The Minivan is Dead. Long Live the Mercedes-Benz VLE.

The minivan is back, but don’t call it a minivan. The all-new Mercedes-Benz VLE is a “grand limousine” that puts the first-class travel experience on most airlines to shame, and it does it all with battery power.

“Ah, great, let me guess: another cool car we can’t get” we hear you groan. But no! The VLE is already up on Mercedes-Benz Canada’s website, and we’re so glad it is.

You see, somewhere along the way — around the same time SUVs boomed in ‘90s and early ‘00s — the minivan became a punchline. It was a vehicle synonymous with quiet suburban surrender, a frumpy thing that put function far above fashion. Driving one was the vehicular equivalent of wearing grey sweatpants and a grey hoodie 24/7.

But here’s the thing about fashion: it’s cyclical. Just as you thought they might never recover, minivans are starting to look kind of… cool. (We called it. More than once.) Maybe it’s millennial nostalgia for the minivans of our parents — shout out to the Toyota Previa. Or, maybe it’s SUV fatigue, since everyone is driving them now. Of course, if you were in Japan or China, minivans have always been cool; they never left.

“While we are far off from the heady days of 1999 when the minivan segment reached 252,000 units, 2025 sales of 43,000 units still represent a notable gain for these (relatively) affordable and practical people movers,” said a research note from our friends at DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.

Enter the all-new Mercedes-Benz VLE, the first model built on Mercedes’ new van architecture, and the clearest sign yet that the sliding-door segment is moving upmarket. This thing has eight seats, two electric sliding doors and oodles of interior space. Mercedes avoids the “m” word, preferring instead to call it a “grand limousine” and a “spatial experience.”

Inside the Grand Limousine

What you call it doesn’t really matter. The fact is there’s never really been something like this available off a showroom floor in Canada. Inside you’ll find an optional 31-inch panoramic screen with 8K resolution that folds up into the headliner when not in use. And, in case you’re trying to get things done on the move, the screen has an eight-megapixel camera for all your Zoom meetings. For movies, there’s Dolby Atmos sound playing through 22 Burmester speakers. Honestly, it puts most home theatres to shame.

The seats are infinitely configurable; electrically adjustable thrones can be repositioned through an app or in-car screen. Watching the car reconfigure itself is, as Mercedes says, almost like watching a choreographed ballet of swivelling, spinning chairs. The ultimate configuration involves opting for the new “Grand Comfort Seat,” which cossets occupants with an additional pillow, wireless charging, lumbar support, massage function and calf support.

Clearly, the engineers in Stuttgart took the “grand limo” brief seriously. Air suspension is said to prioritize cloud-like comfort, and the engineers went to extreme lengths to ensure a quiet ride. That means “decoupled elastomer mounts between the suspension and body, along with an isolated drivetrain,” that reduces vibration and road noise.

For many owners, piloting one of these large machines will be a job for their personal chauffeur. But those wheeling it around themselves will be relieved to know it has rear-axle steering. It’s so effective, it grants the huge VLE a turning circle almost on par with the sub-compact Mercedes CLA. In other words: tight condo parking lots will be no-stress situation.

VLE Range and Charging

Under the smooth sheet metal — which delivers a supremely low drag coefficient of 0.25 — the VLE 300 arrives with 272 horsepower and a claimed WLTP range north of 700 kilometres from a huge 115-kWh battery. (Take that with a grain of salt; the European-spec WLTP range estimates are usually a bit generous compared to our North American EPA or NRCan estimates.)

The all-wheel drive VLE 400 could even be a bit of a sleeper speed-demon. With 409 horsepower it’ll get you and your soccer team buddies from 0 to 100 km/h in just 6.5 seconds.

As for charging, both models get 800-volt architecture — read: the latest and greatest — that ensures drivers can take advantage of the fastest DC charging stations. (Mercedes is currently rolling out its own stations across Canada.) Again, take this with a grain of salt, but the company claims you’ll get up to 355 kilometres of added range after plugging in for just 15 minutes.

What Mercedes has done here, as minivans fall back into fashion, is apply the same level of design, refinement and high-tech luxuries of their lauded flagship models to a sliding-door silhouette. Maybe a grand limousine is what we needed all along? We’ll wait to see how the market reacts, but we already love it.

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