Hi. New to the board. I got a 2026 e53 and it has the Driver Assistance Package.

how can I disable the adaptive cruise to make it like normal cruise?

please and thank you.

You can't.

yeah I kind of figured that out but was hoping for a different answer. I suppose I can’t turn off the fake engine noise either? Thanks.

car is a monster though. Coming off a 2019 GLC43 (SUV, not the coupe) and this is a whole different level.

moved to W214 forum...

I find it can be annoying that the brake engages to keep distance when there is traffic, So I try to emulate dumb cruise control by proactively adjusting my speed setting to avoid brakes. If that becomes too much work I turn off cruise control or accept the braking for awhile.....At least there is some engine sound?

Have same question about fake engine noise. Wish I could turn all of the fake noises off.

I’m a big cruise control guy and it really stinks you can’t disable adaptive, especially when you’re changing lanes and don’t want the car to automatically slow down. IMO it defeats the purpose of having cruise.

Regarding cruise, I just don’t get why anyone would ever want to disable the adaptive. It’s safer, no? And in my experience quite good at slowing down to avoid hitting cars in front of me, which is something I never want to do. And it changes lanes when you use your signals.

I never used cruise control before adaptive. Other drivers can never drive a steady speed so with normal cruise control you constantly have to adjust the speed. Regarding changing lanes, it changes lanes automatically. I don’t know if the W214 has the fully automatic lane change yet. If not, all you need to do is signal for the lane change and if the adjacent lane is empty, it changes into it. Just don’t change lanes so late that it needs to slow down, and you can adjust the following distance. I have mine set to the minimum.

It has the automatic lane feature, or you can have it manually enabled when you use the signal. I chose the manual route as, in New York area, it is too congested.

My 2025 E450 wagon changes lanes on its own, passes the slower moving vehicle in front of me, then moves back into the original lane. It gives a quick alert to the driver, activates the turn signal, and away we go. No slowing down. No need for hands at all. As we are passing the slower car, it flips off the driver. I think that gesture comes with one of the digital extras.

ROFL.

It does have automatic lane change, but I find it a bit frustrating to use. It will move over to pass a car and then move back again all on its own. The problem is it's too transactional in that it will keep moving back and forth if the cars are spaced just right rather than stay in the left longer to pass multiple cars that have enough space. Another annoyance is situational awareness. For example, on a three lane highway and you are in the middle lane (car favors the middle), the car will move to the left to pass and then move back to the middle even if there is another car or worse, a semi in the far right lane right beside you. It's not good driving practice to do that just in case they decide to move over to the middle jast as you do. Always best to get a little ahead before moving back over. The car lacks this kind of intelligence with auto lane change enabled. When I drive on the highway I'll often have auto steering on with cruise but will disable auto lane change for this reason. I find it dangerous.

Thanks for that. I literally got the thing yesterday. Automatic lane change sounds interesting. I have a 37 mile (each way) commute mostly highway, so I’ll play around with it this week and report back.

As I understand from the post above, you can change it back to the old behavior where it only changes lanes when you signal, so that gets you the best of both. You stay in control of when you wanna change lanes and when to just stay in the lane and follow the car ahead.

Yes, it's done by disabling auto lane change in the vehicle menu. You can also enable/disable auto steering and just have adaptive cruise. I typically leave auto steering off when driving the country roads near my house and only turn it on when driving on an interstate. I never use auto lane change after using it for a while and seeing how it works. I may try it again when software updates claim to have improved that function.

There are two engine sound settings; I believe the quieter one is real engine sound. You can program each of the driving modes to have either sound level.

The low speed EV hum is government mandated and cannot be turned off.

Believe that is correct for the exterior of the car, but not the interior. My plug-in hybrid BMW did not have the weird spaceship noise on the interior - neither do Teslas.

Does anyone else find that the "put your hands on the steering wheel" interval is shorter on the W214 than on the W213?

I thought our cars have the eye tracking? Or was that W223 exclusive?

An E53 passed me as a pedestrian, and over 100ft away I could easily hear the same EV hum as it slowed down. I think we’re hearing exterior sounds; there is no reason to amplify the dull hum inside at low speeds.

wow. If that is right, it’s too loud. Louder than my current Mini SE and prior X5 and Model S.

As far as the adaptive cruise goes, I can't imagine a time where I'd want to turn it off. If the car is slowing down with adaptive cruise, you should be slowing down on your own as well to keep proper following distance. Sure, sometimes, when there is nothing in front of that car and you could coast down to get to the gap makes sense, the car won't allow that level of anticipation as it does not see past the car in front of it and can't see what is ahead of that. It is programmed to try to maintain proper safe follow distance at all times which can result in the uncomfortable behavior of slamming on the brakes. If I see this coming, I cancel the cruise then resume when I'm at a proper distance. I just don't think a standard cruse would make sense in this scenario ever.

As for the engine noise, I may be the only one who actually thinks the factory noise is pretty decent. I have an Audi RS e-tron GT and the factory EV noise in that one is truly superb to anything else I've heard in EVs but the E53's noise is a close second to my ears. I definitely don't find it bothersome at all on either high or low settings. And I actually enjoy the fake notes when I'm in S+ and the car is downshifting. I think the sound engineers did a decent job here, far better than the Hans Zimmer BS in the BMWs.

The hand on wheel has never been an issue for me, it also seems to work as intended. Maybe I'm just adhering to the expectations of the engineers and I'm the P50 driver.

I also find the lane keeping and lane changing wonderful. The auto lance change can be a bit unnerving at first but I think it does its thing right. If you feel like it should stay in the passing lane when it tries to auto switch, it just means you're one of those problem drivers who park it in the passing lane. It's a decent reminder to keep right, I have it enabled and don't mind it at all. If I want to cancel, it's just a slight nudge on the steering wheel and it cancels the maneuver, very intuitive and natural feeling to me.

I've been driving with Mercedes' adaptive cruise control for over 13 years, and I have yet to find another one that is this good. I did drive my friend's F150 lightning with the comma open source adaptive cruise for a couple hundred miles this week and that was the closest thing to the Mercedes I've ever tried. Even the Audi stuff is inferior and never felt as good or intuitive as the Mercedes one.

An odd quirk I have not seen mentioned before: if you are in electric E mode and turn on the increased regenerative braking (by pulling on the down paddle to activate D-), and then engage cruise control, it will result in the regenerative mode turning off (going from D- to D).

This is normal, in ACC mode the car will use distance and sped based regenerative mode, this is also available as the default regenerative mode without running the ACC. It will slow down and use engine brake when there are cars in front of you or you're approaching a stop sign vs. using sail when there is nothing impeding your movement forward. This is implemented very impressively and we have it turned on on both the E53 and the GLC 350e. It's the best implementation of predictive engine braking, the Audi version sucks, it has to be turned on manually on every drive. Even my wife likes it and she would never use any kind of cruise control.