NEW ELECTRIC MERCEDES! THE BEST YET!
- what if Mercedes-Benz made a lower cost entry-level electric car a car that competes with the Tesla Model 3 would you be interested in buying it so today I'm going to get the scoop on this car by Mercedes-Benz this is the first video that's going to be done of somebody riding inside of it so in order to do that I need to ditch Utah and head to stutgart Germany let's get out of here welcome to Germany today I have a very special video a car that is not even out yet on the market and that people haven't seen yet in fact I'm filming this video a month before I dropped this video it's the Mercedes CLA this is going to be a car that is economical and electric for the American audience and for the whole world I get to take 45 minutes and drive and I have a special expert that's going to tell me all about the car because I could use some help from a experienced Mercedes-Benz person so here is our driver and our expert today this is Ola Kus he is the CEO of Mercedes-Benz hi Dan good to see you good to see too we've met one time before and it was in San Francisco I think I had 5 minutes to interview and we had a very futuristic car and it was all about the mbos right it had the it was the new system yeah absolutely we're on a special closed track one of the testing facilities that's why I'm not holding my camera like I usually do because there's a lot of top secret stuff that I've seen around here including some stuff with this car so we're going to go on a little drive right now we ready to go yeah let's take it for a spin it's drive time it's fun to be the first to be able to do something it is isn't it and I get to do it today got to ride it at first first ride it's you and your Chinese colleague you're the two persons in the world that are doing this work doesn't even make sense but I am so grateful for it and then also a side note we're going to have a little segment where we get to know Ola a little bit today hopefully that's okay that's okay and today we're on a test track right so it's all about the product it's all driving driving experience and let's forget about all that other corporate stuff for now that sounds like a good plan but I think you can see one thing immediately now in this car so I'm I'm I'm 64 and A2 yeah uh you're pretty tall too right around 6'2 villm is also not a baby and he is sitting perfectly comfortable behind you so it looks sporty and Sleek on the outside and it should but it's big on the inside this is kind of the entry ticket into the Mercedes dream yeah the first Mercedes many Mercedes fans get even if it's our or enter Mercedes and it's it almost feels like the wrong word U compared to the you feel that you're.
- you're in a car it feels more adult it almost feels in terms of how it drives and rides that you're in a bigger car uh needless to say it's quiet and the Mercedes is tight everything is tight everything works high quality attention to these little details even the even the way you adjust the seat it looks like a piece of jewelry I've never seen the seat adjustment like this and I don't there's things that we can't show you on camera so I'm just going to describe some things but typically with the Mercedes-Benz when you get in woo we're going around some nice Corners here um when you get inside of a Mercedes-Benz you need to adjust a seat on every other car I've ever been in it's on the seat but the controls and a Mercedes are on the door and I don't know if this is new to this car I feel like it is I've never seen it I've driven a lot of the the newer cars but it's curved differently like the way the seat adjustment works yeah if you talk to our if you talk to our designers uh they're like the engineers it like never stops you know what's the next Frontier you can have a designer work for dozens of hours just to get these little details absolutely right because even if you know nothing about design you know nothing about technology you know nothing about uh cars even even if you're that person subliminally your eye will just feel this is right it feels right and the the the system right here with the maps with the heads up display it does look more intuitive I think that's probably been one of the negatives on previous generations of Mercedes-Benz is that there's too many buttons and it's not as intuitive to figure.
- out where to push everything this is the new software and setup and it looks intuitive already I know what to push I know where to go for for what we call whole mbos 1.0 so the Mercedes-Benz operating system 1.0 we almost started with a white sheet of paper uh four years ago and we said let's rethink everything let's consolidate the software stack so we have one holistic software stack in the car uh make sure that we have the most performing chips supercomputers uh to power this system okay uh but I told the engineers and especially ones that do UI you have a very simple task uh either a 5-year-old kid or a Mercedes-Benz board member needs to be able to intuitively operate this and if you if you if you meet that challenge done job you've done your job and jokes aside um we have spent hundreds of hours hundreds of hours with focus groups and it's down to every every single feature what are the things that you use most of course you're in a car you're probably going to use navigation in many cases uh you want to listen to music you want to talk to somebody it looks simple and even though we're now in a camouflaged car here you can see that behind this camouflage there is another big screen hiding for you as the passenger uh and in a safe way that prevents driver distraction how can you watch a movie uh and I don't watch watch a movie I need to of course watch the road yeah the wealth of digital experience that is also coming to the passenger in this car is uh is on another level it feels to us that this car it's paradigm shift it ushers in a new era help me understand.
- the one of the talking points and things that I read was that this is going to be a similar platform for a CLA if you want to get a gas powerered CLA or an electric you can it's the same exterior and the same body yeah essentially that's true it would be too soon now to uh step out of combustion that's not where the world markets are yeah uh we started with the electric vehicle and we designed a perfect electric vehicle from the ground up then we set to the engineers you need to come up with an intelligent way to design uh another front module to put in a brand new uh hybridized very efficient powerful combustion engine that we have developed yeah maybe 9 months 12 months whatever after we launch the electric version you will have a high-tech electrified combustion version to go with as well that's great I do appreciate that there is this electric version that is smooth it's quick it's one of the most efficient electric vehicles ever made but also you can get the gas powered option if you want that looks the same on the outside but it's a gas car so .
- do like that i' like being able to have the gas option cuz not everybody is ready for the transition to electric cars and not every scenario makes sense based off of where you live or what you do we're in a once in a 100e transformation in the Auto industry there's no doubt about it I mean the journey is toward zero Mission so over a period of time we're going to switch from one energy source to another energy source we have not put the high-tech combustion cars out to pasture and say forget about those guys and uh I don't.
- know this is New Coke and that was Coke Classic or something but I think eventually we will all end up in the zero emission camp that makes sense okay a lot of people don't know that you were in Burmingham Alabama I've toured the factory before but you were there for many years and you started an American football team in Sweden where you grew up is this right so when I when I grew up in Sweden in the uh in the 80s in my high school they already had a football program oh they did okay and I started playing football in high school
- throughout high school and when I then went to to University the university that I went to did not have a team so indeed oh okay we got a group of guys together and started football team an American football team amazing and and played and I've followed it ever since and then later when I came to Mercedes uh one of my first job was to go to Alabama see that's hard you're right down the street from Tuscaloosa even if you're not a football fan you're going to become one Alabama it's impossible to not be a football fan if you're in.
- Alabama I mean you're in football heaven in Alabama so yes I follow uh football very very closely I'm going to try to at least get to one game this season I love it yeah college football is my vibe I love college football okay all right let's take a look or let's talk about the exterior of the vehicle it's got a very Sleek sporty Coupe type of line but don't be fooled by that the inside is very big I'm 64 and a half I fit in the back seat of this car you're tall we could sit behind each other I would imagine the pricing is not out yet but I would imagine the pricing it's going to be more economical so Ola timing what are we talking about for timing on this the world premiere uh where we show the final product will be in uh spring of uh next year so I guess for the US fans we're looking at the second half of 2025 thank you Olaf for hanging out today great to have you and looking forward to seeing you again all right now that I'm back in America and sitting in my daughter's Tesla Model 3 I can tell you that Mercedes is built like a Mercedes even though it's the entry
- level has tons of room in the front row and in the back row the seats are incredibly comfortable and the new display they wouldn't let me show you too much of the new display but it is really intuitive Tesla does a really good job at keeping it minimalistic and very easy to navigate through just like an iPad and now with this new change that's going into this Mercedes but should be going into the future ones also Mercedes has really simplified things and upped their game and it's going to be a better userfriendly.
- experience and I really like what ola said about that that it needs to be something that your kids can get in there and navigate through and make it simple and Mercedes-Benz did that and I'm sorry that I couldn't actually show you physically what it looked like but they are showing all of that soon and it will be out but yeah that's my second time I've interviewed Ola and I know we just drove around in the car and that's not my usual style of a video but thank you for watching this far in the video and thank you to Mercedes these B for letting me come out there and see that they did not pay me to do that but they gave me the experience which was really really cool so the more competition we can get with electric cars the more adoption we're going to have around the world and people are going to love driving these things and they're going to be affordable thanks for watching and let me know in the comments below I do want to see what your thoughts are and uh good luck to your Alabama Crimson Tide hopefully they can meet up in the playoffs my team is BYU right now as of filming.
- this video I think they're 5 and0 which so hopefully they don't eat the rat poison this week they have a big game coming up this week against Arizona but if they can win the Big 12 maybe we'll see our teams in the playoffs and then but I'm going to go for roll time there you go I'll accept it.
