The Mercedes GLC EV Kicks Off At £60,350

This is an enormous light-up front grille, and behind it is the rest of the new all-electric Mercedes GLC, now on sale in Britain from £60,350. That price sees it land right in the middle of its two biggest rivals, with the new BMW iX3 starting at £58,755 and the Audi Q6 E-Tron kicking off at £61,240.

The Merc's entry price gets you the Sport trim, the first of five different versions that culminate with the £73,350 premier edition. For now, they only come in a single powertrain variant, the dual-motor GLC 400, complete with a 94kWh battery. The setup brings a peak of 483bhp, which is enough to propel the car to 62mph in 4.3 seconds and on to a top speed of 130mph. More powertrain and battery setups are on the way further down the line.

Merc has also finalised the GLC 400's official range figure which, in the UK, tops out at 406 miles. That's a bit of a drop on the 443-mile estimate announced when the car debuted at the Munich Motor Show last month, and some way down on its shiny new rival, the 500-mile iX3, but it's more than you get out of even the rangiest Q6 E-Tron. With the ability to juice up at 330kW, Mercedes also reckons you’ll be able to do the all-important 10 to 80 per cent charge in 22 minutes on a quick enough charger.

It rides on air suspension borrowed from the S-Class luxobarge, while rear-axle steering that turns away from the fronts at low speeds and with them at high speeds is an optional extra. Meanwhile, a Terrain Mode is designed for negotiating some very light off-roading (think the field at your local horse trial or the gravel drive up to a remote luxury Airbnb, which is about the bulk of the off-roading this car’s likely to do), with a ‘transparent bonnet’ function that stitches together camera views to let you see what you otherwise can’t.

The other part of the new GLC we’ve seen already is the inside, and the vast 99cm ‘Hyperscreen’ that spans the entire dash. Inside it lives Merc’s new AI-driven ‘superbrain’, which also powers the onboard voice assistant. Mercedes says that using it is ‘like chatting with a friend’. Sorry Dave, it’s afraid it can’t do that.

Bringing light to the interior is Merc’s ‘Sky Control’ panoramic roof, which pulls the usual trick of being able to instantly switch between transparent and opaque as well as integrating 162 three-pointed star motifs for a bit of a Rolls-Royce vibe at night time.

Oh, and there’s a Vegan Package for the cabin. This doesn’t mean you get seats made of tofu and a Quorn steering wheel, but that it uses no animal-derived materials, and is the first car interior to be independently certified by The Vegan Society.

The electric GLC won’t outright replace the current combustion model, which has been Merc’s global bestseller for several years. Instead, it’ll be sold alongside it, Mercedes taking a similar dual-pronged approach to its EV and ICE ranges to many other brands. Though you can order your GLC EV now, you'll still have a while to wait to get hold of it – the first customer deliveries are set for mid-2026.