2026 Mercedes-Benz S 450e first drive review: Is it the best or nothing groundbreaking?

Before delving into the latest Mercedes-Benz S-Class facelift, the thing that’s worth celebrating for us Indians is the rather prompt arrival of the S 450e plug-in hybrid in India, it’s already here under three months of its global market introduction. This swift pace of bringing their newest magnum opus to the Indian market, affirms and shows the promise of India’s prominence in the luxury segment on the international playing field for Mercedes-Benz. Plug it into the wall box charger and you will get up to 117km on pure EV range; put your foot down and the 3-litre twin-turbo six wakes up to hit 100kmph in 5.7 seconds. But first, what’s new on the S-Class?

India’s landscape of electric and hybrid mobility

“Market leaders have to act like market leaders,” said Mercedes-Benz India CEO Santosh Iyer at the 2022 launch of the EQS in the presence of the road transport minister – at that time a big win for Make in India what with it being the first locally-assembled luxury EV. The EQS was supposed to be the electric S-Class for the brave new world of electrification but customers and speed breakers were having none of it. Nevertheless the EQS laid the foundation for the electric SUVs that followed and today 25 per cent of Mercedes-Benz India’s top-end sales are electrics; 26 per cent of rival BMW’s total sales are electric. That one individual model might not have been a commercial success but electrification is now here to stay. Of course everybody has rather vociferous opinions around EVs but there’s no question that electrification is making combustion engines better. More power, reduced emissions, lower consumption and none of the stress around charging infrastructure. And now the market leader is doing what is expected of a market leader, taking the next leap in technology with the segment-first plug-in hybrid with the updated V223 S-Class.

Except, weren’t hybrids supposed to be a stop-gap as we transitioned from combustion to full electrics? India, being India, we jumped straight to electrics and now, India again being India, we are taking one step back, banning electric chargers in building basements, and getting serious about the hybrid solution.

2026 Mercedes-Benz S 450e design

On the outside the changes are of the blink-and-you-will-miss-it variety. The grille is 20 per cent larger, is topped off by an illuminated three-pointed star, and is flanked by new headlights with a three-pointed star arrangement of micro LEDs and a high-beam reach of 600 metres. The taillamps get more star motifs and that’s the extent of the visual surgery. What is less apparent from the outside is the scale of the engineering underneath. Mercedes claim more than 50 per cent of the car – over 2,700 components – have been newly developed or significantly revised. For a car that retains the same fundamental body, that is a remarkable number.

2026 Mercedes-Benz S 450e powertrain

Also remarkable, in this day and age of electrification, is the introduction of a brand-new combustion engine – a V8 at that. The M177 Evo will arrive in India with the Maybach (the V12 is sadly no more) and unlike every previous S-Class V8 this is not a cross-plane-crank unit but a flat-plane one – the kind more often found in trackhoned supercars.

The use of a flat-plane crankshaft allows Mercedes to retain a V8 while complying with emissions regulations – the more even exhaust flow improves combustion efficiency – but it has employed some clever engineering to preserve the character of its old V8s. On startup this engine sounds just like a cross-plane-crank AMG unit, but it’s not achieving this via speakers. Rather the engine features a unique exhaust camshaft mounted to a magnetic actuator that, below 3000rpm, offsets the position of the shaft to replicate the uneven exhaust flow of a cross-plane-crank engine. At higher revs the shaft switches position to reap the benefits of a flat-plane-crank engine, giving you 530bhp in the process.

For now India gets the S 450e where the turbocharged, 3-litre, straight-six is paired with a 22kWh battery pack for a combined system output of 429bhp and 680Nm. Claimed EV-only range is of 95 to 117 kilometres but there’s a downside to all the batteries: the boot is an abysmal 350 litres.

2026 Mercedes-Benz S 450e performance

In pure electric mode, the S 450e produces no sound that the passenger compartment acknowledges as such. On the Autobahn there is a trace of tyre roar at speed but the engine is fully out of the question. Luxury is about disconnecting you from the chaos of the outside world, and the hybrid S goes one step up on everything we’ve come to expect of the best car in the world. The S-Class owner in Malabar Hill traffic will never hear this engine and that is the point.

The EV range means a properly charged S 450e will handle an entire day of city use without the combustion engine once being required. This is the most natural transition to electrification available for a buyer who has not asked for electrification. Unlike the EQS, here Mercedes aren’t imposing a new technology that the S-Class customer never asked for; they have given them more of what they were already familiar with.

For the moments when the petrol engine is required the transition is so smooth you must concentrate to catch it. Twirl the dial on the steering into Sport mode though and it announces itself, taking on an unexpectedly loud and sporty note. I’m not sure if the sounds are piped in via the speakers but when you gun the S 450e it sounds like it means it. And it goes like it means it, 5.7 seconds to 100kmph in a car that weighs 2.5 tonnes is mega. Then there is the response. The big benefit of electrifying combustion engines is the e-motor fills the gap in the torque curve until the turbos spool up, while also aiding in faster spool up of said turbos. There’s also an overtorque function – momentary torque spikes to sharpen acceleration and overtaking. That means little to no perceptible delay when you flex your right foot, overtaking shove is instant, and you boss the S down the Autobahn, glued to the fast lane, the distinctive face getting traffic to scurry out of the way. Probably that’s why not much has changed in terms of styling. Mercedes says respect is the core design principle with the S-Class and respect is what the S commands down any road.

2026 Mercedes-Benz S 450e comfort and chassis

Tying things down is standard Airmatic air suspension while optional E-Active Body Control reads the road surface and adjusts each wheel independently before you hit it. Potholes and speed bumps are dealt with differently to deliver exhaustingly fabulous comfort. Rear-axle steering is standard at 4.5 degrees, with an upgrade to 10 degrees available, which shrinks the 5.3-metre-long-wheelbase S-Class’s turning circle by two metres.

2026 Mercedes-Benz S 450e cabin and technology

Step inside and the changes are more pronounced, and more complicated to assess. The distinctive portrait-oriented touchscreen that defined the previous interior is gone. In its place is the MBUX Superscreen where the 14.4-inch central display and a 12.3-inch passenger screen are integrated behind a single continuous piece of glass. The driver gets a separate 12.3-inch floating instrument cluster that renders surrounding traffic, cyclists, and pedestrians in three dimensions, which is genuinely impressive.

The Superscreen is necessary to run Mercedes’ new 4th-generation MBOS which has so much functionality that there’s even a water-cooled supercomputer, but sadly the physicality is lost. Touching cold metal buttons feels expensive. Smudging the touchscreen, that does not feel expensive and this Superscreen business is across the Mercedes lineup including the CLA. MBOS has got Google Maps baked in along with Gemini, Bing and ChatGPT. Using “Hey Mercedes”, you can now converse with the car. Mercedes is calling it a multi-agent approach and it remembers short-term dialogue, so you can chat with your S-Class like you would with your friends. Although honestly, why would you?

Mercedes has built this S-Class on NVIDIA’s autonomous driving platform – Level 4-ready architecture, the kind designed for fully driverless operation within defined conditions. The company has partnered with Uber to eventually offer S-Class robo-taxis. So what you’re sitting in today is simultaneously the ultimate chauffeur’s car and the prototype for a world where the chauffeur is optional. While you still have a chauffeur, they will appreciate that physical controls are back on the steering wheel, a proper rocker switch and rotary knob and that replaces those capacitive touch buttons that drove everybody mad. But as always it’s the rear where the S-Class makes its strongest statement. India will get the long wheelbase, what you see in these pictures is the regular wheelbase because in Germany S-Class owners drive themselves and that’s why the S drives like it does – more on that later. Biggest change to the rear quarters is the 13.1-inch screens which might not be as impressive as the 7 Series’ theatre screen but are a more practical solution. Gone is the old Samsung pad and in come two remotes to control everything so you don’t have to stretch out to smudge the screen with your paws.

The screens also have a camera built into it to run Teams calls – a mobile boardroom as Mercedes calls it. And when you log off Teams, you can then log into Disney+ or Netflix, wear the Mercedes branded headphones, experience the Burmester 4D sound system, and immerse yourself in the joys of the backseat of an S-Class. Apart from the Bentleys, Rolls-Royces and Maybachs, there is nothing like the backseat of an S-Class. With the S you’ve arrived in life – and now in utter silence on the batteries.

2026 Mercedes-Benz S 350d – the diesel angle

The S also gets a 6-cylinder which does have a faint diesel grumble which – far from being intrusive – was actually a pleasure to experience after the deathly silence of the plug-in hybrid. The OM656 diesel features an electrically heated catalytic converter, a first for a series-production car, to optimise its carbon-capturing performance from start-up and keep up with ever-tightening emission norms. Don’t hold your breath though, Mercedes may never bring another diesel S-Class to India. Officially Mercedes are evaluating all options but for now there will be local assembly of the S 400 petrol while the S 450e will come as a CBU, the response to the latter dictating local assembly of the plug-in hybrid and what comes in the future.

2026 Mercedes-Benz S 450e verdict

The S-Class has always done this – it arrives with the technology that eventually becomes standard everywhere else. ABS, ESP, pre-safe, night vision, crumple zones, all of it started here and then filtered down to the rest of the range. And the new S is more relevant than ever what with it coming at the head of Mercedes’ most ambitious launch programme ever with 40 new models planned by the end of 2027. The question then is never whether the S-Class is the best car in the world. As stated earlier, the S 450e has already been launched in India and is priced between ₹2.20 crore and ₹2.38 crore (ex-showroom). The question is how long before the rest catch up.