The new Mercedes CLA has problems ahead of launch: the car can’t charge at older 400V DC stations.
Mercedes has often been criticized for poor charging power for premium brand claims. That’s why the new MMA platform underpinning the new Mercedes CLA was designed from the ground up with 800V technology. As a result, the new electric model has a very good charging power of up to 320 kW compared to a maximum of 205 kW for current models in the EQE/EQS range.
However, the new technology is not compatible with older 400V DC stations. By comparison, however, competitors offer solutions that are compatible with these stations. Hyundai-Kia has a DC-DC converter for cases where cars are charging at older 400V stations. The PPE platform used for the new Porsche Macan and Audi Q6 e-tron models has an innovation that allows the split of the 800V battery into “two 400V batteries”, so charging works at older 400V stations.
But Mercedes doesn’t have such a converter installed on the car, at least not in countries with a well-developed network of 800V DC stations. Therefore, the new Mercedes CLA will not be able to charge at the old 400V stations, which usually have a maximum charging capacity of 50 kW. This is also stated by Mercedes in the car configurator: “Fast charging is only possible at 800-volt stations.” Incidentally, in the car’s navigation system, which now works with Google Maps and also has a route planner function displaying the charging stations, only 800-volt stations are active.
However, the car is equipped with a DC-DC converter but this is only used to convert from 800V to 12V for on-board consumers such as headlights, seat heating, or the multimedia system.
Charging from a home wall box or public AC outlets up to 22 kW is not affected.
There were 882,012 public charging points in Europe at the end of 2024, of which 16% were DC stations and 84% AC stations. Doing a calculation results in 144,121 DC charging points and about 13% of them are older than 400V stations with a maximum of 50 kW.