The Paris Motor Show was the moment Mercedes-Benz chose to say it loud and clear: "we will build competitive electric vehicles, not just the surrogates we've been offering so far, you just have to wait."
The real question is will the rest of the industry wait for them as well? The announcement for the launch of Daimler's EQ electric mobility brand was accompanied by the reveal of the Generation EQ concept. The electric SUV, which won't enter production for at least two years, is boasting a maximum range of over 500 kilometers (more than 300 miles), which would place it right up there with the furthest-traveling EVs of the moment.
The only problem is the Generation EQ isn't competing with today's electric cars, but with those two, or maybe three years from now. We don't know what range those vehicles will have, but we're pretty sure that Tesla&Co won't settle for the values offered by their current range. Which, in Tesla's case, also happen to be EPA rated, a system which is much stricter than the NEDC evaluation the Mercedes probably received (if it wasn't something done in-house).
However, Mercedes-Benz is pretty confident in the success of its new brand, and during an interview with Bloomberg, the company's CEO, Dr. Dieter Zetsche, made sure the entire world knew what their ambitions were. Asked whether he sees Tesla as the main competitor given how it is already offering premium vehicles with similar range, this is what he had to say:
“At that point in time, obviously, yes. We have set for ourselves a target five years ago where we are tracking behind to become the number one premium car manufacturer. This was supposed to be reached in 2020, [but] it seems like we are awful close right now already. So we can set a new target to ourselves and that is to be the leader in electric premium vehicles as well – latest by 2025. And this includes not just our current competitors, but new entries as well.”
Earlier in the interview, Dr. Zetsche talked about the four main directions that Mercedes-Benz is focusing on in the future. These are met under the acronym of CASE, which stands for Connectivity, Autonomous driving, Sharing, and Electrification. It's almost as if we're watching Elon Musk talk with a German accent.
You can view the entire discussion below, and it's quite a condensed way of hearing about the path chosen by Daimler for its main brand. Well, technically, for a completely new brand that is strongly associated with Mercedes-Benz. 2025 can't come soon enough.
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