Mercedes-Benz is well behind schedule in terms of EV sales. With the general economic and regulatory situation not promising an increase in EV sales, the group changed course earlier this year. Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius has now scrapped the EV target for 2030 and announced that the company will operate on two tracks (electric and internal combustion engine) for longer than previously planned. It was previously unclear to what extent the Stuttgart-based company would reinvest in internal combustion engine technology as part of this. Källenius told German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche that Mercedes is looking to revamp its hybrid internal combustion engine.
All “relevant combustion engine and transmission combinations” will comply with new regulations such as EU7 and China 7 to ensure that the engines are always at the highest technological level. Still, Mercedes is sticking to its investments in electric vehicles, says Källenius. Rumors that the next S-Class electric car has been canceled are false. Plans to build battery cell factories also remain intact. “In total, we will need eight gigafactories, or 200 gigawatt-hours of battery capacity.” It’s just slower than previously planned. This “slow” also includes recently announced cuts at Automotive Cells Company (ACC), the battery cell joint venture between Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz and Total Energies. ACC has suspended construction work on its battery cell factories in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and Termoli, Italy.
With his involvement in the electric S-Class, Källenius also responded to rumors published in mid-May that Mercedes had stopped developing the “MB.EA-Large” electric platform. The Stuttgart-based company wanted to electrify a new generation of its largest sedans and SUVs based on this architecture from 2028. Handelsblatt, citing four sources, reported that the development had been frozen. Mercedes would need “investments in the mid-single-digit billion dollar range at least.” Handelsblatt did not deny the appearance of an electric S-Class, but raised the question of what platform it would be based on. Sources reported in May that contrary to initial plans, the future large luxury electric car would be partly based on the existing 400-volt EVA2 architecture in the production run. Previous rumors suggested that the EVA2 could switch to an 800-volt system. However, this has not been confirmed.
Mercedes’ “electric only” plans (combined with the platform plan) date back to 2021, when Källenius announced his goal to only sell purely electric new cars from 2030 onwards if possible. Mercedes wanted to be an electric brand “as long as market conditions allow”. Since February, the new direction sounds completely different: “The company expects sales of xEVs to reach 50% of total sales in the second half of the decade. The Stuttgart-based company calls BEVs and PHEVs “xEVs”. This means that instead of a nearly 100% BEV share in 2030, the automaker now assumes that the total sales share of BEVs and PHEVs will be less than half by the end of the decade. In an interview with Wirtschaftswoche, Källenius now speaks of 50% electric cars and 50% hybrids, which in Mercedes jargon would be called high-tech combustion engines.
wiwo.de (German)
