Latest addition to the Mercedes electric portfolio is the C 400 with fully variable all-wheel drive, a wieldy 4-door coupé sized for urban life.

Mercedes-Benz AG

Latest addition to the Mercedes electric portfolio is the C 400 with fully variable all-wheel drive, a wieldy 4-door coupé sized for urban life.

Thanks to battery-electric powertrain architecture, the electric C-Class has a 116.6-inch wheelbase, nearly 4 inches longer than the combustion-engine C-Class sedan, and essentially the same as the electric GLC SUV, which shares much engineering content with this sedan. Simply put, a longer wheelbase means more leg room, front and rear compared to the combustion C-class.

Trunk capacity is enough to manage gear for the kid’s tee-ball or soccer, or a long weekend road trip, with more stowage in the frunk to handle a few soft overnight bags.

Range in the Driving Miss Daisy setting is 473 miles (762km), equal to the drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco or Palo Alto. And as seen in other Mercedes electric vehicles, the batteries can suck up a considerable charge in just ten minutes, in this case adding 200 miles, so a jaunt to the Ahwahnee Lodge in Yosemite or skiing in Mammoth from Los Angeles won’t leave you feeling like Magellan sailing into the unknown. It’s doable.

To complement the long wheelbase—a long wheelbase usually equates to a very placid, plush ride and excellent aerodynamics along the car’s underbelly—one can add optional air suspension.

C 400 electric will be the first variant to reach market. With two electric motors combining for 482-hp, C 400 sprints from 0-60 mph in less than four seconds. The rear motor has a gearbox that kicks from low to high gear to enhance range and quiet the car on the highway.

As an old hand, I can once again attest that when I started decades ago only a handful of exotic sports cars could hope to achieve a “four.something” sprint to 60 mph, and that only with sturm und drang with potential damage to gearboxes and clutches. Here you have a luxurious sports sedan that breaks the 4-second barrier, easy, no sweat. Grandma can take out C 400 and smoke the door handles off many a performance car on her way to the grocery store, without any fanfare or screaming piston engine. Call it easy access durable performance.

Almost all braking can be achieved through “recuperation,” meaning the electric motors “brake” the car to trickle-charge the battery. Electric C-Class can brake electrically to a standstill, mechanical brakes only finishing that final foot of stopping. As on other Mercedes electrics, one can adjust the level of recuperation using the steering wheel shift paddles. I want to experience this feature in my own city on my own favorite roads to fully comprehend. To achieve this and deliver smooth braking must require serious computer scripting.

Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX) Hyperscreen offers a seamless 39.1-inch display that melds driver gauge binnacle, center console screen, and passenger screen. Mercedes has honed this concept for several years now.

Air suspension includes intelligent, predictive damping that automatically adjusts damping (the shock absorbers) just before the vehicle encounters a speed bump, just like in a new EQS or S-class. The intelligent suspension control uses information harvested from other Mercedes-Benz vehicles driving ahead, transmitted in real time to the Mercedes-Benz Intelligent Cloud. In short, you’ve joined the Mercedes hive and thus gain benefit from collective experience in real-time.

Mercedes offers a form of Level 2 semi-autonomous driving that gathers data from multiple sources, and uses 30 sensors, including 10 cameras, 5 radar sensors and 12 ultrasonic sensors. All of these provide raw data to a liquid-cooled onboard supercomputer. Not quite autonomy—this is only Level 2—but it sure can help when leaving a downtown LA office as the symphony audience from Disney Hall is wending its way to the 110 freeway.

The benefits of all these electronic systems astound, but this car had my attention with mention of a sub-4-second sprint to 60 mph. Mercedes continues to expand its portfolio approach, offering combustion, hybrid and pure electric vehicles, each vehicle engineered to Mercedes standards ranging from plush and sensible to wild high-performance. The electric C-class is another offering in that portfolio.