Plug-in hybrids are constructing their case as stopgap options for drivers not able to take the EV plunge. These of you who can management or restrict your day by day driving wants are squarely in its sights. Do you retain your day by day duties at 50 miles or much less? The Benz GLC 350e has you coated.
A house-charging setup for off-peak parsimony turns plug-ins into e-commuter automobiles. However charging prices matter on this equation, too. And if you happen to’re counting nickels and dimes, and end up paying the usurious charges charged by some widespread stations in widespread locations, the benefits of a plug-in flicker and dwindle.
That’s what I skilled earlier this month throughout my check drive of the Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e, which acquitted itself totally properly as I toured my previous stomping grounds. Till I wanted to plug it in, that’s. With close by high-power Electrify America DC fast-charging priced at 64 cents a kilowatt-hour, I spotted charging areas alone aren’t the one hurdle to adoption. Value’s an actual killer.
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e plug-in hybrid check drive assessment
GLC 350e: A handy fast-charge mode, at a value
I picked up the GLC simply as a flurry or two fell out of a grey sky—by no means an excellent register Atlanta, town too busy to plow. The car indicated 47 miles on its battery from the cease, however as soon as I tapped it to life and snicked its stubby shifter into gear, that vary fell instantly to 37 miles. I set out at a crisp 29 levels to search out the Electrify America station I knew properly, with the primary spittle of snowflakes on the horizon, figuring out I would wish to stay near it to ensure some all-electric driving earlier than this winter-paralysis demon confirmed up.
The powertrain’s an extravagant dose of expertise, although it’s largely indecipherable from the skin, the place it will get solely small badges to distinguish it from gas-only fashions. The two.0-liter turbo-4 engine mates up with an electrical motor and a 24.8-kwh battery pack (23.3 kwh usable) for a mixed output of 313 hp and 406 lb-ft of torque, and an EPA-rated electrical vary of 54 miles. Mercedes guarantees a 0-60 mph time of 6.2 seconds, a bit of slower than the gas-powered midrange GLC, and a prime pace of 135 mph as a hybrid, or 87 mph in its electrical drive mode.
Once I get to the EA station, Bolts and ID.4s and Niros have lined as much as reap the benefits of its proximity to Kroger, Starbucks, and LA Health. I’m responsible as (not but) charged, too. When my slot opens and I pull in, a Taycan takes the plug subsequent to me. Surrounded as we’re by glassy golf-course mansions, I’m not shocked—however I’m to search out that the EA quotes me a cost time of 1 hour, 14 minutes. I might cost at its default battery-friendly charge, however with snow on the way in which I flick by way of the interface to interact quick charging, which chops the remaining time, boosts the cost charge to 60 kw, and commits to completion in about 55 minutes.
A couple of espresso pictures later, the GLC has peaked at 33 kw, and has accepted 27.2 kw of vitality, for a promised 62 miles of vary. It additionally charged me 64 cents for every kilowatt: together with tax, the $18.88 complete for the equal of a day’s commute leaves me at a loss. Including insult to harm, as quickly as I pulled out of the charging station the vary dropped to 59 miles, nearly prefer it was recalculating depreciation as a substitute of vary.
The exorbitant value of EA charging apart, the GLC 350e performs remarkably like the opposite GLC automobiles, with about 700 kilos extra packed into it, that’s.
Driveability isn’t a lot of a priority. There’s some lurch when the gasoline engine kicks in—when the battery’s exhausted, or when the Hybrid mode blends its energy with battery vitality to optimize higher-speed efficiency. The Mercedes regenerative braking system lets the brake pedal go stiff or tender, relying on whether or not it’s set for the strongest quantity of regen in D-, or the least in D+.
I experimented with the varied drive and regen modes by way of a well-known sequence of four-leaf clovers that loop round my ordinary stopovers round city. Leaving the automobile in Auto mode, with regen set to its most, yields essentially the most helpful driving vary in combined site visitors. The GLC’s massive wheels and tires produce little bump-steer, however Mercedes SUVs have extra head toss than these from another luxurious manufacturers, largely from dialed-in lateral stiffness and massive wheels and tires—and on this case, a self-leveling rear air suspension that offsets the battery weight. Whereas I keep vigilant in opposition to incoming winter, the GLC 350e tackles the tight on-ramps and the few snaky roads I can entry.
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e plug-in hybrid check drive assessment
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e plug-in hybrid check drive assessment
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e plug-in hybrid check drive assessment
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e plug-in hybrid check drive assessment
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class seems to be, house, and stuff
Mercedes repotted the GLC within the 2023 mannequin 12 months, resculpting its good-looking form that leans extra wagon than SUV. Additionally bought as a extra rakish Coupe mannequin, the GLC has a gorgeous inside, with a digital tombstone at its heart that asserts the interface’s prominence in opposition to a river of matte wooden or metallic trim. Studded by squircular air vents and glammed up with metallic trim in each course, it lights up the bottom as you enter, glints to life when its begin button will get pressed, and responds to nearly each beck and name while you ship out the voice command, “Hey Mercedes.” If there’s a component of recent tech lacking from its wrapper, I wasn’t in a position to determine it over a four-day street journey.
The GLC’s 113.1-inch wheelbase units out a footprint that allows a lot of inside room, with cosy entrance 16-way energy seats which have been designed round an individual barely smaller than me. After just a few hours of darting out to an exurban retreat and again, the motive force seat made itself identified at my hips with a boring ache. On one break, I sat within the three-person bench, which might home two of me and my size-12 toes and short-leg, long-torso physique with ease. The whole lot I’d introduced on my street journey—coolers, in a single day bag, backpack—match simply into the 21.9 cubic-foot cargo space, too. Folded down, the rear seatbacks broaden that complete to 52.6 cubic toes.
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e plug-in hybrid check drive assessment
How a lot does the 2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class value?
With a value that falls between the Kia EV9 and a base Rivian R1S, the $61,050 GLC 350e plug-in hybrid got here witha charging cable I wasn’t pressed to make use of, in addition to its 11.9-inch touchscreen, wi-fi Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and touch-sensitive steering wheel controls that I grew extra accustomed to over time.
Mercedes sells one other plug-in GLC—the 671-hp AMG GLC 63 S E Efficiency, which lays on the facility to earn its initialism. Each be part of a lineup of PHEVs that additionally consists of the plug-in hybrid version of the bigger GLE-Class that arrived for the 2024 mannequin 12 months.
Sooner or later, it’s seemingly we’ll see the EQC electrical SUV within the U.S. in 2025, after Mercedes pulled again from plans to deliver it right here in 2019. These stopgap fashions will assist the automaker because it pivots and delays its EV gross sales targets, because the politics surrounding electrified automobiles shift with each passing minute.
Most of us would quite personal the all-electric fashions which will come to move, however over this weekend of driving I used to be in a position to calculate precisely how the GLC plug-in would possibly work. It’s the identical line we harp on with each PHEV assessment: You have to plug it in for it to make sense.
This time it comes with the caveat: You have to plug it in at dwelling for it to make sense.
What you plug into higher have one thing extra just like the $0.17/kwh value most Atlantans pay for electrical energy. That calculates out to one thing extra like $4.50 for a full, putative 62-mile cost.
That situation is solely attainable—if not going—with a house charger that’s used religiously. Out right here within the bougie burbs, plug-in drivers who don’t have their very own storage setup will stay on the mercy of our strip-mall overlords—and, at instances, by overpriced, undermaintained charging conditions created by authorized settlements. At these costs, the espresso needs to be free.
