“The Economy of Desire” is how Mercedes named its strategic update announced this week. Big changes are expected as the three-pointed star will focus more on larger, more expensive models at the expense of its entry-level offerings. The number of compact cars will be reduced from the existing seven models to just four for the new “Entry Luxury” category. The German brand reserves less than 25% of its total investments for it.
One of the new entry-level models was teased by chief designer Gorden Wagener during the presentation, so naturally we had to take a screenshot. He refrained from going into specific details, saying only that the mysterious car will be “the most sophisticated and technologically advanced car with everything digital inside. I can promise you it’s a real luxury car in this segment.”
Ok, but what exactly are we looking at? Well, it appears to be a sleek sedan, leading us to believe it could be the next-gen CLA. With Mercedes saying it will reduce the number of compact cars, it could merge the A-Class Sedan and CLA into one model. We could keep speculating that the CLA Shooting Brake doesn’t have a bright future either, but nothing is official at this point.
The model in question is expected to ride on the already announced MMA platform which is expected to debut in 2024. The architecture will be electric first but not electric exclusive. In other words, Mercedes engineers are developing the hardware primarily for electric vehicles and will make compromises in terms of packaging for the ICE models. This is the exact opposite of the strategy used for the EQA, EQB and EQC crossovers since all three EVs come from ICE platforms.
Lessons learned from the Vision EQXX concept car will be used in these new compact models, so range anxiety should finally be a thing of the past, even in smaller vehicles. In an interview with Motor1.com Earlier this year, Mercedes-Benz Chief Technology Officer Markus Schäfer warned us that electric vehicles would always be more expensive than ICEs because cost parity would not be achieved for the foreseeable future.
