2024 Mercedes-Benz E-Class First Drive: TikTokin' It To The Streets
This is the 2024 Mercedes-Benz E-Class. It's formally known as the W214, and the latest in a long line of full-sized sedans that runs through a good chunk of Mercedes' 97 year history. It could be seen as another iteration of another stately, business-like sedan, but this one's actually loaded up with new tech and new toys and even a few firsts.
You're looking at Mercedes-Benz's first car with a selfie camera, and the world's first car with TikTok. There's WebEx and Zoom in there, too, if your needs are a little more professional. Regardless, after a few days spent driving the new E-Class around Austria, I can confidently say this luxury sedan is also the world's greatest mobile streaming studio.
Selfie
We'll go ahead and get the TikTok talk out of the way up top, because it is completely novel. The E-Class has a wide-angle, high-definition webcam that pokes out of the dash like an alien eye. That perspective means it captures virtually the entire cockpit, including both front passengers, and even has a pretty good view of the rear seats.
TikTok is the feature that will probably raise the most eyebrows, and yes you can view through your various feeds of accounts you're following and whatever other stuff TikTok's disturbingly prescient algorithm thinks you'll like. You can heart and follow and all that good stuff, and even post your own — though not on the go.
That's an interesting integration, but perhaps more compelling — if more boring — are WebEx and Zoom. In Zoom, for example, you can host or join meetings, and even use the whiteboard. Attendees will show up on the E-Class' 14.3-inch central display and they'll see you via that webcam, but crucially only when you're stationary.
Safety First
If you're moving, both the camera and the video feed are disabled. Apps like TikTok and Angry Birds (old-school!) are also blocked from use while you're under way. But, you can still participate in the meeting via audio, and once you've signed in and synchronized your calendar, joining a scheduled call involves just a few taps on that central display.
That display is part of a two-screen setup that Mercedes-Benz calls Superscreen, one step down from the triple-OLED Hyperscreen in the EQS sedan. For Superscreen, only the 14.3-inch central and 12.3-inch passenger displays are integrated, and they're slightly lower-rent (but still quite bright and clear) LCD panels.
On that rightmost display, passengers can change navigation settings or cue up media, and even start some streaming movies. When a movie starts streaming, a privacy filter engages on that display. From the driver's seat, it just looks like a black box. Distraction avoided.
Routines and Performance
Another new trick in the E-Class is called Routines. Think of this as something like a proprietary, automotive flavor of If This Then That, just minus the extreme flexibility. You can program your car to adjust the cabin lighting, HVAC settings, and even the seat heaters based on triggers like external temperature, ensuring your tush will be kept toasty automatically.
Mercedes says it wants to connect this to the ChatGPT integration that the company released in beta earlier this year, which all just sounds awfully disconcerting for some reason. But, expect that to stay optional — for the short-term at least.
Enough about the tech, let's talk performance. In the U.S., the new E-Class will come in two flavors. First is the E350 4MATIC, which delivers 255 horsepower and 295 pound-feet from a 2.9-liter inline-four cylinder mated to a 48-volt mild hybrid system. The next step up is the E450 4MATIC, with a bigger, 3.0-liter inline-six and the same hybrid system, now offering 475 hp and 369 lb-ft. Yep, every E-Class is a hybrid, but for now at least there will not be a plug-in model available in America.
Both are connected to a nine-speed automatic transmission and come with 4MATIC all-wheel-drive.
Progressive Sport Sound
Ready for some more weird tech? The new E-Class comes with a dedicated synthetic engine sound called Progressive Sport Sound. We've heard similar fake engine notes on EVs like the EQE and EQS. Why is it needed here? Well, even at full-song the inline-six in the E450 just isn't very loud.
In fact, the entire experience is extremely quiet, but dig through the menus in the MBUX user interface, toggle on Progressive Sport Sound, and that instantly changes. The system relies on every trick the E-Class has to offer and the full sound system to deliver an experience like a much bigger, much rougher, and crucially much louder engine.
Even at idle you can feel the thing thrumming and pulsing, ready to go. It is of course much louder when accelerating hard, and there are even pops and cracks when decelerating. It's certainly not an everyday kind of thing, nor is it everyone's cup of tea, but believe it or not it actually does elevate the experience of driving in a sporty way.
The Drive
To be fair, driving in a sporty way is not exactly the E-Class's forte. Sure, it handles well, and if you opt for the air suspension, toggling the car over to Sport delivers a cleaner, sharper response. It's respectably engaging through the corners and there's no shortage of grip at either end.
But, really this is a much better cruiser. Even on ancient cobblestone-paved roads, the E-Class was remarkably smooth and compliant without any of the unwanted wandering, floating feeling you can sometimes get in bigger, heavier luxury machines.
That's not to say that the E-Class isn't getting big. It's grown by a half-inch in length for 2024, gaining 0.87 inches in wheelbase. This makes for a slightly roomier cabin and, thanks to some more efficient packaging, trunk space is up by nearly 50 percent. That fixes one of the biggest issues in the outgoing car, which was always a disappointingly poor machine for a long getaway.
Active Safety
TikTok isn't the only tech boost the new E-Class has received. In addition to the usual suite of driver assistance features, like automatic emergency braking and adaptive cruise control, the new E-Class has what Mercedes calls Active Lane Change Assist.
With this, the new E-Class will automatically change lanes on the highway, unprompted. It'll spot gaps in traffic and just go for it, and it's surprisingly good. Even in thick traffic the system was never a nuisance, waiting patiently for faster cars to go by before entering the passing lane, returning back to the right as soon as it was clear.
The E-Class does not have all the sensors of the S-Class, though, so it won't be offering Mercedes-Benz's just-approved level-three driving system. At least, not yet.
The Package
The 2024 Mercedes-Benz E-Class is frankly a weird mix. The refined styling is clean and crisp but far from shocking. The ride quality is likewise extremely good, but good in the sort of way that you just kind of forget about it. However, all that mild-mannered stuff is peppered with a dose of the outré, like the inclusion of TikTok and that bug-eyed selfie cam, which will ensure you'll always feel guilty about not feeding the social content machine, even when you're commuting.
And then there's the synthetic engine notes, which at the touch of the button make this thing sound, at least, like a much wilder machine. Whether all that Jekyll and Hyde stuff suits you is up to your own unique proclivities, but whether it fits your budget remains to be seen.
There's no pricing on the new E-Class just yet, but look for it to hit dealerships in the first half of 2024 with an MSRP that should split the difference between the littler C-Class and the bigger S-Class, probably right around $60,000.