Mercedes-Benz CLA 250+ first drive Malaysia: Wet Genting reveals what this EV Is really like

KUALA LUMPUR: There are probably easier places to have your first drive of a new rear-wheel-drive electric Mercedes-Benz than Genting Highlands in the rain.

The road was wet, visibility came and went with the mist, and there were enough slippery patches around to discourage any heroic attempts at finding the limits of the new CLA 250+.

But perhaps that was not such a bad thing, because after a short run up and down Genting, one thing about the new CLA became quite clear: Mercedes does not seem particularly interested in impressing you with the usual electric-car party tricks.

Also Read: Mercedes-Benz CLA 250+ electric launched in Malaysia, RM274,888 with up to 792 km range

There is no enormous torque figure to shout about, no neck-snapping acceleration every time you breathe on the accelerator and, in the CLA 250+ at least, no ridiculous power figure designed mainly to win a social-media argument.

Instead, this is an EV that appears to have had a lot of attention paid to how it actually responds to you, and on a wet mountain road, that becomes rather easy to appreciate.

The third-generation CLA represents quite a big change for the nameplate. Malaysia currently gets one fully electric version, the CLA 250+ AMG Line, priced at RM274,888 on-the-road without insurance.

A single electric motor at the rear produces 200 kW, or 272 PS, and 335 Nm, with drive sent to the rear wheels through something rather unusual for an EV: a two-speed transmission.

First gear uses a shorter ratio to help with acceleration from lower speeds, while second is intended to improve efficiency and performance at higher speeds.

The result is a claimed 0-100 km/h time of 6.7 seconds and a top speed of 210 km/h. None of those figures sound especially outrageous by modern EV standards, and that is probably the point.

The big headline figure is instead its range. Its 85 kWh usable battery allows Mercedes-Benz to quote up to 792 km on the WLTP cycle, while its 800-volt electrical architecture allows DC charging at up to 320 kW.

That tells you quite a lot about what Mercedes was trying to achieve with this car. The CLA 250+ is not really chasing the performance-EV crowd; efficiency appears to be the obsession here.

That does not mean it feels boring, though. Turn onto a damp uphill section, squeeze the accelerator and the first thing you notice is what the CLA does not do.

It does not suddenly dump all 335 Nm onto the rear tyres. Instead, the accelerator calibration is wonderfully progressive, and there is still more than enough performance to haul the car up Genting without feeling remotely strained.

The important bit is that the power arrives in a way that is very easy to meter out. On a dry road, you might overlook something like that, but on a wet road with tight corners and patches where grip can change quickly, you appreciate it almost immediately.

You can feed the power in rather than negotiate with it, and that is an important distinction because plenty of EVs are fast now. Making an EV fast is not particularly difficult anymore; making one pleasant to drive smoothly is something else.

The CLA 250+ is still a substantial electric car with a large battery beneath it, but through Genting's tighter sections it does a surprisingly good job of disguising that mass.

It is not suddenly a lightweight sports sedan, and you can still sense the weight underneath you when braking downhill or changing direction quickly, but it does not feel cumbersome.

The steering is light enough that you are not fighting the car through repeated bends, yet the front responds accurately when you turn in. There is not a huge amount of chatter coming back through the wheel, but in these conditions I was far more interested in knowing that the car would respond consistently to what I was asking of it. It did, and that consistency inspires confidence on a road where the available grip is constantly changing.

The body is also kept nicely in check. Load it through a longer bend and the CLA takes a set rather than feeling like its battery mass is constantly trying to drag the body in another direction. That is particularly interesting because Mercedes has not fitted some elaborate air-suspension setup here.

The Malaysian CLA 250+ gets a passive Comfort suspension setup, and from this brief encounter, it seems to strike a very sensible balance between ride comfort and body control.

That balance might actually be one of my favourite aspects of the car so far. There is always a certain expectation when you see an AMG Line badge, large wheels and a low-slung Mercedes that the ride is going to be unnecessarily aggressive in the name of sportiness, but the CLA does not immediately come across that way.

There is compliance in the suspension, road imperfections do not result in the car constantly fidgeting underneath you, and over the more flowing sections of Genting it settles into a rather pleasant rhythm.

At the same time, Mercedes has not gone so far in the other direction that the CLA becomes soft and floaty. That matters on a road like Genting, where repeated climbs, dips and direction changes can quickly expose a car that moves around too much. The CLA instead feels calm and settled, and that sense of calm kept coming back throughout the drive.

The descent is just as revealing as the climb. Coming back down Genting means you start interacting much more with the CLA's regenerative braking system, which can recuperate at up to 200 kW and offers selectable regeneration levels as well as an adaptive mode. The technical number is impressive, but from behind the wheel the more important thing is how natural the whole system feels.

There is no strange disconnect where you are wondering when regeneration ends and the physical brakes begin. The pedal response feels progressive, and on a wet downhill road that makes it much easier to judge exactly how much slowing you want.

This is not the sort of thing that looks exciting on a specification sheet, but it is exactly the sort of detail you notice when you are actually driving the car, and arguably the sort of thing that makes an expensive car feel properly developed.

The CLA's two-speed gearbox is another fascinating piece of engineering, yet ironically there is not much theatre associated with it from the driver's seat. That is probably a compliment. Unlike the simulated gearshifts appearing in some performance EVs, Mercedes is not trying to make its two-speed transmission part of the entertainment. Its job is mainly efficiency.

The lower first ratio helps with acceleration, while the taller second gear allows the rear motor to operate more efficiently at higher speeds, which helps contribute to that enormous claimed range figure.

During this short drive, though, it largely just got on with the job in the background. You do not climb into the CLA and suddenly feel as though you are driving some strange two-speed automatic; it still fundamentally behaves like an EV.

Perhaps that is my biggest takeaway from this very short first drive. Mercedes-Benz has spent years building EVs where the fact that they were electric often became part of their identity, but the CLA feels slightly different.

Yes, the technology underneath it is fascinating, with an 800-volt architecture, up to 320 kW charging, an efficient electric drive unit, two gears and nearly 800 km of headline WLTP range, but none of that really dominates the experience from behind the wheel.

What you notice instead is that the accelerator is easy to control, the steering is accurate, the suspension keeps the body settled, the brakes are easy to judge and the cabin remains quiet. The whole car feels composed in a way that is perhaps more impressive than a huge acceleration figure, especially when you are threading it through a cold, wet and slippery Genting Highlands.

There will need to be a much longer drive before making any definitive judgement on the CLA 250+. Malaysian highways, broken urban roads, real-world consumption and a proper test of that enormous range claim will tell us far more.

But as a first impression, the new CLA 250+ does not seem particularly interested in convincing you that electric cars are exciting simply because they can accelerate violently.

It feels as though Mercedes has concentrated instead on making an EV that is easy, polished and genuinely pleasant to drive, and after this brief wet-weather taste, that approach makes quite a lot of sense.

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