E-Class Ups Its Tech Game

The 2024 Mercedes-Benz E-Class is a big freaking deal. The softly styled E450 4Matic here may look like any other midsize luxury sedan to you, but the E-Class represents so much more. For longtime watchers of the brand, the E-Class is a legend. This is a former Car of the Year winner that does duty as a taxi cab outside the U.S., serves as an upscale suburban commuter, and still makes time to rip up the asphalt in the form of a 600-plus-horsepower family wagon.

While the GLC and GLE SUVs top the sales charts, people use the E- and S-Class to judge the entire luxury brand. Oh, and not to make this personal, but I spent a year driving a 2021 Mercedes E450 4Matic after growing up in the back of my parents’ late-’80s E-Class four-doors.

Better not screw this up, Mercedes.

The E-Class story begins in 1993 when the name was first used on one of the brand’s midsize sedans. Consider the fact that the 2024 E-Class is built in a factory that’s been in the family since 1915 and you start to feel the heritage backing this car.

In the U.S, we’ll get E350 and E450 models. At launch, all American E-Class sedans will have standard 4Matic AWD, and it’s not clear whether a lower-priced E350 rear-drive model will appear down the line. We were never big fans of the last-gen E350’s turbo inline-four engine, but the new E350 is—like the E450—a 48-volt mild hybrid. This should mean an increase in refinement, smoother engine stop/start transitions, and quick boosts of power when you need it.

The E350 is good for 255 hp and 295 lb-ft while the E450 comes with a healthy 375 hp and 369 lb-ft. Both engines are mated to a nine-speed automatic. After that year in a 2021 E450, we found the refined, smooth, and quiet engine was the best part of the car.

The same is true about the new 2024 E450 4Matic. Beyond its refinement, the E450 justifies its place in the lineup with effortless and smooth acceleration.

The car is also blissfully quiet, although if you find it too hushed under acceleration, Mercedes has a techy answer for that. The automaker has tweaked its Progressive Sport Sound feature so you can make your car’s inline-six sound like a (slightly louder) V-8 in any drive mode, complete with silly but still quiet cracks and pops in Sport. The 2021 E450 reached 60 in a MotorTrend-tested 4.6 seconds and we expect similar performance from the new one.

One note on the car’s 48-volt mild-hybrid system, the engine stop-start system on our test cars took a tad too long to start up again at quick stops. Drivers who take their time and come to complete stops will never notice anything, but those who drive more briskly may notice a minor delay as the car turns back on.

Lately, we’ve had issues not with MotorTrend-tested braking performance of Mercedes cars but how they feel. Luckily, this wasn’t a problem with the 2024 E450s we drove; the cars combined easy to modulate brakes with a suspension that isolated the cabin from most—but not all—road imperfections.

Mercedes-tuned steel suspensions haven’t always impressed us, and it’s unclear how the standard 2024 E-Class cars will ride. There’s an easy solution to this uncertainty: Get the Technology package. If you can, just do it. Besides adding an air suspension, this bundle also includes rear-axle steering, one of the best features to come out of Mercedes in years.

We’ve seen rear steering systems where the rear wheels turn opposite the fronts up to 10 degrees at lower speeds, and in the same direction as the fronts at higher speeds. Here, the feature goes up to 4.5 degrees and you can feel the difference in maneuverability.

Mercedes has stuffed the 2024 E-Class with tech to entertain, engage, and protect. A 12.3-inch instrument cluster display offers a 3D depth effect—a feature that divided the MotorTrend staff when we experienced it on the S-Class. Move to the center stack and you’ll see something familiar to anyone who has spent time in a Benz lately: a large, portrait-style screen. Here, it’s 14.4 inches in size and has been laid out to make more tasks easier to operate straight from the home screen.

That screen includes digital controls for temperature and air speed-—so no physical buttons or knobs here—and a tiny physical volume slider just below the bottom right corner. Just like the Mercedes’ touch-sensitive steering wheel controls, they’re not intuitive at first but in our experience driving a 2021 E450 for a year, you can eventually learn where the important controls are without looking down. And when that doesn’t work, there’s always the improved voice commands.

We already previewed the 2024 E-Class interior in Silicon Valley, so we know how deeply software lives at the heart of this Mercedes. Many apps will facilitate interacting with your car in new ways beyond Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Those phone-mirroring features are still around, but now you can access Spotify, Apple Music, and other media services directly by signing into apps in the native operating system. The graphics make Spotify feel like an integrated part of the Mercedes infotainment universe. In the future, we’d prefer album covers to fill up more of that giant 14.4-inch screen, but perhaps that’s one over-the-air update away. There’s also a selfie camera, games and the ability to take Zoom calls with one of the car’s integrated cameras when the car is parked and without when it’s in motion.

Surprisingly, a 21-speaker 730-watt sound system is standard equipment on the 2024 E-Class. The Burmester 4D surround sound system places speakers in the headliner and two in the driver’s seat itself near your ears. The automaker tells us that right now, the seat-based speakers are only used for phone calls but is open to the possibility of using them for music in the future.

A 360-degree camera, active parking assist, augmented video for the navigation system, and a self-parking system are also all standard, strengthening our belief Mercedes is moving past the days of base trims with unimpressive levels of equipment.

Loaded cars will have an automatic lane change feature we experienced and appreciate. If you have the active cruise control on, if all Mercedes’ conditions are met, the car will change lanes without you doing a thing and then change back again when there’s an opening. And if your exit is approaching, the car will look for an opening to (automatically) change lanes.

Another 12.3-inch touchscreen is available for the front passenger, and as with other cars, we still see this as more of a tech-forward gimmick than something that moves luxury forward. All the impressive app functionality on the main screen? That’s useful to the driver, who often spends a lot of time solo in the vehicle, but we wonder what the point of a road trip is if the front passenger’s eyes are glued to a game or movie on a screen.

If they are, they’ll miss the luxurious interior’s leather and wood, which is almost everywhere.  The way the door trim wraps around the front of the dash isn’t new to the automotive world, but it looks great when it’s a tan ribbon of color against a black dash.

We’ve also seen the passenger-side dash without the available screen and prefer that look to a display that may get hot to the touch if the car’s been parked in the sun too long. The standard wood trim is illuminated with tiny Mercedes stars, just like the ones you find as wallpaper on the back of on-screen infotainment menus, inside the grille, and inside the taillights. Stars really are everywhere with the new E-Class.

Interior space has never been an E-Class strength, but the 2024 model is slightly bigger in the back seat. The back seat feels appropriately midsize but not cavernous. The only head-scratcher is the opening for entry and exit, which is a bit small.

On the outside, the E-Class is about what you’d expect. The design isn’t flashy or cool. Instead, it looks clean, curvaceous, and understatedly elegant, like the C- and S-Class sedans.

For all you car spotters, the best way to distinguish the new models are the Mercedes three-pointed stars in the taillights. The detail can be seen as clever or overwrought, depending on your perspective. The other differentiator is the black trim that connects the edge of the grille to the headlights. That styling element looks better in person and is supposed to reference electric EQ models. Before long, we expect other Benz sedans adopt this design, too.

The 2024 E-Class feels like a car that can do almost anything with a certain measure of excellence. We want an easier-to-access rear seat and dislike door handles that require more effort than a conventional one to open, but there’s lots of goodness here. The E450 drives well, which is a relief considering how much we liked the driving experience of the last one.

With Mercedes diving headfirst into tech, there’s simply no way to cover all the updates in one review. We hope owners will take an extra minute to consider all the different digital possibilities, because it can be overwhelming beyond the already exciting prospect of getting accustomed to a new car.

E450 drivers who never explore that side of the E will still be able to feel and see the luxury they expect from a staple of the brand. Like everything in life, it’s not perfect, but the 2024 E-Class can hold its headlights high as it moves the icon forward.