What’s hot, what’s not about the latest Mercedes-Benz A-Class

[snoop1130]

What’s hot, what’s not about the latest Mercedes-Benz A-Class

By Kingsley Wijayasinha

 

 

The newest Mercedes-Benz A-Class unveiled in Bangkok on Wednesday is probably the costliest 1.3-litre sedan in the Thai market.

 

Priced at Bt2.49 million, the A 200 AMG Dynamic comes with a turbocharged 1.3-litre engine that develops 163 horsepower and 250Nm of torque. Mercedes-Benz claims 0-100km/h acceleration in 8.1 seconds and a top speed of 230km/h.

 

The engine-size reduction is result of stricter emission laws that have forced virtually all automakers to lower engine displacement in newer models.

 

The A 200 AMG Dynamic produces just 130g/km of CO2 and 0.02g/km of nitrous oxide while boasting 0g/km of particulate matter, according to official Eco Sticker figures. The average fuel economy is claimed at 17.5km/litre.

 

Currently only the imported version is available, while lower-priced CKD versions will follow later, once local assembly commences, although the timing has not been confirmed by the German automaker, which is also building a battery plant in Thailand for use in its PHEV (Plugin Electric Hybrid Vehicle) line-up and possibly EVs if it decides to assemble one here in the future.

 

The lowest-priced Mercedes-Benzes in Thailand currently are A-Class variants from the previous generation, including the CLA 200 Urban (Bt2.14 million), GLA 200 Urban (Bt2.175 million), and C 220 Avantgarde (Bt2.379 million).

 

Last year, one out of four Mercedes-Benz passenger cars sold in Thailand were small models, said Roland Folger, president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz (Thailand) Ltd.

 

“Positioned as an appealing product for young owners who love freedom, digital lifestyles and work-life balance, the new A 200 AMG Dynamic features an attractive, all-new sporty design axiom inside and out that retains unique qualities of passenger cars in the A-Class family, including an agile exterior, a large cabin centred on daily utility, a stunning engine offering fuel economy and best-in-class safety features,” he said.

 

The A-Class has a newly introduced multimedia system called Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX), Folger added.

 

“The system is intuitive when using and learns the habits of users. This is also the first time in a compact car model that MBUX can function in sync with our trusted Mercedes Me Connect to establish a strong, seamless connection between owner, the vehicle, authorised dealers and other compatible services,” he said. 

 

“This amazing system integration means Mercedes-Benz can offer new functions to owners of the A-Class, especially intelligent voice control with natural speech recognition. In this case, the system can understand various English dialects and is easy to activate by voice with the key-phrase ‘Hey, Mercedes’, so focus on the road can remain unchanged when a command is being input.”

 

During the first six months of this year, Mercedes-Benz sold 7,289 vehicles in the country, a 3.1-per-cent decline compared to the corresponding period last year. 

 

Meanwhile, arch rival BMW is close behind at 5,474 vehicles, down 1.5 per cent, followed by Volvo with 1,079 units, a surge of over 90 per cent thanks to high popularity of the new XC40 compact SUV.

 

_{Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/auto/30375201}

 

_{-- © Copyright The Nation Thailand 2019-08-22}

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[kotsak]

The 200 badge was already a joke with a 1.8L engine (not to mention the 180 with the 1.6) now it's more laughable.. I miss the old time where the badge represented the actual engine size..

[nobodysfriend]

Time to mass produce affordable and reliable electric cars , they have the technology for that , so just do it !

 

[hobobo]

1 hour ago, nobodysfriend said:

Time to mass produce affordable and reliable electric cars , they have the technology for that , so just do it !

 

Agree that they can produce affordable and reliable electric cars, but what about infrastructure? Germany and the UK are just two of the many countries that realized that they need at least ten times as many public charging spots as they currently have. In Thailand the charging queue would stretch from Pattaya to Trat if they sold more purely electric cars. Home charging units are just not practical enough.

[brokenbone]

they are too small, i had my knees up to my ears

and bent my neck as hard as i could to fit in a fookin amg,

and was still hitting the roof with my head and panel with my shins.

you cant even pull back the seat or reel back the back support in those 2 seat suckers.

those were the days when a merc meant comfort.

...or perhaps mercedes are simply aiming at asians these days ?

Edited August 23, 2019 by brokenbone

[shady86]

15 hours ago, kotsak said:

The 200 badge was already a joke with a 1.8L engine (not to mention the 180 with the 1.6) now it's more laughable.. I miss the old time where the badge represented the actual engine size..

Most manufacturers downsizing and turbocharging so the badge doesn't represent the actual engine size anymore. Even the bigger C and E class all uses 2 liter with different tunes for 200, 250 and even 300. The power output sounds reasonable for 200 badge, comparable or even stronger than a NA 2l engine.

 

[madhav]

2 hours ago, nobodysfriend said:

Time to mass produce affordable and reliable electric cars , they have the technology for that , so just do it !

 

VW will be the one to do it first in terms of the German company.

 

Their production will ramp up to 300k per year. The ID 3 will be the beetle for the new electric age.

 

https://electrek.co/2019/08/21/electric-car-chart-end-combustion-engine/

 

Although Tesla will open another plant in China so they will double their production to likely 600k per year.

[CLW]

Ah finally they have A-Class in Thailand. Waiting for the smaller, cheaper models which should be affordable once they arrive as CKD.

[khastan]

This may interest someone. I worked at Mercedes Benz UK for over 12 years very many years ago. Only the expensive upmarket models had electric anything. The cheaper ones were all manual, even the windows. They were all built to last though and would run forever. I have seen cars with over 200000 miles on the clock still running. They were so well built and we had very few fatalities. One particular incident springs to mind. A gold 350SL had overturned on the motorway doing well over 100 mph, slid on its roof on the tarmac and then across a muddy field filling most of the interior with mud. The owner (who was quite well know at the time) extracted himself from the mud and other than being shook up was uninjured. The car, has was the policy was written off by MB but found its way back on the market has good as new.

[Tropposurfer]

2 hours ago, brokenbone said:

they are too small, i had my knees up to my ears

and bent my neck as hard as i could to fit in a fookin amg,

and was still hitting the roof with my head and panel with my shins.

you cant even pull back the seat or reel back the back support in those 2 seat suckers.

those were the days when a merc meant comfort.

...or perhaps mercedes are simply aiming at asians these days ?

Agree even the gl series are small. Got to go to the gle to get reasonable cabin room.

and frankly 120 k for an suv with the Benz accoutrements is not good value.

the sedans like cls while looking so hot have no bloody headroom.

i was going to buy a late model gle as I’ve been a Benz driver for quite a while but the newer models just don’t do it for me, gle is almost same as the old ml just different body ... no heads up, poor economy compared the X5, etc etc.

the gle is sorely lacking in the tech of b’mwrs porsche etc.

i think for what you get in a Benz nowadays they are overpriced too!

my two cents worth.

[jackdd]

5 hours ago, nobodysfriend said:

Time to mass produce affordable and reliable electric cars , they have the technology for that , so just do it !

There is just no real reason to do this now. Humanity will not stop burning oil until all reserves are depleted. Does it change much if we deplete them in 50 or in 100 years? Once they are depleted we will have to switch to electric (or something else).

If we would all switch to electric cars right now this would just mean the price for oil would go down, which would mean more oil would be used in airplanes and ships and for producing plastic.

 

Edited August 23, 2019 by jackdd