MERCEDES-BENZ S-CLASS

There's still much to explore, even from 1500 miles away

- ANDREW FRANKEL

MILEAGE 6803

WHY WE'RE RUNNING IT

To see if a plug-in hybrid S-Class can be as convincing as its diesel ancestors

Like Jack (p66), I’ve been playing with an app. In my techno-Luddite world, that’s akin to Tarzan riding a monorail around the jungle.

But sitting here in the Corfiot sunshine, I can look at my telephone and see that my car remains where I last parked it, some 1500 miles away from where I am now. If it weren’t, I could deactivate the key from here. I can tell that it’s locked, and were it not, I could lock it from here. If I had left it with valet parking, I could set a geofenced perimeter that would alert me were the car to breach it in my absence. I can tell that no one has driven into it hard enough to trigger its collision detection sensors. I know how much petrol is in the tank and how full of electrons is the battery. I could programme it to ensure that upon my arrival at its door, the interior temperature would be precisely what I would choose, regardless of the weather outside. I can open or close the windows and/or the sunroof. I can review the tiniest details of my last journey and bone up on how to drive the next one more frugally. And so on and on and on.