MERCEDES-BENZ CLA

Smallest car in the new-era line-up is a landmark EV for efficiency, but is there more to its appeal than that?

- ILLYA VERPRAET

Four hundred and eighty-three miles. That makes this new Mercedes-Benz CLA the longest-range EV you can buy in the UK, surpassing the firm's other streamlined saloon, the EQS. Even when you remove the ‘in the UK’ qualifier, you need to look to the Lucid Air Touring to go further on a single charge.

But that range is only really a byproduct of the thing that could make the CLA a landmark car, which is its efficiency.

The EQS and the Lucid are very expensive, very large cars with massive batteries, whereas the CLA isn't. It costs from £45,615, which is only as much as a long-range Tesla Model 3, and instead of taking the brute force and ignorance route towards achieving a longer range by just fitting an enormous battery pack, Mercedes has gone to town on maximising the number of miles the CLA squeezes from every unit of energy. The result is a WLTP rating of 5.0mpkWh. When some rivals are muddling around in the 3s, that seems game-changing and it means that its averagely large battery pack of 85kWh gives a properly impressive range.

Doing more with less seems like rather an obvious idea, doesn’t it? Particularly with an EV, the implications are huge, because a smaller battery is cheaper and lighter, it charges faster and it uses fewer precious resources. But the reality of achieving it, of course, is more complicated.

To that end, the CLA starts from more or less a clean-sheet design. It introduces a brand-new platform, rather than building on that of the EQS and EQE. It represents quite a departure for Mercedes, which has thus far kept its electric and combustion platforms separate. This new architecture supports both, being primarily designed for EVs, with hybrid options to follow. The same applies, naturally, to future SUV derivatives.