2020 Mercedes A 250e

No, this is not yet an EQA that many particularly environmentally conscious people are perhaps waiting for. Even the fact that there has already been a fully electric B-Class in principle cannot help here. Because these were all auxiliary solutions on combustion platforms and you can't really use them anymore with today's range requirements.

We have just recently described a few plug-ins and so it seems obvious to do the same with the corresponding A-class. This is an interesting vehicle for the present time, if you agree with us that even a plug-in hybrid might be outdated in the not too distant future. But of course this applies all the more to cars with only combustion engines. The following prices refer to the second half of 2020.

We chose this compact car for just under €37,000 minus €4,500 environmental bonus. If you are brave enough, try to get by at a Mercedes dealership with at most one or two extras, although the very useful LED main light alone costs almost €1,000. Apart from that, you will enjoy a certain amount of appeal to the AMG line, e.g. on the steering wheel and rims, MBUX, recognition of traffic signs and the active brake and lane keeping assistants.

What we are interested in are the real ranges. However, it should be noted that these refer to operation in summer when the air conditioning system is not used extensively. You can charge the A 250e with max. 15.6 kWh gross as standard with 3.6 kWh, 7.2 kWh (+348 €) or 24 kW (+580 €) and you can drive 80 km purely electrically if you are not driving too fast, and considerably less at German motorway speed.

However, it may not make much sense to prescribe a particular use for the A 250e unless you have a relatively manageable distance ahead of you anyway. This is because the car has a sophisticated system for determining where and when and in what speed range it uses its various drives. The transition from one to the other happens almost imperceptibly.

So with a modern plug-in hybrid you can save fuel for a far more distance than 100 km. Even with an empty battery and a limited motorway, you still get less than 6 l/100km, not such a bad value for a compact petrol engine. After all, its empty weight is about 300 kg higher. By the way, the premium does not quite make up for the price difference to a comparable vehicle without special electrical engineering (A 200, manual transmission).

From the minimum luggage space 45, from the maximum 70 litres have disappeared. After all, the 250e is allowed to tow a braked trailer as heavy as the 200. From the outside, you can't see which attachments were necessary to install the battery instead of the tank, its relocation to the rear and the rest of the electrics around it. Even the exhaust system had to be shortened.