Mercedes CLA: First impressions from a Tesla owner

Having just had our Mercedes CLA 250+ for a week, I wanted to write down some first impressions and contrasts to our Tesla experience, from buying to driving, having had a Model X since 2020. This is that.

Big picture

The 2020 Tesla Model X is a 7-seater (7 actual full seats although there is limited headroom on the two most rear seats). As a family of five, we usually have the two last-row seats folded down, so the car has five full width seats and a very large trunk area. It can tow 2250kg and with four wheel drive it gets us everywhere during hard winters too. This has been an enormously practical family “bus” and we’re keeping the car.

With three people in the household having drivers licenses (maybe four next year) it was time to look at a second car - and to complement the X we wanted something smaller and more nimble.

Over the course of a few months we tested:

1. Mercedes CLA 250+
2. Tesla Model 3 (several editions, used and new)
3. VW id.3 (used)
4. BMW i4

Very quickly the field was narrowed down to the CLA and the Model 3. The id.3 is of course a completely different class of vehicle (and we did not care for how it handled), the BMW was priced similarly to the CLA and Model 3 but felt a lot less premium on the interior, noise and ride.

In the end we went with a CLA 250+ in beautiful red, no towing hitch and just rear wheel drive. We still have the X for towing and for getting through snow, it will be fine.

The buying process

With the Tesla, you go online and you are offered a few choices: Do you want the LR model or the Performance one? Which colour exterior (a handful of options) and which colour interior (two options). Would you like winter tyres with that? Hitch, yes or no? And that’s literally it.

Very very few options with obvious and easily understandable consequences and cost structure (each option has a price). While this explains why all Teslas look the same, it also explains why people are confident going to a website and ordering one without ever talking to a dealer.

Now the thing about Tesla to understand, is, that they evolve their vehicles every single day - little improvements to the manufacturing process are folded into the production line all the time. While they do make new model revisions every few years, changes happen all the time. These changes are not announced - you will need to find peace with the fact that you are getting a car that is as good as they can make it, at the time you order yours. If we had waited one week, our Tesla would have had 10% greater range; we didn’t know because nobody knew, and we don’t care, because we got the best car we could get at the time and you can always wait for an improved version no matter what kind of technology you are purchasing.

Huge contrast to the Mercedes experience. They also have an on-line configuration tool (good job!), but because of the way they structure their options, it is actually pretty complicated to use. It really makes sense to go to a dealership and talk to someone who understands the option structures and packages. For example, if we wanted extra rear side door airbags (which are not very costly) they required the full leather interior package (which is quite costly). If you are not deep into the Mercedes universe, this is just complicated and hard to make sense of.

What surprised us the most, I think, is the number of things that are options. What I mean by that is, the number of things they are willing to not put in your car, and still sell it under the Mercedes brand which I consider (and I think Mercedes considers) to be somewhat of a luxury brand. For example: Electrically adjustable seats - that is an option. Heated steering wheel - in the Scandinavian market - that is an option. Honestly I was surprised, I almost expected electrically operated side windows to be an option at that point. But also, I could maybe understand it if you could make a special order to have these basic things omitted - but that you have to be aware of it and remember to order them like extras is not intuitive to me.

To Mercedes’ credit (or the dealership really), we had great help walking through this and we got a lot of useful advice on which packages included which things and what was nice little extras - for example, adding massage front seats was less than 200€ if memory serves, but an option you had to remember to select. We would never have found that on our own - so thank you dealership!

In the end, we got exactly the car we wanted. Very happy with the result. Surprised at what the consequences could have been if we had not had competent assistance from the dealership.

Start your Engine

First time I drove a Tesla I was really puzzled by the lack of anything like an “ignition” key or on/off switch or similar. The car was just simply “on” all the time - if you entered the car with a key you could drive it, if you left the car it would lock the doors. Like a (cell-)phone, the car was no longer something you had to switch on or off - because, like a phone, it’s always on. Sure the motor doesn’t rotate the wheels all the time, the lights are not always on, but the battery holds power and the computer is on. Not having to switch your car on or off becomes the most natural thing in the world extremely quickly.

Today a lot of EV makers still put “On” or “Start Engine” or similar buttons in their vehicles. The button doesn’t really do anything, but you are required to push it before the car will drive - for no reason. That button is the symbol of legacy auto-makers that simply does not understand that time moved on.

I am so pleased that the CLA does not have such a button. Or at least that you do not have to press it (it technically has an on/off button that you press in order to put the parking brake on, weirdly). The CLA works just like Tesla in this regard; the car unlocks when you approach it, you enter the car, press the brake and put the car in “D” and off you go. No “Start Engine” buttons, no nonsense. Well done Mercedes!

Driving

The CLA is a much smaller car than the X of course so comparing the two can never be apples to apples. The CLA drives very well, it handles very well, it has good noise insulation and the ride is smooth on roads that are not perfect. It is a very pleasant drive.

The CLA is a little less “planted” than the Model 3, but then the CLA suspension is a little softer than the Model 3. That said both cars ride very well and both feel great through corners. The CLA is less snappy (smaller motor), but it is easily fast enough to get us to anywhere we are going and if you want a race car you are not looking a the CLA anyway.

Drive Assist vs. Autopilot

On the Tesla I practically always use Autopilot when driving on highways - it was quirky back in 2020 but OTA software updates corrected that and for the past many years it has been excellent. On a Tesla when you engage Autopilot it will very positively “take” the wheel for you, you can feel that the car is now steering - if you pull slightly on the steering wheel it does not budge. The car unmistakably “has the wheel”. You need to drive with your hand resting on the wheel slightly offset, so that the car can “feel” that you are still there.

The Mercedes Drive Assist is conceptually the same system - it does adaptive cruise control and it will steer your car on highways and smaller roads just like Tesla Autopilot. However, when Drive Assist is engaged, the car “sort of” has the wheel, it does steer, but you can steer too. So for example, if you want to move to one side of your lane you can do that. Coming from Tesla this is unnerving - it is not obviously clear from holding the wheel, whether the car will steer or not.

Now having put a few hundred km more on the car with Drive Assist I’m confident that this is just a matter of getting used to how this system is different from the other one. It is going to be perfectly fine, it just takes a bit of getting used to. I guess some people will argue that Drive Assist is “better” because it allows you to influence the steering a bit - personally I am more a fan of clear and unambiguous ownership of duty. But that’s personal preference, I get it.

Lane change

Both the CLA and the Tesla has the hardware and software necessary to do automatic lane changes on highways and to automatically park. However, on the Tesla these small extras are a rather pricey upgrade. It’s nice that Mercedes included lane changing with their Drive Assist because extended highway driving (where Drive Assist and Autopilot are just brilliant features) will invariably involve changing lanes every now and then. Tesla made a weird choice in my opinion to offer Autopilot without lane change. Well done Mercedes.

Very low speed ascent

Tesla does not use multi-speed gearboxes in their vehicles. Each electric motor has a fixed-ratio gearbox, and some of their cars then has different ratios on the front versus the rear motor (so one motor is optimised for high-speed and one for low-speed but both work at all speeds). This means the motors need to be run well both at extremely slow speeds and extremely high speeds - and this works incredibly well in every two-motor Tesla I have ever driven. Creeping up on a steep ramp or reversing with a heavy trailer is effortless, there is incredible torque delivered completely smoothly at all times, truly impressive.

The CLA on the other hand has a two-speed gear box. When accelerating onto a highway you feel a short pause in the acceleration when the gear box shifts up. While electric motors have excellent torque from zero rpm up to some enormous speed, they do have different efficiency at different speeds - presumably the gearbox helps the CLA be a more efficient vehicle, and should also help deliver torque better at all speeds.

In reality though, reversing slowly over a little bump for example, you can feel that torque is not delivered very evenly. The motor will ‘hesitate’ and it feels like it has problems overcoming resistance. Now to be clear this is not a huge issue - it is a noticeable contrast to the Tesla, but you can certainly reverse the CLA into anywhere it needs to go. I suspect this is just motor control software tuning that they can address over time in OTA updates - the motor certainly seems capable of moving the car with authority at higher speeds.

Electronic seats and driver memory

Each driver has a profile in the car where things like seat settings, sound, dash display and other preferences are stored. In theory this means when you enter the car using your own key the seats will be adjusted to your preference.

In reality, however, if I enter the car after my wife has driven it, I need to squeeze myself into the drivers seat, wait for the facial recognition to see that it’s me, and then the seat will adjust to my settings while the car greets me.

It is so strange that those settings do not apply when it unlocks the doors (like, for example, the Tesla does). I don’t know what couples do that share this car if they have larger size differences between them.

Again this must be an oversight that is easily fixed with an OTA software update.

The MBUX menu system

The car has a menu system on a centre console touch screen display - it allows you to adjust your preferences for all the things you would expect, like ambient lighting, audio or visual warnings, driver assist functionality and so on and so forth.

A few of the options are displayed, but are impossible to modify - unless the car is in Drive. This makes no sense. If anything, you could make the argument that the menu system could be disabled if the car was in “D” (to prevent distracted driving) - requiring the opposite is just nuts.

(Interestingly, while test driving the id.3 we accidentally folded the side view mirrors while parked, and were unable to fold them out again. It was not until the car was put in “D” that the fold/unfold button would allow them to unfold. I am not sure what it is with legacy automakers that make them make this decision - in contrast, in a Tesla the menus and buttons just do what they say all the time).

Add on top of that; I was playing with the menu options at home while parked in our driveway. After being forced to put the car in “D” to access parts of the menu, the drive assist system then decided to warn me about something with the parking space, thereby obscuring part of the menu. So the menu requires me to tell the car I wish to drive, for me to access the menu, while another part of the system obscures part of the menu to warn me that I should be careful when driving… That is a little bit silly…

As a software engineer myself I understand how something like this happens - luckily this would be fixed if simply the requirement to put the car in “D” to work a menu while parked, would be removed.

Driving dynamic - memory

Now about the driver profiles; great stuff of course (and to be expected). One option you can select is the “driving dynamic”, so whether you want “Eco” mode (saves power on aircon etc.), “Normal” or “Sport” mode (slightly more responsive accelerator, slightly less power steering assistance). For reasons that elude me, this particular setting is not stored in the driver profile.

For me personally I prefer the “Sport” mode (again this is not a race car - I just like that the accelerator is slightly more responsive and that I feel the road a tad more in the steering wheel), but I end up driving in “Normal” mode because who has time to sit and configure the car before every drive…

It would be really nice if this little quality-of-life setting would be stored in the profile along with everything else. One can hope for an OTA update.

One-pedal driving / Regenerative breaking

Tesla introduced one-pedal driving and as such they are the authority on this. On a Tesla this works extremely well - the way that the accelerator is used to modulate between acceleration and de-acceleration, and in particular how you modulate the strength of the de-acceleration is just extremely well put together. You will learn this style of driving in a couple of minutes, it is extremely intuitive, and I think most often when I commute I will complete both the highway and the city driving without ever touching the brake pedal. The brake pedal is literally for emergencies only.

The CLA has a couple of different “recuperation” modes. It has the “auto” mode which I suppose mostly mimics an ICE powered automatic-transmission vehicle - in other words there is no recuperation what so ever and letting go of the accelerator just means the car coasts. I guess this is useful to people who like to drive in this style where they periodically “apply speed” and then coast for 30 seconds, rinse and repeat. The regular “D” mode of recuperation is very mild - reminds me of the “D” mode in the Nissan Leaf we had before the Tesla, it sort-of regenerates but it is so little that I’m not sure what it is good for.

Finally it has the “D-” mode which has strong recuperation, actual one-pedal driving level. This works well. But… The modulation is ok but not great, I have to say. When slightly easing off on the accelerator, the recuperation will kick in quite forcefully - the modulation is not very well done here. On the Tesla, when you slightly ease off the accelerator, not much recuperation is applied - when you lift your foot further then stronger recuperation is applied. It’s hard to explain, but I wish someone would put a couple of Mercedes engineers into a Tesla and have them drive around half a day in a city - then move them to a CLA. And it has to be a couple of engineers, taking turns, because you feel this more as a passenger than as a driver. This would result in one small OTA software update which would completely correct this behaviour, making the CLA every bit as nice to one-pedal drive as the Teslas. It’s clearly a software-only issue so it is something I expect they will fix in the future.

Phone-based key

Our X is just old enough to not have NFC enabled locking; meaning we need to use the special keyfobs. You can use the phone app to unlock the car and enable driving, but there is no easy and convenient way to use the phone instead of a keyfob.

The CLA does have this ability. On paper it turns out. Even with the 2.1.1 software, the option to tie a phone to a driver profile and use it for unlocking the vehicle is unavailable. Like the X, we can of course use the app to unlock the car.

Looking forward to this option - which is announced - actually being available.

Frunk

The CLA has an excellent frunk. Well done Mercedes!

Obviously the Model X (being a much larger car and a Tesla (the inventors of the frunk)) has a bigger one. But that’s not the point - Mercedes has done extremely well finding the room for a practically usable and decently large frunk. Nice!

To access the frunk in any car you open the hood. In a Tesla this is done with a button on the touch screen because opening the hood is something you do whenever you access the frunk. It’s not a rarity.

It is interesting to see that on the modern CLA with a large and practical frunk, the opening of the hood is still accomplished with the Bowden cable opening introduced in the 1930s. Not a button on a touch screen. Not a little electrical button either. But a mechanical lever that pulls a cable - pull the lever twice and the hood can be opened.

There is nothing wrong with that system as such but it has a distinct agricultural feel to it, not something I would have expected to see in a luxury sedan in 2026.

Trunk

Comparing the two vehicles on trunk size would be pointless - the CLA being a Sedan of course has a much smaller opening for a cargo area that is actually pretty decent for a smaller car.

We were quite surprised that the trunk is not electrically operated though. Yes you can get buttons for that, and even a foot swipe sensor so you can open the trunk if you have your arms full of things that need to go into the trunk - but both options are part of the same rather expensive package that we did not order (I’m sure we were presented with it by the dealer and that we decided against it).

What that means is, we have a rather “hands on” trunk. You open it by pressing the big Mercedes logo on the back - you close it by grabbing it with your hands and slamming it shut. Now I have had plenty of cars that worked like that over the years (Saab 9000, Peugeot 307, Nissan Leaf) and there is nothing wrong with that system - but it is one of these little things where I understand that some brands will (or at least would) sell a car without a button to close the trunk but I don’t understand that Mercedes will in 2026.

Charging lid

On the Tesla, the charging lid opens when you press the little button on the charging cable plug (they have a wireless thing going), or it opens when you press the lid itself. When you have unplugged the charging cable the lid closes shortly after. It is impossible to drive off without closing the lid because it’s just not your job to close it. The car takes care of that, you just drive.

On the CLA, the charging lid opens when you press the lid. They do not support the Teslas wireless opening, which I guess is fine. However, having unplugged the charging cable, you need to close the cover yourself - and that’s fine, it’s like the trunk, nothing wrong with that system. But if you forget, you can drive off with the lid open - no warnings, no sound, no indicator on the dash even. The only way to tell you’re driving with the lid open is other motorists flashing their lights at you.

When I discovered the Renault Zoe worked like this I thought it was strange. Why would they skimp on a 0.1€ sensor to tell the driver the charge port is still open? I think it is even more strange in a Merc.

Headlights

We got the matrix headlights in the CLA (it was an option, but one that we were advised to take because those headlights are fantastic). I have not had a lot of time in the car at night yet, but for the driving I did do, the headlights are very good. It is very different from driving with “high beam / low beam” - it feels more like driving with an impossibly good low beam all the time. Absolutely a fan of that.

One funny thing is the light switch. Both the X and the CLA will of course be used in “auto” mode at all times, nobody switches lights on and off in a car any more (I presume - at least in the EU where driving lights are mandated). In the Tesla the lights are a menu option on the large touch screen (an option you almost never use) - in the CLA it is a good old fashioned big plastic push-button close to the drivers left knee. Nothing wrong with this of course, nobody needs to be pushing it, everything is automatic, but this is one of those interesting compromises where most things moved to the touch screen and a few things didn’t.

Ambient light

The X from 2020 is from before Tesla really did much ambient lighting - it does have a little, but a lot happened with ambient light across all automakers the past six years. We did not drive any of the test cars at night so we really could not compare ambient light between them.

We love the CLA interior at night - very well put together ambient light. I think I like the interior even more at night than during the day actually. It can be customised from the menu in many ways and I have not even had the time (or need) to play with that yet. All in all just really well put together.

Conclusion so far

First of all, we are very happy with our choice! The CLA is a nice car that drives well.

There are some of the nitpicks I have that just probably wouldn’t be there in more premium models. I totally understand that the CLA is not a Maybach, and of course you cannot get Maybach features and finish for CLA money. I understand it must be difficult for a brand like Mercedes to decide where they cut functionality to meet the cost expectations of lower tier models like the CLA. My comments are not meant as a criticism of their decisions, it’s simply a reflection of my expectations as a customer with a brand that I perceive as premium, buying a product that is in their lower tiers of “premiumness” (there, I made a word).

Other nitpicks are things that that I think Mercedes will address in OTA updates as they get time to fix technical debt and make smaller quality-of-life improvements on the software side.

Everything that I didn’t bring up here just works amazingly well. It is a really nice car, no question about it.