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 each day driving wants are squarely in its sights. Do you retain your each 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 for those who’re counting nickels and dimes, and end up paying the usurious charges charged by some fashionable stations in fashionable locations, the benefits of a plug-in flicker and dwindle.
That’s what I skilled earlier this month throughout my take a look at drive of the Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e, which acquitted itself totally nicely as I toured my outdated stomping grounds.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 take a look at drive evaluation
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 a great check in Atlanta, the 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 seek out the Electrify America station I knew nicely, with the primary spittle of snowflakes on the horizon, realizing I would want 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 know-how, although it’s largely indecipherable from the surface, 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, just a little slower than the gas-powered midrange GLC, and a high 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 make the most 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 stunned—however I’m to seek out that the EA quotes me a cost time of 1 hour, 14 minutes. I may cost at its default battery-friendly fee, however with snow on the best way I flick by means of the interface to interact quick charging, which chops the remaining time, boosts the cost fee to 60 kw, and commits to completion in about 55 minutes.
A couple of espresso photographs 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 whole 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, virtually prefer it was recalculating depreciation as an alternative of vary.
The exorbitant price 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 gentle, 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 assorted drive and regen modes by means of a well-known sequence of four-leaf clovers that loop round my regular 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 large 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 take a look at drive evaluation
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e plug-in hybrid take a look at drive evaluation
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e plug-in hybrid take a look at drive evaluation
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e plug-in hybrid take a look at drive evaluation
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class appears, house, and stuff
Mercedes repotted the GLC within the 2023 mannequin yr, resculpting its good-looking form that leans extra wagon than SUV. Additionally bought as a extra rakish Coupe mannequin, the GLC has a beautiful inside, with a digital tombstone at its middle 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 route, it lights up the bottom as you enter, glints to life when its begin button will get pressed, and responds to virtually each beck and name whenever 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 establish it over a four-day highway journey.
The GLC’s 113.1-inch wheelbase units out a footprint that allows plenty 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 driving force seat made itself recognized at my hips with a boring ache. On one break, I sat within the three-person bench, which may home two of me and my size-12 toes and short-leg, long-torso physique with ease. All the things I’d introduced on my highway 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 whole to 52.6 cubic toes.
2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC 350e plug-in hybrid take a look at drive evaluation
How a lot does the 2025 Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class price?
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 ability to earn its initialism. Each be a 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 yr.
Sooner or later, it’s possible we’ll see the EQC electrical SUV within the U.S. in 2025, after Mercedes pulled again from plans to carry 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 fairly personal the all-electric fashions that will come to cross, 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 evaluation: 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 residence 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 state of affairs is solely potential—if unlikely—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 occasions, by overpriced, undermaintained charging conditions created by authorized settlements. At these costs, the espresso needs to be free.
