Real world numbers for C178 CLA250+EQ
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Mercedes S350 Bluetec
Real world numbers for C178 CLA250+EQ
Having now owned a C178, CLA250+EQ, Sport model - the basic spec - Since 21/02/2026 And having reached close to 3000 miles, I can supply some real world numbers for range, consumption etc. I'll also comment on the way the car is presented and sold and the charging experience.
My consumption over 2890 miles has averaged 4.8MpkWh and the range is routinely 408-410 miles for 100% charge. This has always been monitored as the sum of distance covered plus remaining miles, I have never run to flat - for obvious reasons. A typical example was a trip from my home near Diss, Norfolk, to visit two locations around Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in March. The journey commenced on a cold morning with 100% in the battery and ended with the entire trip home being made after dark with outside temperatures around 4º to 6ºC. We covered 325 road miles and the remaining mileage was 93 miles. Continously while on the road, the sum of miles-remaining and miles-covered hovered around 420.
When we first took the car home, the fact that its brain was learning my driving style and displaying increasingly accurate total mileage figures was very obvious. No battery charge has yielded any less than 408 miles and times when all my driving is in the typical traffic conditions of the A143 and the town of Bury St Edmunds, the average consumption hovers above 5MpkWh. The current consumption-since-last-charge number is 5.1.
Although I have charged the battery at both Ionity and Gridserve stations, I almost always charge at home where we have an Ohme HomePro installation, and this brings me to one of several ludicrously stupid aspect of the car's design...
All the available charging routines are dictated by the interaction between the car's charging system and the charger, on the basis of the percentage you wish to charge plus the time you want the car available. No matter what I do, this pairing of parameters always ends up doing some of the charging at peak rates, even though I have an Octopus Account with 6 overnight hours at 8p per kWh. I want to be able to say to the charger: 'Charge at full rate [7.4kW] only between 23:30 and 05:30 and I will accept whatever charge input that gives me.' This would allow me to hook up the charger every day, knowing the car would top itself up at 8p/unit. There is currently no way to do this and, to be blunt, this is a galactically stupid ommision on the part of the Mercedes engineers. It appears that Octopus are about to introduce a new setting called 'Charge Cap' which will not supply power to the charger except in the cheap rate period, but Mercedes should have built that assumption, and the necessary parameter settings, into the car in the first place.
Like everone I know who has one of these cars, I am greatly annoyed by the way MB made all the clever driving features monthy rental based but made sure that no mention of this occurred in any of the road tests and made sure that the dealers selling the first available cars did not know either. At about £60/month if you decide to have all these extras, this is a grade one royal rip off. They also cheapened the spec of the base model after supplying one or two road testers with sample cars which they assured them were base models but that had electric seats, the inductive phone charger system and some other items that are not part of the base spec. The highly honourable, Nick O'Leary was fooled by this and reviewed what he was assured was the Sport version, but was plainly a higher spec car with ordinary door handles. I'm unhappy all round with Mercedes' selling approach here.
The car, however is very good - extremely restful and calm to drive - however, as a last point, I need to state clearly that praise for the low noise levels and top class suspension by the various road testers is utter rubbish - one even said it rivaled the S-Class. The car has hard suspension with really poor performance on bad UK roads. Crash-through from ridges and holes is really abrupt. My previous car was an S-Class, my third such car, and equating the ride of the CLA250+ with any S-class is nonsensical - It's better than a A-Class, but not much, broadly C-Class level.
Ed Form.
My consumption over 2890 miles has averaged 4.8MpkWh and the range is routinely 408-410 miles for 100% charge. This has always been monitored as the sum of distance covered plus remaining miles, I have never run to flat - for obvious reasons. A typical example was a trip from my home near Diss, Norfolk, to visit two locations around Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in March. The journey commenced on a cold morning with 100% in the battery and ended with the entire trip home being made after dark with outside temperatures around 4º to 6ºC. We covered 325 road miles and the remaining mileage was 93 miles. Continously while on the road, the sum of miles-remaining and miles-covered hovered around 420.
When we first took the car home, the fact that its brain was learning my driving style and displaying increasingly accurate total mileage figures was very obvious. No battery charge has yielded any less than 408 miles and times when all my driving is in the typical traffic conditions of the A143 and the town of Bury St Edmunds, the average consumption hovers above 5MpkWh. The current consumption-since-last-charge number is 5.1.
Although I have charged the battery at both Ionity and Gridserve stations, I almost always charge at home where we have an Ohme HomePro installation, and this brings me to one of several ludicrously stupid aspect of the car's design...
All the available charging routines are dictated by the interaction between the car's charging system and the charger, on the basis of the percentage you wish to charge plus the time you want the car available. No matter what I do, this pairing of parameters always ends up doing some of the charging at peak rates, even though I have an Octopus Account with 6 overnight hours at 8p per kWh. I want to be able to say to the charger: 'Charge at full rate [7.4kW] only between 23:30 and 05:30 and I will accept whatever charge input that gives me.' This would allow me to hook up the charger every day, knowing the car would top itself up at 8p/unit. There is currently no way to do this and, to be blunt, this is a galactically stupid ommision on the part of the Mercedes engineers. It appears that Octopus are about to introduce a new setting called 'Charge Cap' which will not supply power to the charger except in the cheap rate period, but Mercedes should have built that assumption, and the necessary parameter settings, into the car in the first place.
Like everone I know who has one of these cars, I am greatly annoyed by the way MB made all the clever driving features monthy rental based but made sure that no mention of this occurred in any of the road tests and made sure that the dealers selling the first available cars did not know either. At about £60/month if you decide to have all these extras, this is a grade one royal rip off. They also cheapened the spec of the base model after supplying one or two road testers with sample cars which they assured them were base models but that had electric seats, the inductive phone charger system and some other items that are not part of the base spec. The highly honourable, Nick O'Leary was fooled by this and reviewed what he was assured was the Sport version, but was plainly a higher spec car with ordinary door handles. I'm unhappy all round with Mercedes' selling approach here.
The car, however is very good - extremely restful and calm to drive - however, as a last point, I need to state clearly that praise for the low noise levels and top class suspension by the various road testers is utter rubbish - one even said it rivaled the S-Class. The car has hard suspension with really poor performance on bad UK roads. Crash-through from ridges and holes is really abrupt. My previous car was an S-Class, my third such car, and equating the ride of the CLA250+ with any S-class is nonsensical - It's better than a A-Class, but not much, broadly C-Class level.
Ed Form.
Last edited by edform; Jun 18, 2026 at 06:22 AM.
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Having now owned a C178, CLA250+EQ, Sport model - the basic spec - Since 21/02/2026 And having reached close to 3000 miles, I can supply some real world numbers for range, consumption etc. I'll also comment on the way the car is presented and sold and the charging experience.
My consumption over 2890 miles has averaged 4.8MpkWh and the range is routinely 408-410 miles for 100% charge. This has always been monitored as the sum of distance covered plus remaining miles, I have never run to flat - for obvious reasons. A typical example was a trip from my home near Diss, Norfolk, to visit two locations around Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in March. The journey commenced on a cold morning with 100% in the battery and ended with the entire trip home being made after dark with outside temperatures around 4º to 6ºC. We covered 325 road miles and the remaining mileage was 93 miles. Continously while on the road, the sum of miles-remaining and miles-covered hovered around 420.
When we first took the car home, the fact that its brain was learning my driving style and displaying increasingly accurate total mileage figures was very obvious. No battery charge has yielded any less than 408 miles and times when all my driving is in the typical traffic conditions of the A143 and the town of Bury St Edmunds, the average consumption hovers above 5MpkWh. The current consumption-since-last-charge number is 5.1.
Although I have charged the battery at both Ionity and Gridserve stations, I almost always charge at home where we have an Ohme HomePro installation, and this brings me to one of several ludicrously stupid aspect of the car's design...
All the available charging routines are dictated by the interaction between the car's charging system and the charger, on the basis of the percentage you wish to charge plus the time you want the car available. No matter what I do, this pairing of parameters always ends up doing some of the charging at peak rates, even though I have an Octopus Account with 6 overnight hours at 8p per kWh. I want to be able to say to the charger: 'Charge at full rate [7.4kW] only between 23:30 and 05:30 and I will accept whatever charge input that gives me.' This would allow me to hook up the charger every day, knowing the car would top itself up at 8p/unit. There is currently no way to do this and, to be blunt, this is a galactically stupid ommision on the part of the Mercedes engineers. It appears that Octopus are about to introduce a new setting called 'Charge Cap' which will not supply power to the charger except in the cheap rate period, but Mercedes should have built that assumption, and the necessary parameter settings, into the car in the first place.
Like everone I know who has one of these cars, I am greatly annoyed by the way MB made all the clever driving features monthy rental based but made sure that no mention of this occurred in any of the road tests and made sure that the dealers selling the first available cars did not know either. At about £60/month if you decide to have all these extras, this is a grade one royal rip off. They also cheapened the spec of the base model after supplying one or two road testers with sample cars which they assured them were base models but that had electric seats, the inductive phone charger system and some other items that are not part of the base spec. The highly honourable, Nick O'Leary was fooled by this and reviewed what he was assured was the Sport version, but was plainly a higher spec car with ordinary door handles. I'm unhappy all round with Mercedes' selling approach here.
The car, however is very good - extremely restful and calm to drive - however, as a last point, I need to state clearly that praise for the low noise levels and top class suspension by the various road testers is utter rubbish - one even said it rivaled the S-Class. The car has hard suspension with really poor performance on bad UK roads. Crash-through from ridges and holes is really abrupt. My previous car was an S-Class, my third such car, and equating the ride of the CLA250+ with any S-class is nonsensical - It's better than a A-Class, but not much, broadly C-Class level.
Ed Form.
My consumption over 2890 miles has averaged 4.8MpkWh and the range is routinely 408-410 miles for 100% charge. This has always been monitored as the sum of distance covered plus remaining miles, I have never run to flat - for obvious reasons. A typical example was a trip from my home near Diss, Norfolk, to visit two locations around Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in March. The journey commenced on a cold morning with 100% in the battery and ended with the entire trip home being made after dark with outside temperatures around 4º to 6ºC. We covered 325 road miles and the remaining mileage was 93 miles. Continously while on the road, the sum of miles-remaining and miles-covered hovered around 420.
When we first took the car home, the fact that its brain was learning my driving style and displaying increasingly accurate total mileage figures was very obvious. No battery charge has yielded any less than 408 miles and times when all my driving is in the typical traffic conditions of the A143 and the town of Bury St Edmunds, the average consumption hovers above 5MpkWh. The current consumption-since-last-charge number is 5.1.
Although I have charged the battery at both Ionity and Gridserve stations, I almost always charge at home where we have an Ohme HomePro installation, and this brings me to one of several ludicrously stupid aspect of the car's design...
All the available charging routines are dictated by the interaction between the car's charging system and the charger, on the basis of the percentage you wish to charge plus the time you want the car available. No matter what I do, this pairing of parameters always ends up doing some of the charging at peak rates, even though I have an Octopus Account with 6 overnight hours at 8p per kWh. I want to be able to say to the charger: 'Charge at full rate [7.4kW] only between 23:30 and 05:30 and I will accept whatever charge input that gives me.' This would allow me to hook up the charger every day, knowing the car would top itself up at 8p/unit. There is currently no way to do this and, to be blunt, this is a galactically stupid ommision on the part of the Mercedes engineers. It appears that Octopus are about to introduce a new setting called 'Charge Cap' which will not supply power to the charger except in the cheap rate period, but Mercedes should have built that assumption, and the necessary parameter settings, into the car in the first place.
Like everone I know who has one of these cars, I am greatly annoyed by the way MB made all the clever driving features monthy rental based but made sure that no mention of this occurred in any of the road tests and made sure that the dealers selling the first available cars did not know either. At about £60/month if you decide to have all these extras, this is a grade one royal rip off. They also cheapened the spec of the base model after supplying one or two road testers with sample cars which they assured them were base models but that had electric seats, the inductive phone charger system and some other items that are not part of the base spec. The highly honourable, Nick O'Leary was fooled by this and reviewed what he was assured was the Sport version, but was plainly a higher spec car with ordinary door handles. I'm unhappy all round with Mercedes' selling approach here.
The car, however is very good - extremely restful and calm to drive - however, as a last point, I need to state clearly that praise for the low noise levels and top class suspension by the various road testers is utter rubbish - one even said it rivaled the S-Class. The car has hard suspension with really poor performance on bad UK roads. Crash-through from ridges and holes is really abrupt. My previous car was an S-Class, my third such car, and equating the ride of the CLA250+ with any S-class is nonsensical - It's better than a A-Class, but not much, broadly C-Class level.
Ed Form.
So is it the C178 or C174, you mentioned KW so is it the pure EV or plug in hybrid? From your review, it is clearly the EV.
C174 is the pure EV that people are praising about, others hate having the FWD and engine in the C178.
I got confused because you mentioned the C178 but the EV should be the C174.
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Mercedes S350 Bluetec
Interesting as one said it rode like a Rolls Royce even, autotrader UK.
So is it the C178 or C174, you mentioned KW so is it the pure EV or plug in hybrid? From your review, it is clearly the EV.
C174 is the pure EV that people are praising about, others hate having the FWD and engine in the C178.
I got confused because you mentioned the C178 but the EV should be the C174.
So is it the C178 or C174, you mentioned KW so is it the pure EV or plug in hybrid? From your review, it is clearly the EV.
C174 is the pure EV that people are praising about, others hate having the FWD and engine in the C178.
I got confused because you mentioned the C178 but the EV should be the C174.
Last edited by edform; Jun 18, 2026 at 09:04 AM.
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Sorry I'm obviously confused about the model designation. The car is and early 2026, CLA250+EQ Sport model. It is full EV with an 85kWh useable battery capacity and a quoted range of 484 miles and as I indicated, I'm averaging about 420miles which I think is pretty impressive. The ride, as I said is pretty average for a modern German car with low profile tyres. My point was that the road testers, most of whom drove the car in the Skandinavian launch event, have substantially over rated the ride. On good roads with high performance surfaces, the car is eerily quiet, but on noisy surfaces it is noisy and on poor surfaces it is hard and unfogiving on bumps. My 2012 S350DL Bluetec was much, much quieter and my previous S, a 2016 3 litre diesel short wheelbase was better than that. I will amit that, because of the audible engine of the diesel cars, the CLA250+ is quieter on high class surfaces. But the ride isn't anywher near that of an S.
Edit:
What tire pressure was it set to do you mind telling me what tire sizes as well? Does the car come optional with adaptive suspension?
Last edited by W205C43PFL; Jun 18, 2026 at 10:01 AM.
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Mercedes S350 Bluetec
The basic Sport model was meant to be delivered with 17" wheels and higher profile tyres, but I wanted a silver car and the only one in the country had the bigger wheels, so that's what I got.
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The tyres are 225/45R18 95W front and 255/40R18 95W rear, Goodyear Eagle F1 all round. There is no adaptive suspension, just springs and damper.
The basic Sport model was meant to be delivered with 17" wheels and higher profile tyres, but I wanted a silver car and the only one in the country had the bigger wheels, so that's what I got.
The basic Sport model was meant to be delivered with 17" wheels and higher profile tyres, but I wanted a silver car and the only one in the country had the bigger wheels, so that's what I got.
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Mercedes S350 Bluetec
The lower profile tyres on the 18" wheels mean the tyres themselves are less absorbent towards road shocks. I had a B-Class and it was sspecified as having the 'Comfort' suspension, which included bigger, 18" wheels and low profile tyres. Its ride was awful.
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Mercedes S350 Bluetec
I stated in an earlier reply that it does not have adaptive suspension, and I've remembered now that it does - they all do. The dampers adjust the level of damping to suit road conditions, but it doesw not give th ecar a compliant ride, capable of soften croad crash the way the air suspension of the S class does.
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I stated in an earlier reply that it does not have adaptive suspension, and I've remembered now that it does - they all do. The dampers adjust the level of damping to suit road conditions, but it doesw not give th ecar a compliant ride, capable of soften croad crash the way the air suspension of the S class does.
