Mercedes has been overly optimistic about the growing popularity of electrified vehicles, saying hybrids and electric vehicles would account for 50% of its sales by 2025. However, this is unlikely to happen since the new target for 2024 is to reach only 21% of total shipments. . Faced with harsh reality, the German luxury brand will no longer kill its cheapest gasoline car this year.
The A-Class was supposed to bow out in 2024, but its life cycle has now been extended until 2026, according to automobile car. Not sold in the United States, the compact sedan is actually the entry point into the Mercedes lineup, with a starting price of €37,401 (nearly $41,000) in its German home market. Last month, CEO Ola Kallenius admitted that price parity between combustion engine cars and purely electric models was still “many years away”. The executive went on to mention that customers can see this in the price gap between an ICE car and an electric vehicle.
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Mercedes is working on a new family of compact cars and these will also be equipped with combustion engines. The CLA, CLA Shooting Brake, GLA and GLB are all replaced on a newly developed MMA platform that will support gasoline engines as well as fully electric drivetrains. The company has not said a word about the renewal of the A-Class hatchback, the A-Class sedan and the B-Class minivan. We know that there are plans to create a “Little G” SUV on this new architecture.
Mercedes believes plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles will account for up to 50% of total shipments by 2030. That’s a significant change from a projection made a few years ago, when the company announced it would would be fully electric in some markets by the end of the year. the decade. Based on the newly established targets, we can infer that the company intends to continue manufacturing cars with gasoline engines into the 2030s in response to lower-than-expected adoption of electric vehicles.
In a document prepared for investors, the Stuttgart-based automaker says it is “taking the necessary steps to go all-electric” but acknowledges that “customers and market conditions will determine the pace of the transformation.” In other words, if you want to buy a gasoline car in 2031 with the famous three-pointed star, Mercedes will happily oblige you.
There are signs that the European Union’s ban on the sale of new emissions-emitting cars in 2035 may not come into force. Lutz Meschke, Porsche’s chief financial officer, recently said there was “a lot of discussion at the moment about the end of the combustion engine. I think it could be delayed.” If that happens, which wouldn’t be a big shock, the ICE era would continue.
