Another new C350e owner (in Sweden)

[jarborra]

Just wanted to say hello to my fellow Mercedes drivers and fellow hybrid owners!

After one BMW (M-reg 730iA) and two Audis (2006 A8 and 2011 S5 convertible), I recently took delivery of a Selenite grey C350e with beige interior and black piano finish as a company car (Leaseplan). We don't have the same options packages as in the UK here, but it's a Fleet Edition with the Distronic Plus package, Keyless and COMAND Plus SatNav (big screen).

I have a 9 mi commute to work and can charge there so I'm getting pretty good mpg so far (74 mpg real world driving) with the ICE firing up only when I gun it on the motorway.

Although I'd say my A8 still topped it in terms of refinement, I'm loving the Mercedes experience. Despite the mostly useless touchpad, I like the ergonomics of things like the parking sensors turning on automatically at low speeds, the self-parking being instantly available and the near self-driving aids are ridiculously good (like how the car "knows" I need to overtake a bus at a bus stop and adds 30 degrees to my subtle steering wheel nudge).

It's also a beautiful car. To qualify for the full "environmentally friendly" BIK tax benefits, the dealer told me I had to stick with the 17" rims and balloon tires though. Still thinking about buying a set of 19" after-market, but then again, this is my executive commuting drive...what has everyone else done?

I put my order in in early May, originally Tenerite grey which then became unavailable with MY17 so switched to Selenite (both boring, but hold up dirt better than my phantom black A8 or deep sea blue S5). In the flesh, I like Selenite quite a bit better than Tenerite which has a bluish tinge. Side note: The dealer was unaware that the hybrid optics were also added with MY17, which I found decidedly naff. He didn't believe me that there was a new "hybrid optic delete" option and had to call down to Germany to confirm. Anyway, managed to avoid the blue callipers and blue disco lights on it. Got a naff badge though.

I've been lurking here a while and working my way through the 150+ page thread on the C350e - there are some great posters here. Having lived in London for 13 years prior to moving back to Sweden, I love the banter.

My one worry regarding the car is the water ingress problem in the charging port. Given that I park on my driveway and it's now quite rainy, I wonder what will happen once the snow and ice comes... (and not just to my e-mode range!).

(Also, I hate having to have both the Mercedes Me app and the Mercedes Connect webpage on my phone. Why can't they add the hybrid stuff and pre-heating to the native app instead...?)

That's long enough - now let's see if I can post some pics!

 

[Ourg]

Nice looks Great!

Mine is hopefully onboard the Elbe Highway carrier arriving in Sodertalje monday morning. Ordered a brilliant blue saloon in June. With not more than 100 cars delivered in Sweden, its a rather odd model to say the least. Did spot one a few weeks ago on the way home though

Don't really understand the lack of popularity! the fleet edition is competitively priced and as a company car its subject to all tax benefits possible.

Excited to switch to Bremen after 5 cars from Ingolstadt and curios of the pre heat features ability to cope with the Swedish winter!

 

[Flyingpig73]

I love the preheat function, but then I live in Merseyside... Not as cold as Sweden.

To help prevent water ingress I use the flap on the charging cable to cover the connection and therefore prevent water ingress. Also my car is on a downwards slope and reversed in, so the water should naturally run away from the connection.

Alhtough it is obviously an issue as many people have experienced the fault, but more people have not had the issue, so only the minority.

Anyways, you car looks great!! Great choice of colour!!

 

[jarborra]

Thanks guys. Brilliant blue is a beautiful colour and if I had a garage or knew I'd be washing the car more often, I probably would've gotten that. This grey was primarily chosen for its ability to hide dirt.

Good to hear about the water ingress issue not being that common. I don't have a flap on the charging cable but will take the advice about wiping off the inside of the inner door/port before closing it.

Yes, the fleet edition is very competitively priced in Sweden given that the starting list price for a C350e in Sweden is SEK 499,900 and I (well, Leaseplan) paid SEK500,000 (£46,345) for a Fleet edition with Distronic Plus, COMAND, Keyless go and metallic paint after some heroic haggling.

Will be interesting to see what mileage you get in Sweden @Ourg as we probably have similar use cases. (Maybe we can even skip the liter per mil to mpg conversion - even after 13 years in the UK I don't have an innate feel for what mpg is). Where in Sweden will you drive it?

 

[Dodgy]

Don't really understand the lack of popularity! the fleet edition is competitively priced and as a company car its subject to all tax benefits possible.

It looks like the PHEVs of choice in Sweden are the Passat, Outlander and V60. The Passat and the Outlander are bigger than the C350e and all three have 50% more range. I doubt whether any of them are as nice a place to be as the C350e.

The Passat sounds woefully underpowered - it has enough horsepower and I don't have much experience of the TFSI engine, but a 1.4l engine in a 1800kg car sounds like a mis-match. Having said that, nearly 3000 of them have been registered in Sweden this year so they must be doing something right.

 

[Ourg]

It looks like the PHEVs of choice in Sweden are the Passat, Outlander and V60. The Passat and the Outlander are bigger than the C350e and all three have 50% more range. I doubt whether any of them are as nice a place to be as the C350e.

The Passat sounds woefully underpowered - it has enough horsepower and I don't have much experience of the TFSI engine, but a 1.4l engine in a 1800kg car sounds like a mis-match. Having said that, nearly 3000 of them have been registered in Sweden this year so they must be doing something right.

Indeed the Passat is underpowered. Wolfburgs choice of a 1.4 liter ICE is, in my opinion, bordering to a pathetic. Especially combined with the aggressive marketing of the combined "system effect". It's a big car and (although higher than the Merc) it still has a quite limited electric range. If you ever do some milage on country roads, it won't for sure be an exciting ride once the batteries have been drained! Then again, you most likely don't value those aspects of a car in the first place if you have picked the Passat road.

The Passat estate has a strong tradition in terms of sales figures over here and the PHEV is obviously no exception.

The Outlander has it's well defined target group and seems to be a good car for those who fancy transporting horses.

The V60 is a Volvo and as such it will always have decent sales figure in Sweden. The D6 seems have quite nice specs on the paper, but is over priced. Significantly more expensive than the C350e and the dealers didn't even try to argue about it (did even manage to get the sales rep to admit to something like "Yes, I agree that the Merc is a better car in almost all aspects- I cannot compete with the price, go ahead and welcome back next time you buy a car")

The BMW 330e could have been a competitor for me, but was never really in the loop due to the lack of tow bar (from factory at least) plus it's not available in estate version which I'd prefer. Total Swedish sales figures are bordering to marginal but still exceeds the 350e by quite some amount in (440 registered in total vs 104 for the C350).

 

[Ourg]

Will be interesting to see what mileage you get in Sweden @Ourg as we probably have similar use cases. (Maybe we can even skip the liter per mil to mpg conversion - even after 13 years in the UK I don't have an innate feel for what mpg is). Where in Sweden will you drive it?

Yes - looking forward to this! My daily commute is ~20 km one way starting south of Stockholm ending up in Kista. Charging in both ends so hoping to run mostly on electric.

Very bad commute with a lot of traffic and que driving (the Distronic will be a relief!). I usually end up somewhere 28-30 MPG with my A4 (2.0 TFSI quattro chipped to 290 bhp). When I had diesels (Q5 and an A6 Allroad, both with the 3.0 liters V6 TDI) it was possible to do it on 45 good days but probably averaged around 40 MPG.

 

[jarborra]

Interesting stuff Ourg. Where do you get these stats? Are they available at SCB or do you work within the industry (or insurance)?

Totally agree on the 1.4L ICE in the Passat. Have a 2.0L 4-motion loaner right now until our new Tiguan arrives and - even so - it feels much less quick than our old Tiguan. I can't imagine what it would be like with 1.4 and battery weight.

 

[Ourg]

Interesting stuff Ourg. Where do you get these stats? Are they available at SCB or do you work within the industry (or insurance)?

Stats from the industry org BilSweden - they publish very good reports on a monthly basis.

September incl YTD

Last month the delivery of Volvo V90 started to make it's way to the top of the list. 1057 registered (in comparison, C-class had a total of 315 cars. Outlander 285 of which 214 where PHEV).

Page 16 and onwards you'll find all low-emission cars.

 

[jarborra]

Thanks - interesting that there've been so few C350e's. I like it though... more exclusive!

 

[jarborra]

My daily commute is ~20 km one way starting south of Stockholm ending up in Kista. Charging in both ends so hoping to run mostly on electric.

Very bad commute with a lot of traffic and que driving (the Distronic will be a relief!). I usually end up somewhere 28-30 MPG with my A4 (2.0 TFSI quattro chipped to 290 bhp). When I had diesels (Q5 and an A6 Allroad, both with the 3.0 liters V6 TDI) it was possible to do it on 45 good days but probably averaged around 40 MPG.

Missed this post on my iPhone - sorry! I have a 14km commute from Danderyd to Sthlm City but I usually drop off my daughter at school, making it a 17km commute on E18 and then queuing in the City. I can *almost* make it on electric, but then the motorway (where I can hit 60-80km/h) and the tunnel (where I usually top 100km/h) probably sucks a lot of battery. I used to do this commute in a 333bhp Audi S5 convertible and I never even bothered to check the MPG - kinda defeats the purpose of the car when all I want is for the exchaust valves to open and the V6 to reverberate back at me in the tunnel!!

Will be very interesting to compare notes once yours arrives.

 

[Ourg]

Will be very interesting to compare notes once yours arrives.

Close to two months ownership and time for some stats

Daily commutes 20.5 km one way ~1000 km in total
November
Average consumption: 2.6 l/100 km (109 MPG)
Average speed: 36 km/h

December
Average consumption: 1.9 l/100 km (149 MPG)
Average speed: 38 km/h


Overall stats 2100 km
Average consumption: 3,7 l/100 km (76 MPG)

Obviously satisfied with the December commute stats. Overall stats very reasonable. On longer journeys, I still think the fuel economy is very decent and I don't think a bigger battery pack would be wise given the additional weight and space reqs.

Some reflections

* Irrational e-range. Some days (or maybe more truthful on some very rare occasions) she happily runs all way home on electrics and still has 3 km left when I park outside my house. Other days, she runs out of electrics more or less halfway. Traffic and temperature affects performance to some extent, but not nearly enough to explain the radical range-delta.

* Temperature and pre-heat... Below zero is a killer! The pre-heat is fantastic for the comfort, but cannot say that I notice increased range thanks to it - although I carefully set it to ~20 min prior to actual departure in order to let the battery get fully charged before taking off.

* E-save may save fuel - a bit contra intuitive - but have found that manually entering e-save may save some fuel. For my commutes, I often do it ~halfway to ensure it will not reach 10% until I've reached my destination. If the car is left to decide itself, it will use all battery and end up with 10% left with a few km to go. Instead of just living with the fact, the car often (but not always) reacts with a

WOAH FULL PANIC MODE - I HAVE NO BATTERY LEFT

and starts to charge like a maniac from the ICE. Result? Last 2 km with the ICE stuck in some kind of unavoidable charge mode consumes 0.5 liters of petrol (11 MPG!!!).

Extremely frustrating to say the least. Hey baby, please stop destroying my nice stats - I have a charger waiting for you in two minutes time...

* The car - the brand - the build - the appearance.

I. Love. It.

To the extent that I have switched my search for a second car to a CL instead of an A7. Been driving Audis for a long time. Fantastic cars, but the star in front provides me with something else. Personally (and I know some people disagree with me here) I regard the interior, technology and design as a step upwards. This car is a very very nice place to be, to the point that I'd have a hard time to choose between the C350e and the A6 Allroad I drove a few years ago.

 

[jarborra]

Thanks Ourg for a very interesting update. My reflections are perfectly aligned with yours:
* I find the e-range irrational as well: forget the 32km range in the broschure, even fully charged it says 24km which becomes 16km after around 2km at 30km/h and then drops precariously on the motorway.
* Like you, I find E-save good to hit on the highway and even then it coasts with the engine off quite a bit and the ICE only kicks in on hills.
* It really annoys me that pre-heat seems to use the e-battery instead of running off of the electrical mains that I have left plugged in. Will try your trick of setting the start time 20 minutes earlier - although I like the cozy heated seats when I get in... I also think the web app (as the actual app is useless) should have a weekly/daily setting instead of forcing me to set a start-time every single day (VW have had this on-board for years).

Also agree with the build, looks and comfort of the car. I have the full Distronic package (self-steering, etc.) and I think the steering (fly-by-wire as it may be) has a fantastic solid feel. I have also come from a long range of Audis (A8, S5 convertible) and I love the build quality and feel of this car. My only complaint would be around the COMAND system which I still find less than intuitive.

So, anyway, my stats for a daily 14.5km commute in residential/short highway/city traffic (and 2,037 km travelled total): 3,3L/100km and 38km/h average speed.

Talk soon !