I was out of town for a week and got to drive a 2017 Mercedes S class sedan for a few hours one day, and then the next day took a 2017 Mercedes convertible for a ~200 mile spin thru the desert.
It's my first drive in a non-EV for a while, and my immediate impression was that something was wrong with the car, given all of the vibration and noise. Of course, that's just how ICE cars roll but how quickly you forget it when you drive a Tesla. Both cars felt sluggish, loud and I kept thinking I had a misaligned wheel.
The complexity of the center console - with so many buttons and tiny, illegible labels - blew my mind. It didn't reach Porsche levels of ridiculousness but it is certainly close. Lovely analog speedo and tach displays in the coupe but quite impractical. The Mercedes UI made zero sense and the tiny LCD is laughable when you are used to the Tesla. Both of the cars were overdue for a service which kept flashing away on the LCD.
The *only* feature that my wife and I liked was the S Class dynamic seats which automatically hug you on the curves. Nice, but it didn't outweigh all of the downsides.The Burmeister audio in the S Class didn't impress as much as I thought it might.
I also noticed the Mercedes TACC is inferior to Tesla. On curvy roads, it felt like the Mercedes TACC doesn't lock onto the car in front consistently and there is a surging motion to the cruise as the lead car weaves in and out of the Mercedes sensors.
Since there is no display like the Tesla, it's hard to tell what is happening, but several times I had to step on the brake as it didn't feel like it detected stopped traffic. Also, when it does detect stopped traffic, the Mercedes TACC requires you to hit the accelerator to start cruise again, unlike Tesla TACC. And of course, to save gas the engine switches itself off regularly at a stop, which is just unnerving. I even had to pull in at a gas station to fill it up!
I was so glad to get back into my Tesla returning home that I went for a three hour drive in peak hour traffic just to unwind.
It's my first drive in a non-EV for a while, and my immediate impression was that something was wrong with the car, given all of the vibration and noise. Of course, that's just how ICE cars roll but how quickly you forget it when you drive a Tesla. Both cars felt sluggish, loud and I kept thinking I had a misaligned wheel.
The complexity of the center console - with so many buttons and tiny, illegible labels - blew my mind. It didn't reach Porsche levels of ridiculousness but it is certainly close. Lovely analog speedo and tach displays in the coupe but quite impractical. The Mercedes UI made zero sense and the tiny LCD is laughable when you are used to the Tesla. Both of the cars were overdue for a service which kept flashing away on the LCD.
The *only* feature that my wife and I liked was the S Class dynamic seats which automatically hug you on the curves. Nice, but it didn't outweigh all of the downsides.The Burmeister audio in the S Class didn't impress as much as I thought it might.
I also noticed the Mercedes TACC is inferior to Tesla. On curvy roads, it felt like the Mercedes TACC doesn't lock onto the car in front consistently and there is a surging motion to the cruise as the lead car weaves in and out of the Mercedes sensors.
Since there is no display like the Tesla, it's hard to tell what is happening, but several times I had to step on the brake as it didn't feel like it detected stopped traffic. Also, when it does detect stopped traffic, the Mercedes TACC requires you to hit the accelerator to start cruise again, unlike Tesla TACC. And of course, to save gas the engine switches itself off regularly at a stop, which is just unnerving. I even had to pull in at a gas station to fill it up!
I was so glad to get back into my Tesla returning home that I went for a three hour drive in peak hour traffic just to unwind.