Anyone here own or owned a Mercedes C250E Hybrid?

darragh o meara

Hi all,

I have recently being looking to get myself into the world of Hybrids, right now electric just doesn't work for me with regular long commutes being the main reason and the electric cars that do meet my needs being just outside my price range right now. Plus I'm still a petrol head at heart and like to be able to burn a few litres of Dino juice every so often

Ok that out of the way, I have recently been looking to change my current BMW 520d to something a little more eco friendly and I got looking at the Mercedes Hybrid's. Initially I looked at the E Class diesel hybrid which on paper and test drive looked great, in actuality its not much of a hybrid in the true sense and according to some of the owners I spoke too offered worse economy than the diesel due to the extra weight. Out of the few owners I spoke to only 1 said he would buy another one... Moving on, I recently drove a C350e Petrol plugin hybrid and was impressed with the fact that there was some battery range on it albeit not huge but enough for me. The salesman tried to tell me that it would outrun the diesel version economy wise and I suppose that is why I'm here.

My main driving is South Tipp to Dublin a few times a week ( typical week 500-600 miles), mostly on the motorway but a bit of town driving each day in between, approx 20km ( this is the bit I'm hoping I can electrify as its probably the most un-economical part of the week ). Does anyone have real life experience of these cars and owned one for a while and willing to answer a few short questions?

My questions are:

What kind of MPG do they really deliver especially on the motorway?
What is the real world battery range?
Any common issues with them?

KCross

First off, are you familiar with the difference between a hybrid and a plugin hybrid (which the 350e is)?
e.g. you will need a home charge point installed and charge the car everyday to get decent mpg from it. Are you willing to do that?

darragh o meara

KCross wrote: »

First off, are you familiar with the difference between a hybrid and a plugin hybrid (which the 350e is)?
e.g. you will need a home charge point installed and charge the car everyday to get decent mpg from it. Are you willing to do that?

Yes, I’m aware of the difference. While I don’t currently have a charger at my house, I do have use of one at work and would be willing to charge regularly at local charge points.

krissovo

Your use case looks ok on paper to get value from plug in but I am not sure it will drive real savings. I had the E version on an extended trial and I was not that impressed but my typical daily commute was 90kms so once the electricity is gone its gone. The savings for me would have been peanuts once you add the cost of charger instal as well as the hassle of slow charging plus the car was a couple of grand more expensive. Even if you plug in on the road its 90/120 minutes to charge back up to a reasonable level and with slow charges having a cost now free electricity is gone.

whippet

I’m not sure you are going to get the best efficiency out of that based on your usage - full EV would probably suit better.

I recently gotten a BMW 330e PHEV .. it’s suits my motoring ... most of the time I’m doing short runs and tend to be on EV for most of it. The 330e fully charged will give realistically 40-45km on pure EV (depending on weather and driving style) ... I do a regular 100km round trip and it returns about 2.5l/100km (112mpg in old money).

I have a home charge point - takes about 3 hours to fully charge. There is some wizardry in the onboard computer that will use the hybrid system as efficiently as possible and you can manually set it to retain a certain percentage of charge for the end of your journey or for urban driving.

I’ve never charged it at a public charge point and I don’t really see any point in doing that - 3 hours will give me 40km ..not really worth the hassle now with free electricity a thing of the past.

When the battery is empty standard driving on the motorway will creep up to about 5l/100km so just like any normal petrol yoke.

I’m delighted with it so far and it’s a nice compromise between comfort, efficiency and performance

darragh o meara

whippet wrote: »

I’m not sure you are going to get the best efficiency out of that based on your usage - full EV would probably suit better.

I recently gotten a BMW 330e PHEV .. it’s suits my motoring ... most of the time I’m doing short runs and tend to be on EV for most of it. The 330e fully charged will give realistically 40-45km on pure EV (depending on weather and driving style) ... I do a regular 100km round trip and it returns about 2.5l/100km (112mpg in old money).

I have a home charge point - takes about 3 hours to fully charge. There is some wizardry in the onboard computer that will use the hybrid system as efficiently as possible and you can manually set it to retain a certain percentage of charge for the end of your journey or for urban driving.

I’ve never charged it at a public charge point and I don’t really see any point in doing that - 3 hours will give me 40km ..not really worth the hassle now with free electricity a thing of the past.

When the battery is empty standard driving on the motorway will creep up to about 5l/100km so just like any normal petrol yoke.

I’m delighted with it so far and it’s a nice compromise between comfort, efficiency and performance

Thats interesting to hear, I also looked at the BMW PHEV but the person selling it told me that there was only and 10km electric range on it and as I already had a BMW I decided to look at the Merc.

At this minute, full EV wouldn't really be an option as I am often called at short notice to go somewhere and I couldn't trust myself to have it plugged in all the time at home/work. With a hybrid if I run out of electric I still have a backup

whippet

darragh o meara wrote: »

Thats interesting to hear, I also looked at the BMW PHEV but the person selling it told me that there was only and 10km electric range on it and as I already had a BMW I decided to look at the Merc.

At this minute, full EV wouldn't really be an option as I am often called at short notice to go somewhere and I couldn't trust myself to have it plugged in all the time at home/work. With a hybrid if I run out of electric I still have a backup

What year BMW was that? The previous generation 330e would get about 25km range the G20 gets 40+

darragh o meara

whippet wrote: »

What year BMW was that? The previous generation 330e would get about 25km range the G20 gets 40+

2017, the seller didn’t own the car so he could’ve been talking out of his hat which is the problem I have. I really should be buying one of these from someone who has long term experience with one.