I got new 2024 W214 E400e in replacement of my 2015 W205 E350e and found that W214 misses everything about hybrid system. There is no ability to charge battery in anyway while driving, it seems to only drain battery in any situation. Car always starts with ELECTIC or HYBRID (which is mostly same as ELECTIC) modes. You can not start engine with shift paddles, you can't charge car from engine and car does not slowly charge on cruise speed as it was before.
I got car 2 weeks ago, it drained battery in few days (even that I was trying to save it), I lost my extra 130hp and 300Nm, and now I have to drive with huge heavy battery and small trunk and wait for a sunny day so I can "restore" my access to hybrid system. Previous car was totally usable, it was much smarter and gave many abilities to driver to control both engines. You literally had 2 engines in one car and could play with it and enjoy it. But now it is as simple as "if there is more that 0% of battery left, use electric engine, never start combustion engine until battery is not empty".
Yes, it still does recuperative charging on breaking, but as soon as it has at least 1% of battery, car does not want to start engine and will do its best to drain it back to 0%.
It seems totally pointless and I feel very frustrated that I paid extra for higher model of hybrid while they made hybrid system totally useless. I would not recommend this car to anybody until you have access to FREE electricity every day! otherwise it is just waste of money. I regret selling my 2015 C class in replacement of it, it looks like a big downgrade and I feel like car is actually older than 2015 year.

So my question to you guys: Do you know any way to charge battery to 100% without plugging it into a wall?

 

You evidently did not review the vehicle specs before you purchased it. The E400e is described and documented as a PHEV - Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicle.
Perhaps this will be a hard earned lesson for you to "look before you leap."

 

You evidently did not read that my previous car was also hybrid from Mercedes and I drove PHEV car for 10 years before buying new Mercedes PHEV.

 

I’m not educated on PHEVs, but it sounds like you’re just dragging the ICE around as dead weight until your electric system goes dead.

 

Exactly, and then it switches into dragging EV engine with battery until you put it in charge. It was not like this before, seems they did 0 afford to make a good system this time.

 

LOL, I need to find that link the YouTube of the PEV towing a generator with a diesel tank........

 

That in a nutshell essentially describes PHEVs. They've long been called the worst of both worlds.

OP, I'm not familiar with your previous car. Was it actually a PHEV or a traditional HEV? There's a big difference. The idea behind a PHEV has always been that you plug it in overnight to charge the battery and then do your daily driving in electric mode the next day until it runs out of juice at which point the ICE acts as a range extender. That's how regular PHEVs normally work. Charging the battery via the engine is very inefficient and would completely negate the point of a PHEV. The whole idea is efficiency. Charge it with electricity that hopefully comes form clean sources and only burn fuel if you need to drive farther than the electric range.

PHEVs typically have a few different hybrid modes to manage the battery charge. One of them is Battery Hold. This mode lets you defer the use of the electric powertrain. This is typically used if you have a long highway journey and then want to drive electric at the destination. So you put it in Battery Hold in order for the car to only use the ICE and preserve the current state of charge and then once you reach your destination you put it in electric mode. This is increasingly becoming a common usage pattern for PHEVs, especially in places such as Germany and the UK where politicians want to ban ICE vehicles from the inner cities. So with a PHEV you use the ICE outside the city in Battery Hold mode, and then when you enter the city you switch to Electric mode.

FWIW, I have driven PHEVs over the years. Mainly as rental cars and they all worked how your current car works. The rental companies typically don't plug them in, so they always have an empty battery, and the little energy they recuperate from braking is quickly used whenever possible. The power from the ICE and the electric motor are not meant to be additive for performance. They are used at different times. This is different for performance PHEVs such as the AMG E Performance models. They use hybrid in order to increase the performance of the car and in Race mode the engine keeps the battery charged whenever the engine has extra power that's not used for propulsion. Different objective for these cars. Your car is not a performance car, so the objective is efficiency and the electric motor is not used in addition to the ICE, but in lieu of the ICE whenever possible to safe fuel and you must plug it in to charge the battery. If you don't plug it in overnight then buying a PHEV is pointless because you just end up dragging around a heavy empty battery.

 

Oh, now I see.. My privious mercedes was clearly the best of both worlds, and what you are describing is how they ruined it. I was fine with using my W205 PHEV for almost 10 years and never regret it. I almost never charged it from wall and I always knew that my next car would be PHEV again as I said it was "best of both worlds". But seems I was not updated with new "modern trends" in PHEVs.

Privious car is just previous generation from the same brand, it would be the same if we compare W205 to W206, W206 I bet will have same issues as W214 and W205 as PHEV is 10 times better than W206. My main concern about PHEV was never to use it as electic range extander, only if you get out of fuel and need to next gas station. But it was always about power (as car had 750Nm) and mobility (as I could select how to drive and what to do with car), I could also park on EV slot and charge car sometimes for free (which is not a reality anymore in 2024), there are many ways to use car when you have 2 diferent engines in it.

That is how they did now, but before car had all same modes as normal car, but in Comfort and Eco you had extra hybrid modes and one of them were Charge. Now they only give you Battery Hold, Electric and Hybrid (which is almost same as Electric) and Sport(when engine is always running).
There is not always need to use combustion engine to charge car, as I said it was one of possibility. On W205 if you put it in Comfort and "Battery Hold"(it was called diferently there) it was only recuperating but was not using it until you change mode. This way you can charge car with recuperation, and yes on 100km trip it was easy to charge smaller battery on W205 and often could reach 100% and had to use another mode Manually! to spend this energy. On new car it simply never goes more than 1%.

The power from ICE and electic motor are meant to be additive for performance. Just check new hybrid l6, it is now AMG E53 Hybrid. The only way to use this car now is in Sport, as than it has almost 400hp and 650Nm, but you must be sure to switch to Sport every time you start car, if you forget it once it will drain battery and you are downgraded to 250hp and 350Nm . Which is for me is pointless waste of my time, and I would rather select E450 and let them continue this stupid trends of making PHEV to be fuel efficiency and nothing else.

 

and vice versa!

 

Excellent explanation:

A few observations:

When I last looked, a BMW X5 hybrid gets much worse mileage on the highway than a normal, ICE X5: the reason is simple: after a few miles the battery is depleted, the ICE takes over and you are dragging around several hundred pounds of battery: the hybrid is substantially heavier than the ICE X5.

My friend has a hybrid Porsche Panamera: He claims that the car can run on electric, ICE + electric for extra performance. I asked him if the hybrid was re-chargeable while driving? He was not sure.

I believe the old Ford Fusion is electric until the battery dies, then goes to ICE and during trips as the battery recharges, it switches back to hybrid (electric): Major drawback: more than half the trunk is taken up with the battery: so small that a set of golf clubs cannot fit in!

 

It is not so simple guys, if you press hard on gas pedal you will clearly see boost from both ICE and electric. And car is not 100% drives in one of modes at any time, it is more like very advanced start/stop system where you can drive with stoped ICE for miles. You need to drive your friend's car to understand how it works.

To see that all hybrid cars uses both engines simply look at acceleration to 100km/h:
E200 - 2.0l 204hp - 7.5s
E300e - 2.0l 204hp + 129hp (313hp total) - 6.4s
E350 - 2.0l 255hp - 6.1s
E400e - 2.0l 255hp + 129hp (381hp total) - 5.3s
E450 - 3.0l 381hp - 4.5s
E53 AMG - 3.0l + ...

 

Doing some research into the 2015 w205 C350e hybrid, I discovered that it had a "charge" mode to keep the battery charged from the ICE continuous running. I don't find that mode in the current generation of PHEV offerings.

 

Yes, but it only 1 thing that is missed, in total I can tell at least 10 differences that were removed or changed for the worse.

 

You are comparing C class features with E class features. They will never be identical. Just as the E class features will never be identical to the S class. In addition the "charge" mode in the W205 is not very efficient and ultimately costs more per kWh than electricity from your own house.

 

Not to hijack the thread @ua549 My E does identify as an S, and they both have issues of inferiority of the big Silver Benz in the drive (it wont fit in the garage).......

My neighbors experiment is over. They got a Tesla....sold after four months. Did not like the power bill....so, their daily is a Dodge truck, big un. Plus, they could afford any car/truck/plane they wanted....it is just the electric bill that bothers them (it is not the built in pool, the fully electrified garage for their forth through sixth cars) or the boat(s) and vacation home in Crystal River FL....they have the money. But, the electric bill ticked them off.

My other neighbor has a Rivian R1T that has not run in months, no hopes of fixing it......for me, knowing my own age. I will be in ICE for the rest of my life....no need to complicate things anymore than needed (says the man with multiple AMG and S class vehicles....)

 

As I said, in AMGs and other performance PHEVs, the hybridization is primarily about increasing performance. However, in non-performance PHEVs at least these days, it's about reducing emissions. Yes, there are times where the e-motor assists the ICE to briefly increase performance in regular PHEVs, but again that's primarily to reduce emissions, because emissions and fuel consumption is the highest during acceleration, so a lot of stopping, then accelerating again kills the fuel economy in pure ICE vehicles, so PHEVs use the electric motor to help during acceleration and improve fuel economy, but the objective is not to increase performance as such.

The past is the past. I haven't really followed MB's hybrid strategy, but what I explained above is how it works these days in non-performance PHEVs. Emissions and fuel economy regulations have become significantly tighter since 2015, so MB etc. are forced to squeeze everything they can out of these cars in order to meet the fleet average. How the current PHEVs work is partly so that they can continue to sell AMGs with V8 engines and still meet the fleet average instead of having to pay billions in fines. This is the world we live in today.

The way you are thinking of PHEV does not apply in this world. If that's how you want to use PHEV, then you gonna have to trade up to an AMG, such as a 53. You'll find that hybridization there is about performance first and efficiency second. You don't get this from a regular commuter PHEV anymore. I agree with you that in a way PHEV is the best of both worlds and that's why they are popular. You can use them largely like an EV for daily driving. Most of them these days have a pretty decent electric range that is sufficient for how many miles most people drive on average per day. So you charge it overnight just like an EV and then drive around in electric mode for the most part and the engine is only used on longer journeys or to briefly increase performance when for example you have to accelerate hard to get out of an emergency or merge on the highway. The way you are trying to use your PHEV is not how they are designed anymore.

 

This is a tricky one. They get you with how they specify the power of PHEVs. They specifically list ICE power + electric power separately, instead of as total system power. That's because the two are largely used independently. That's what I'm getting at. Now to contrast that, look at how the power is specified in performance PHEVs such as the C63 S E Performance for example. There it's specified as a single power figure. That's the total system output, because the ICE and e-motor work together to produce the performance. This is done very deliberately. You can talk to folks at MB and they'll tell you exactly this. In a regular PHEV you can't just add the e-power to the ICE power. It doesn't work like that. Those power figures come in at different times. The torque/power curves are very different for an ICE and an e-motor, plus the batteries can't actually deliver the necessary current for very long. Performance PHEVs use Formula 1 inspired battery technology that can deliver huge amounts of power in a very short time w/o overheating and can also recharge very quickly. That's not the kind of battery your E400e has. Two very different worlds. BTW, the reason a PHEV accelerates faster is not because of more power, but because of the instant torque from the e-motor. So the e-motor accelerates the car while the engine has to first overcome the turbo lag. A pure ICE takes longer to get out of the hole because of the turbo lag compared to a PHEV or EV which produces instant torque from the electric motor. You need to study the engineering behind these things.

 

You are missing a point that it is enough for me to just put car in Sport mode to get all performance benefits you think exists only on AMG. That was not deleted, and works good for perfomance, keeping car on lower gear and give electric boost on any gas press. I drive car like this as I have no other options now to do not drain my battery.
But before I had, I could actually be much more power efficient as I was able to start or stop engine when I need, I could control charging and recuperation rates of the car. I am not talking only about missing "charge" mode, it is only 1 feature as I said that is missed now.
As one of example I could put car on Eco mode and simply say never shut engine off. It would charge battery from recuperation and I would drive it on higher gear for fuel efficiency. Now with my "workaround" with Sport mode it also keeps car on lower gear (until I change it to Manual shifting).
What was before about modes, it was like 5 driving modes and 4 electric mode (on Sport and Sport+ you did not have electic modes). so it was like 3 * 4 + 2 = 14 different modes in total. Now there is only 4: BH, El, Hybrid, Sport.
How about possibility to start/stop engine at any moment before? why that was removed, what is the logic behind preventing people from simply switching their engine off when user wants to be super eco friendly and efficient.
Also for those who says that C class is different to E class. Hybrid system is the same, I drove W206 hybrid for a few days and it works exactly same way as W214.
I live in Germany, 99% of Mercedes cars are Diesel or PHEV. Because electricity and gas is very expensive here and there is no point to charge car at night, you charge PHEV only from solar panel on good weather.

Overall it looks that the progress that did Mercedes for this 10 years is simply removing features and making worse what is left.

 

No, I'm not missing this point. You are misunderstanding how the PHEV system works in your car. See my other post above. You can't just add ICE and e-power together in a PHEV. That's not how this works.

 

You can, that is how it works, they works in combination with each other. You have 2 power gages on IC, you have 2 fuel consumption indicators, you clearly can see fuel and electricity going into each motors at the same time. And you can easily spin rear wheels when battery is charged on W205 (as it was not 4matic) and feel 350Nm less when it is discharged.

Man, if you were right there would not be 5 different PHEV W214 cars on german website. Differences in performance, I clearly see 700Nm every time I boost, and that was the reason I bought PHEV, because I also had 700Nm on my previous C class. AMG just has bigger electic motor and ICE. Hybrid system is same.
Again, I have zero complains about performance, performance is good and Sport mode was not removed. My complains about the rest of system that was cut into extremely simple logic and give user zero ways to control it. It is kind of manual gearbox vs automatic, before it was fun you can master your skills, now you simply have 1 button and stupid logic behind it.

 

You are skipping over a lot of details. The devil is always in the details. You need to consider the very different torque and power curves that the ICE has compared to the e-motor. The rated power that you find on the spec sheet is only at a very specific rpm. Power = torque * rpm, so an ICE makes very little power at low rpms, Even worse before the turbo kicks in. So this isn't just a matter of adding two numbers together that you find on the spec sheet. It's a bit more complicated than that. As I said, what you mostly feel is the benefit of the instant torque from the e-motor. Are you an engineer? I am.

 

Why we talk about performance when I said 5 times that the topic is not about performance? I bought E400e over E300e for performance reason, and I am happy with performance on it. I do understand that curves are diferent and I feel it like there is much more boost on lower speeds than on highway and I am fine with it. As on german highways sometimes 700hp is not enough. Just stop talking about me having not AMG car, I agree, it is not AMG.

I am not mechanical engineer, but I am software/electonic hardware engineer, and when I see on IC that 100kw is being sent into electic motor for me it is 134hp! nometer what.

Can we continue discussing all that features that Mercedes removed in new generation of cars? and any posiblity to increase percentage of battery without pluging it into wall? I think I can say 3 diferent ways I could charge W205 before and non of them applies to new generation.

 

I'm only responding to you. You posted the horsepower figures and all and are going on about torque etc. and you incorrectly added the power together of both powertrains. But fair enough, we don't have to talk about performance. The part that you missed that I said about AMG is that they do what you are asking for. They charge the battery with the engine. So once more, the only way to charge your battery in your E400e outside of recuperation is to plug it in. That's all there is to say. Take it or leave it.

 

Do they have charge mode? Because, well, my car does it as well. It charges battery from ICE with no problem.

 

Not directly. They use different energy management strategies based on the drive mode. In Comfort they work much the same as your E400e and they also have an Electric mode and a Battery Hold mode. However, in the Sport modes and particularly in Race mode in case of the 63 E Performance models, they keep the battery charged via the engine to always make sure that full power is available whenever you need it. That's kinda why I brought up performance. AMG optimized the hybrid system so you don't run out of battery/power in the middle of a lap or on the German Autobahn for that matter. I've been to the Nürburgring with some of the AMG E Performance models, and in Race mode you can literally start the lap with an empty battery and then at the end of the lap the battery is full.