Unless you have been stranded on a small island without Wi-fi for the past four or five years, by now you should have heard about the push for electric cars.
Like Christmas, the switch to electric is going to come, but I must admit that last week I was not worried about how soon we will all be driving electric cars as I drove the diesel version of the refreshed Mercedes CLS 220-d coupe.
‘Range Anxiety’ is the big worry for people who switch to electric cars. I have been that soldier when testing various electric models in recent years, but last week I certainly didn’t have any ‘range anxiety’ in the diesel version of the CLS. With a full tank of diesel on board the range was 1,320km; happy days indeed.
The Mercedes CLS has got a make-over and it now has new lights and bumpers and the wheel choices have been revised. The interior has been given a thorough make-over with open-pore wood trims for the dash and many technological upgrades.
My test car was so comfortable, very frugal on long journeys, but a bit thirsty in urban traffic. With 194 brake horse power available you can get from zero to 100km/h in just over seven seconds and the top speed is 235km/h.
I drove a very attractive High-Tech Silver version and the coupé seemed to glide along the road. I would need a few more pages to list all the goodies available in my test car, but the one I remember most was a simple one, safety.
I know that we should all reverse park, but nobody is perfect, and one day last week I parked the lazy way. When I was reversing out of the spot a young man riding one of those new scooters and not wearing a yellow bib, whizzed by the back of the CLS. The technology obviously recognised the movement and applied the brakes. Relief all round.
The interior had all the AMG attributes with really bright seats. Officially the colour scheme was Macchiato Beige/Magma Grey trim. The dash is well laid out and there is a neat holder between the driver and front-seat passenger where you can store drinks and other items out of sight of the prying eyes of any would-be thief. At night the ambient lighting is really gorgeous.
The boot is huge, but as usual with Mercedes no spare wheel is supplied. However, there is a huge ‘well’ space for a spare wheel, so once again the advice is to haggle for a spare.
All that luxury is not cheap and the diesel CLS will cost you €83,090. Road tax is €270. Now where are those new Lottery numbers, the old ones are clearly not working!
A truly relaxing week of luxury travel. Whoever said that ‘diesel is dead’ was a bit premature I think.
In many of the recent press cars I have driven, one of the radio stations that keeps popping up on DAB is Angel Radio. The DJs on Angel play some lovely old-style music, but you would probably need to be over fifty to appreciate the music, which is often from the fifties and earlier.
This community station, which is based in Havant near Portsmouth was launched in 1999 to bring music and memories into the homes of older people. Angel Radio was available in the CLS and it’s well worth a listen, if you want to get away from the constant flow of bad news.
