The 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLE is an Excellent Luxury SUV

This is the new

2020

Mercedes-Benz GLE and it is the latest mid-size

luxury

SUV from Mercedes-Benz. Now

luxury

SUVs like this don't have much appeal for car enthusiasts, but they are very, very popular and it looks like a new luxury SUV. It comes out every two weeks today. I'm going to review the new GLE to see if it belongs on your luxury SUV shopping list. I borrowed this GLE from Fletcher Jones automobiles which is the gold standard of Mercedes-Benz dealerships located here in Orange County in Southern California and obviously Fletcher Jones has all the latest Mercedes-Benz models, but I was especially excited to see the new GLE that just went on sale.

First, a little overview now that GLE is the new name for the Mercedes-Benz m-class, which was one of the first mid-size luxury SUVs when it came out more than 20 years ago as the ML320. Mercedes rebranded it as the GLE a few years ago to bring it in line with its other smaller SUVs. GLC and the larger GLS, but this is the new GLE completely redesigned from the ground up for the

2020

model year. The GLE is offered in two versions. The base model GLE 350 uses a turbocharged four-cylinder with 2,155 horsepower and 273 pound-feet of torque or you can upgrade to this, the GLE 450, which uses a turbocharged six-cylinder with 362 horsepower and 369 pound-feet of torque. -ft of torque and I'm sure a more powerful AMG version is on the way now as the base GLE 350 starts around 57,000 and the 450 costs only about five grand more to start, which is a pretty small price jump considering the additional power.

Now the gle's closest rivals are the BMW walk through the new GLE and I'll show you all the cool quirks and features of the new Mercedes-Benz SUV, then I'll take it out on the road and drive it and then I'll give it a Doug rating and for more of my thoughts on the GLE, click Click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer, where I also put together a list of the best old-school luxury SUVs currently for sale on AutoTrader. Now I'm going to start the GLE's quirks and features with something you notice when you first get in and turn it on, and that's the headlights that dance a little.

When you do it now, many cars' headlights go up and down and then level out, but headlights go one step further. Take a look, thanks. That's a little strange and, frankly, I think it's kind of distinctive and cool, but not that unusual. but it gets a little more unusual because when you pull the hood latch to open the hood, the headlights dance a little now too. I'm not entirely sure why the headlights do that dance when the hood latch is pulled and the hood is open. but I assume they do this to confirm that you have actually pulled the hood latch and opened it successfully.

Now, the next lighting-related item you notice when you first get into the GLE is all this ambient lighting and look how cool it is. It really looks great and really sets the mood of this interior every time it gets dark or you walk into a garage, you see it everywhere and it's a really nice look, they've even placed it around these two handles in the middle. I've included these grab handles for when you're taking your GLE off-road and have to hold on to keep from flying out of your seat on some crazy off-road trail, but we've also lined them. in this really nice ambient lighting and everything looks very, very luxurious in this interior by the way, one really cool thing about those ambient lights is that they can change depending on the things that you do in the interior before, for example, you can see that I'm Turning up the temperature right now and the ambient light turns red to confirm to me that I'm getting warmer here, but it's only happening on the driver's side because I'm only turning up the driver's temperature.

You go through the passenger side. and do that and then the passenger side ambient light flashes red as I turn up the temp which is a really cool feature now when I turn down the temp the ambient lights are currently blue so they don't actually show up much. but if you go all the way and now the temperature can't go any lower, it shows white, so it's basically saying, "Hey, you're at the bottom of this menu, you can't go any further and on the driver's side." You can see the blue, there's not much contrast, but when you get to the bottom it shows white to let you know you've reached the coldest point.

It can be an interesting feature of these ambient lights. Now another interesting thing in this interior is the climate vent location to the left of the steering wheel on the driver's side, it has a fairly large climate vent next to the big green thing that I'll get to in a minute, on the right from the big screen, it has what looks like a climate vent but it's not, it's just there for symmetry and it's some kind of dummy climate vent and the reason it doesn't matter that there's a dummy climate vent is because there are four climate vents separated in the middle, so you definitely don't need a fifth now, you don't get into many cars that have four different air vents in the middle, usually it's three or even two, but the GLE goes out of its way to make sure the interior is the best.

Perfect temperature to your liking now the next one also in the middle I want to go down to the center console where you have this beautiful tray. It's actually a lid and I really like the material it has. It seems like a very nice material that you would use. for a pad or something, now you can open this by pressing this little latch on the back and when you open it, it reveals the cup holders and the wireless charging system. These are things that you would otherwise want to hide and when it's in place, everything looks great as ice here, but when you have it open and want more functionality in your center console, you can see that the two cupholders are actually cupholders, but if you have a larger drink you want to place.

You can move the plastic frame of the cup holder out of the way and that gives you more space for the cup holder. If you want to go back to having a smaller drink at that time, simply press this little button and then the cup holders will snap back into place and you'll be ready. accept a smaller drink, so they are very versatile cup holders under this nice lid and then I want to move on to the infotainment system, this is the latest infotainment system from Mercedes, the best version I have seen so far and I have to do it.

Let's say I get into a lot of cars and this is the best infotainment system in the automotive industry, better than Tesla, better than Volvo, which I also love, it's just fantastic and one of the main reasons is the absolute controllability of all. Look at this. Many times I post a review of a car that has a touchscreen and then people say I hate touchscreens. Well, in this car you can control the whole system using this little pad, it adds on the center console, you move your finger and press these buttons, it controls the whole infotainment system, but some people don't like the little pads, they prefer touch screens, guess what, it's also a touch screen, touch whatever you want, just like any normal touch screen system, and it's incredibly responsive every time you touch it. really great you can scroll through things it responds immediately to your finger it feels like a smartphone but there's even more controllability you don't want to use the touchpad or the touchscreen you can use this little set of buttons on the steering wheel to scroll and select various things on the infotainment screen and you can also control basically the entire screen from the steering wheel buttons so there are three separate places where you can control things on this infotainment system and it gets even better because you can talk to You need to listen, Hello Mercedes, how can I help you?

I'm cold, we're loyal to 65 degrees, so in other words, no matter what you prefer in this infotainment system, voice commands, steering wheel controls, touchscreen, central controls, you've got it all and that . the controllability is really great, it basically caters to women and everyone, no one can complain that the system doesn't work the preferred way because Mercedes just made everything redundant and they basically gave it all to you and with that in mind it's time to highlight some of the interesting quirks and features of this infotainment system. I've already talked about the system in the new Mercedes A-Class and the AMG GT four-door, which I'll link in the description below, but there are always more interesting quirks to find and I want to start with the seat kinetics.

This car has a feature called seat kinetics and you can activate it while driving. It is not a seat massage system, but when you turn it on it simply pushes different parts of the seats forward in various directions. It's time to stay cool, relaxed and relaxed while driving down the road, which is not a bad idea. I mentioned below how much I liked the color of the mood lighting in this interior, but you don't have to use it. this color there are several different ambient lighting colors you can choose from including my favorite which is now called color mix, if you choose to mix colors the colors will change slowly but surely as you drive down the road you can go from red to purple. to green and they all change as you drive, so you don't have to commit to just one individual color, but rather you can have a mix of colors as you drive, which is a nice and cool look.

The GLE's feature is the parking space search function. This is one of those cars that will automatically park for you once it finds a spot and you can press this little button on the center console and have it start looking for a spot and when I love the graph that appears on the infotainment screen which shows this car looking for a place and basically the way it works is that once it has found something it tells you and then you stand back and let the GLE do its thing? and park in a parallel parking spot, which eliminates the difficulty of parallel parking.

It's worth noting that although many new luxury vehicles have this feature, I happen to like the graphic on the infotainment screen. Now next we move on to the gauge cluster which According to the infotainment system, is probably my favorite gauge cluster system in the automotive industry, mainly because it's incredibly configurable. Look at the gauge cluster, you have three basic areas on the left in the middle and then on the right and you can change them all, the one on the left, you can change from the tachometer to several different functions of the car and the same story on the right, you can change that on the speedometer to show you several different things about the car and you can scroll through them and see all of its options now, the one in the middle by default shows various information from the trip data.

You can scroll through it and see basic trip information, but if you press the back button on the steering wheel, you can also see a list of all the various different things that you can put on that center screen your phone your navigation your music whatever you want you can do click on that and then you can scroll down the middle to full screen and do what you just chose full screen in the gauge cluster So you can have three different parts in the gauge cluster like I was showing you or you can have the full screen map or your music full screen or whatever, you can set it exactly how you want in your most perfect settings and it's great very often.

I see car companies putting a screen in the gauge cluster and then not letting you change it, which kind of defeats the purpose of a screen, but it makes sense to have a screen if you can really do as much and customize it as you want. As much as the GLE allows you to, and then we move on to the back seat of the GLE, where you won't find much of anything interesting here, it's actually a pretty simple and straightforward luxury vehicle back seat, although I will say it's a surprising surprise. spacious back here there is a lot of room, especially compared to other rival mid-size SUVs, there is a lot of legroom, there is a lot of headroom, it seems like the back seat of the GLE is more spacious than the X5, the Lexus RX of that kind.

Now it's worth noting that this particular GLE does not have third row seating, but it is available for people who want three rows of seating quite simply and then we move back to the GLE and specifically we move on to the cargo area and Obviously, to access the cargo area like all other luxury SUVs, you can open it automatically and when you do you will find a cargo area surprisinglyspacious back here, although obviously if you get a third row seating model it won't be as spacious, but with only two rows, you have plenty of room for your things and you also have a couple of interesting features here, starting with the fact that the spare tire is under the floor, something quite common, but the interesting thing is that the GLE comes with a small strap.

It can be used with a hook on the end to secure the cargo area floor in the up position to this molding that goes around the roof and that way when you change the tire, you don't have to keep coming over here and opening this up. You can always have it open thanks to this smart little strap, that's a good idea. Another thing I like back here is a first aid kit with all the typical first aid kit supplies, but my favorite is this illustration of a man who just hit a cyclist in his Mercedes-Benz that looks like an old S-Class I don't know when this graphic was last updated but still the man ran over the cyclist but now he will save him thanks to the magic of the Mercedes-Benz first aid kit included in his vehicle now, next we move under the hood and you can see the GLE 450 turbocharged six cylinder, now this is not a V6, it's an inline six and the power numbers are really strong 362 horsepower 378 pound-feet of torque, those are good numbers and they are a great improvement over the GLE 350 for 4 cylinders and 255 horsepower.

I'm also really surprised that the GLE 450 isn't much more expensive than the 350, the base price is only like seven thousand dollars more and to me it's well worth it to get over a hundred extra horsepower and a lot more torque. About 360 horsepower is still not an incredibly large number. I'm sure there will be an AMG version of this on the way. to deliver 500 and some horsepower with a growly and angry V8, but for now this is what you get. Next I want to talk about a couple of styling elements with the GLE starting here with the Mercedes-Benz badge on the newer Mercedes-Benz models.

The badge has become absolutely huge. Look how big this thing is. It's like a full size heavy truck. We are at that level. Remember when the Mercedes badge used to be subtle and small. It's long gone. Obviously one of the reasons it's so big. is that a lot of the sensors and radar systems for the adaptive cruise control, that kind of thing is integrated behind assigned to the badge, but anyway it's really very big, now one styling element that I love about this car is In the back. Look, it has these silver exhausts on each side of the bumper.

Now when you look closely at these exhausts, you can see that they are actually exhausts. You look there and you can see that they are functional, that's where the exhaust comes from, which is. more than can be said for other luxury SUVs and I don't want to name names because I don't want to embarrass the Audi SQ5, but there are still cars that have fake vents that look sporty and have an exhaust, but in reality the exhaust comes I'm very happy that Mercedes-Benz has not followed that trend and, speaking of design and style, I want to say that the exterior of this car looks good, it is not particularly beautiful, but it is certainly not ugly, it looks good, good, normal, nothing that someone would do. complain, but it's probably nothing they'd fall in love with either.

I think it's a decent looking car and next, since we're talking about the EXT interior and specifically the rear, one interesting element of this car, if you look back, you'll see it. Notice there's no immediately obvious backup camera back here, so where does it come from? Obviously, a vehicle like this has a backup camera. The answer is that it deploys when you put it in reverse, put it in reverse, and then the backup camera extends down from above the license plate. and that way it's hidden unless you're using it and that keeps it from getting dirty when it's not in use and that also ensures that the rear of the GLE looks a little cleaner than if it just had a backup camera. stuck here it looks a bit ugly and those are the quirks and features of the new Mercedes-Benz GLE, now it's time to take it out on the road and see how well it drives driving the GLE, you know, sometimes car enthusiasts They watch these videos and they say: Oh, I can tell you that you enjoy sports cars more.

That's actually not true. I enjoy cars like this because I love how competitive this market is. I love hyper-hyper competitive. You know, the X5 has a better camera system. but this car is better at infotainment, it's very interesting to get into each one and see how they try to outdo each other and new ones are constantly coming out and it's very interesting to me to see how those little changes happen and which ones you already know. what a small thing they have done to try to gain a small advantage over their competitor. I just find those things very interesting and in this car the infotainment really is the story here.

I just think this is a fantastic system, really great. I love it. capabilities, you have to be able to do things, huge screens, really, very, very useful. I truly believe he is the best in the auto industry and I thought Tesla was the best in the auto industry for about seven years and I think someone has finally caught up. road, the GLE is more or less exactly as I expected, i.e. quiet, comfortable, good visibility, good seating position, nothing you know, it's really crazy when you're creating an SUV in this segment, you don't want to shake the boat because This is such a common segment, there are so many buyers now that you can't go too crazy and this is another good example of that.

For better or worse, some people might want something that's a little crazier and for those people there will be the Jelly Coupe, there's the Velar, there's the Audi Q8 and more exciting vehicles, um, but this is just your typical family vehicle. suburban mom luxury you know and now found in every mildly nice suburb you know, from Woodlands Texas to Brookline Massachusetts, this is all over. and with this new Jelly I am already very clear that it is a great improvement over the previous one. The outgoing GLE was actually a very old design for a luxury SUV.

I think it came out like 2012. It didn't really look new and it wasn't um, but this is a big step forward, much more comfortable, much better technology, better everything, better steering wheel, better materials, um, it's just a really nice improvement, It drives exactly as you would expect from a Mercedes-Benz. The luxury SUV does a good job of keeping the bumps at bay, it's not as comfortable as high-end vehicles like the Range Rover or even the Mercedes new G-Wagon, but it's exactly what you'd want, it's relatively quiet here, visibility is good, you can see a lot in all directions big mirrors it's nice it's a good vehicle not said about it pretty good truck um I wasn't sure when I got here if I'd be shooting the Jelly 350 or the 450 or the 350 on paper .

It really doesn't seem like enough Mercedes says 0 to 60 in over seven seconds it's a four cylinder with only 250 horsepower that just isn't that strong for the US market we usually only get cars that are more powerful even this feels okay, but not lightning fast or anything, I'd really skip that base GLE 350 and go for the 450 uh, if you can, the price isn't that substantial, it looks like it's really worth it, and that's the Mercedes-Benz GLE 2020, although I suspect it is the base. The GLE 350 level could use a little more power, at least that's what it looks like on paper.

This appears to be the GLE 450, but either way it's a nice modern luxury SUV with lots of new technology and interesting features. and an available third row seat and it's a big improvement over the old GLE and now it's time to give the GLE a score Doug starting with the weekend categories and the GLE's styling is fine, nothing more, nothing less , and gets a 5 out of 10. Acceleration goes from 0 to 60 in 5.5 seconds and gets a 5 out of 10. Handling is average and gets a 5 out of 10. The fun factor is pretty moderate, it's reasonably fast, but otherwise it's not particularly fun, it gets a 4 out of 10.

Finally, the cool factor in the GLE 450 isn't necessarily cool, except that it's a new Mercedes SUV and it gets a 4 out of 10 for an overall weekend score. out of 23 out of 50. The following are the daily categories and features of the GLE 450 has an

excellent

infotainment system, truly the best in the business and many other good things, and gets a 9 out of 10. Comfort is average for the class and gets a 7 out of 10. The quality is good, the interior is fantastic. although long-term reliability remains to be seen and scores a 7 out of 10. Practicality is strong, the GLE has a spacious interior and an available third row and scores a 9 out of 10.

I finally appreciate that the GLE I drove had a sticker price of around 75,000, which is good for the technological power and the new body style, although not necessarily for the performance, it still gets a 6 out of 10 for a total daily score of 38 out of 50. Add it up and you get the Doug's score. It is 61 out of 100, which places him here compared to his rivals. It loses by one point overall to the new BMW X5, but the GLE actually wins in the everyday categories. The X5 is better looking and a little more fun to drive, but the GLE has better technology and an available third-row seat that you can't get in an X5 both deserve a spot on your luxury SUV shopping list.

It's actually surprising how much space there is back here. It's a reasonably spacious rear cargo area compared to a front cargo area that isn't. It is so spacious because it has a motor.