Mercedes-Benz B-Class review: A great compact crossover that Americans (mostly) can’t buy

Every American who drives in Europe returns to the Land of the Happy Meal with the same thought: “The cars in Europe are great! How come more of them don’t come to the US?” Case in point is the Mercedes-Benz B-Class, a compact crossover or multi-purpose vehicle with a decent array of tech features. In the US, it’s offered only as an electric vehicle, which means it’s going to sell in the hundreds not thousands a month.

The diesel-engine MB B180 I drove carries four to five, a lot of luggage for something barely 14 feet long, and gets 50 mpg on the highway. It could be the perfect car for a young city-dweller who needs something compact enough to fit in tight parking spaces. It’s equally suitable for downsizing boomers who want comfortable seating in back and much of the tech of their previous mid- or full-size luxury vehicles. Just as long as you’re willing to pay $40,000-$50,000 for something with less carrying capacity than our Editors’ Choice Subaru Forester or a Toyota RAV4 that top out in the thirties for gas-engine versions.

What this, ah, MPV is like to drive

I spent three weeks touring Spain this summer and the B180 was a perfect vehicle for Europe, narrow enough to get through ancient city streets (main photo), efficient at speed with highway economy of 4.5 liters per 100 km (52 mpg), and with useful safety aids such as attention assist (drowsiness detection) and lane departure warning. Air conditioning was near flawless which is good when southern Spain’s summer temperature approaches your body temperature. I drove a 2014, though the 2015 model year won't change much.

As with bigger Mercedes-Benzes, the car has a cockpit controller, Comand, that works reasonably well; a LCD display propped high on the dash; and a lot of buttons on the center stack, including a numeric keypad for dialing phone numbers.

Europeans are safety-conscious in different ways from Americans. But their safety regulators trust you, at least for now, to be careful playing with tech. If the front seat passenger wants to pair a Bluetooth phone after you start off, you can do it (so could the driver). In the US, an interlock prevents that and on many cars, entering navigation routes as well. The warning chimes (such as for seat belts) seem to come on later and more softly. Despite this, Spain and most other western European countries have lower auto fatality rates than in the US. Perhaps it’s because they, unlike us, don’t do things such crash a car while shaving(Opens in a new window).

The B-Class you can buy here: electric drive-only

If you want a B-Class here, you can buy one with extreme conditions: no gasoline, no diesel, no CNG, no hybrid models. Here it will be the B-Class Electric Drive only with a base price of $42,000, a range of 85 miles (EPA official estimate) to 100 miles (Mercedes real-world estimate). Federal and state incentives reduce the price by as much as $10,000.

The 28 kWh lithium-ion battery pack is sandwiched in the floor, an ingenious way to not make the car front-heavy or take away from the load height in the cargo area. The electric motor is rated at 177 hp (not a lot) and 251 pound-feet of torque (pretty good). A two-hour recharge off a 240-volt transformer adds 60 miles of range. Because it’s a heavy vehicle for its size at 3,900 pounds, the 84 MPGe (gasoline equivalency) is almost a third less than other EVs such as the RAV4 electric.

Mercedes is keeping the B-Class ED away from the flyover states as of the summer introduction. For now, it’s sold in states with strong zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandates: California and Oregon in the West; and New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, and Virginia in the East. A wider rollout comes in the first half of 2015, including heartland America. Chicago, you will be heard.

Does the base price seem high? The US version is well-equipped with the Mbrace 2 telematics system, a 5.8-inch LCD, USB connection (just one but with power to run a tablet), navigation, collision prevention assist (essentially smart forward collision warning), attention assist (drowsy driver alerts), and active parking assist. If you want to pay closer to $50,000, you can order blind spot detection, lane keep assist, parking sonar and advanced parking assist, and a higher-end Comand multimedia system with a 7-inch LCD.

Why cool European cars aren’t sold in the US

What makes sense in Europe doesn’t always translate to the US market. The Europeans don’t have the vast open stretches of highway seen in Montana or Texas, so the US understandably has less demand for the low-power cars that sell so well over there. We don’t pay $8 a gallon for gasoline and we also don’t pay more for gasoline than diesel, which is why diesel is the majority there and minority here. We don’t have narrow streets that make squared-off cars and boxy minivan-like people movers necessary.

Europeans regained weight in the generation after World War II when food was less scarce. In comparison, Americans poured on the pounds. In the past 50 years, the average American became 25 pounds heavier. That means the width of the B-Class, 70 inches (1,780 mm) isn’t adequate for three-across in back as you roll up to the drive-through window. The smallest Mercedes SUV/crossover before the B-Class, the GLK, is three inches wider.

The other cars you don’t see in the US are the brands that tried in the 1970s and 1980s such as Renault and Peugeot. They were unreliable at a time when Japanese cars were arriving with world-class reliability (for the era) and haven’t yet attempted a comeback. Fiat has and Alfa-Romeo will return, so resurrection is possible.

Should you buy?

The Mercedes-Benz B-Class is an acquired taste here: You’ve got to like electric drive and don’t need to drive more than 75 miles a day, unless your workplace has 240-volt charging stations, meaning you work at places like Google not WalMart. Interestingly, the list price is actually lower than a Toyota RAV4 EV before Toyota rebates. With Mercedes, you get the quality, luxury, quietness, and envy-inducing three-pointed star. There are things that Mercedes does almost better than anyone else, such as its Comand telematics system.

Mercedes-Benz has run more marketing simulations than we have. Their gurus see the prime competitor as the BMW i3. From our perspective, the Benz is a better people and cargo hauler (obviously), but the i3 is better as an emissary of alternative propulsion because it looks so different, just as the Toyota Prius hybrid, Nissan Leaf EV, and Tesla EV don’t look like combustion-engine cars you know. The i3 is also better for American roads because it offers a range extender, meaning a small gasoline engine that lets it run on and on. That makes it sort of like a plug-in hybrid, although it’s not described that way. BMW expects more than half of all purchases will be the range-extender version. The plug-in powerplant is something Mercedes should consider. If you buy an EV in the US, it’s either your second or third car because you need a long-range real car, too, or you’re willing to park the B-Class EV and rent a combustion engine car for the weekend trips.

Mercedes should consider bringing a gasoline or, better, diesel B-Class to the US. With a full tank of diesel, in Europe the range indicator in my car read 1,000 kilometers. That’s 625 miles. One of the small luxuries of owning a diesel is that most all weekend trips can be done without ever refueling. One of the biggest market segments is the downsizing baby boomer who wants the tech of his previous high-end car and the other is the well-off millennial for whom the cost of a $50,000 EV isn’t a lot different from a $35,000 EV. This is one vehicle that really should be sold in the US in greater-than-EV quantities.