Mercedes rolls out S320 CDI BlueEFFICIENCY

Less than a month after the reveal of the long-awaited Mercedes Benz S400 BlueHybrid comes the latest vehicle in the luxury carmaker’s line of ultra-efficient models, the all-new S320 CDI BlueEFFICIENCY, which is set to go sale in Europe at the end of the year. Extensive modifications to the current S320 CDI model has seen Mercedes lower fuel-consumption of the vehicle by up to 10%, while maintaining the dynamic drive expected from a luxury saloon.

Picking up Mercedes’ BlueEFFICIENCY tag, the new S-Class diesel features fuel-saving technologies such as on-demand power steering, an automatic transmission with standstill decoupling, as well as tires with reduced rolling resistance.

New to the car is the standstill decoupling feature, which interrupts the power flow to the transmission as soon as the vehicle draws to a stop with the engine running, in much the same way as the clutch on a manual transmission. This eliminates the converter’s hydrodynamic resistance, lessening the load on the engine and lowering fuel consumption.

The new model will replace the S320 CDI, and consumes just 7.6L of diesel per 100km (31mpg) with a correspondingly low carbon emission rating of 199g/km – a reduction of 0.7L and 21g, respectively, over the outgoing model.

Despite the improvement in consumption, there has been no change in the V6 powerplant’s power and torque figures of 235hp (173kW) and 540Nm respectively. Thus equipped, the S320 CDI BlueEFFICIENCY completes the sprint from 0-100 km/h in 7.8 seconds and attains a top speed of 250 km/h.