As per the recent annual conference, Mercedes Benz intends to convert up to 50% of its total sales to electrified vehicles, including hybrids, in the second half of the decade.
Mercedes Benz is one of the front runners as far as innovation in electric mobility technology is concerned. In 2021, the German marque announced that by the end of this decade, Mercedes will only sell electric vehicles (EVs) “wherever market conditions allow”. However, the carmaker’s recently held annual results conference painted a completely different picture.
Slower economic growth, supply chain bottlenecks, and trade tensions between China and both the U.S. and European Union also weighed on Mercedes’ outlook for 2024, the carmaker said, forecasting lower returns on sales across its car and van division.
11% of total sales fully electric: Mercedes Benz
With the road looking bumpy ahead, Mercedes Benz has dialled back on its plans for 50 percent of sales to be either electric or plug-in hybrid by 2025. The revised roadmap states that the company plans for “up to 50 percent” of its sales to comprise electrified drivetrains “in the second half of the decade”.
Speaking at the annual conference held on February 22, Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius told investors, “Artificially trying to hit the number by pushing product into the market doesn’t make sense”. He admitted that even in Europe, Mercedes won’t achieve 100 percent EV sales by 2030. Currently, fully-electric vehicles in Mercedes’ lineup account for only 11 percent of its total sales— 19-21 percent including hybrids.
Källenius further cautioned that first-quarter sales of Mercedes Benz are likely to come below the previous year’s level as component shortages— particularly of 48-volt systems supplied by Bosch— continued to stem the flow of production.
Kaellenius said Mercedes Benz wants customers and investors to know it is well-positioned to carry on producing combustion engine cars and ready to update the technology well into next decade. Its current plans for updates mean “it is almost like we will have a new lineup in 2027 that will take us well into the 2030s,” Kaellenius said.
Mercedes will continue to launch new electric cars with the most prominent being the new CLA EV in 2025. This electric sedan will be based on the new electric MMA (Mercedes Modular Architecture) platform which will underpin four models slated to replace the current range of compact cars barring the A-Class and B-Class.
Models underpinning the MMA platform will boast of a single-charge range of up to 750 km. Källenius confirmed that some future electric models from Mercedes would use cheaper lithium-iron-phosphate batteries as the company struggles to reduce the cost of EVs.
(With inputs from Reuters)