Last week, I shared my thoughts on the Mercedes-Benz CLA350, a small electric sedan that has a lot going for it mechanically, is weakened by ergonomic and usability quirks devoid of common sense, and too high a price. In that review, I mentioned without going into too much detail the quirk that bothered me the most, and I think it really should be highlighted – if, for no other reason, to encourage Mercedes to reconsider its choice, and to never let other automakers do this again.
The CLA350 includes the latest version of the company’s MB.OS infotainment software, and in some respects, it’s quite simple and nice to use. The overall interface, from the digital instrument cluster to the center screen, feels less cluttered than before and is noticeably faster as well. Mercedes also reduced the amount of capacitive controls on the steering wheel and added physical up/down toggle switches, which is always a plus. However, in this rethinking of the wheel controls and media system, there has been one serious casualty: the ability to skip songs or radio presets from the buttons on the wheel.
In other words, the only way to go through media in this car is to tap the playback buttons on the infotainment screen – which are on the default home/map view, at least Very Through short—or voice—commands. Since I started reviewing cars for a living about eight years ago, I’ve never driven anything that lacked that ability via steering wheel.
This surprised me so much that I was convinced I was doing something wrong, until I flipped through the manual (which was completely useless), Poked around RedditAnd, finally, confirmation came from Mercedes itself.
Of course, it was not always like this. Two years ago I reviewed the 2024 Mercedes E350, another very technologically advanced sedan. The E350’s wheel playback controls were also limited, insofar as the media widget needed to be activated on the instrument cluster if you wanted to skip songs via the capacitive directional pad on the wheel. Weird and disturbing, but at least there was one way. Apparently, Mercedes thought even this was more than necessary.
Who knows why this decision was taken. Perhaps the designers wanted to encourage owners to use voice commands, which I didn’t see on purpose. I wouldn’t be surprised; Like many automakers, Mercedes has invested a lot of money and developed In its digital voice assistant, it has been equipped with AI so that it can handle tasks in a more conversational manner.
On that note, I’ll just say that there’s no technical reason why Merc’s software couldn’t be updated via over-the-air update to bring this behavior back to models that lack it. I hope the company considers this, because I really don’t want this to be the start of a trend.
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