2025 Mercedes CLA review: the EV comes of age

It seems to me that the motor industry and its customers are somewhat out of step. It’s nobody’s fault and hard to see how it could be avoided, but just as electric cars are starting to find their feet, those who should be buying them have lost interest and, thanks to some fairly rubbish early product and entirely inadequate infrastructure, I can’t say I blame them. But it seems that manufacturers are now realising that slick design is not enough for the latest generation EVs and that they also need to think what goes beneath and not just produce cars with no range, inelegant power delivery and all the appeal of treading on something a dog left behind.

I’ve just cast my vote for the 2026 Car of the Year, upon whose jury I sit, and there are some really good EVs on the shortlist, like the Fiat Grande Panda, Kia EV4 and Renault 4. Cars that are decent to look at, decent to drive, with decent range and no longer entirely indecent pricing. But this new Mercedes-Benz CLA may just be the best of the lot, whether it wins the award or not. It’s quite annoying, really, because I think that of them all, this is car that reveals just how capable an EV can be if its creator tries. Here is an electric vehicle that really will cover 400 miles on a single charge – that’s not some meaningless, lab-generated claim, but genuine, observable, real-world range. Of course that’s easily done with a massive battery, and all the weight and cost penalties that go with it, but that’s not what’s going on here. The CLA’s battery is pretty average in size for its category. It weighs less than two tonnes and prices start at just £45,615. When you have to fill it up, it’ll do so at up to 320kW and good luck finding a public charger in the UK that’ll keep up with it.

And the extraordinary thing about it is that there is little that is genuinely groundbreaking in its engineering. It’s not got solid state batteries or anything like it. But the car is a clean sheet design with what I understand to be a very efficient electric motor working in conjunction with a two-speed gearbox, something most other EV manufacturers don’t bother with. I further understand that achieving seamless shifts is very difficult if you don’t build your own boxes but, unlike almost all rivals, Mercedes always has. And when I drove the CLA I had to concentrate even to tell it was changing gear. It is also right up there among the most aerodynamic cars on sale.

I guess some might worry that Mercedes spent so much time (and budget) getting the powertrain right they forgot about the rest of the car. Not so. True there’s not enough space in the back, but remember this is just the first in an entirely new family of cars that will include, among others, both a shooting brake version and an SUV. The wall-to-wall electronics in front of you can be a bit intimidating at first and these slick, glossy, black display panels are now so ubiquitous that I wonder how premium they really feel these days, but there are at least physical controls for the ventilation so, once learned, it works well enough.

“It’s been a while since a Mercedes-Benz last got my attention like this one”

It’s a pretty good thing to drive too. There is a twin motor CLA350 for those who want more power, four-wheel drive, or both, and a small battery entry level car is on the way, but I found the level of performance perfectly acceptable for the category: it’s meted out progressively and before the EV era its acceleration would have been regarded by all as really rather impressive. It handles well too: grip levels are nothing special, a quite common and perhaps under-reported phenomenon these days and likely the consequence of quite heavy cars going down the road on quite low rolling resistance tyres – but that doesn’t particularly bother me either. Far more important is the clarity and accuracy of its steering, its well-judged damping and the way it manages to control the car’s body movements without degrading its rather fine ride quality.

It’s been a while – perhaps too long I might say – since a Mercedes-Benz last got my attention like this one. And it has nothing to do with its speed, power, grip or balance. What I want in a car, any car, is for it to understand the nature of the job it is required to do, whatever that might happen to be, and to do that to a standard beyond that of any direct competitor. And I think back to my early days in this business when W124s and W140s were simply the best cars in the world at their allotted tasks and realise how much I’ve missed Mercedes being in that space. Well it’s back now and it leaves BMW’s forthcoming Neue Klasse with all the work to do. That too promises transformative abilities for its brand so the first time they meet (though the BMW launches with an SUV first) will be something to behold. For now however, this new CLA is the best EV of its kind I’ve driven and it’s going to require something genuinely remarkable to top it.

Mercedes-Benz CLA 250+ AMG Line Premium Edition

• Price £51,770
• Engine Rear electric motor, 85.5kWh battery
• Power 268bhp
• Torque 247lb ft
• Weight 1980kg
• Power to weight 134bhp per tonne
• Transmission Two-speed, rear-wheel drive
• 0-62mph 6.7sec
• Top speed 130mph
• Range 462 miles (WLTP)
• Charging speed Up to 320kW
• Verdict Mercedes sets the electric bar.