C350e owners club

[Dodgy]

I use the heating on 3/4 bars at 23 degrees. When my windscreen is steamed up I use mac without a/c and it takes ages to clear up.

I charge the battery once a week and save it when I go town driving. My battery would show 11 miles but it’s completely empties when I do a 3 mile trip. It’s really bad.

when I do town driving without electric I get 15-22mpg. This is on comfort mode.

another thing I’ve been trying to do is drive fast to get to 30 and then my foot off and try to drive on electric. The problem is the speed drops and drivers behind me overtake me.

The one thing we should start with is that the MB battery performance is heavily impacted by the outside temperature.

I did a 5.4 mile trip on Saturday and only had 25% battery remaining at the end. That trip was in e-mode, because I knew the car should be able to do it without the engine on. It included some sub-30mph pottering for roughly a mile uphill, which used about 20% of the battery, an uphill acceleration to 60mph that used about 15%, a downhill cruise that gave me 2% battery back and a brief sub-30mph section that used a few % then the opposite journey to return home.

There’s a good chance the same journey in hybrid would have not used the engine either. If you’re 100% confident your car can’t do this, there might well be a problem with the battery.

 

[CaptainChaos]

I use the heating on 3/4 bars at 23 degrees. When my windscreen is steamed up I use mac without a/c and it takes ages to clear up.

Why do you do that? Press AUTO and AC and set it to 23 if that's your preferred temperature and leave it. Don't touch it. It's "automatic".

another thing I’ve been trying to do is drive fast to get to 30 and then my foot off and try to drive on electric. The problem is the speed drops and drivers behind me overtake me.

I think you are over complicating things. Put it in Hybrid and let the car sort itself out. It will choose when to use which power source. Keep an eye on the "swingometer" lights in the bottom of the rev counter and they will tell you if you are using electric (white) about to use the engine (red) or charging (green). Hopefully you can stay out of the red and light as many greens as often as possible.

 

[Nick Harper]

Started a conversation with Mercedes on chopping in my two year old C350e estate for a brand new C300de estate. The extra electric mileage makes sense for my 20mile commute and the diesel will give much better economy on long haul. As usual, my local dealer doesn’t really understand the option list. Anyone recommend a dealer that does?

 

[Dodgy]

Started a conversation with Mercedes on chopping in my two year old C350e estate for a brand new C300de estate. The extra electric mileage makes sense for my 20mile commute and the diesel will give much better economy on long haul. As usual, my local dealer doesn’t really understand the option list. Anyone recommend a dealer that does?

You are a true optimist! [emoji23]

 

[Deleted member 126969]

Only one thing the average dealer knows anything about, screwing punters.

 

[Sraj]

When I drive on hybrid, the Rev counter goes past the red. It goes past the red once I’m over 15mph.

The green only shows one bar when I’m coasting and full bars when braking.

Are you able to drive at 30 on the white bar?

My average mpg is 36 now and that’s without using the heating.

QUOTE="CaptainChaos, post: 2821046, member: 122698"]Why do you do that? Press AUTO and AC and set it to 23 if that's your preferred temperature and leave it. Don't touch it. It's "automatic".



I think you are over complicating things. Put it in Hybrid and let the car sort itself out. It will choose when to use which power source. Keep an eye on the "swingometer" lights in the bottom of the rev counter and they will tell you if you are using electric (white) about to use the engine (red) or charging (green). Hopefully you can stay out of the red and light as many greens as often as possible.[/QUOTE]

 

[Dodgy]

When I drive on hybrid, the Rev counter goes past the red. It goes past the red once I’m over 15mph.

The green only shows one bar when I’m coasting and full bars when braking.

Are you able to drive at 30 on the white bar?

My average mpg is 36 now and that’s without using the heating.

QUOTE="CaptainChaos, post: 2821046, member: 122698"]Why do you do that? Press AUTO and AC and set it to 23 if that's your preferred temperature and leave it. Don't touch it. It's "automatic".



I think you are over complicating things. Put it in Hybrid and let the car sort itself out. It will choose when to use which power source. Keep an eye on the "swingometer" lights in the bottom of the rev counter and they will tell you if you are using electric (white) about to use the engine (red) or charging (green). Hopefully you can stay out of the red and light as many greens as often as possible.

[/QUOTE]

Two points:
1. Yes, I can get to 30mph easily without using the engine in hybrid. I expect I could get to 50, although I’ve not tried it recently.
2. If you put the transmission into eco (it’s in the dynamic select settings, or you can just choose ECO/E mode using the dynamic select rocker switch in the lower part of the centre console), you should activate the haptic accelerator pedal, which pushes back at the point the engine would come on.

If #2 doesn’t let you get to 30mph using the electric modes, it sounds like your battery might be performing well short of expectations.

 

[Deleted member 126969]

The car should be able to maintain motorway speeds on battery alone, assuming it has some capacity left. It should also be able to accelerate ‘moderately’ up to speed without using the ICE. All being well, you get about 90bhp of electric motive power (with decent charge in the battery). That’s enough to cruise along at legal speeds, accelerate reasonably well enough to keep up with general traffic.

If yours won’t do more than 15mph on the flat on a full charge without firing up the ICE then it is clearly faulty. The symptoms sound as if the battery has very low capacity. It sounds like it behaves like mine does on an almost flat battery. The “swingometer” under the tacho doesn’t give a constant reading I don’t think. By that, I mean that 3 white LEDs on a full battery is more power than 3 white LEDs on an empty one, just based on how it feels when driving. I think it's more like a proportion of available power rather than an absolute power gauge.

Again, I’ll ask, have you tried to work out how much electrical energy you are actually putting into it when charging?

On the dash, set charge current to 10A (to make the maths simple).

Again on the dash (or main display) find out battery charge state.

Put it on charge and note what time you start. Keep an eye on it and note when it finishes (100% charged), or if that isn’t convenient, when it reaches a known %age of charge. Try to let it charge for at the very least an hour to minimise errors.

You can now work out how much energy you put in to get it from the starting figure to the ending one.

You know it was charging at about 2.3kW. You know how long it was charging for. Multiply the time it was charging (in hours) by 2.3, that tells you how much energy you put in, in kWh.

You know how charged it was at the start and the end, so you can work out how many % of capacity you added by charging. End %age minus start %age.

Total battery capacity is then (roughly!!!), (100/%age charge added) x energy added in kWh.

There are errors and assumptions in this, but it should give a decent indication if there is anything drastically wrong.

of course, it would be much easier if you had a fixed wall charger that did the sums for you like some of the new ones do.

I do a similar check to this from time to time on mine. I have solar PV and a Tesla Powerwall so can easily monitor how much power is going into the house, so it’s easy for me to see how long mine is on charge for and how much it took. Usually works out to around 6kWh or so, which is about right given the errors and assumptions involved in testing like this. If it came back very different to that, I’d know there was something wrong.

Once you have an idea of the actual battery capacity, you can then have an idea where to look for the problem.

 

[CaptainChaos]

When I drive on hybrid, the Rev counter goes past the red. It goes past the red once I’m over 15mph.

The green only shows one bar when I’m coasting and full bars when braking.

Are you able to drive at 30 on the white bar?

Yes. You should be able to hit 50-60 on the flat. Yours is clearly not right.
Are you able to perform the test Chris has suggested?

 

[Sraj]

ok, I’ll try this now and see what happens. At the moment there’s 11 miles on the battery. I’ve been driving on e save eco mode.

Do I press the black button on the charger to charge four bars or two bars? The last time I changed, I left it on two bars for 3 hrs and the battery showed 12 miles

The car should be able to maintain motorway speeds on battery alone, assuming it has some capacity left. It should also be able to accelerate ‘moderately’ up to speed without using the ICE. All being well, you get about 90bhp of electric motive power (with decent charge in the battery). That’s enough to cruise along at legal speeds, accelerate reasonably well enough to keep up with general traffic.

If yours won’t do more than 15mph on the flat on a full charge without firing up the ICE then it is clearly faulty. The symptoms sound as if the battery has very low capacity. It sounds like it behaves like mine does on an almost flat battery. The “swingometer” under the tacho doesn’t give a constant reading I don’t think. By that, I mean that 3 white LEDs on a full battery is more power than 3 white LEDs on an empty one, just based on how it feels when driving. I think it's more like a proportion of available power rather than an absolute power gauge.

Again, I’ll ask, have you tried to work out how much electrical energy you are actually putting into it when charging?

On the dash, set charge current to 10A (to make the maths simple).

Again on the dash (or main display) find out battery charge state.

Put it on charge and note what time you start. Keep an eye on it and note when it finishes (100% charged), or if that isn’t convenient, when it reaches a known %age of charge. Try to let it charge for at the very least an hour to minimise errors.

You can now work out how much energy you put in to get it from the starting figure to the ending one.

You know it was charging at about 2.3kW. You know how long it was charging for. Multiply the time it was charging (in hours) by 2.3, that tells you how much energy you put in, in kWh.

You know how charged it was at the start and the end, so you can work out how many % of capacity you added by charging. End %age minus start %age.

Total battery capacity is then (roughly!!!), (100/%age charge added) x energy added in kWh.

There are errors and assumptions in this, but it should give a decent indication if there is anything drastically wrong.

of course, it would be much easier if you had a fixed wall charger that did the sums for you like some of the new ones do.

I do a similar check to this from time to time on mine. I have solar PV and a Tesla Powerwall so can easily monitor how much power is going into the house, so it’s easy for me to see how long mine is on charge for and how much it took. Usually works out to around 6kWh or so, which is about right given the errors and assumptions involved in testing like this. If it came back very different to that, I’d know there was something wrong.

Once you have an idea of the actual battery capacity, you can then have an idea where to look for the problem.

 

[Sraj]

How do you change the settings on the battery? I can’t remember how to do it.

The picture I uploaded shows 11 miles. Battery is showing 82%

The car should be able to maintain motorway speeds on battery alone, assuming it has some capacity left. It should also be able to accelerate ‘moderately’ up to speed without using the ICE. All being well, you get about 90bhp of electric motive power (with decent charge in the battery). That’s enough to cruise along at legal speeds, accelerate reasonably well enough to keep up with general traffic.

If yours won’t do more than 15mph on the flat on a full charge without firing up the ICE then it is clearly faulty. The symptoms sound as if the battery has very low capacity. It sounds like it behaves like mine does on an almost flat battery. The “swingometer” under the tacho doesn’t give a constant reading I don’t think. By that, I mean that 3 white LEDs on a full battery is more power than 3 white LEDs on an empty one, just based on how it feels when driving. I think it's more like a proportion of available power rather than an absolute power gauge.

Again, I’ll ask, have you tried to work out how much electrical energy you are actually putting into it when charging?

On the dash, set charge current to 10A (to make the maths simple).

Again on the dash (or main display) find out battery charge state.

Put it on charge and note what time you start. Keep an eye on it and note when it finishes (100% charged), or if that isn’t convenient, when it reaches a known %age of charge. Try to let it charge for at the very least an hour to minimise errors.

You can now work out how much energy you put in to get it from the starting figure to the ending one.

You know it was charging at about 2.3kW. You know how long it was charging for. Multiply the time it was charging (in hours) by 2.3, that tells you how much energy you put in, in kWh.

You know how charged it was at the start and the end, so you can work out how many % of capacity you added by charging. End %age minus start %age.

Total battery capacity is then (roughly!!!), (100/%age charge added) x energy added in kWh.

There are errors and assumptions in this, but it should give a decent indication if there is anything drastically wrong.

of course, it would be much easier if you had a fixed wall charger that did the sums for you like some of the new ones do.

I do a similar check to this from time to time on mine. I have solar PV and a Tesla Powerwall so can easily monitor how much power is going into the house, so it’s easy for me to see how long mine is on charge for and how much it took. Usually works out to around 6kWh or so, which is about right given the errors and assumptions involved in testing like this. If it came back very different to that, I’d know there was something wrong.

Once you have an idea of the actual battery capacity, you can then have an idea where to look for the problem.

 

[CaptainChaos]

From memory, press home on the left steering wheel buttons and go into Settings and Battery.

 

[Sraj]

Hi, thanks for that, I managed to change the setting to 10A. Previously it was on 8A.

I started the charge at 1608 and it was fully charged at 1700. Prior to charge, the battery was showing 100% flow. I switched the engine on after charging and it showed 13 miles on full charge.

QUOTE="CaptainChaos, post: 2821377, member: 122698"]From memory, press home on the left steering wheel buttons and go into Settings and Battery.[/QUOTE]

 

[Sraj]

I started the charge at 1608 and it was fully charged at 1700. Prior to charge, the battery was showing 100% flow. I switched the engine on after charging and it showed 13 miles on full charge.

The car should be able to maintain motorway speeds on battery alone, assuming it has some capacity left. It should also be able to accelerate ‘moderately’ up to speed without using the ICE. All being well, you get about 90bhp of electric motive power (with decent charge in the battery). That’s enough to cruise along at legal speeds, accelerate reasonably well enough to keep up with general traffic.

If yours won’t do more than 15mph on the flat on a full charge without firing up the ICE then it is clearly faulty. The symptoms sound as if the battery has very low capacity. It sounds like it behaves like mine does on an almost flat battery. The “swingometer” under the tacho doesn’t give a constant reading I don’t think. By that, I mean that 3 white LEDs on a full battery is more power than 3 white LEDs on an empty one, just based on how it feels when driving. I think it's more like a proportion of available power rather than an absolute power gauge.

Again, I’ll ask, have you tried to work out how much electrical energy you are actually putting into it when charging?

On the dash, set charge current to 10A (to make the maths simple).

Again on the dash (or main display) find out battery charge state.

Put it on charge and note what time you start. Keep an eye on it and note when it finishes (100% charged), or if that isn’t convenient, when it reaches a known %age of charge. Try to let it charge for at the very least an hour to minimise errors.

You can now work out how much energy you put in to get it from the starting figure to the ending one.

You know it was charging at about 2.3kW. You know how long it was charging for. Multiply the time it was charging (in hours) by 2.3, that tells you how much energy you put in, in kWh.

You know how charged it was at the start and the end, so you can work out how many % of capacity you added by charging. End %age minus start %age.

Total battery capacity is then (roughly!!!), (100/%age charge added) x energy added in kWh.

There are errors and assumptions in this, but it should give a decent indication if there is anything drastically wrong.

of course, it would be much easier if you had a fixed wall charger that did the sums for you like some of the new ones do.

I do a similar check to this from time to time on mine. I have solar PV and a Tesla Powerwall so can easily monitor how much power is going into the house, so it’s easy for me to see how long mine is on charge for and how much it took. Usually works out to around 6kWh or so, which is about right given the errors and assumptions involved in testing like this. If it came back very different to that, I’d know there was something wrong.

Once you have an idea of the actual battery capacity, you can then have an idea where to look for the problem.

 

[Deleted member 126969]

You need to know what charge percentage it had when you started to charge, not what indicated range was. The guessOmeter isn’t a useful tool at all most of the time, it calculates predicated range on what happened last time it was driven. Fine if you do the same trip, in the same conditions time after time I suppose.

based on your figures so far, you put roughly 2kWh into it. Roughly 85% of that will go into the battery as useable energy, so about 1.7kWh. If you know the %age charge it was showing (not indicated range) when you started to charge, we can make a stab at working out the battery capacity.

 

[Sraj]

Percentage charge was 100% energy flow prior to charging

You need to know what charge percentage it had when you started to charge, not what indicated range was. The guessOmeter isn’t a useful tool at all most of the time, it calculates predicated range on what happened last time it was driven. Fine if you do the same trip, in the same conditions time after time I suppose.

based on your figures so far, you put roughly 2kWh into it. Roughly 85% of that will go into the battery as useable energy, so about 1.7kWh. If you know the %age charge it was showing (not indicated range) when you started to charge, we can make a stab at working out the battery capacity.

 

[Sraj]

I drove on charge because the hybrid wasn’t working when I went out and drove for 3 miles. This was probably due to the cold weather. Mpg for the trip was 13.

Percentage charge was 100% energy flow prior to charging

 

[Dodgy]

I drove on charge because the hybrid wasn’t working when I went out and drove for 3 miles. This was probably due to the cold weather. Mpg for the trip was 13.

This is all quite confusing.

1. There’s no way the car should take 52 minutes to charge from 100% to full. The last 1% does take longer than the first 1% of charging, but only a few minutes at worst, so less than 0.5% should definitely take less than 5 minutes until the charge completes
2. Hybrid mode hasn’t been unavailable in my car for many, many months. The few times it’s been unavailable have been for less than a minute.
3. The only way I can imagine the car achieving 13mpg over a 3 mile journey is if charge mode was functioning correctly, which it shouldn’t if your battery is at 100% state of charge

I’m pretty sure you have a fault. My only doubts are that you’re making slightly strange choices (using charge mode when you believe the battery is full) and slightly strange descriptions of what’s going on (“Percentage charge was 100% energy flow” - these words aren’t quite right), so we might be getting crossed wires. Plug-in hybrids are complicated and writing about them isn’t easy.

If I were you, I’d be aiming to take it to a dealer for a check-up. Before that, I’d do the test that Chris recommended several times from a low state of charge (less than 50%). 10%-90% needs about 5kWh of energy. A 10A charge gives you about 2.3kWh per hour of charging, so it should take just over 2 hours. If you’re going to convince a dealer there’s a problem, you’ll need some good data to beat them with, so make plenty of notes.

 

[CaptainChaos]

I drove on charge because the hybrid wasn’t working when I went out and drove for 3 miles. This was probably due to the cold weather. Mpg for the trip was 13.

I think we mentioned it before. CHARGE will kill your mpg. You can get away with it on the motorway, but not at low speeds. I think I've used it twice in four years.

It looks like you have got to the "randomly press every button because I am annoyed" stage and you need to take a step back.

My car is four years old and 30,000 miles and I think it's all working as it should. I do lots of urban short runs in a very hilly area. My car is charged to 100% over night. It usually shows 10 miles range in the morning. My climate control is set to AUTO + AC and 21. Over the last 13,747 miles my average is 46.3mpg with an average speed of 19mph. The engine has been off for 8,021 of those miles. The other day I had a longer journey to make - 138 miles starting off with little charge. Average was 46mph at 43.4mpg and the engine off for 33 miles.

Note that last bit - I started off with no charge and yet the engine was still off for 33 miles. I wonder if you are driving in such a way that you are always forcing the engine on. Have you found the green circle of economy? It might give you some ideas in which you can change your driving style to suit a hybrid.

 

[Deleted member 126969]

Percentage charge was 100% energy flow prior to charging

I drove on charge because the hybrid wasn’t working when I went out and drove for 3 miles. This was probably due to the cold weather. Mpg for the trip was 13.

I’m sorry, I just don't understand what you mean there.

%age charge is an indication of the static charge state, not a rate of charge. “100% energy flow” is a reading of how much power is flowing....but I don’t recall seeing that metric anywhere?

If you mean it showed 100% charge when you put it on charge, and it then took 10A for nearly an hour,, then there is something very wrong. That energy has to go somewhere, the battery temperature management system won’t soak up that much I don’t think. At the end of a normal charge, you see the charge power drop down to about 900W for the last 15 minutes or so.

Cold engine, cold weather, 3 miles in charge mode, yep, not surprised it showed 13mpg, but that does presume it was actually putting some power into the battery.

Sorry to come across as a pedantic ****, but one needs to be very specific about the language or it just gets too confusing.

For now, ignore the guessOmeter. Concentrate on the battery charge level %age figure. Even that is a bit misleading as we don’t really know what 0% and 100% actually mean. Do MB force safety margins at top and bottom and fudge the figures, or are they really 0% and 100%?? Personally, I think there is a small-ish buffer at the top (indicated 100% is probably about 90% of actual battery capacity) and 0% is probably 5% actual, but the systems will never let it go that low anyway. These limits will be set to protect the battery as a genuine 100% charge level is bad for them, and a genuine 0% discharge level is very bad for them.

I absolutely agree with @Dodgy here, you want to have some solid data to hand before taking it to a dealer. I get the impression most of them have zero clue about hybrids, and care about the same amount. Do a few “empty to full” charge cycle tests, noting start %age level, time to charge to 100% charge level and the power setting of the charge (10A is good). That way you’ll have a good idea of actual battery capacity to present to them.