This new electric car promises almost 500 miles of range on a full charge – and I’ve driven it

This sleek-looking saloon is the new Mercedes CLA, and it’s a really exciting car. While the old CLA had a selection of petrol, diesel and hybrid engines, this new model is all-electric – and when it goes on sale it’s going to have the longest range of any EV on sale in Europe.

Mercedes reckons the new CLA will do up to 492 miles on a full charge – beating out the much bigger and posher EQS, which tops out at 481 miles. Not only that, but it promises ultra-fast charging, all the tech you could want and even a nice driving experience, all in a package that’s still relatively affordable. Well, it certainly is compared to the EQS.

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But is it any good? I went out to Denmark to spend a couple of days driving the new CLA across all different types of roads and driving scenarios, and here’s what I thought…

It’s more stylish than Mercedes’ other EVs

The EQE and EQS, Mercedes’ two flagship electric cars, sort of look a bit like fish that have been in the sun too long. Now, that’s for a good reason – their styling has been informed by aerodynamics, honed in the wind tunnel to make them as slippery as possible. But that doesn’t mean they look nice.

The new CLA, on the other hand, has some really nice proportions to it. It’s a bit more of a traditional ‘three-box’ saloon car shape, but it’s still ultra-aerodynamic with a drag coefficient that’s bang smack in between the EQS and EQE.

Helping it slip through the air neatly are clever features like air intakes which can shut themselves up when they’re not needed, a fully-covered underbody so the car has a totally smooth floor, aero designs for the alloy wheels and hidden door handles. The CLA’s full-width LED lightbars at the front and rear are par for the course in car styling these days, but I do like the grille which is made up of hundreds of Mercedes three-pointed stars.

It’s pretty classy inside, too

The CLA’s dashboard does look a little bit like a cliff face because it’s so upright and featureless – but as soon as you turn it on, the screens blast into life. As standard you get a driver’s display and a central infotainment system, both really clear and responsive, but you can also have a separate display for the passenger so they can change the music or stream video without distracting the driver.

It’s not perfect, though – I still don’t think much of Mercedes’ touch-sensitive steering wheel, which has way too many buttons that you can’t distinguish by feel alone. And even though Mercedes’ new voice assistant can use ChatGPT to help it answer the tougher questions, I found it pretty useless – it even took me on a wild goose (or duck) chase around Copenhagen trying to find a restaurant that would serve me my preferred fowl. At least the navigation system, provided by Google Maps, works better…

All the bits of the cabin you touch regularly feel nice, but there are some hard and scratchy materials down below – a Tesla Model 3 feels a bit more premium.

It’s surprisingly practical

There’s good space for adults to sit in the back of the CLA – which is quite surprising considering it’s quite a small, sporty-looking car. Legroom is good and even in models with the full panoramic sunroof – which is massive, by the way – there’s enough headroom for a regular-sized adult to sit.

It’s a shame the floor is quite high up so you don’t get much under-thigh support, though.

The boot is 405 litres in capacity, which is less than the 470 litres you get in a BMW i4 or the massive 592 litres in a Tesla Model 3. But it’s still quite practical, and you get a super-useful 101-litre front boot too. If you need more practicality, just wait – Mercedes will launch the CLA Shooting Brake soon, an estate version of this car with a bit more space for junk in its trunk, not to mention better rear headroom.

It’s really nice to drive

The CLA isn’t a lightweight, but it’s not as heavy as most cars with this sort of range and performance are – and that’s helped Mercedes to make it quite nice to drive. It’s really easy to drive smoothly thanks to light controls and well-calibrated pedals. Even the brakes, which can feel a bit grabby on some electric cars, are easy to modulate.

It corners nicely without leaning too much in the bends, because the weight of the car is all set really low down in the chassis. There’s loads of traction coming out of corners too, even in the rear-wheel drive model.

The CLA is no sports car – we’ll probably have to wait for AMG to get its hands on it before that becomes a possibility – but it’s still really nicely balanced to drive. It’s also very comfy and quiet on the motorway, and the driver assistance tech genuinely helps you out with driving around a busy city too.

But your mileage may vary

The headline figure for the CLA is 492 – that’s how many miles it can do on a single charge, according to official testing. I wasn’t able to do a full Carwow range test during my time with the car, but based on the efficiency I was getting on the trip computer – 4.2 miles per kWh – I calculated that the CLA can do up to 357 miles on a charge in the real world.

And before you call me lead-footed, I checked all the other trip computers from the other journalists who were with me on this press trip. The best I saw managed 4.8 miles per kWh, which works out to a range of 408 miles on a charge.

Now, if I’ve learned anything from doing numerous Carwow range tests over the years, it’s that electric cars never manage their claimed range. But it’s a bit of a shame that the CLA managed less than the Porsche Taycan I tested previously, despite that having less range on paper. I’ll be range testing the CLA in the UK as soon as I’m able, so watch this space.

The other headline figure is that the CLA can charge at up to 320kW – Mercedes says this lets it add 200 miles of range in as little as 10 minutes. Well, when we tried topping up, we got around half that speed – but that’s mainly due to the charging curve of the battery.

So the new Mercedes CLA is a really impressive car, but having all those headline features hasn’t made it ridiculously expensive. The range starts from about £46,000, but the one you want with all the bells and whistles costs a bit over £50,000.

That’s about on par with the Tesla Model 3 – a Long Range Rear-Wheel Drive model costs £45,000, while the All-Wheel Drive variant costs £50,000. A BMW i4 is a bit more expensive, and a BYD Seal a little cheaper.

The CLA stacks up against this really impressive crowd so well that I reckon you should just go right ahead and buy one – even if the range isn’t quite as good as that massive headline figure.

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