EQ could also be RIP from ’24 with MB CEO eager to exchange ICE with EVs.
Sources have instructed Handelsblatt the Mercedes-Benz board is contemplating dropping the EQ sub-brand from 2024 when it launches a brand new vary of small electrical autos.
The transfer to finally remove the EQ sub-brand, launched solely in 2019 with the GLC-based EQC electrical crossover, is reportedly because of the automaker focussing all of its efforts on EV improvement.
If all mannequin strains will someday get replaced by electrical fashions, the reasoning goes, there’s not a necessity for a separate electrical sub-brand.
Replying to an inquiry from Reuters, a Mercedes-Benz spokesperson hinted the report wasn’t removed from the reality.
“With the objective of our father or mother model Mercedes-Benz turning into totally electrical by the tip of the last decade, we are going to adapt the positioning of the autos and thus additionally the usage of the model in keeping with the occasions, however it’s too early for particulars on this in the intervening time,” the spokesperson instructed the information wire.
Mercedes-Benz has dedicated to turning into an electric-only model by 2030, however solely “the place market circumstances permit”.
Over the previous few years, Mercedes-Benz has spent appreciable time, effort and cash to carry a full vary of EVs to the market.
These embrace fashions just like the EQA, EQB, EQC, EQT and EQV which might be based mostly on platforms initially designed for inside combustion engines, whereas more moderen fashions, just like the EQS sedan, EQS SUV, EQE sedan and EQE SUV, journey on a devoted EV structure.
We don’t know when, or if, these current fashions will likely be renamed. Whereas some producers wait till a mannequin changeover to undertake a brand new naming construction, Mercedes-Benz isn’t any stranger to renaming autos part-way by their lifecycle.
In 2015, the corporate introduced it will rearrange its alphabet soup such that crossover and specialty fashions have been aligned with its core sedan and hatch vary. As such, the SLK grew to become the SLC, and the ML was the GLE.