Usually, when it comes to the Irish market, there are a couple of reasons for a car to be so long delayed in arriving here.
The most common one is, bluntly, that the world’s big car makers generally don’t bother to think much about the Irish car market. Our entire annual sales figures are usually eclipsed by one large American dealership. So, unsurprisingly, we tend to fall to the back of the queue.
The second reason is usually seasonality. Our annual sales tend to clump around January (a big spike) and July (a slightly smaller one), coinciding with the new number plates.
Outside of those times, there’s often little point in introducing a spanking new model, as it’s just going to get forgotten about by the time the big sales spike time comes around again.
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In the case of the Mercedes CLA Electric variants, though, there’s a good reason why we’re only getting it in Ireland now, despite first driving it in Europe last summer. It’s to do with charging.
You see, Mercedes originally designed the CLA Electric (as distinct from the CLA Hybrid, which is also now on sale) to charge from high-tech, high-speed 800-volt DC public charging points. That’s how it can add a claimed 325km at 320kW of charging power.
However, someone had to take those same engineers aside and remind them that many older public charging points are only running at 400 volts of power. The CLA simply wouldn’t recognise these chargers.
So a fix was needed and it’s only now that fix is incorporated into the CLA’s electronic make-up.
No matter, better late than never and all that, and the CLA arrives boasting one big number: range.
There is an entry-level €53,425 CLA, with a compact 58kWh battery and a range of 542km, or you can have a bigger €60,535 71kWh battery with a range of 674km.
Impressive? Certainly, until you come to the €63,525 CLA 250+ model, with its 85kWh battery and a 792km range on a full charge.
It feels good to sit into a new EV on Irish tarmac with a 95 per cent charge on board and see a distance to recharge figure of 670km.
It’s not so much that this does away with the old notion of ‘range anxiety’, it’s more that it means, assuming you can charge your CLA up at home, that the rapid DC charging stuff is now effectively meaningless to you.
Unless your daily driving is hauling up and down from Cork to Dublin and back again, owners should rarely have to visit a public charger.
The CLA 250+ is also properly rapid. The stopwatch says that it will accelerate from 0-100km/h in 6.8 seconds, but thanks to the fact that the rear-mounted 200kW (that’s 271hp in old money) electric motor has its own two-speed gearbox – a low gear for acceleration, and a higher gear for motorway cruising – the CLA can properly pin you back in its exceptionally comfortable high-back bucket seats with no little vim and vigour.
You can upgrade to the much more powerful, four-wheel drive CLA 350, which costs €68,295 and has 260kW of power (353hp), but honestly you don’t need it.
The CLA is also really lovely to drive.
That rear-mounted motor gives you some proper rear-drive handling balance on a twisty road and the steering has a lovely combination of relatively light, low-effort weighting, but with impressive precision and clarity too. The only downside is that the suspension becomes a bit rumbly and knobbly on broken tarmac. Clearly, Stuttgart engineers have never seen a Wicklow back road.
I say that’s the only downside, but we need to talk about the CLA’s interior.
For a start, there’s a massive overdose of screens. The standard layout gives you a 12.3-inch digital driver’s display and a large 14-inch infotainment screen in the centre of the dash.
This uses Mercedes’ new whizz-bang MB.OS software, which is designed to be ‘learning’ and therefore should become easier and more intuitive over time.
I certainly hope so, because on this test drive it felt rather confusing and awkward. That effect is heightened by the total lack of physical buttons, something which even the Chinese authorities have started to think is not such a good idea.
We can confirm it’s not, and the small bank of touch-sensitive buttons on the base of the centre console aren’t much help, nor are the haptic buttons on the multi-spoke steering wheel.
There’s also the option of a third screen, dedicated to the front-seat passenger, on which they can watch movies or even play video games, including driving and racing games such as Forza Horizon.
The driver can clearly see these – there’s been no attempt to partition the screen off, nor to add angled pixels to prevent the driver from becoming distracted.
Mercedes’ people tend to go a bit quiet and distracted when you mention that this is hardly in keeping with the company’s exceptional record on safety, but sotto voce more than a few of them agree.
Also, Mercedes itself seems to agree, because its next-generation screen set-up apparently sees a move to projecting information on to the car’s windscreen, in a manner where it’s totally hidden from the driver.
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That’s good, but there’s another bigger problem. Quality.
Mercedes has been genuinely innovative and forward-thinking with the CLA. Screens apart, it has impressive safety credentials. It has exceptionally smooth aerodynamics. It has that clever software which self-improves. It has the neat two-speed transmission for the electric motor.
What it doesn’t have is quality, at least not in the traditional Mercedes sense. The door on a Mercedes should close with the subtle ‘whump’ of the door to your private dining room. The CLA’s door clangs like a 20-year-old taxi. The steering wheel rattles when you tap the rim and the plastic on the high-set centre console feels cheap and hollow. Even the rearview mirror of our test car felt loose and wobbly when we adjusted it.
Clearly, car makers must sacrifice much in search of profits, but we’d suggest Mercedes shaves off that sheen of quality at no little cost. If it doesn’t feel like a proper Mercedes-Benz, then buyers might stay away.
That needs fixing, and fast. The electric bits? Brilliant, quite brilliant. The quality? Needs work.
