Thank you, Garage 42, for providing the test drive opportunity. Let’s talk about the driving experience of DENZA X from three aspects.
Exterior and Interior
The exterior design is very sleek and the dark red color is very textured, similar to Mazda’s “Soul of Motion” red. It has a gradual color transition in the sunlight. The 22-inch large wheels, Brembo calipers, and wide body make it look sporty enough.
With a width of 1.95 meters and a length close to 5 meters, the DENZA X has a broad and imposing feeling, completely in line with the positioning of a mid-size SUV. For my family of just having a baby, the 7 seats are an absolute necessity. Although the third-row seat space cannot compare with MPVs, it is still spacious enough for two slim kids in the scenario of 7 people getting in and out.
In terms of workmanship, thanks to the accumulation of DENZA over the years, the engine, wings, door gaps and other workmanship details are in place, and the tolerance control is uniform. It is definitely comparable to Tesla!
The interior is very Mercedes, especially the front row. The classic seat adjustment is embedded in the wood-grain door decoration, and the silver air conditioning vents make it look like a Mercedes at first glance. The design genes of Daimler are fully reflected in the interior, this is the German flavor!
In addition to Mercedes elements, there are also many other details that surprise people, such as the wrapping of the sunroof frame, the silky feeling of the sunroof opening and closing, and the treatment of the sliding tracks and air outlets of the front seats. All kinds of knobs have reached the top level in the same class in terms of damping and texture.
Central Control and Instrument Panel
After startup, the exquisite feeling disappears instantly, especially with the clumsy low-version Android car system and a pile of unadapted applications, it is just a tragedy…Even if we don’t talk about third-party applications, the design logic of the car’s system itself is very chaotic, and the design style is completely traditional car companies’ style. The simplest example is that navigation and music are not integrated at the system level. If you exit navigation and switch to music, the navigation will be displayed as an ugly floating box… I hope Daimler’s design genes can help BYD’s technical system, and there is a large space for improvement in the overall visual and interactive experience of the instrument and central control in the future.
The only thing worth mentioning may be the rotation function of the central control. According to the scene division, you can horizontally view the navigation during normal driving, and vertically switch to listen to music or watch short videos when parking or resting. After all, with a 15.6-inch central screen and full-car audio, watching videos is much more enjoyable than using a mobile phone.
Advanced Driving Assistance
The startup logic is somewhat complicated. ACC is controlled by a lever, but the lane keeping needs to be separately controlled on the car’s central control. In this aspect, the new forces of car-making are obviously lagging behind. The ACC reaction during driving is okay, and acceleration and deceleration are relatively smooth, but occasional jitter may occur when the driver intervenes during the ACC braking. I’m not sure if this is a unique case.
Since we got the hybrid version, the advantage is that we can experience the quietness of pure electric vehicles and there is no range anxiety during long-distance driving.
When starting the car, there is complete silence. However, after the engine is engaged at high speeds, the engine sound is slightly sharp, and there is still some gap compared to Mazda’s Zoom-Zoom.
In the case of congested traffic in Beijing, the fuel consumption is within an acceptable range of 10L/100km.
In terms of chassis tuning, when passing speed bumps or turns, the chassis tuning is very solid, and the road noise filtering effect is good. Most of the fine vibrations can be filtered out without losing the road feeling. However, perhaps because of the sporty tuning, the chassis is slightly hard.
Final Words
With a 48-hour experience over two days, as it was a working day, there was no chance to conduct long-distance energy consumption testing and more in-depth experience. I can only talk about my simple feelings in the daily scenes of commuting. Overall, as a car itself, regardless of the appearance, interior design, car space, overall workmanship, chassis texture, and acceleration performance, it is definitely not inferior to most brands at a selling price of over 200,000 yuan. Daimler’s after-sales system is responsible for the overall quality of the DENZA, which also guarantees the quality of after-sales service after buying a car.
However, under the siege of new forces in car-making, intelligence is the next focus that DENZA needs to develop. Putting aside the intelligence aspect, DENZA has a kind of luxuriousness that is buried in car-making and experience, which is regrettable.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.