[Elugelab]

One thing that I wondered whilst driving in town yesterday - when you press the brake pedal, does the car first use the regen to slow down on lighter brake applications, before using the brakes for harder stops? The car's energy flow screen suggests that when using the brake pedal, the car is regenerating - accurate?

I find myself avoiding the brake pedal as much as possible to get max regen from one pedal driving but equally if it uses regen first on lighter brake pressures, I'll be more inclined to use the brakes.

I presume it does since the brakes do have a weird feel to them (which I presume is the car blending regen and actual braking) but not sure if others know better than me.

 

[antnee]

Yes it does - but I don't know how much it then uses the friction brakes.

 

[carrspaints]

Hi everyone. I received my new A250e last week. I took it for a drive over the weekend and guess I must have used up the battery, it was displaying 1% this morning. I don't have a charging point installed at home yet, so when I set off to work this morning, the vehicle had 1% battery life.

I drove 70 miles to my destination (motorway and A roads) and 70 miles on the return leg. During that time, the battery remained on 1%. I tried all of the different drive mode options but the battery remained at 1% after my 140 mile round trip. Is this normal? I'm not expecting a fully charged battery, but thought I'd see at least some increase in battery charge. Unless I actually use a plug in charger, it seems my car is just a petrol vehicle that is doing average petrol miles per litre.

 

[Timslim]

Hi carrspaints - The A250e is as you know a plug in hybrid - without plugging the vehicle in to charge you will get no benefit from the battery powered motor, and will effectively be running a relatively inefficient petrol car.

It may recoup a little energy from braking but that will not be a great deal, and depends on your type of journey (for example I would expect 70 miles on free flowing motorway/A Roads to regen very little charge).

To get the most out of the car, you need to plug it in to charge the batteries when needed.

 

[carrspaints]

Hi carrspaints - The A250e is as you know a plug in hybrid - without plugging the vehicle in to charge you will get no benefit from the battery powered motor, and will effectively be running a relatively inefficient petrol car.

It may recoup a little energy from braking but that will not be a great deal, and depends on your type of journey (for example I would expect 70 miles on free flowing motorway/A Roads to regen very little charge).

To get the most out of the car, you need to plug it in to charge the batteries when needed.

Thanks Timslim. I had read elsewhere that some A250e owners were seeing up to 23% additional battery charge when driving for an hour or so. Perhaps they were driving with their foot simultaneously on the brake 😀

Anyway, good to know it's not my car or something I am doing wrong. Will just need to juice up via charger cable.

 

[carrspaints]

Okay, so having driven this A250e for a few weeks now, I have noticed an issue I don't understand. I have not recharged my battery at all since purchase. When setting off in the morning, the battery shows 1%. I have found that if selecting Battery Level drive mode, the battery will charge up (slowly) over a longish trip. I have had this up to 6 - 7% at the end of a trip. Great, but when I return to the vehicle 6-7 hours later, the battery is back to 1%? I haven't left any interiors lights on, there is nothing that should be using that 6-7% stored charge, yet it is gone. This has happened 4 consecutive times now. Is this battery leaking charge, or is there something I may have missed?

 

[Surge Joebot]

I am in a similar situation to you. I hardly ever charge mine either. Not ideal I know but it's just my situation doesn't really allow me to easily. Opted for hybrid as I wanted a more powerful car (200bhp plus) but cheap lease deal (£280 a month in work all in - includes insurance, breakdown, maintenance, no deposit req'd etc)

Anyway, back on topic, I used to have a Golf GTE. Which could regen the power a lot better than the Merc does and could even charge it on the go which the Merc can't do. Anyway, I've discovered after giving it a charge at a public free charge point, and switching the drive mode to "sport" for every drive the battery has dropped but it's hovered around 23 miles since. It's been over a week and a half now and it hasn't really gone down. So I would suggest if you are not charging all the time like me, just drive it in sport mode. Then you have the power when you need it, and no hassle of constantly worrying about the battery level going.

 

[Sd005]

There is a drive and charge function

 

[Surge Joebot]

There is a drive and charge function View attachment 7704

I know it seems like there is a function as it shows on the display here. But there isn't an option to enable it. So there isn't really.

 

[Sd005]

I know it seems like there is a function as it shows on the display here. But there isn't an option to enable it. So there isn't really.

I get you, usually my drive and charge activates if I'm in eco, driving over 55mph.

 

[Surge Joebot]

I get you, usually my drive and charge activates if I'm in eco, driving over 55mph.

Yeah it's kind of odd the vehicle can do it, and can recognise it's doing it. But you can't select it. Poor design. VW are a lot better than Merc with this

 

[antnee]

Yeah it's kind of odd the vehicle can do it, and can recognise it's doing it. But you can't select it. Poor design. VW are a lot better than Merc with this

Not really poor design. It is a plug-in hybrid, designed to be plugged in! The car is only using excess power to charge the battery during certain conditions. If you force it to charge in just any old situation, it will actually more fuel and be less efficient overall.

 

[Surge Joebot]

Not really poor design. It is a plug-in hybrid, designed to be plugged in! The car is only using excess power to charge the battery during certain conditions. If you force it to charge in just any old situation, it will actually more fuel and be less efficient overall.

I disagree. The golf is also a plug in hybrid. But offers charging while driving as an option. The Merc has the ability to do this too but hides the function from the menu. I agree it's a conscious choice by the manufacturer to enforce the "plug in" part to provide better economy for the driver, but personally giving the driver as many driving modes as possible and letting them make the choice is far better than hiding one of the driving modes a car is capable of through software.

Having owned and driven both, believe me, the golf is far more superior. It even has a better engine and a far smoother DCT. I was pretty disappointed moving to the Merc tbh. Don't think I'll be getting another one. Nicer interior and external looks though : )

 

[antnee]

What is the point in purposefully being less efficient though? If you give users a dedicated mode, they use it all the time not knowing/realising that if they just used another mode and let the car decide when it should charge the battery they would use less fuel/create less emissions overall.

 

[Sd005]

I disagree. The golf is also a plug in hybrid. But offers charging while driving as an option. The Merc has the ability to do this too but hides the function from the menu. I agree it's a conscious choice by the manufacturer to enforce the "plug in" part to provide better economy for the driver, but personally giving the driver as many driving modes as possible and letting them make the choice is far better than hiding one of the driving modes a car is capable of through software.

Having owned and driven both, believe me, the golf is far more superior. It even has a better engine and a far smoother DCT. I was pretty disappointed moving to the Merc tbh. Don't think I'll be getting another one. Nicer interior and external looks though : )

What's the VW like on range? I always thought Mercs had one up on hybrids when it came to range. Was considering the A3 hybrid but range was max 35...

 

[Surge Joebot]

What's the VW like on range? I always thought Mercs had one up on hybrids when it came to range. Was considering the A3 hybrid but range was max 35...

Not really much in it to be fair. Merc on paper is supposed to have about 40-43 miles. Golf had about 30 on full charge. I'm still yet to get anything above 30 on the Merc. So they are about the same.

 

[Surge Joebot]

What is the point in purposefully being less efficient though? If you give users a dedicated mode, they use it all the time not knowing/realising that if they just used another mode and let the car decide when it should charge the battery they would use less fuel/create less emissions overall.

That's fine if it works for you, great. But other people clearly would like a choice. Hence this thread. VW and some other manufacturers give you that choice, Merc don't. So obviously there is a market for this option.

 

[Rickster32]

For me when I decided to order the Merc a few weeks ago, the range vs the Golfs did play a part, also the premium pack version I ordered was a much cheaper deal than the Golf, over £100pm on PCP.

 

[Surge Joebot]

For me when I decided to order the Merc a few weeks ago, the range vs the Golfs did play a part, also the premium pack version I ordered was a much cheaper deal than the Golf, over £100pm on PCP.

Same reason I changed to Merc to be fair. Plus new golf design is horrible and cheap. Plus some of the worst standard alloys I've ever seen on the standard GTE!

I got the a class saloon premium too. Still cheaper than the GTE would have been.

 

[N3WEE]

Not really poor design. It is a plug-in hybrid, designed to be plugged in! The car is only using excess power to charge the battery during certain conditions. If you force it to charge in just any old situation, it will actually more fuel and be less efficient overall.

Hi,
I have had my a250e for just a few weeks. I came across this discussion when trying to work out how Mercedes Me calculates MPG and MpkWh. Yesterday my journey was 177 miles, mostly on motorway. I started with a full battery and at outset it said I had a range of 32 miles on battery - I understand this will be a guesstimate based on previous usage but also environmental conditions such as temperature. I thought I would try the 'route based operating mode strategy' and set the sat nav for a return journey (as I could not recharge en route) and selected eco mode. So I thought the system would look at the whole return route and work out when to use full electric (up to 32 miles) and petrol to get the most economical journey overall. Having arrived home and looked at the Mercedes Me trip details it tells me I have travelled 177 miles, 68 in electric only, MPG is 67, mpkWh is 18.8. I am assuming MPG is calculated on the whole journey with electric and petrol combined so pro rata this works out at 41 mpg while just on petrol. 41 mpg seems low as I was cruising on the motorway most of the journey so I was wondering if part of the petrol consumption was taken up by recharging the battery which achieved 68 miles fully electric out of 177 - when it projected I would get just 32 miles fully electric before I set off (and the maximum stated by Mercedes is 44 miles). I concluded that the battery must have recharged to an extent over the journey. Obviously this would cost in terms of petrol usage to recharge (and explain the very average 41mpg on petrol only) but I presume that the Mercedes analytics system works out that the electric generated will be more beneficial in the whole journey than the cost of the petrol consumed to recharge.
I have read here that there is little recharging of the battery during the journey but my experience yesterday doesn't seem to be consistent with this. I have not found anything on the Mercedes website to explain how the figures in the Mercedes Me trip data are calculated. Have I misunderstood something here? 🤔