This Mercedes E-Class Facelift Is a Plug-in, May Have New Screens

The Mercedes driver may not have been too happy to be seen by the carparazzi and covered up the steering wheel while he stood at the lights. But the infotainment system is still in view and looks more like the one in the GLE. We expect the MBUX convenience features to eventually migrate onto the middle sedan model.

At the front, the E-Class should resemble both the A-Class sedan and CLS-Class four-door coupe, which rides on the same platform and shares its engines, by the way.

Also, W213 facelift will bring new design features. If you look closely enough at the back of the car, you may notice how the taillights "bleed" onto the trunk opening and appear to be connected by a chrome "brow" over the license plate.

The bumper also has a rectangular cutout on the right, which is where the charging port currently resides. Mercedes may not be able to fit the whole battery in the trunk but is working on a super-sized package with up to 100 km (62 miles) of range.That's according to the WLTP, but we can still expect more range than a normal commute needs.

The company has three types of green cars planned. There's the EQ Boost family, which has mild hybrid assistance, the EQ Power and Power+ plug-in models like this and pure EQ, which are the EVs.

By 2020, the automaker hopes to have more than 20 PHEV models out in the market, and this E-Class will be one of them. I think Mercedes is also counting the wagon version separately.