- All Mercedes EVs noticed a major drop in year-over-year gross sales in 2024.
- The EQS sedan and SUV misplaced probably the most, whereas the EQB misplaced the least.
- Mercedes is getting ready to unveil an all-new CLA, which it hopes will herald quite a lot of new EV consumers.
Mercedes-Benz took a bet when it determined to type its line of electrical automobiles to appear like amorphous blobs. Although they’re objectively good EVs that put on one of the crucial prestigious badges within the enterprise, Mercedes’ EQ fashions simply aren’t discovering consumers. Within the U.S. final 12 months, all three obtainable EVs offered significantly fewer vehicles than in 2023, and the EQS noticed probably the most vital dip.
Mercedes’ annual figures pool gross sales of the EQS sedan and EQS SUV, which in 2024 totaled 6,963 items in comparison with 14,499 items in 2023. That’s a 52% drop, and it exhibits the brutal actuality of electrical automobile 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 significantly better final 12 months, promoting 11,660 items in comparison with 19,104 items 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 knowledge proves that demand for plug-in hybrids is on the rise, because it reported a 470% enhance 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 at the moment sells 5 PHEVs within the States, which supply class-leading electric-only vary.
The GLC350e, as an illustration, has an EPA-rated vary of 54 miles because of 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 offered 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 offered by Cox Automotive. Even when the ultimate numbers will differ barely, it nonetheless means EVs had a greater 12 months than we thought, all of the studies about cooling gross sales and the way extra consumers had been 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 will probably be rear-wheel-drive-biased, with both NMC or LFP batteries (which Mercedes desires to mix in the identical pack sooner or later) and non-compulsory dual-motor all-wheel drive. It’s constructed on a brand new bespoke EV platform referred to as MMA, which may even underpin no less than two crossovers, one among which will probably be a seven-seater.
The producer is aware of the design of its present bespoke EVs wasn’t very properly obtained, so it is going to make its subsequent era of electrical automobiles look extra just like the combustion vehicles it sells. The alternative for the EQS sedan, as an illustration, guarantees to be a real electrical S-Class, which ought to assist it carry again these consumers who averted the present mannequin particularly due to the best way it appeared, a few of whom in all probability purchased the extra conventional-looking Lucid Air as an alternative or an S-Class plug-in hybrid.
