My son wrapped up his school year last week and had a very successful year. As a part of his congratulatory gift we gave him a choice of visiting any restaurant he wants for dinner. He chose a brewery we enjoy that has great pizza which is about 50 miles up river from us.
Happy with his decision we loaded family, and hund in the GLS for an evening excursion. Sun shining, nearly 80 today. Beautiful views. Winding road… Curve Mode.
I now appreciate the capability of this suspension after our drive this evening. If you would have asked me if this was a worthy feature before, I would have honestly said no. Now I’m a big fan.
this is a winding state route two lane road with turns, varied elevations and plenty of dips and poorly repaired slides that unsettle most suspensions. This GLS is a beast on this road and it stayed dead flat in the corners and smoothed out(not eliminated) the bumps, dips, and unevenness in the tarmac. I told my wife to watch the Subaru Outback in front of us and pay attention to how active their suspension was working and how much the car moved all while we were barely feeling the surface changes. Very impressive. My son typically gets a little car sick on this route but tonight he commented on that he didn’t feel sick at all.

Most of my previous driving in this vehicle was running errands around town when I could grab the keys on the weekend. It’s fun, and fast, but it wasn’t substantially different experience from a standard suspension x167.
I told my wife that this is our new road trip car, whereas she used to prefer my Ram over her previous Grand Cherokee.

The Pirelli tires have great grip but the 23’s still ride a little rough for my liking. I’m eager to feel the difference this fall when I swap out the 21’s that have all season Pirelli tires. I recently scored this set of nearly new takeoffs from a guy that bought a 580 and upgraded to 22’s. 😎

 

저도 GLS580, E-ABC 타고 있습니다.

Curve Level 1~3? 사용하나요?
South Korea 도로에서는 산이 많아서 Curve 3을 주로 이용합니다.

Curve 1 을 사용하는 경우에는 차선 유지도 동작합니다!

 

I used curve mode. I didn’t realize there were 3 options. What year is your GLS? My wife’s is a 2021. I’ll have to look into the menus tomorrow to see if hers has different curve options.

My wife loves lane maintenance but it caught me off guard tonight. I am not afraid of using the entire lane and the car said no!, and pulled me back to center. 😆

 

Thanks for sharing OP, glad you had a good time with the E-ABC.

 

Thanks for sharing OP. This is awesome.

If am buying a GLS as my own daily, I'd 100% consider the E-ABC as the only way to go. Even for a family hauler like my current use-case, I think E-ABC would be awesome.
I will never ever go with a daily nowadays without the advanced suspension packages on any brand or car. The standard suspension feels really bad on any car or SUV compared to the advanced setup because these systems have become way too good to not appreciate. I have always had my own doubts about these packages, but from what I can tell, the recent changes to software and so on have made these systems much much better. They rely heavily on sensors and data analytics, and I think it took Mbenz a lot of time to dial it in perfectly. Interestingly, while they did that, they really messed up the standard suspension tuning in many cars especially sedans with recent software updates.

Thanks again for sharing; please share more as you learn more about it. Am very curious about your long-term observations than the short-term ones.

 

In my experience with E-ABC, about 2/3 of my passengers liked it (the curve mode) and about 1/3 disliked it.
The higher the curve mode, the more divided the opinions became.
As a driver, I didn't like any of the curve settings. It made the entire experience feel numb to me - I had no feedback that I was in a a corner.
To me it was a party trick.

As far as smoothing out the pavement, it only does so on full width humps, but doesn't smooth out potholes or similar that affect only one side.
AMG ARC is better on potholes; E-ABC is better on speed humps/dips.

That opinion is based on my 2020 GLE, and I don't know of of technology has improved.

 

I can appreciate that. For me it was incredible that such a large vehicle could remain so planted and level through hard corners at speed. While I cab understand the numb feeling, I would imagine it's a sacrifice for the performance(over feedback), and maybe BMW or Porsche have it figured out... but we have the Benz. I have heard the comment made by divers in the s-class with e-abc that it feels unnatural(not a compliment) and I would agree with that assessment and I think that's why I wasn't overjoyed with it at first, but now I have come to appreciate it for what it is and not what it isn't.

I do agree that it doesn't make potholes disappear and that's what I was expecting originally(magic) and I was bummed that my Ram with "air" suspension soaked them up better than this GLS. Again, this system doesn't make potholes disappear and so I just accept that and try to avoid them!