Next Mercedes-Benz C-Class to go all-hybrid

Emissions-reducing hybrid technology will find its way throughout the entire Mercedes-Benz C-Class range when it’s upgraded in 2021.

Sources involved in its development have insisted the fifth generation of the world’s best-selling premium car will offer both hybrid and plug-in hybrid power.

While the electrification of the C-Class sedan, wagon, coupe and convertible is the biggest news, as Benz spends big to slide beneath tough new European emissions laws, the technical advances won’t stop there.

With 10 new pure battery-electric cars rolling onto the market before midway through 2022, Benz has also hinted at an EV C-Class (or at least a C-Class-sized EV, badged EQ), which would make the entire range the most efficient of its type in history.

Daimler can talk all it likes about its SUVs and its burgeoning small-car range, but the C-Class and its variants make up a full 20 per cent of Mercedes-Benz sales, and it’s a strong seller globally.

It has so far wiped the floor with rivals like the BMW 3 Series, the Audi A4, the Jaguar XE and Volvo’s upcoming S60.

The new model will sit on a mild upgrade of Daimler’s rear-wheel drive MRA platform, which also underpins the E- and S-Class and the bigger SUVs.

It will grow longer in the wheelbase to deliver slightly more rear legroom, but it will not be much longer overall. Instead, most of the platform upgrades will be made to adapt the C-Class to its electrified future.

Every single model will be electrified through a choice of 48-volt mild-hybrid or full plug-in hybrid systems and it will again use four- and six-cylinder engines.

The entry car will retain the C 200 badge along with its 1.5-litre, four-cylinder petrol engine, linked up to an integrated starter motor with a small battery of its own.

But that car’s mild-hybrid, 48V technology will be spread across the C-Class board from mid-2021, with the belt-driven starter-generator allowing the combustion motor to deactivate when the car’s cruising and using its instant torque to help with accelerating at low engine speeds.

This time around the tech will join the inline 3.0-litre turbo sixes as well, particularly in the AMG-badged C 53, so it will be for performance as well as economy.

It won’t be the first of its kind, though, with just about every German car-maker set to counter the EU7 emissions rules with mild-hybrid, 48V power, right down to the next Volkswagen Golf Mk VIII.

Plug-in hybrid versions of the next C-Class will stretch the zero-emission driving range out to more than 80km – and this time it will be measured on the new, more realistic WLTP consumption/emissions test, rather than the old, laboratory-only NEDC rules.

Benz has plans for two different plug-in hybrid versions of the C-Class, with a petrol-engined model and also the diesel powertrain it’s already using in the C 300.

It suspension set-up will develop further along the current car’s successful fine line between comfort and handling, plus it will be fitted with Level 3 (SAE) semi-autonomous driving features from its suite of driver-assistance systems.

Like Audi’s A6, A7 and A8, the full breadth of the technology will need to wait on regulatory changes before it can be legally deployed in most markets.

Still, it should offer hands-free driving capability on highways at up to 130km/h – the speed limit on most European motorways.