SAN FRANCISCO—Automakers are starting to follow some familiar paths as they continue their journey to electrification. Electric vehicles are, at first glance, strange new technology, and they usually look that way. Mercedes-Benz’s EQS and EQE are good examples of this – with bodies that looked like soap bars rubbed in the shower, they stood out. That might be fine for early adopters and pioneers, but if you want to survive you need to sell cars to normal people, and that means making EVs more common. That’s what Mercedes has done with its latest all-electric CLA.
However, the amount of new technology that Mercedes has loaded into the CLA can’t simply be denied. The car is based on the four-door coupe look that the company introduced a few decades ago, but has a completely modern electric powertrain connected to the wheels, run by four powerful networked computers. And yes, there is AI. (For pedants, “coupe” means coupe, not two-door, so the name is accurate.)
The CLA is the first of Mercedes’ new series that will use the same modular architecture, and interestingly, it’s powertrain agnostic – a hybrid CLA is also coming in time. But first the battery EV, which makes good use of some of the technology developed by Mercedes for the EQXX concept car.
At 185.9 inches (4,722 mm) long, 73 inches (1,854 mm) wide and 57.8 inches (1,468 mm) high, it is not a particularly large car. In addition to the trunk, there is a small frunk in the front.
Credit: Jonathan Gitlin
That creation was capable of going about 750 miles (1,207 km) on a single charge, but it was hand-built and lacked a working rear door or an actual back seat. The CLA manages up to 374 miles on a full charge of its 85 kWh (usable) battery pack, although this reduces slightly when you fit the larger wheels.
But barring that terrible trend of bigger and bigger wheels, Mercedes has been restrained in this regard. Designers use that trick to disguise the size of their SUVs, but the CLA’s relatively small size requires no such visual trickery, and the rims range from 17-19 inches and no larger than that. Smaller wheels create less drag, and even though the CLA doesn’t look like it’s been roughed up, its drag coefficient of 0.21 says otherwise.
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