E300 Hybrid Reliability Issues

simonrip

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2014 E300 Hybrid
E300 Cost of New Hybrid Battery

Well, the dealer has identified the problem at last, and it turns out that it was a faulty hybrid battery, as expected. Just in case anyone is interested, the cost of this part is apparently 9,000 pounds. Given that my car has been at the dealership for 3 weeks, it is probably safe to assume another couple of thousand pounds for labour for diagnosis and repair - if you were unlucky enough to experience this failure out of warranty.

I have already rejected the car and I am waiting to be given a delivery time for the replacement.

I will add another comment shortly about how I feel Mercedes has dealt with this issue.
 

Frontstep

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Wow thats a lot of Duracells enough I suspect to write the car off in under 10 years.
 

simonrip

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Mercedes Customer Service in General

I can only speak with reference to my personal experience of Mercedes customer service, but it seems to me that Mercedes needs to make significant changes to how it deals with customer problems when they arise.

I am fully aware that customers may be unreasonable or difficult at times, but there seems to be a pervasive feeling amongst many Mercedes staff (by which I mean staff at dealerships as well as direct employees of Mercedes) that any customer who complains is simply making a nuisance of him/herself. This is a cultural issue which needs to be resolved.

Mercedes customers will be more demanding than most, as they have typically invested a lot of money into what they believe is a premium product. When this product fails to live up to expectations, they will obviously be aggrieved, and it is how Mercedes responds to this which is crucial.

A customer who has experienced a problem which is then quickly resolved, will actually be more likely to purchase again from that supplier than from one where there was no problem at all. This is common knowledge in the customer service industry. Also, it used to be a said that a happy customer tells 1 person, and an unhappy customer tells 10. In these days of social media, it is more likely that the unhappy customer will tweet 1000 people. A company like Mercedes needs to wake up to this quickly.

I won't repeat my long-drawn-out problems, but I will give one more example of why I am so angry with Mercedes. When I contacted the dealer on Friday to reject my car, the aftersales manager was polite, sympathetic and told me off the record that he felt the rejection was completely justified and was a very strong case. All good so far. When I phoned him three days later to check on progress, he told me that he was waiting for his director to sort out the paperwork, and it would be ready to send to Mercedes Head Office soon. For him, an extra few days for a customer whose brand new car has already been off the road for 3 weeks was irrelevant. To me, it showed that Mercedes just didn't care, and there was absolutely no urgency to resolve the problem for me. I now find out that it can take Mercedes up to 4 weeks to respond to a request to reject a car! That is absolutely unbelievable, and shows a total lack of consideration or understanding of the situation.

I run my own business, and have considerable experience of how a situation like this should be dealt with, and I don't have a fraction of the resources that Mercedes has at its disposal.

Firstly, there needs to be a small, dedicated team to deal with pre-existing faults on new vehicles. I am not talking about cars which have broken, but that small number of new vehicles which are delivered with a serious and fundamental fault. The local dealer needs to quickly identify when such a problem occurs, and escalate it immediately. Any customer of a brand new vehicle who experiences a significant fault or failure will be very unhappy, and needs to be reassured that everything will be quickly resolved to his/her satisfaction.

Contrast how Porsche has dealt with the GT3 engine problem. A few customers' cars caught fire, so Porsche looked into it and identified the fault. They contacted every customer, explained the problem, and replaced the entire engine of every single vehicle. Result - some customers may not have been thrilled, but you couldn't argue that Porsche could have done any more.

If that was Mercedes, they would have taken the car in, had it in the workshop for weeks without phoning once with an update, would have provided a cheap loan car and acted like you were lucky to have anything, then stripped down and rebuilt your brand new engine and told you it would be fine.

Come on Mercedes, find out which company trains staff at John Lewis, and send every single one of your staff on a customer service course. A little empathy goes a long way.
 

Frontstep

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Mercedes do have a department to deal with customer problems;
 

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simonrip

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2014 E300 Hybrid
Do you mean Mercedes Customer Service?

Unfortunately they have no authority to actually do anything. I spoke to them when my car was recovered, but they have never contacted me in the 3 weeks since, and when I have phoned them they just told me to talk to my dealer. Friendly, but useless unfortunately. If they could escalate a problem, so that it was dealt with by someone in authority then they would be worthwhile.
 

Suvit

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E300 Hybrid / 2013
Hi all,

I had similar problems with my E300 Hybrid. The car is just about one year old now. After the first 6 months, the car start to have starting problems intermittenly (green READY lamp not shown). But given a few tries, it can start normally. There was one time that it took 5 minutes to start the car. I thought that it won't start anymore but keep trying with S mode and turn off all electrical load until it started but without the hybrid system (the very unusual state which happenned only once). The engine did not stop/start any more even in E mode, the battery was not used or charged (constant level at about 40%) and air condition did not work (fan only because the compressor is powered by hybrid battery). I then turned off the engine and started it again, it started easily but still without hybrid. I drove to work in that condition (really hot without air conditioner). When I arrived my office an hour later, I stopped and started the engine again, the hybrid still not working. In the afternoon, I decided to drive the car to service center but the car was back to normal with hybrid and air conditioner working like nothing happened before. The mechanics could not find anything wrong with their Star Diagnostic Tools. They didn't know what to repair. After that, the starting problem still occurred a few times every month.

Moreover, recently the engine just shutdown while driving on the road but can restart again easily. It happenned 4-5 times already. So I started searching internet to find the clues and found this thread here. I live in Thailand but my car was imported from UK because we drive on the same side. I've heard that there are a few cases of brand new E300 Hybrid in Thailand with starting problems or engine shutdown too, but nowhere else in the world. I suspect that this problem is related to UK production only. Because there is no report in any other country.

I think this is not purely the major hardware failure because everything is working fine after starting. It could be some over-sensitive protection mechanism in the software that prevent starting or even shutdown the engine. But surely there must be some minor hardware problems to trigger it. Just want to share the symptoms and my analysis. I will let you know if any more progress.

Suvit
 

simonrip

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Sorry to hear that you also have a problem with your E300 hybrid. Mercedes UK had no previous experience of hybrid battery failures, and it took a long time to identify the problem with my car. This suggests to me that failure of the hybrid system is certainly not a common issue in the UK, and if it was there would be a lot more reported problems. Good luck with finding a solution.

Simon
 

John Laidlaw

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Do you mean Mercedes Customer Service?

Unfortunately they have no authority to actually do anything. I spoke to them when my car was recovered, but they have never contacted me in the 3 weeks since, and when I have phoned them they just told me to talk to my dealer. Friendly, but useless unfortunately. If they could escalate a problem, so that it was dealt with by someone in authority then they would be worthwhile.

it was the picture of the guy with his head in the sand! Classic!
 

John Laidlaw

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Hi all,

I had similar problems with my E300 Hybrid. The car is just about one year old now. After the first 6 months, the car start to have starting problems intermittenly (green READY lamp not shown). But given a few tries, it can start normally. There was one time that it took 5 minutes to start the car. I thought that it won't start anymore but keep trying with S mode and turn off all electrical load until it started but without the hybrid system (the very unusual state which happenned only once). The engine did not stop/start any more even in E mode, the battery was not used or charged (constant level at about 40%) and air condition did not work (fan only because the compressor is powered by hybrid battery). I then turned off the engine and started it again, it started easily but still without hybrid. I drove to work in that condition (really hot without air conditioner). When I arrived my office an hour later, I stopped and started the engine again, the hybrid still not working. In the afternoon, I decided to drive the car to service center but the car was back to normal with hybrid and air conditioner working like nothing happened before. The mechanics could not find anything wrong with their Star Diagnostic Tools. They didn't know what to repair. After that, the starting problem still occurred a few times every month.

Moreover, recently the engine just shutdown while driving on the road but can restart again easily. It happenned 4-5 times already. So I started searching internet to find the clues and found this thread here. I live in Thailand but my car was imported from UK because we drive on the same side. I've heard that there are a few cases of brand new E300 Hybrid in Thailand with starting problems or engine shutdown too, but nowhere else in the world. I suspect that this problem is related to UK production only. Because there is no report in any other country.

I think this is not purely the major hardware failure because everything is working fine after starting. It could be some over-sensitive protection mechanism in the software that prevent starting or even shutdown the engine. But surely there must be some minor hardware problems to trigger it. Just want to share the symptoms and my analysis. I will let you know if any more progress.

Suvit

sorry to hear about this too, I have been lucky it seems, 1 year anniversary 2nd September and never missed a beat. I wonder if Mercedes have experienced similar problems in other relatively high humidity countries?
 

drdel

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I've read this thread with interest as I have just returned from a MB dealer having enquired about a new E Hybrid Estate. I must say I find the. almost abrasive, remarks by our MB 'dealer' insider surprises me - he'll certainly not win entry to the diplomatic core !!

For some people the purchase of a 40k+ car is probably the second most expensive thing they'll buy and MB markets the durability and reliability of its cars - the web also claims wonderful customer care !!

I've noticed that MB and its dealers treat customers fine until they have your cash and if you're wanting a service that's OK they will take your money. As soon as there's an issue they run for the hills as now-one wants to be the person with the problem.

The OP's car should not have failed, it did and he needs support to resolve it promptly. His contract is with the dealer but the dealer just wants to hide behind his franchise deal with MB. Providing a loan car is often just a way of getting rid of you, and then they sit on their fat a** and do little. This is because they will never experience the effect personally as they drive cars supplied by the employer/dealer and when there's an issue they use another, its not their cash so they have no sense of ownership so don't give a monkey's.

I could not speak to a sales-person as I was first directed to a 'product specialist' equipped with his iPad into which he one-finger typed everything I mentioned. My simple questions, 1. on battery life and warranty terms weren't answered and 2. what cars did they have in their pipeline. Only yielded "would you like me to make an appointment for you to meet a sales-person next week; because I can't access the production system!" 45mins later and having lost the will to live I just grabbed brochures and a price list and decided to see what I could do on-line.

This story has gone a long way to convincing me I might look elsewhere (I know these forums are not representative of the total but the dealer's treatment does ring bells)
 

John Laidlaw

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better with leasing. I dealt with the lease manager at MB of Liverpool- quite excellent, unbelievably slick and informative handover too
 

voyce

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mercedes e300 hybrid amg sport
Hi,

Apologies if this post has been covered before, but I am a new member and I couldn't see a search facility on the forums.

My new E300 Hybrid finally arrived two days ago, after a 14 week wait, and I was thrilled with it right up to the point where it broke down yesterday!! I had left it in a car park and it just refused to start, showing the error message 'malfunction' with a battery symbol, which indicates a problem with the hybrid system. I left it for 1/2 hour, and by the time I came back it had fixed itself (temporarily or otherwise).

I have booked it in for a check-up at the local dealer, but I wondered if there had been reported issues with reliability of the hybrid system? A quick google search didn't turn anything up, but I don't want to find that I am a guinea pig for unproven tech which turns out to be unreliable. Not a great experience so far.

Simon

i purchased this car october 10 2014 and almost done 11.500 miles when purchased was 7000 miles on the clock the car broken down on sunday engine managment light was on. since first day the car had issue with consumption. i never got 70 mpg with this vehicle. the company claims that and it is not correct.i complained for this problem to check in and booked for monday morning for this issue when broken down on sunday they check the vehicle saying gear bok plate issue and they have no parts here and i have to wait 8 days for this part to come from germany. i am a chauffeur and i can not afford to let car my car to go for next 8 days mercedes un able to help me apart from fixing the issue under warranty i need to go work to earn money and stuck in doors brand new car broken and got 5 years to pay more for this disapointment my 2010 e250 avantgarde was better consumption then brand new e300 hybrid
 

simonrip

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That is very bad luck, but Mercedes will offer you a loan car while your car is off the road for 8 days. You just need to phone the Mercedes assistance number and they will arrange a car for you.

Unfortunately you will not get 70mpg from this car. If you are in slow traffic then the mpg will be better than the E250, as you can coast on electric power, but for long distance you will not really see any difference. If you get more than 45mpg average you are doing well, but if you drive very gently then it is possible.

It is too late now, but for next time I would suggest going for a long test drive to see how the real mpg compares.

Good luck with the repair.

Simon
 

John Laidlaw

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yes, echoed, sorry to hear these woes. My E300 has behaved beautifully over nearly 20 months now, no issues. as Simon says, there is no chance of 70mpg ever. I did once on a long run get c63mpg, but very very carefully. I am currently averaging 45, but expect that to improve when I put my summer tyres back on for the last 4 months I will have it. C350e PHEV Estate ordered for 1st September- allegedly 135mpg! That won't happen of course, but......
 

turbopete

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my old c220 cdi computer has always been worryingly accurate on long runs (not always great on sub 100 mile trips) and this is the best ive managed so far.



Apologies to the tree huggers who want everyone to drive newer, low emissions cars to get better MPG (in their misguided minds!)
 

John Laidlaw

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my old c220 cdi computer has always been worryingly accurate on long runs (not always great on sub 100 mile trips) and this is the best ive managed so far.



Apologies to the tree huggers who want everyone to drive newer, low emissions cars to get better MPG (in their misguided minds!)

don't apologise, that's outstanding!
 

turbopete

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don't apologise, that's outstanding!

thanks. the same car a few years ago managed over 850 miles on a 60-off litre tank, without refuelling. it was filled to the brim of the neck though as there was a 20-odd mile trip from the filling station home. same car, different driver, same family.
 
A

ageddes99

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I have had quite a bit of trouble with my E300 Hybrid within 6 months of new. Started running poorly with what seemed like an intermittent misfire. MB took the car in and did a pile of work under the guise of the 'recall' which included new starter motor, new ECU and new fuel rail pus a visit from MB Germany and on receipt of the car 2 months later the problem hasnt gone away. Gearbox reprogram hasn't fixed it either and I have no warning lights coming on just an intermittent cough. These cars run super smooth so when there is something wrong it really stands out. Quite a bit of vibration now from when the new starter motor kicks in also so this will be going back to MB for them to go back to the drawing board. Interested if anybody else has experienced the mystery misfire?
 

John Laidlaw

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no misfire on mine after 20 months+, sorry to hear your ills with the car. As you say, they are silky smooth when running properly
 
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