Mercedes GLC EV Unveiled With 443-Mile Range And Much Grille

You’ve probably already seen a bit of this car. It’s the new electric Mercedes GLC, and its manufacturer has been making a bit of a song and dance about its new fully-illuminated front grille, which looks like it’ll be Merc’s signature for the next phase of its design language. Make of it what you will – you’re certainly not going to misidentify it at night on an unlit country lane.

Now, though, we’ve got a look at the rest of the car it’s attached to, which is initially being launched in dual-motor GLC 400 guise with a 94kWh battery. That 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.

That makes it three tenths quicker off the line than its big rival, also unveiled at the Munich Show, the BMW iX3 50 xDrive, but the Beemer counters this with its hugely impressive 500 miles of quoted range – the Merc manages a still-healthy estimated 443-mile figure. With the ability to juice up at 330kW, the company 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 some 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, much as Porsche’s set to do with two separate Cayenne models and BMW with the X3 and iX3. Expect to hear more about prices and further variants when the car goes on sale in the first half of next year.