bbb897

I currently have a 2018 GLC with a 3rd child on the way and looking to get into something bigger but not TOO big.

Asking the community - How is the GLE with the 3rd row seats? Getting in/Out?

My current options (open to suggestions):
2020/21 Audi Q7
2021 Volvo CX90
2020 Mercedes GLE


FYI - Current kids are 9 and 4.

jhoang1990

I have the 2024 gle with the third row which should be the same as 2020 gle. The 3rd row options makes the 2nd row powered seats. On each side there’s a button on the seats to fold up to access the back seats. I’d recommend going in from the passenger rear side since that side only folds one seat up vs driver rear sides folds the middle and driver rear seats up. Getting in and out is not an issue for us. The gle is big enough that I don’t think you’ll need to put the 2nd row seats all the way back so you could adjust how far it forward to set it to give the 3rd row more room, however, I think there is enough room for you kids with the seats all the way back.

mikapen

Can you comment on how the slow power seat folding affects your use?

jhoang1990

I never thought to time it. I usually fold one side down while getting one of my kids in the car seat in the 2nd row and then fold it back up by the time I get my kids strapped in. Sorry I can’t really answer on this since I don’t pay attention to it. But since it’s a one touch / push of the button, you don’t have to hold it down to fold up

djer

Keep in mind when folding up the 2nd row, it's one touch - quick button pull and release, the seat will fold up. But when you bring the seat back down, you do have to push and hold the button in for safety reasons. Also there's a timeout if the door is opened for more than a couple of minutes. The annoying part is when seat is folded up, it moves the backrest all the way forward, and you'll have to manually recline it.

The statement above is annoying for me, but fun for the kids, so there's that ...

Also there's not much space behind the third row, so depending on how you load it up for trips etc., you may have to get a roof bar or utilize the hitch if you have it.

maalox

Along the same lines, I have a 2020 with 3rd row. Never actually used the 3rd row itself but appreciate the 2nd row being adjustable. Currently have 2 young kids in car seats in the back, and my wife and me in front. 3rd kid arriving in October and I'm wondering if I should consider making use of the 3rd row now. We can fit all 3 car seats in the 2nd row, but especially when the newborn is...newly born... my wife would like to sit closer to him. 2 questions:

1- Can bulky infant/toddler car seats fit in the 3rd row, and are they safe there? I could put my eldest child in the 3rd row, leaving room for my wife and 2 youngest kids in the 2nd row.
2- Alternatively, I could keep the 3 child seats in the 2nd row, and my wife can sit in the 3rd row. Then she can see/interact with the kids in front of her by leaning over and taking a peak, versus being in the passenger seat in front which makes it very difficult to do/see anything (especially with the bulky rear-facing infant seat blocking a lot of the view and access). However, I don't think the 2nd row will fold down or move forward enough with a car seat (or car seat base with load leg in the case of the newborn) installed, making entry to the 3rd row nearly impossible?

Of course, I can always experiment with my current child seats but thought I'd get some feedback/suggestions.

jhoang1990

option 1 is the best option for me. I would have the two car seats in middle and driver side so that only one part of the car seats fold down (passenger side) vs driver side and middle folds down if you attempt to do it from that side.
I wouldn’t recommend putting a bulky car seat in the 3rd. If you child is old enough for one of those booster seat those would be the best bet. I don’t see a LATCH option for the 3rd row seat. I was as going to get the nuna ace child booster seat for the 3rd row.
option 2 isn’t going to work.

also, not sure how older your oldest child is, so you may have to go with what fits your family

maalox

Thanks for the reply. The oldest is only 4 so too young/small for a booster seat, still needs a bulky full-size car seat. I'm not sure I'm left with a great option then.

I know there isn't LATCH/ISOFIX in the 3rd row, but seatbelt installation is equivalent (and even recommended over LATCH in some cases based on weight). I guess if there isn't an anchor to hook into on the back of the 3rd row that would be a dealbreaker though.

jhoang1990

Maybe consider a used gls with the captain chairs if possible.

djer

This really depends on how big your middle car seat is, if it's too wide, even the single rightmost seat cannot fold up properly.

Option 2 is also impossible.

wildta

Option 2 might be possible if your wife is a yoga trainer or contortionist.

maalox

TL;DR 3 full-size car seats (2 front-facing, 1 infant rear-facing) in the 2nd row is possible while maintaining proper access to the 3rd row! Front-facing seat installed in the left using seat belt (not LATCH/ISOFIX), rear-facing infant seat base with load leg installed in the middle with seat belt (no LATCH/ISOFIX available there anyway), front-facing seat installed with LATCH/ISOFIX (NOT seat belt, unlike first seat which is otherwise identical) in right seat. A bit unclear about weight limit differences between the NHTSA, MB, and the car seat manufacturer.

I used my professional Tetris experience (world champion of my household back in the 90's, beating my dad in the finals) and came up with a solution for option 2 (3 full size car seats in second row, 3rd row still available for use). The 3rd row is just as accessible and "good" (i.e. uncomfortable) as if there were 0 car seats installed in the second row. Whether my wife or another passenger wants to use it remains to be seen, but at least it's an option. I suspect when the new baby is just born my wife might want to sit back in the 3rd row at least some of the time, because she can lean forward and peak at the newborn in his rear-facing seat, give a pacifier, check that he's ok, etc. Otherwise, sitting in the 1st row passenger seat doesn't give any access to him, because he'd be rear-facing and behind us. And whether there's enough luggage space leftover for strollers and diaper bags and everything else with one of the 3rd row seats pulled up also remains to be seen, but that's another Tetris challenge for another day.

I currently have 2 kids, ages 4.5 and 2. They are both in a forward-facing Nuna Exec car seat, which may not be the bulkiest one around but is certainly no slouch at 18.5" wide (without those cupholders you see in the picture). I have my oldest son on the left behind the driver's seat, and my younger son in the middle so that the rightmost 2nd row seat is available for use by an adult. I tried putting my second child on the right (which makes loading/unloading him easier versus reaching into the middle), but then the middle seat is wasted as no adult can fit there (the 2 car seats on either side make it even tighter than it already is), and even accessing it is a challenge because there isn't much space between the child seats and the front seats to squeeze through. Also, and this is important, installing it the way the manufacturer recommends (using seatbelt, not LATCH/ISOFIX, which might be counterintuitive to some) stops the seat from tilting/sliding because the seatbelt is fully tensioned while installed, limiting the seat's movement. Not to mention that the seatbelt itself being buckled in as part of the installation cordons off access to the 3rd row, even if the seat itself could tilt/move out of the way enough.


With this seat in the middle, it blocks the right seat from tilting forward because its width encroaches by several inches, thereby making 3rd row access impossible. I tried moving both the left child seat and the middle child seat towards the left door as much as possible, and I was getting close to creating enough room for the right seat to tilt/slide, but was still about an inch or two off so gave up. I also realized that with the 3rd child on the way, even if I could make this work, the newborn's rear-facing infant seat on the rightmost seat would be annoying. Unlike the above seats which you don't really remove once they're installed, the infant seats are meant to be portable because you can drop them back and forth between the stroller and the car. But installing them using the car's seatbelt or LATCH/ISOFIX every time gets tedious, so the preferred approach is to "permanently" install a base, and the infant seat just drops onto the base. The added safety benefit is that many bases have a load leg which extends to the car's floor, absorbing any movement in the event of a front crash. I'm reusing the Nuna PIPA RELX base I had for my previous child:

That load leg touching the floor also makes the right seat unable to tilt in and slide forward, so it's just not an option on the right seat. However, it is narrow enough to be installed in the middle row without blocking the right seat from tilting/sliding. The final solution is as follows:

1- Older child stays on the left in the front-facing seat, installed using manufacturer-recommended seatbelt method.
2- Newborn will be in the middle, where the base with load leg are permanently installed.
3- Middle child will be on the right, but the seatbelt installation method is a no-go because it stops the seat from tilting (and the seatbelt itself blocks access to the third row), so you have to fallback to the LATCH/ISOFIX installation method. The only reason this is workable is because I learned that the GLE (and GLS and probably others) have a "car seat friendly tilt" feature that not all cars have. See https://www.thecarmomofficial.com/fa...-friendly-tilt for more information, and also

which shows how many "family" 3 row SUVs don't even have this feature. Basically the car seat can remain installed via LATCH/ISOFIX while the seat tilts/slides forward to give access to the third row, even with the top tether attached to the anchor behind the seat.

With this setup, the right seat can tilt forward even with the full-size front-facing seat installed, thereby giving normal access to the 3rd row. The rear-facing infant seat will be slightly tedious to slide through the door and above the right-most seat and drop down onto the base in the middle, but it's actually easier than buckling up my middle child in the middle (who is heavier than the infant seat + newborn will be), especially if either side of that middle seat is occupied by seats or bases, meaning I wouldn't even be able to squeeze myself in while trying to put him in the middle. And the infant seat literally falls into the base with nothing to clip/install manually, it latches automatically and is also easy to remove.

If you're wondering why Nuna recommends installing via seatbelt versus LATCH/ISOFIX, despite the latter being quite popular and "easier" (less possibility of making a mistake), it's because of weight limits. NHTSA only allows a combined (seat + child) weight of 60 lbs (or 65 lbs depending on rear or front facing?), and with these bulky seats weighing a good ~26 lbs, that leaves barely 40lbs for the child. Seatbelts on the other hand have a higher weight limit without compromising safety versus LATCH/ISOFIX, so Nuna prefers to recommend that method rather than expecting parents to remember to reinstall the seats a different way after the weight limit is exceeded.



Limited research on my part seems to show that 65 lbs is probably conservative, and the small handful of failures that occurred during NHTSA (and equivalent Canadian) testing were at even higher weights with improper installations. Also, at least for my 2020 GLE, according to the manual @ https://www.mbusa.com/content/dam/mb...SUV_Manual.pdf our cars are rated to 73 lbs, so unless Nuna itself fails at just 65 lbs (i.e. they're not just restricted by the NHTSA limit), there should be a bit of wiggle room there. But I have a way to go to get to 40 lbs anyway and don't intend to go against the recommendations, and by then my older son might be in a booster which opens up a lot more options.

jhoang1990

just tested it out. You can put both on the latch/iso and both seat folds up no issue. However, if you have the car seat in and the rear seats recline it won’t work.if the rear seat is reclined, when it tries to move forward the car seat will put too much pressure and it will stop. I’d recommended the latch without the rear seat reclining and the seat will still be tight and won’t budge if wiggling side to side.

just incase you’re wondering, this is with the nuna exec as well.

actionreaction

The GLE without third row has really good second row legroom. Is the second row in any way compromised (e.g., less legroom) by the addition of the third row seat option?

jhoang1990

the answer is yes and no. If you’re having kids in the 3rd row you can leave the 2nd row in the original position you have it. If you’re gonna put an adult back there, you can move the second row up a little, so the person it the 3rd row has some extra leg space.

maalox

To add to that, the addition of the third row seat option makes the 2nd row power adjustable (recline/slide), so you can adjust how much legroom and backrest "lean" the second row has. You can make the 2nd row legroom at least as good as if you had no third row, or adjust the 2nd row legroom to increase/decrease cargo space and/or 3rd row legroom by a couple of inches.

If you don't have the third row seat option, the second row isn't adjustable (besides folding it down nearly flat for extra cargo room). I know some markets or early production one-off models have a power-adjustable second row even without the third row, but it's the exception rather than the rule.