If you’ve spent any time reading about the German automobile industry, you’ve probably heard the name Jürgen Resch. Resch is the head of a non-profit organization called Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), or Environmental Action Germany. He made headlines in 2018 after his organization sued automakers to hold them accountable for a ban on diesel cars in the country’s most polluted cities, and was among the first to take Volkswagen to court over its infamous diesel scandal.
These days, the DUH is focused on enforcing the EU’s upcoming ban on the sale of gas- and diesel-powered cars, while also holding companies throughout Germany accountable for stuff like “greenwashing,” a practice in which corporations tout their products as environmentally beneficial when, in many cases, they are not.
To give you an idea of the DUH’s goals, it sued Mercedes-Benz a few years back, accusing the brand “of infringing on people’s freedoms by exacerbating climate change,” according to Reuters. The suit demanded that Mercedes adhere to tighter emissions goals and commit to ending production of ICE-powered vehicles by 2030. The lawsuit was dropped in 2022, but the DUH plans to appeal that decision.
The DUH regularly tests cars to see if they hold up to their fuel consumption and emissions claims with the help of Axel Friedrich, an environmentalist who spent time at Germany’s Umwelt Bundesamt (UBA), the country’s federal environmental agency. German publication Manager Magazin describes him in a particularly threatening light:
Axel Friedrich (77), a former department head at the Federal Environment Agency, regularly measures everything that can be measured for environmental protection organizations, including the German Environmental Aid. He examines cars and cruise ships for their pollutant emissions. He is considered by the media to be an “emissions hunter” or “the scourge of the auto industry.”
According to Manager Magazin, Mercedes was understandably nervous about supplying a CLA to the DUH for testing purposes. The company claims the CLA can hit 12.2 kWh/100 km (5.09 miles/kWh), making it the most efficient EV in Europe. Any results differing from that would cast doubt on the company’s reputation and risk losing that highly desired EV efficiency crown. But reportedly, the car performed exactly as it was supposed to. From Manager Magazin:
Friedrich drove kilometer after kilometer over three days, achieving a reading of 12.22 for the CLA. The car lived up to its promise. The on-road results matched—something truly rare—the manufacturer’s lab values.
Resch couldn’t or didn’t want to believe this. He reportedly asked Friedrich to subsequently test various versions of the Tesla electric benchmark. He also tested Model 3 models, but the CLA remained the most fuel-efficient. According to those close to him, Friedrich raved about the CLA, saying the Mercedes was the best electric car he’d ever driven.
At this point, you’d think Resch would make the results public, confirming Mercedes’ claims and reaffirming the CLA’s position as the most efficient electric car on the market right now. Except that’s not what happened, according to Manager Magazin:
But unlike usual, Resch remained silent afterward. The DUH did not publish the positive result for Mercedes. Mercedes also remained silent—although they would, of course, have liked to make the test results public.
Resch says he disliked the idea that Mercedes might use the measurement results to advertise under the label of Deutsche Umwelthilfe. He also doesn’t know whether the CLA provided by Mercedes was actually a production model or an improved version for the tests. Mercedes dismissed Resch’s concerns, saying the CLA provided was a production vehicle.
These are fair points from Resch. You wouldn’t want your independent non-profit to look like it’s promoting a company it’s actively in the process of suing. And there’s no way of telling whether the car tested was a pure production spec (I don’t think Mercedes is stupid enough to do this, but other manufacturers have in the past, so it can’t be dismissed entirely).
To me, it sounds like the DUH wanted to tack on a “gotcha” moment to an electric car maker in the hopes that the results would hold the manufacturer more accountable. Except, the results were reportedly better than expected, so the DUH decided to drop the whole thing and move on. Whether any of this is actually true is anyone’s guess; I’ve reached out to the DUH and Mercedes for comment. Until then, Mercedes’ official efficiency data still stands.
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
This car is relatively efficient as far as EVs go, but how repairable is it in old age? The emissions produced from all of the materials and embodied energy that go into manufacturing the car is something that must be considered because its environmental impact is every bit as massive as what the car is expected to use/produce over its lifetime. Many of the resources that go into making the car are non-renewable.
It is not good for the environment to fill the landfills up with toxic crap. If this car cannot be economically repaired with basic tools by a shadetree mechanic and confidently used as a daily when it is 2+ decades old, then you might as well keep using an old clackety diesel Mercedes from the 1970s/1980s, as that could be kept operational for a human lifetime or longer AND run on biofuels.
There was an Invader GT kit car converted to electric posted on this site as being for sale on craigslist. I’d be FAR more confident that I’d be able to keep it running 30+ years from now, than I would this Mercedes. That Invader GT uses plug-and-play EV components that are easily swapped and programmed without anything proprietary locking the user out of repairs. A set of Harbor Freight tools and a laptop computer is all you need. It’s as simple as an ICE car from the 1960s, if not moreso. That Mercedes sounds like at the end of its initial service life, it’s not getting fixed without spending $2X,XXX+ at the stealership, meaning it will be landfill fodder with non-recyclable components that have been bricked by software but would otherwise be functional if they could be cheaply fixed(except they were deliberately designed not to be by Mercedes), which is the ultimate squandering of EV technology given the promise it holds for a much longer lasting car.
If he does a retest on a privately acquired production version and then releases the results, then fair enough. Also, he might want to preserve his right to not become an award/benchmark in a privacy kind of way, which is might seem foreign to us Americans but is probably something Germans would respect more.
I heard “The DUH” in the voice of the narrator of the Time Masheen ride from Idiocracy when he’d say “The UN”.
“But then an even greater force emerged: The UN. And The UN un-nazied the world”
That’s hilarious. For some reason, I heard “DUH” in the voice of Billie Eilish from “Bad Guy”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDfgMOUjCI
That’s how I pronounced it in my head just for the lulz. I’d be equally amused if DUH had sister organizations called DURR and D’OH.
D’OH would have to be their French subsidiary.
More of a white flag, er, label version,.
Not releasing the results is not OK. You don’t have to add “praise”. Just say it met spec and move on. That should be the goal, at any rate: confirm or deny claims
Thanks for stating clearly what I was thinking. Pretending the test never happened is disingenuous at best.
12.2 kWh/100 km is very good. I wonder what kind of trajectory they did.
Now I hope a company will make a more ‘Toecutter’ version. It could stand to lose a lot of electronic gimmicks, weight and battery capacity.
They have 85 kWh net now. If they slash that to 40 kWh, the car would become a lot cheaper and lighter. Thus more fun to drive and environmentally friendly. And probably even more efficiënt.
Mercedes could start with merely eliminating all the superfluous glowing stars and the wide-screen dashboard…
…but then I suppose it would just look like a Corolla mated with a 1999 Ford ZX2.
Considering that it could end up outlasting both of those put together while being greatly cheaper to operate than either, I’d be all for that. It seems no major manufacturer has learned from the McKee Sundancer of half a century ago, where the battery pack is designed to be easily accessed and swapped at the end of life. The battery is the weak link in an EV, and should NOT be considered a permanent fixture, but instead a maintenance item. Any EV that doesn’t design the battery to be easily replaced, with open source components that could be easily/cheaply re-configured for an entirely different pack and constraints, has been designed for planned obsolescence.
What they didn’t tell you is that all CLAs are equipped with steering wheel fingerprint scanners, so they can tell when they’re being tested by Friedrich and put themselves in high efficiency mode. The rest of the time, they emit a chemical from their HVAC vents that’s fatal only to owls and baby seals
Once a cheater, always a cheater!
Jim Wangers era Pontiac FTW
“Let’s take off this mask…why….it’s old man Bosch!”
/would have gotten away with it, etc
I read about the new CLA’s architecture a few months ago, and I thought it was pretty cool that they managed to get that much efficiency out of it. Now, if they would just strip out the geegaws and technology for the sake of technology and give it the old-school “actual luxury through comfort and build quality” treatment, I’d be incredibly tempted to buy one, if they ever brought it here, which they probably won’t.
There is a reason the LS400 is the standard.
A modern, efficient EV Benz with the build quality, comfort, and ease of repair of the old W124s and W126s would be amazing. Imagine buying a car, confident that you will get 1+ million miles out of it with minimal hassle and downtime, with a battery swap or two along the way that you could pay Bubba mechanic down the street to do for you, confident it will be such a simple job he doesn’t screw it up, or you could even do yourself. Where everything on the car could be repaired as good as new.
Mercedes stopped building durable, repairable cars 30+ years ago. They’re disposable junk now, which is a crying shame, and making EVs into disposable junk entirely defeats the claimed purpose of making EVs to begin with.
I wouldn’t have released it either. It would seem like an endorsement. I’m not going to praise someone for doing one thing right and a hundred things wrong. In regards to the efficiency of the car, it has the proper low to the ground, aerodynamic shape to achieve such performance, unlike what consumer trends have forced people into in the last two decades.
“It met all advertised claims in mulitple tests.”