My First Look At The Mercedes GLC Electric! Incredible Specs In The Shadow Of BMW iX3
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Behind me is the new Mercedes electric GLC. I have been so excited to bring this car to you because just a couple days ago, we recently filmed We’re in the middle of an auto show. We got to roll with it, folks. We just filmed the BMW i3, which is the first vehicle on BMW’s Noia Classa. And the EX-3 is a direct competitor to the new GLC. The entire IAA auto show seems to be EX-3 versus electric GLC. And at least on paper, it looks like BMW has absolutely crushed the new GLC in terms of range and charging and electrical architecture and more. However, in this video, I’m going to take you on a tour of the new electric GLC. We’re going to look in the front trunk, the rear trunk, the interior, the software. I’m going to show you a cutaway of the platform as well to look at the permanent magnet electric motors, talk about the clutch disconnect, talk about the charging performance, and you can then see how it stacks up against the EX-3 or other electric cars you may be interested in. This really feels like it’s going to be the big volume seller for Mercedes in terms of electric cars. So, it’s a super important one that we film this and bring this to you. Next time, Mercedes, maybe you could invite us to film it in a studio ahead of time instead of us getting rain poured us on us in the middle of the auto show. All good. We’re still going to get the video to you even though it’s a few days late. Well, guys, you’re going to have to deal with us on this one. It is rainy. It is crowded. And we are going to have fun cuz this is what auto shows are all about. So, new electric GLC. So excited for this one. This the combustion GLC outs sells pretty much any Mercedes worldwide. So you put in an electric drivetrain, it should be their bestselling electric vehicle. It’s not just any electric drivetrain, though. This is really Mercedes next generation passenger car stuff. Or maybe I should say like normal car stuff. Because in the background of the excitement around the GLC electric, the Mercedes AMG team is working on the most insane stuff. We’re talking 10C charging over a megawatt charging. We’re talking huge power and chassis and performance. So like the AMG Mercedes sound like are going to be charging monsters, range monsters. And they just broke about every long-distance electric car record you could think of. And I have a whole video coming with my friend Eva who’s responsible for the charging team here at Mercedes and uh from the technology perspective. And that will come in a few days. So, really stay tuned for the AMG EQXX deep dive program with um my friend Eva. That’ll be really fun. So, the specs on this are amazing, but keep in mind what AMG is working on makes this look so lame. Um what is the GLC Electric? So, let’s run around it really quick so you can see there’s people in there, so you’ll be able to peek in and get a sense of some of the size and and space as well as they close the door. All good. Come around this side. Um you can see the back of it really clearly here. And design-wise, well, everyone has eyes and everyone has an opinion. So, I of course will leave that all to you. Except my opinion is okay. It looks a little sad. That’s the only thing I can say. These little droopy things. It’s part of the new design language with Mercedes. I think it looks okay. It It’s fine. It’s just not particularly exciting. It still carries a little bit of the bubble from EQS, SUV, EQE, but I think it looks better than those, especially the front end. Um, we’ll talk about the lightup grill in a little bit, but I’m not 100% sure it’s as bad as everyone’s saying. I think it looks better in person. All right, let me show you inside the trunk because first thing I’m noticing and first thing I should mention is this vehicle is on air suspension, which is not on the EX-3, which means you can hit a button right in here and you can actually, well, it may not do it with people in there. Don’t know, might be disabled, but you can dump the rear suspension out. So, you can lower this loading height. Now, this is, I would say, an acceptable loading height to get into the back of the GLC for your luggage, although it is quite high. For example, as I’m standing, this vehicle is not lowered. Lucid gravity is down here. And we saw something else yesterday. Oh, the Kia PV5 van that was like next to my shin. Crazy. Still, for a GLC size vehicle, as expected, trunk space, nothing crazy, but totally more than usable. And you have a nice underfloor storage to store charging cables or bags. There’s also a front trunk as well, which I will show you. You can turn this floor into a complete flat load floor, which I really love. Um, so you can choose to have it, you know, in this raised position or in this lower position. And I think that’s a really nice option to have. Of course, you have this, you know, privacy shade that can come in as well. So, all in all, I think in terms of luggage compartment, no major innovations going on here. Doesn’t need to, but still really good. We should mention the tow hitch, which I don’t think this one’s equipped with. You can tow 2.4 tons with this one. It’s like enough for a large boat. I don’t know what it translates to in pounds, maybe around 5,000 lb. It’s Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. But still really great towing. We just talked to our friend Hanis, who’s one of the engineers here. Shout out Hanus. He uh he said the towing is awesome. So, you can really tow some big stuff with this. Way more than the EX-3, they claim. All right, coming around. Nice roof rails. I don’t know if these are standard. Every market will spec these differently, uh, depending on the, you know, I guess how the product planners in that market do it. Oh, we were dumped out on the air suspension, Scott. Oh, so it’s not that low. So, it’s not that low of a loading height then. Okay. Um, interesting things to nerd out for a second in terms of the battery pack. This is a 94 kWh usable NMC battery pack. So, that sounds pretty big for a car of this size. I mean, when you think Model Y, which has an 81 to 84 kWh pack, depending on the battery, it’s a bit bigger than a Model Y, but not by that much. And it’s got a pretty juicy battery in it. Until you hear about what BMW put in the i3, which is 109.8, no, 108.7 kWh usable battery pack. A whole another 10 kwatt hours more than this particular one. Actually more. It’s like 14 kwatt hours more. So, like I said, the Germans are really going after each other. These guys may have it on efficiency. Mercedes motors have always been insanely efficient. Their drivetrains, even the shape of the cars, the design lends themselves to being very efficient. And in all of our testing, Mercedes have always been more efficient than BMWs. I think that’s true. We can always say that. So maybe the smaller battery is made up for by its efficiency, which should be around 350 mi in the EPA cycle, which is a lot of range. Now, range only matters on the initial charge from 100% to zero. What really matters to us at least is charging performance. So, come on over here because this is where it gets a little complicated. That battery pack that I mentioned that’s in the car is an 800vt system architecture. We’re not sure of the exact nominal voltage of the battery pack. We’ll plug it in. We’ll play around with it when we do our charging curves, but at least it should have an 11 kW AC charger, I believe, as standard. 22 optional in Europe. In the US, it will probably have a 48 amp onboard charger. But I say that with an asterisk because Mercedes in the US on singlephase up to this point have only had a 40 amp onboard charger. So you buy $187,000 electric G-Class, you get a 9.6 kW 40 amp onboard charger, which is a bit weak sauce, especially when we’re talking batteries that are almost 100 kW hours. Unsure. It might be in the spec list somewhere. We’ll play around with it when we can look at a US spec version. From a DC charging perspective, this is where things get exciting because it can support 330 kW peak charging performance. Now, that sounds really good until you hear about what BMW did with the EX-3, which can do 400 plus kow charging, and you go, “Oh boy, this would have been amazing if it launched in on its own in a bubble. If no one else, if I didn’t exist, we’d be like, the GLC is the new road tripper.” and then BMW just had to smash it with their 400 kW charging. So, that’s the theme of the show. Um, however, I still think 330 kW charging should be great. The vehicle supports manual and automatic preconditioning tied in with one of the best route planners we’ve ever used. Should be very similar to the existing Mercedes products. We’ve done route planner race to Vegas’s and Mercedes always nail it on the route planner. There’s a few bugs in there, a few little things when you get to super low state of charge that the cars don’t love. But in general, out of anyone, um I I would feel comfortable letting anyone get in a Mercedes, hit where they want to go, and just follow the route plan. Now, I mentioned this is an 800vt system architecture. So, your high voltage charging, how is that going to work with the Tesla Supercharger network, which at this time there’s still no public V4 high voltage chargers installed anywhere in the world. And in certain markets, this vehicle will be offered and some maybe even as standard. I think the US is standard with a 400vt booster. And from what I heard is it’s only a 100 kW boosting. So if you go to a Tesla supercharger with this vehicle, this is preliminary. We’ll have to test it of course later on. You may only get 100 kowatt charging, which is not enough. There’s certain versions of the CLA, which is also built on the MMA architecture, like this vehicle that don’t even have a booster at all. like early production CLA’s cannot charge on superchargers, but then other Mercedes can. And I can’t figure out why they didn’t do a split pack like others or going with a booster situation using the rear rotor and stator like Lucid and Hyundai does. It’s difficult to implement, but it’s doable and Mercedes is an engineering company and you’d think you’d want to offer your customers the best charging experience, which is typically the supercharger network for convenience in the US at least. And well, I don’t know. Um, but regardless, everything from the new GLC should be able to charge on the supercharger network, at least at a reduced performance. You’re still going to want to seek out high voltage chargers from Ayana, who sponsored this video, or others. That was a good tie-in. They should pay extra for that. Anyway, um, we don’t know also if it’s going to have knacks or CCS. It most likely will have knacks. Yeah, with with almost no question. But sometimes the Germans are slow with stuff, so you never really know. Come around the side, Scott. So, we can get a really good side profile of this thing right now. It actually looks pretty damn good in my impression. I think the color is, you know, okay. The running boards is very typical Mercedes. Scott, how many Mercedes stars do they have on their level two EVSSE? Oh, god. More than the front grill of a Maybach EQS or less. That is crazy. And excuse the uh rainy camera to the viewers there. But uh a couple things to discuss would be driver assistance. There’s 10 cameras around the car. I want to say three or five radars and 12 ultrasonic sensors. They say this will give you a first class driver uh driver assistance experience. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be as good as Tesla FSD in terms of functionality, but at least here in Europe, Tesla FSD doesn’t exist. So then this could be really good. I still think BMW takes the cake, at least for systems I’ve driven in Europe, for having the best driver assistance here in this market. Uh, but again, they’re very sort of choked in terms of the capability and what they’re able to do. This should do automatic lane changes, lane centering everywhere. It I believe it might even stop at red lights. Like, it should be great, but it’s no FSD, hit your destination, go where you want it to go. And I think that’s something I’d really love to see the German automakers just push a bit harder on. I know a lot of our audience just wants lane centering wherever they go. I’m kind of one of those people until I’m in a car with FSD and I’m like, “Oh, it’s so nice just to be chauffeured around.” Let’s talk about this. This has been the big controversial um design decision with the GLC. Now, I you guys know I’m not a design guy, but all of these pixels are recessed. They come out. So, it’s not like a flat design. It does have a 3D look and they light up or they go away. I’m sure this will be optional. Everything with Mercedes is optional, especially in Germany. In the US, they uh product planners tend to package things together. I think it would look good without it and maybe with Yeah, maybe just black. They’re trying to make it look a little bit less like an electric car, I guess, and more like the combustion variant. Uh Scott, you should share your opinion. I actually like it and I think it is the least offensive of the girls here. So, I actually So, Scott likes it. I do. I think it looks like a combustion car. Yeah. So, I actually think the whole design of the GLC, like if you look at it down the side here, looks awesome. Like, I really think it’s got this nice little fender situation. The headlights look okay. Even with the Mercedes star in there, which is a little tacky. They’ve been doing this like with E-Class and other stuff. Yeah, whatever. I’m not loving this. In photos, this Mercedes badge looks way too big. In person, it’s actually kind of nice and it’s angled nicely. It I think it’s okay. Yeah. In photos, it was very offensive. I saw pictures of this. I’m like, have they lost their minds? Are their designers blind? What are they doing? Like, you know, it looks like one of those calculators that old people use or like those f everything’s huge. It’s just like everything’s way too big. In person, it actually works pretty well, I think. Uh, let’s pop the front trunk so we can show everyone what is under there. Um, we haven’t mentioned the power and performance. This sign just reminded me. 4.3 seconds 0 to 100 kph. So, 4.2 seconds 0 to 60 probably. And what is the horsepower? 489 PS. So, that’s probably 480 horsepower. And 360 kW is the one we want to go with. The rear motor is the stronger one. The front motor is the secondary motor. Both are permanent magnet with silicon carbide inverters on both motors. I’ll show you those over there with a clutch disconnect up front, which normally would be a bad thing, but Mercedes does clutch disconnects better than anyone. And we just talked to the clutch disconnect guy and he was like, “Oh, love that you appreciate my work.” And I’m like, “Have you driven a Ribian with clutch disconnect?” And he’s like, “Dude.” And Scott was like, “My car clunks every time I accelerate.” He’s like, “No, at Mercedes everything should be unnoticeable.” And I’m like, well, you can tell sometimes. He’s like, yeah, if you really floor it, there’s a quick connect mode that just gets it in there, but still, it’s super smooth. Anyway, he loved that we knew what clutch disconnects were. And talking about the smoothness, I’m going to reach in and try and open up the uh front trunk really quick if I don’t fall. Would you mind pulling the uh the front trunk button? I don’t know where it is exactly. Uh yeah, I think it’s this one. Yeah, exactly. Pull that. Great. Thank you. Okay, let’s take a look under here and see what we have. There is a latch. So, I prefer front trunks without a latch. But the nice thing is it’s right in the center. So, you can reach in and boom, right under the Mercedes logo. Pull this up and here we go. Washer fluid fill right up front. You don’t have to get anything dirty. That’s awesome. And actually a fairly sizable front trunk. Um, this is due to the MMA architecture having a really efficient thermal system, heat pump, heat scavenging. The entire system has uh multiple valves where it can shuffle heat from the battery to the motors to the cabin. Uh and uh I think that’s great. I mean this is really truly designed to be a worldclass efficiency example in this class of vehicle. And that also leads to a reduction in parts count because the more parts you have, the more losses you’ll have in terms of flowing coolant around. So you get a pretty large front trunk. I think that’s good. Scott, you want to scream in real quick? What do you think? Oh, I just wanted to know what was under the carpet. Oh, under the carpet’s nothing. Nothing. Oh, I’d rather see that be rubber cuz that gets really dirty really easily. I don’t know if that will be an option or not. Shout out to who’s the 3D 3W floor mats we’ve been working with. Oh, all right. Good. So, that’s kind of the exterior wheel choices. We know there’s going to be plenty of them and they’re all OE tires. Um Hanis, one of the test drivers we were talking to as well, he said and his colleague have driven these on all the development miles. So they’ve done thousands of miles over the last two years with these things all around the world. Death Valley here, Spain, I’m sure Sweden. Yeah. Anyway, they said you cannot hear a thing in there. The road noise is totally controlled. He’s like, it’s absolutely insane. The air suspension is a two-chamber air suspension, so you can control vehicle height and wheel motion separately, so that you get a really nice uh ride example, very similar to like how an S-Class should ride. It’s probably not as smooth as an S-Class, but it’s still there. And it has rear axle steering of up to around four and a half degrees. So, that’s again stuff that I doesn’t have. No air suspension, no rear steer. This has dual chamber air as an option. Of course, you’re probably going to be able to get a steel suspension. And uh you know, and of course the rear. Now, um there’s a line to sit inside of it, but I took a video from inside. And I’ll just explain briefly because we’ll have to film this later on. But um I’ll take I’ll show you a photo that I took from my point of view looking at the dashboard. Scott, first of all, seating positions nice. Steering wheels comes out far enough. It’s a pretty good seating position. It’s very comfortable. The seats are great. And but I’m This is a topsp spec model, so it should be comfortable. Of course, the screen in my opinion looks terrible. It looks so cheap. This there’s this piano black rim, this plastic around the whole thing. the vent placement, everything feels to me totally unpremium. And the EX-3 absolutely smokes this on the interior. I don’t understand how putting a giant screen across the car with like giant bezels and not integrated software and the the operating system is like inside of the screen. It looks like when you use CarPlay on a Lucid Air, but that’s the base system. And I was like, this is really bad. They’re not like they they put the big screen in there so they can say it’s the widest screen or whatever in any car, but then they don’t utilize the space for anything important. And then I think what’s nice is like having a design element with like a central screen, but then also like kind of what they did with the previous EQs, which I guess some people didn’t like, but put some wood or interior materials behind there to make it feel a bit more traditional. I just think this like just peek your head in there if you don’t mind, Scott. Like I just think looking in from the outside makes this thing look pretty not premium. Not like this is more CLA looking screen than GLC if you know what I mean. It’s like doesn’t work for me at least. Um yeah. So that was the actually the real disappointment of this car where when we got into the EX3 yesterday, we sat in there and we were like, “Wow, the materials are cool. The screen actually worked in that Even though it looked really ugly, it functioned how you would expect in terms of um you know, just having everything on one centralized display. The software in the BMW seem to be more in depth. This felt laggy. Now, I talked to one of the guys here and they said it’s laggy just cuz everyone’s been touching it. He said it was the laggiest. Laggiest screen we’ve seen all week here at IAA. Yeah. And it’s not like terrible. Totally usable, but you can tell like it’s clipping frames. I’ve been looking at a lot of Chinese cars. The Chinese cars do really fast software. Um, so I think that kind of wraps up everything on the GLC. We don’t know US pricing yet, I don’t believe. And of course with Mercedes, there’s going to be a million options. It has a one box braking system. I didn’t mention that. So that’s similar to like Macan where you can do a ton of regen on the brake pedal. Uh, it will actually regen through small amounts of ABS, which is nice. And then it will um under emergency braking shut regen off which okay probably not so needed here but for AMG is needed for performance applications. Let’s run over and look at the chassis. And while we’re walking over there we can just discuss a little bit of what’s been happening over here at Mercedes. Even though from the outside looking in, I always say we don’t drive cars on a on paper, we drive them on pavement. So the spec sheets is just a example. The BMW spec sheets have just crushed this car so hard, it’s hard to ignore it. With that said, there is so much excitement here at Mercedes. Take a look. The GLC inside is around all of those people. So, this is genuinely it’s been like this for over an hour now. Just can’t even get We can’t even get over to it. Just an insane, I would say, excitement from the German market around the GLC. Maybe even more than the EX3 Noya Classa. Yeah, I think so. Which is shocking to me. But this is I mean available. Yeah, it’s been here for 3 days and they’re still geeking out. All right, so this is the powertrain uh right here. So you can see this is the um rear electric motor. So this is the main primary axle of the entire system. It’s a permanent magnet unit. It has uh you know basically oil cooling, everything you would expect. silicon carbide inverter and this is going to be the standard normal drive unit. Then you have your high voltage battery pack which looks fairly normal looks like prismatic cells in here and you have a penthouse design which is similar to how Tesla’s doing it and also BMW. So you have all of your power electronics. I assume the booster does not go in there but I could be wrong for high voltage. You can see the high voltage charging port in the rear is a um CCS one because it has three high voltage lines heading to it. With Knack, everything should be integrated into one port. And I say should be because I’m pretty sure the Mercedes CLA launches with like a knack and a J1772 port, which is really not the way to do it. And I’m not no one’s really seen 100% how the US cars will be implemented, but I hope this just has knacks for AC and DC charging and we’re done. I think that’s about all we can show for GLC. How long do you think the video is, Scott? Oh, plenty long. Plenty long. We’re good. Okay. Well, I’m soaking wet. So, thanks to the viewers for watching this one. I’m glad we were able to get something on GLC over to you. And we’ll see you on another one again soon. Bye-bye.
Kyle explores the new Mercedes GLC 400 Electric which should be a huge seller for the brand! With the BMW iX3 launching just days earlier as a direct competitor, it will be interesting to see these two battle it out on the global market. Enjoy!
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