Road Test: Mercedes-Benz E300 BlueTec Hybrid
Price as tested: €52,200
+ Smooth, efficient, seamless hybrid system, classy, comfy
– Very little really
= Merc's first on-sale hybrid is a cracker, right up with the Lexus GS450h
The problem with hybrids is that they never work. Hmmm. That last statement may need a bit of explaining and context. OK, here goes; the problem with hybrids is not precisely that they don’t work (clearly they do, as they go, stop and steer) but that they never seem to work quite as well as you want them to. Hybrids are very clever, very good for lowering your official emissions figure and therefore your annual motor tax bill and very good for making you feel like you’re doing your bit for the environment. What they tend not to be very good at is returning anything like their claimed fuel consumption figures in real-world driving.
Partly, that’s a weight issue. All those batteries and electric motors add mass and complication to a car and the inertia of that mass has to be overcome every time you accelerate. Partly, it’s a driving style thing. To get the best economy out of a hybrid (or any car for that matter) you just have to drive like a saint, or as if a baby panda has taken up residence under your throttle pedal.
So it was that I came to the Mercedes-Benz E300 BlueTec Hybrid expecting to be disappointed. And yet, it had a surprise for me. It may have a long-winded name but actually, the E300 is one of the more simple hybrids around. It’s not expected to do duty as a pure-electric vehicle for anything other than short bursts, so its weight and complication are kept to a minimum. In fact, the E300 weighs just 110kg more than the standard E250 CDI diesel upon which it is based. That makes it only the third diesel hybrid car to go on sale (following on from the French pair of Peugeot 3008 Hy4 and Citroen DS5 Hy4) and, I’d argue, the most successful yet.
Instead of a massive stack of batteries eating into boot and cabin space and pushing up the kerb weight, the E300 has a smaller 19kW lithium-ion battery that’s actually packaged within the engine bay. That feeds a 27bhp electric motor which is neatly packaged within the existing casing of the seven-speed 7G-Tronic automatic gearbox. The idea behind all this extra gubbins is to give the E300 the power and grunt of a big V6 diesel while retaining the economy and emissions performance of a smaller-capacity four-cylinder engine.
And, on paper, it works rather brilliantly. A standard E250 CDI diesel, with a manual gearbox, returns Co2 emissions of 130g/km, giving you an annual road tax bill of €270. An E300 BlueTec does 109g/km, depending on which size of alloy wheel you spec it with. That means you’ll pay just €190 a year to tax it. Perhaps not the biggest consideration for someone spending north of €50k on a new Mercedes, but nice to know all the same.
Speaking of the price tag, there’s a major benefit there too. A very basic E250 CDI, with an optional automatic gearbox, in Classic trim, costs €51,665. An E300 BlueTec in the same trim, but with a standard automatic gearbox, costs €52,200, which seems like not a major extra expense. But wait, it gets better. A regular E300 CDI V6 diesel, to which a BlueTec Hybrid is more or less comparable in terms of performance, costs €64,160 and costs €390 a year to tax. This whole hybrid thing is looking pretty good.
Of course, this is the point where a hybrid’s on-paper performance tends to fall down and disappoint. But actually, the E300 BlueTec rises the the challenge quite well.
I think the key here is the gearbox. Hybrids tend to have very annoying gearboxes, whether it’s the CVT in a Prius that lets the engine rev and roar annoyingly any time you ask for a bit of acceleration, or the EGS gearbox in the Citroen or Peugeot cars which seems to pause for a long and deep thought between every ratio. The Merc’s conventional wet-clutch automatic transmission is a revelation in this respect. You ask for acceleration; you get some. You back off and cruise, and everything goes quiet again. Gear changes are done without fuss, noise or pause. In hybrid terms, it’s an unusually lovely experience.
It’s a very refined powertrain as well. You’ll most likely start off in electric mode, and considering how small the battery is, you’ll go for a surprising distance before the diesel engine kicks in. When it does, you’ll know all about it as there’s little or no hope of entirely disguising the noise of a DERV engine firing up from a cold start, but once everything warms up, it’s a very smooth, refined unit. What will also surprise you is how often, in motorway and main road cruising, the engine shuts down and the electric motor takes over. Known as sailing, this effect can dramatically cut your long-range driving fuel consumption.
Ah yes, the dreaded question of fuel consumption. Mercedes quotes an average consumption figure of 4.3-litres per 100km, or 65mpg. Will you be surprised if I tell you we didn’t manage to match that? Of course not, but if an average of 6.0-litres per 100km on our brief test drive (47mpg) seems like the traditional hybrid disappointment, then perhaps it shouldn’t be. For a start, from an engine with more power and grunt (590Nm) than the standard E250 CDI, that’s a match for the conventional diesel’s fuel consumption, and on top of which, I reckon you’d easily get the E300 to average around 5.0l/100km without too much effort.
There’s not much point in pronouncing on the handling and ride, as our test car was the outgoing-shape E-Class, and there’s a new, sexier-looking E, with tweaked and improved suspension arriving any time soon. Suffice to say that like almost all E-Class models that have come before, what it loses to rivals like the BMW 5 Series in terms of outright precision, it makes up for in terms of comfort and quietness.
No, the E300 BlueTec isn’t going to save the planet, the wales or the endangered salamander, and nor thankfully does it claim to. It is, instead, a well-engineered, good to drive car with a distinctly well-thought-out hybrid transmission installation that will save you money on fuel and tax, relative to other, similar cars. And it’s one of the first hybrids we’ve ever driven that’s not a disappointment.
Mercedes-Benz E300 BlueTec Hybrid
Price as tested: €52,200
Capacity: 2,143cc
Power: 201bhp + 27bhp electric motor
Torque: 590Nm combined
Top speed: 250kmh
0-100kmh: 7.8sec
Economy: 4.3l-100km (65mpg)
CO2 emissions: 109g/km
Road Tax Band: A3. €190
Euro NCAP rating: 5-star; 86% adult, 77% child, 59% pedestrian, 86% safety assist.
