Automotive News
January 18, 2016 - 12:01 am ET
DETROIT -- Daimler AG Chairman Dieter Zetsche said he is "very confident" the redesigned Mercedes-Benz E class will reclaim the No. 1 spot in the U.S. midsize luxury sedan segment from the Lexus ES.
Mercedes believes much of the car's appeal will lie in its vast array of technologies.
The E class was the segment leader from 2010 through 2012, after its last redesign in 2009. A record 69,803 vehicles were sold in 2013, but the ES nonetheless passed the Mercedes nameplate that year and has held the top spot ever since.
The E class faces a crucial test when the 2017 version goes on sale this summer. Sedan sales are stagnating in a U.S. market increasingly dominated by trucks. Indeed, U.S. sales of the E class tumbled 25 percent last year to 49,736 vehicles. To counter that trend, the automaker has packed a bigger but lighter, more coupelike car with advanced technologies.
At a limited-invitation launch event on the eve of the Detroit auto show, Mercedes placed greater emphasis on the sedan's connected-car and driver-assist features than on styling or powertrain performance.
Zetsche invited a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor to take the stage for a lengthy but lively discussion of how the definition of machine intelligence does and does not differ from that of human intelligence. His conclusion: There is no difference. Intelligence is the ability to learn from one's experiences, and cars are moving toward that.
The semiautonomous driving features in the coming E class have sharper steering inputs than those in existing Mercedes vehicles, leading to longer periods in which the driver can go without hands on the wheel. That could stretch from 10 seconds today to as long as 60 seconds with the advances, Thomas Weber, Daimler's research head, said.
Enabled by mobile phones, the E class can exchange information with other vehicles farther ahead on the road, allowing the driver to "see around corners" well in advance. Mercedes says it can help in the event of immediate danger such as black ice on the road or a broken-down vehicle ahead.
Car to X, more commonly called vehicle-to-X, or V2X, refers to "vehicle to anything," a connected-car term for cars that communicate with other cars as well as infrastructure such as traffic lights. In this case, the new E class simultaneously acts as a receiver and a transmitter of data.
Some features, such as active lane-change assistance -- which allows the car to pass another in traffic after the turn signal is held down for two seconds -- and a remote parking feature, are being offered by the automaker for the first time. But those features and Car to X won't be available in the U.S. at launch.
With the redesign, the E class moves from a standard six-cylinder gasoline engine to a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine. It's the first four-cylinder gasoline E class ever.
The new engine produces 241 hp and 273 pounds-feet of torque. That's 61 hp less but the same amount of torque compared with the outgoing six-cylinder. But even with the lower horsepower, Mercedes says the vehicle's lighter weight will translate to comparable performance, while providing significant fuel economy gains.
More powertrain variants will follow after launch. Expect a diesel model, a plug-in hybrid, an AMG performance model and a performance-tuned AMG Sport variant.
All E-class models available at launch will have the brand's new 9G-TRONIC nine-speed automatic transmission as standard equipment. Mercedes touts the nine-speed as more efficient and quieter with fast gearshifts and low engine revs while cruising.
Pricing wasn't released, but a significant increase is unlikely. The segment is hotly contested, plus it's under increasing pressure from midsize crossovers such as the Mercedes GLE, Lexus RX and BMW X5.
The E-class sedan's styling marks a continuation of the clean styling trends and cues seen in other recently launched Mercedes cars.
