C350e owners club

[Dodgy]

It would be nice if MB would just tell us this stuff. I appreciate many don’t care, but some of us are interested in this kind of thing!

You think they know??


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[Rich Dobie]

You think they know??


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I think the reference is to MB designers/engineers rather than your local MB sales team!

A good theory though and appears logical

 

[Deleted member 126969]

I think the reference is to MB designers/engineers rather than your local MB sales team!

A good theory though and appears logical

Sorry, yes, I meant the folk who designed the thing.

Indeed, that theory certainly sounds plausible.

 

[Dodgy]

Sorry, yes, I meant the folk who designed the thing.

Indeed, that theory certainly sounds plausible.

I have no idea how Mercedes have set up the hybrid engine modes, but it’s possible that they’re largely machine learning, in which case they might not understand what it does - they’ll just know what they’ve asked it to do.


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[Deleted member 126969]

I have no idea how Mercedes have set up the hybrid engine modes, but it’s possible that they’re largely machine learning, in which case they might not understand what it does - they’ll just know what they’ve asked it to do.


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In which case, mine has probably learned that I drive like the old fart that I am.

I used to have to reset the gearbox ECU on my old Alfa every few months or it drove like a sluggard.

 

[Dodgy]

Pretty disappointing economy and hybrid activity on my 90 mile journey yesterday - only 37mpg. I know it was cold and windy, but I thought I’d do better. :-(

I used 40% of the battery on the suburban start of the journey and another 20% at the junction to get onto the motorway. All the motorway stretch of the outward journey was done with engine on and no battery charging, so I still had 40% when I arrived at our destination. The crawl into the car park in a long queue drained the battery to 10%. Once we were back on the motorway, the battery charged to about 20%, then charging was limited to downhill stretches only, with the combustion engine doing all the work apart from the odd slow section when it switched off and the electric motors did a little work.

I did a journey a while back using e-save and it did something similar, but charged the battery to over 50%.

Someone said earlier that sport doesn’t charge the battery. I was in sport later on yesterday and it was charging every chance it got.

 

[Unclecuddles]

I have had mine for 10 months, private lease over 2 years with the help of a company car allowance. I do fairly low mileage (around 150-200 miles a week). When new I was getting around 100mpg between fills for my relatively short commute (14 mile round trip) and if I didn't go on any long journeys any other time. Now getting around 60mpg, which I'm hoping is down to the cold whether and not the battery losing charge capacity.

My commute is 3 miles urban then 4 motorway miles. In recent months I have driven the 3 urban miles on electric, then the 4 motorway miles on hybrid with the ICE arriving at work at around 45% charge and 75-80mpg (this was 55-60% and 100+mpg in the summer). I then drive home on the motorway on charge mode which gives me enough electric to complete the urban part of the journey so long as I use E-Mode for the last mile or so, getting home on 10% and 40-45mpg. Can anyone comment on whether this is the most efficient way to utilise the battery? If I can persuade work to invest in charge points then I could get to work and back on electric!

Minor annoyances:-
1) The telephone button on the steering wheel does nothing until I have selected telephone on the car computer, then it brings up the recently called list. Surely as a shortcut you should be able to press it so it brings the list up straight away?
2) Similarly, why doesn't the voice recognition work for the phone. When I press it, the Navigation comes on, but on a friends older E-Class he says he can make calls using voice activation (unless I am doing something wrong?).
3) Forget Microsoft minutes, now I call it Mercedes miles - the way it tells you on start up you have 12 miles electric range and then you only get around 7 miles out of it (and watching the percentage drop rapidly as I pull out the drive!).

A few questions
1) The Mercedes Me app - is it possible to send your planned route to the car, because I don't know how to do it if you can?
2) Is the "vehicle tracking" recognised for insurance purposes? If so, what do you select as the manufacturer on the insurance application?
3) I'm trying to persuade work to invest in chargers. Has anyone got a workplace charger installed, and if so is it free to use, or chargeable via a some kind of tracked charge for use, or credit card, or maybe a fee or donation?
4) Finally, what is your next car going to be? I have been relatively happy with mine, and am saving on fuel versus my last diesel which was the point of getting it.

I have tried trawling through the thread, but have not come across answers to the above.

 

[greekCL]

I have just updated my little diagnostic tool as it did not have W205 in the list of Benz cars
So I was pleased to see that it read all the ECUs of my car all 36 of them.

I was also pleased to find out that it has detailed view of the Hybrid battery cells and voltage etc... so come the years out of warranty the car should be "easy" to repair like it is happening now with Lexus and Toyota out of warranty cars.

 

[Deleted member 126969]

Which tool is that?

 

[CaptainChaos]

I then drive home on the motorway on charge mode

You will have to try and do some comparison tests but I found CHARGE has a detrimental impact on mpg, and you may get a better result leaving it in HYBRID or ESAVE for the motorway section.

1) The telephone button on the steering wheel does nothing until I have selected telephone on the car computer, then it brings up the recently called list. Surely as a shortcut you should be able to press it so it brings the list up straight away?
2) Similarly, why doesn't the voice recognition work for the phone. When I press it, the Navigation comes on, but on a friends older E-Class he says he can make calls using voice activation (unless I am doing something wrong?).

If you have COMAND you can use the voice recognition to say "CALL Contact" and it will call your Contact from any menu, assuming you have said the contact's name correctly. I don't think the AUDIO20 cars can do this.

3) Forget Microsoft minutes, now I call it Mercedes miles - the way it tells you on start up you have 12 miles electric range and then you only get around 7 miles out of it (and watching the percentage drop rapidly as I pull out the drive!).

It works both ways though. In the summer I can leave home with 13 miles range, drive 8 miles to work and still have 12 miles showing. Remember what it's doing - it's calculating a range based on your driving at that moment in time. If you suddenly give it a big bootful from clap cold it will drop accordingly.

 

[Jeddy]

I was slightly surprised yesterday when it was cold with snow around. Took the car off charge (in the garage) 'started' it and the ICE started! I checked and had a 12mile electric range. Reversed down the drive a bit and stopped and the ICE turned off. I then drove off up the road on battery. Guessing the ICE started as it was cold perhaps in readiness in case it was needed or because I also turned on some heat or maybe to warm up the batteries a bit? But as someone said earlier once you get down towards freezing that really does hurt the battery, 47miles at 39.2mpg from a full charge, although some of that was urban with quite a bit of stop / start which would hurt any economy.

Re @Unclecuddles question, I'd be inclined to avoid charge mode if you want good overall economy (and aren't trying to avoid pollution in urban areas which I think is what it's really about), use hybrid or e-save to reduce fuel on the motorway and you'll still be getting benefit from the battery nearer your destination even if it hovers around the 12% mark, just not as much as if you had a more fully charged battery, but then you've not wasted a load of fuel on the motorway charging the battery.

I'm fairly sure there is no way that you'll ever get as many miles out of 100 ml of fuel used to charge the battery as you would have if you'd just used that 100 ml of fuel to drive the car - too many losses at various points. If you absolutely need to be running on battery at certain points in your journey then it has a purpose, otherwise it's a waste of fuel.

@greekCL I hate to disappoint you, but don't expect to be able to replace specific cells. Even if it was possible I'm sure you must have seen no end of times on all sorts of battery operated products the warning not to mix old and new cells. I'd like to think that there is some clever tech which can isolate duff cells, but that's probably as far as they can go.

I suspect I'm not the only person who is trying (or has tried) to work out at what point on their their journey home via various routes then can switch to eletric only mode and get home as the % charge drops into single figures!

 

[Rich Dobie]

I was slightly surprised yesterday when it was cold with snow around. Took the car off charge (in the garage) 'started' it and the ICE started! I checked and had a 12mile electric range. Reversed down the drive a bit and stopped and the ICE turned off. I then drove off up the road on battery. Guessing the ICE started as it was cold perhaps in readiness in case it was needed or because I also turned on some heat or maybe to warm up the batteries a bit? But as someone said earlier once you get down towards freezing that really does hurt the battery, 47miles at 39.2mpg from a full charge, although some of that was urban with quite a bit of stop / start which would hurt any economy.

Re @Unclecuddles question, I'd be inclined to avoid charge mode if you want good overall economy (and aren't trying to avoid pollution in urban areas which I think is what it's really about), use hybrid or e-save to reduce fuel on the motorway and you'll still be getting benefit from the battery nearer your destination even if it hovers around the 12% mark, just not as much as if you had a more fully charged battery, but then you've not wasted a load of fuel on the motorway charging the battery.

I'm fairly sure there is no way that you'll ever get as many miles out of 100 ml of fuel used to charge the battery as you would have if you'd just used that 100 ml of fuel to drive the car - too many losses at various points. If you absolutely need to be running on battery at certain points in your journey then it has a purpose, otherwise it's a waste of fuel.

@greekCL I hate to disappoint you, but don't expect to be able to replace specific cells. Even if it was possible I'm sure you must have seen no end of times on all sorts of battery operated products the warning not to mix old and new cells. I'd like to think that there is some clever tech which can isolate duff cells, but that's probably as far as they can go.

I suspect I'm not the only person who is trying (or has tried) to work out at what point on their their journey home via various routes then can switch to eletric only mode and get home as the % charge drops into single figures!

Jedda, the same happened to me yesterday. In the snow and cold I unplugged the car (so full charge) started the car and switched to e mode as I was only going a short drive of around 3 miles and found the engine started. I also put it down to the temperature and possible load on the car (heating/seats/etc). Once I had reversed off the drive the ICE cut and moved into e mode for the whole journey.

I suppose my question is that the load on the batteries didn’t change after only maybe 20-30 seconds on ICE so why did the engine start for such a short period? Was it the fact that the default setting is Hybrid, so once you start it defaults at certain temperatures to the ICE unless you manually switch to e mode?

 

[greekCL]

Which tool is that?

It is MBII from icarsoft, not the cheapest but it has been working great on my last couple of Mercedes's

@greekCL I hate to disappoint you, but don't expect to be able to replace specific cells. Even if it was possible I'm sure you must have seen no end of times on all sorts of battery operated products the warning not to mix old and new cells. I'd like to think that there is some clever tech which can isolate duff cells, but that's probably as far as they can go.

I suspect I'm not the only person who is trying (or has tried) to work out at what point on their their journey home via various routes then can switch to eletric only mode and get home as the % charge drops into single figures!

I had my Lexus GS450h repaired by a specialist he replaced the faulty 2 cells and the near 3 lowest cells in total 5. The car was performing amazing since then. I had done 14000miles since the repair and it was excellent until I sold it as I wanted to move on to a newer car.

But it is good the Mercedes does have a individual monitoring function like Toyota/Lexus has in their diagnostics. This will help on the years to come.

 

[Jeddy]

@Rich Dobie I suspect we'll never know. It's a good point that the load hadn't changed after 30secs. In light of that I think I'd put my money on it being to protect the engine / warm it up in case it was needed, it's not going to be good for an engine to go from frozen to e.g. 4000rpm the first time you try to overtake something.

@greekCL I stand corrected!! I'm surprised and very much hope that is the case.

Has anyone else noticed that (the web interface to) Mercedes Me now provides 2 charging / pre-heating profiles? One for week and another for weekend? (Not checked the mobile app yet).

The other thing odd yesterday was when I was trying to use the pre-entry climate control (and failed) the M.Me app suggested the car was unlocked, the doors were open etc. (all untrue), could have been quite alarming were it not in the garage. Mind I did wonder when I opened the garage if I was going to find the car missing.

 

[Deleted member 126969]

Following up on our discourse re the warranty on the hybrid components a few days back, I contacted MB and asked them if they could clarify it for me. I was wrong about it covering all components, it is, explicitly, ONLY the battery that has the extended warranty. I guess I was thinking about a Tesla!

Quote

"I am writing in relation to your recent email regarding your query on hybrid warranty.

I can advise that the only difference in warranty for our hybrid vehicles concerns the battery, as you mentioned in your email you already appear to have access to this, however I can forward you another copy if you require.

To address your concern with the drive-train, this too also falls under our general warranty as opposed to a specific hybrid warranty.

Thank you for contacting Mercedes-Benz Customer Service."

End quote.

 

[stuartj]

Lots of activity on here recently - must be everyone at home avoiding the bad weather in a rear wheel drive ice skate.

I have now had my C350e for two years and covered 52000 miles which can only be described as mixed. In the early days I could get an average of over 50mpg on a 90 mile round trip to London however this is now down to around 44mpg albeit in the winter. I recently did a long trip to the Alps, just under 1600 miles, with a fully loaded car at French motorway speeds (ish) and returned around 35mpg which was about the same as both my previous cars - a 520D and a D5 XC60 albeit they did have appendages on the roof.

I have recently been struggling with Mercedes me which now will not function and I am awaiting a response from Mercedes Tech Team as to why after nearly 24 months of working most of the time now refuses to talk to my car - no pre heat for me for my 05:30 starts. Customer Service was very quick however they do not have a clue why this is not working and the different apps tell different things such as my car is unlocked, the battery is flat and I have 0 miles range after filling up and 400 mile range when empty.

I have also found that the battery does not always charge despite being plugged in with the green light showing so now have to have the e-mail confirming my battery is charged so I do not keep going to check.

As I got a bit caught out with delivery times when I ordered the C350e I thought I would check with the dealerships as to what was happening with the face-lift and when I could get rates and delivery periods etc. I therefore spoke to the local dealer, whom I am still awaiting a call back from 30 months ago for this car, to be told that they did not know and that their specialist Sales manager would phone me the following Monday and that they would try extra hard to secure my business this time. Surprise surprise but no call back!

The dealer that I bought the car from was more useful and said that whilst they could not confirm exactly what was happening they believed there would be a petrol and a diesel PHEV C Class and that they would have all the details by mid April. They also said that the saloon would be built in South Africa?? so the delivery dates may be extended however they did tell me that for this car which was not the case.

All in all I have enjoyed the C350e - there is definitely room for improvement and the issue are getting more as the car gets older i.e. reduced range, lower economy, more strange noises and mercedes me, but it has never broken down, nothing has failed and would I consider getting another? Yes - a 9 speed diesel with 270BHP and even more torque or a 9 speed petrol with 300+ BHP - either would do if the little annoying issues have been ironed out.

 

[wivenhoe]

Following up on our discourse re the warranty on the hybrid components a few days back, I contacted MB and asked them if they could clarify it for me. I was wrong about it covering all components, it is, explicitly, ONLY the battery that has the extended warranty. I guess I was thinking about a Tesla!

Quote

"I am writing in relation to your recent email regarding your query on hybrid warranty.

I can advise that the only difference in warranty for our hybrid vehicles concerns the battery, as you mentioned in your email you already appear to have access to this, however I can forward you another copy if you require.

To address your concern with the drive-train, this too also falls under our general warranty as opposed to a specific hybrid warranty.

Thank you for contacting Mercedes-Benz Customer Service."

End quote.

Chris-S. When I bought mine in Sept 2015 there was a specific warranty document for the Hybrid system which confirmed it was covered for 5 years or 60k - I'll try and dig it out as I think the 'Hybrid' warranty would cover all C350e's until at least 2020 ! It definitely wasn't just a battery warranty

 

[greekCL]

I need some help guys.

- Regarding petrol smell on random occasions, I had it once and that was on Saturday night on a 2 mile trip the car had strong petrol smell through the vents and under the bonnet. I do not have time to waste trying to convince Mercedes engineers that I am not going mad and it is the little fuel line that needs to be changed...
Can someone kindly supply any information on a Mercedes dealership that has already dealt with the very same problem and resolved it?

- Regarding the outside temp update, again does someone know a Mercedes dealer that has fixed this for them? As it seems to be that Mercedes Canterbury they had the car in and they cannot find anything that will enable the temp to show with the main mileage display.

- Another thing I noticed today although I was so pleased with the fuel economy and the performance driving of the car (just over 50MPG on my way back from London) I noticed a lot of judder when the friction brakes engadged, seemed to be coming from the front right corner of the car. Has anyone else experienced something similar?
The car was on S+ suspension setting / S for the steering setting / E for the engine setting

 

[Jeddy]

Regarding the outside temp update, again does someone know a Mercedes dealer that has fixed this for them? As it seems to be that Mercedes Canterbury they had the car in and they cannot find anything that will enable the temp to show with the main mileage display.

Two thoughts.
1. Are you certain you are looking in the right place, only reason I ask is it's not obvious! From memory select Trip and it's on the first screen which shows the odometer and trip mileages. At the bottom there are 2 values on the left and right, it's not either of those, however just above the value on the right in a lighter colour it's there.
2. If you go to the Mercedes Me web interface (i.e. not mobile app), and select Software Updates, then Use Service - does that show anything other than 'No software updates are currently available for your vehicle.'? I'm not sure the need for that update would display in there, but if anything does show in there then something has not been done.
If you discover Canterbury are not applying software updates I'd suggest once you'd made them do it, going elsewhere in future as you can bet their not doing other things too in an effort to save time / money.

 

[Jeddy]

Regarding petrol smell on random occasions, I had it once and that was on Saturday night on a 2 mile trip the car had strong petrol smell through the vents and under the bonnet. I do not have time to waste trying to convince Mercedes engineers that I am not going mad and it is the little fuel line that needs to be changed...

Just a suggestion. Do you have breakdown cover? If so call them next time you get the smell, they may not be able to fix it, but if they can locate it then you have something to report to MB. Not sure what would happen if you tried MB Mobilo, hopefully they'd either fix it or take it to a dealer who would have to then fix it.