- All Mercedes EVs noticed a major drop in year-over-year gross sales in 2024.
- The EQS sedan and SUV misplaced essentially the most, whereas the EQB misplaced the least.
- Mercedes is making ready to unveil an all-new CLA, which it hopes will usher in a number of new EV consumers.
Mercedes-Benz took a bet when it determined to fashion its line of electrical automobiles to seem like amorphous blobs. Despite the fact that they’re objectively good EVs that put on one of the vital prestigious badges within the enterprise, Mercedes’ EQ fashions simply aren’t discovering consumers. Within the U.S. final 12 months, all three out there EVs bought significantly fewer automobiles than in 2023, and the EQS noticed essentially the most important dip.
Mercedes’ annual figures pool gross sales of the EQS sedan and EQS SUV, which in 2024 totaled 6,963 models in comparison with 14,499 models in 2023. That’s a 52% drop, and it exhibits the brutal actuality of electrical car gross sales final 12 months, which noticed elevated competitors and extra consumers selecting hybrids or plug-in hybrids.
The EQE sedan and SUV didn’t do a lot better final 12 months, promoting 11,660 models in comparison with 19,104 models in 2023, marking a 39% lower. The EQB, Mercedes’ smallest electrical providing within the U.S., noticed the bottom decline (36%), with gross sales happening from 13,797 in 2023 to eight,885 final 12 months.
Mercedes’ personal information proves that demand for plug-in hybrids is on the rise, because it reported a 470% improve year-over-year. That is partly defined by the truth that the producer had extra PHEVs on sale in 2024 in comparison with the 12 months earlier than. It presently sells 5 PHEVs within the States, which supply class-leading electric-only vary.
The GLC350e, for example, has an EPA-rated vary of 54 miles due to its giant 23.3-kilowatt-hour battery, and it helps DC quick charging at as much as 60 kW. Even with the decrease EV gross sales, mixed EV and PHEV gross sales made up 15% of all Mercs bought final 12 months within the States.
EVs accounted for round 8% of complete passenger automobile gross sales within the U.S. final 12 months (round 1.3 million automobiles), up from 7.6%, based on preliminary estimates supplied by Cox Automotive. Even when the ultimate numbers will differ barely, it nonetheless means EVs had a greater 12 months than we thought, taking a look at all of the experiences about cooling gross sales and the way extra consumers had been taking a look at hybrids and PHEVs.
Mercedes will quickly reveal an all-new CLA, which guarantees to be a tech powerhouse with each electrical and hybrid powertrains. The electrical variant can be rear-wheel-drive-biased, with both NMC or LFP batteries (which Mercedes needs to mix in the identical pack sooner or later) and non-obligatory dual-motor all-wheel drive. It’s constructed on a brand new bespoke EV platform known as MMA, which will even underpin at the least two crossovers, one among which can be a seven-seater.
The producer is aware of the design of its present bespoke EVs wasn’t very properly acquired, so it would make its subsequent technology of electrical automobiles look extra just like the combustion automobiles it sells. The substitute for the EQS sedan, for example, guarantees to be a real electrical S-Class, which ought to assist it deliver again these consumers who averted the present mannequin particularly due to the way in which it seemed, a few of whom most likely purchased the extra conventional-looking Lucid Air as an alternative or an S-Class plug-in hybrid.
