Photo: RM Car Design
Earlier this year, Mercedes-Benz confiscated the Paris Motor Show by announcing an all-new sub-brand the company will use to market its future electric vehicles called EQ.
Ignoring the cheesy naming (it's a combination between electric and IQ, in case you missed it), the German carmaker chose a GLC-sized concept SUV to showcase the design direction for this new group of vehicles. It went by the equally cheesy name "Generation EQ" and it took a bit of getting used to.
It didn't come with the usual weird lines and cartoonish proportions that we've become used to when talking about EV concepts, but it rock the boat a little with its neon blue inserts that we were told would make it on the production version as well.
The EQ range will indeed debut with an SUV, but Mercedes-Benz has promised no less than 10 different cars based on the same platform (even though the term "platform" might be used a little loosely here, since three of them are said to be smart vehicles) by 2020, which means the EQ stable is going to get populated really quickly.
Mercedes-Benz might sell big in North America and China, but its home market (and the whole of Europe, by extension) will always have a saying in the brand's lineup. And since the Europeans tend to love hatchbacks, we wouldn't be surprised if the second EQ model were a compact two-box car.
It wouldn't simply be a market-compliance decision, but also a strategic one as this segment seems to be the most contested at the moment, with Tesla's Model 3 expected to swallow a large part when it eventually comes out.
The mashup we see here isn't perfect (that charging port is just wrong) and we're not entirely sold on the wheel design, but other than that and the fact there's too much dark plastic on the rear bumper, we could see Mercedes-Benz's next electric hatchback looking quite like this RM Car Design rendering. Too bad we don't get to see the front as well.
It didn't come with the usual weird lines and cartoonish proportions that we've become used to when talking about EV concepts, but it rock the boat a little with its neon blue inserts that we were told would make it on the production version as well.
The EQ range will indeed debut with an SUV, but Mercedes-Benz has promised no less than 10 different cars based on the same platform (even though the term "platform" might be used a little loosely here, since three of them are said to be smart vehicles) by 2020, which means the EQ stable is going to get populated really quickly.
Mercedes-Benz might sell big in North America and China, but its home market (and the whole of Europe, by extension) will always have a saying in the brand's lineup. And since the Europeans tend to love hatchbacks, we wouldn't be surprised if the second EQ model were a compact two-box car.
It wouldn't simply be a market-compliance decision, but also a strategic one as this segment seems to be the most contested at the moment, with Tesla's Model 3 expected to swallow a large part when it eventually comes out.
The mashup we see here isn't perfect (that charging port is just wrong) and we're not entirely sold on the wheel design, but other than that and the fact there's too much dark plastic on the rear bumper, we could see Mercedes-Benz's next electric hatchback looking quite like this RM Car Design rendering. Too bad we don't get to see the front as well.
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