Mercedes GLA hybrid reliability & safety rating
The Mercedes GLA 250 e is likely to be reliable and safe, but we've no official data on either front just yet
| Euro NCAP | Adult protection | Child protection | Safety assist |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 stars (2021) | 96% | 90% | 75% |
Mercedes came 13th out of 29 manufacturers for owner satisfaction in the 2021 Driver Power survey; a big improvement from a near-bottom 28th place out of 30 manufacturers in the 2020 edition. This put it ahead of high-end rivals like BMW (21st), Land Rover (22nd) and Audi (23rd). On the safety front, there's better news: in July 2021, Euro NCAP applied the Mercedes B-Class' five-star crash-test result from 2019 to the GLA, as the two cars are very similar under the metal.
Mercedes GLA hybrid reliability & problems
The new GLA hasn't been on sale long enough for any problems to be made obvious – but we can take lessons learned from the A-Class, a car that's mechanically similar and has been on sale for longer. It finished 23rd out of 75 cars in the 2021 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, with good scores across the board. It's safe to assume that the GLA will return a similar figure.
Safety
The GLA itself hasn't been crash-tested by Euro NCAP, but the organisation declared in July 2021 that the Mercedes B-Class' five-star score from 2019 can also apply to this car, as the two are quite similar under the metal. That means a very impressive 96% rating for adult occupant protection, a 90% score for child protection and a mark of 75% for safety assistance systems.
There's the usual array of top-shelf active safety kit, too: standard Exclusive Edition cars get Mercedes' active brake assist, speed-limit assist, active lane-keep assist and attention assist systems as standard, while top-end Premium Plus cars get adaptive LED headlights and traffic-sign assist. The GLA hybrid also gets an acoustic warning system that alerts other road users to its presence at speeds under 19mph when running in electric mode.
