torque number I said that you really want to care about having that much torque on demand really low in the power band means that you don't really have to rely on that 7-speed transmission to do a lot of shifting when you want to roll on the power you actually do have paddle shifters if you should decide that you want to do some shifting of yourself for some supported driving but if you actually just fire off a quick downshift after a couple of seconds of not shifting it will revert back to its automatic mode and shift for you again generally speaking I've been very happy with the comfort and quietness of this vehicle and the efficiency that I get without having to sacrifice having power on tap I needed diesel is the way to go for this kind of vehicle all right now the 2014 each 50 BlueTEC is gonna start at 51,000 for $400 and it's pretty well equipped at that price you're getting a lot of car for the money and you're also getting that forty-five miles per gallon on the highway which is so awesome now ours has a lot of safety tech what you want and a lot of convenience tech that you want we've also got a lot of app tech what you don't want skip that and you can go all in Phoenix Dowell for sixty six thousand twenty-five dollars again still a pretty good deal and you're getting a lot of car and a lot of efficiency for the price