The luxury car segment features a healthy variety of very diverse choices and the latest crop of models has taken the idea of niches to new extremes. If you’re in the market for a luxury sedan that costs around one eighth of a million dollars, then the Tesla Model S and all-new Mercedes-Benz S-Class are direct rivals, even though they’re actually kind of not…

MotorTrend’s Jonny Lieberman set out to find which is the better choice if you do happen to have that kind of money to spend on something plush.

The Tesla is taken out first, and the impression is the same as it was when it was first launched: it has great acceleration, it looks pretty sleek, it corners rather well and it has that huge screen. Bad points are the quality of the interior and the usual range-associated concerns.

The S-Class is really hard to fault: it’s packed with clever gadgets and has probably the single nicest interior of any (attainable) car on the market – it looks like it was designed by an artist, a good one, and then made functional by Germans; they got it spot on.

If you’re looking for a conclusion, well, it’s all but foregone and detailed at the end of the video posted below.

By Andrei Nedelea

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