Exposure to Mercedes-Benz epic adjustments: 19 models will be discontinued, station wagons are the focus of cuts, EQ has just been rumored to be abandoned – yqqlm

For more luxury, more electric

Author | Truman

Editor｜Zai Zhou

The global luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz is undergoing drastic model adjustments.

American auto media “Car&Driver” broke the news that Mercedes-Benz willThe product line undergoes major changeseliminating most of the product lineupcoupe and station wagon.

Among the 33 Mercedes-Benz models sold in the United States and Europe, there may be only 14 stylesmodels will be retained, while the remaining 19 modelsModels will be phased out.

According to Mercedes-Benz insiders, the future of wagons, coupes and convertibles is full of uncertainty, and Mercedes-Benz does not need underperforming products to increase sales.

In the next few years, Mercedes-Benz is expected to focus more on high-end models such as AMG and Maybach, as well as the new sub-brand Mythos series.

In fact, before this, Mercedes-Benz’s EQ brand was also rumored to be “dead soon”. Foreign media reported that Mercedes-Benz plans to abandon the EQ brand for electric vehicles, and it will be 2024.

Give up EQ first, and cut off most of the fuel vehicles. Obviously, after the transformation of All in electrification, the landlord’s family also needs to be more streamlined.

01,19 gasoline vehicles will be eliminated

As early as last year, Mercedes-Benz released theStrengthen profitabilityIts long-term strategic plan includes a plan to significantly resize and reshape its vast product portfolio.

However, it was only a preview at that time, and it did not disclose which models would be discontinued until a more specific plan was exposed this time.

Car&Driver reported that Mercedes-Benz will only have 33 models in the European and American markets.14 models reservedMore than half of the models will be “sent away”.

Generally speaking, the cut-off models are mostly models with poor sales and low profitability, but the streamlining of Mercedes-Benz’s product line this time includes not only some unpopular models and niche products, but even CLS and so on. Popular models.

Specifically include:

The C- and E-class coupes and convertibles are gone.

The C-Class and E-Class coupes and convertibles will disappear at some point between 2023-2024, replaced by a pair of two-door CLE-Class models.

While Mercedes-Benz has launched the new S-class, it has also discontinued the S-class coupe and convertible models.

The CLS will cease production in 2024.

Don’t forget about sports cars, even the once popular CLS will be discontinued in 2024. Since its launch in 2004, this model has sold more than 450,000 units.

The AMG GT is also doomed.

After the CLS will be discontinued in 2024, the AMG GT four-door coupe will also be discontinued in 2024 or 2025. It is reported that Mercedes-AMG will launch a new GT coupe based on the current SL at the end of this year, and increase the Maybach SL new product series to expand its lineup.

In 2026, we’ll see a new four-door coupe, and the next-generation SL with more space, and a new AMG GT coupe, except those will beelectric vehicle.

The coupe SUV was also dropped.

The SUV Coupe lineup is also on the cut list. At present, GLC and GLE have corresponding Coupe models, and a new generation of GLE and GLC coupe models will be unveiled in the next few years. But after that, their service period will also come to an end.

Goodbye hunting trucks.

Mercedes-Benz has not let go of station wagons and hunting vehicles that are popular in the European market. The C-class station wagon in the European market will disappear after 2028, and the E-class station wagon is planned to be discontinued in 2030.

Later this year, we’ll see the next-generation E-Class wagon unveiled, and it will be the last generation of the car to bid farewell to Volkswagen when production ends in 2030.

In addition, the next-generation CLA-class hunting vehicle will adopt MMA pure electric platformand will debut in 2025, it will be Mercedes-Benz’s EuropeanThe last safari.

So far, Mercedes-Benz has not responded to the relevant information, and the “slimming” plan is mainly focused on the US and European markets. Whether it will affect the Chinese market is still uncertain.

02,EQ series ill-fated

Not only the above-mentioned models, not long ago, Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kaellenius said that as the product line is increasingly dominated by electric models,EQ branding is superfluous.

This also seems to have announced the fate of the EQ brand. Several media reports from Mercedes-Benz’s German hometown said that the new compact car that Mercedes-Benz plans to launch in 2024 will be built on the Mercedes-Benz pure electric platform-MMA platform, andno longer use the EQ name.

Although a Mercedes-Benz spokesperson responded later, it is too early to discuss relevant details. But it is undeniable that Mercedes-Benz gave up the EQ series, which is also expected.

After all, the performance of the entire EQ series is a bit miserable.

At the Paris Motor Show in 2016, the EQ concept car was officially unveiled for the first time, and it stood side by side with AMG, Smart, Maybach and others internally. Two years later, Mercedes-Benz officially released the pure electric brand EQ and its first model EQC to the world, a pure electric SUV, which is now priced at 491,900 to 571,900 yuan.

In recent years, Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles are basically named in the form of EQ, such as EQA, EQB, and EQC, which are equivalent to Mercedes-Benz’s GLA, GLB and GLC.

However, the first model of the EQ series did not carry the banner of sales. Terminal sales have been performing poorly and have been criticized for quality problems.

All this stems from the place where EQC was born – the Mercedes-Benz MEA platform. Although it is called an electrified platform, it is actually based on the Mercedes-BenzThe structure of the fuel vehicle is transformedbirth is not pure enough.

This also leads to frequent quality problems. Previously, on major car complaint platforms, EQC owners had a variety of problems, ranging from display failures, to air-conditioning system errors, to “coolant leaks and burned motors” of core components.

Regarding the problem of motor damage, some car owners still have faults even if they replace the motor twice.The reason why EQC motor failure occurs is thatDesign flaws occurred in the process of changing oil to electricity.

In the end, Mercedes-Benz had to use a recall to solve these historical problems.

In 2021, Mercedes-Benz launched the EQA and EQB models one after another, which are also “oil-to-electricity”. Even if they are positioned as entry-level, the starting prices of the two cars have reached 321,800 and 351,800 respectively.

Under the beating of reality, Mercedes-Benz did not give up the oil-to-electricity change until the last two years, and really started the road of “full electric” and brought a brand newPure electric platform EVAand non-oil-to-electricity products EQS and EQE.

Although EQS has got rid of the problem of oil-to-electricity, as an S-class among electric vehicles, the price must be “like Mercedes-Benz”, and the initial price is as high as more than one million yuan. The direct consequence of this is that consumers do not buy it.

The collapse of word-of-mouth brought about by the “oil-to-electricity” product with the lowest cost and the shortest development cycle is obviously unexpected by Mercedes-Benz.

Sales speak for themselves.

In 2022, Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars will deliver a total of new vehicles worldwide 2.0439 million vehiclesdown 1% year-on-year, of which pure electric models were 117,800 vehiclesaccounting for about 5.8% of total sales, a year-on-year increase of 124%.

Even though the sales of electric vehicles have increased by 124% year-on-year, there is still a big gap with Tesla and BYD’s annual sales of more than one million, and even compared with the new domestic “Wei Xiaoli” forces.

In the past few years, Mercedes-Benz has invested a lot of resources in the EQ brand, just to achieve the strategic goal of comprehensive pure electrification by 2030, but the poor performance of the EQ series has also added more uncertainty to its fate.

03,In order to be more “Mercedes-Benz”

One of the great benefits of losing weight is that the group will have more energy and attentionHigh-end models and core modelssuch as AMG, Maybach.

Mercedes-Benz to launch in 2026, Car&Driver reportsPremium off-road SUV GLG,V-class Maybachwill also be featured.

In addition, Mercedes-Benz’s new sub-brand “MYTHOS” series, positioned higher than Maybach, may be born in the future, including Gullwing reincarnation, four-door G-class pickup and SL-based super sports car.

Mercedes-Benz intends to customize its future products in preparation for the expansion of personalized mobility services to reduce stress on drivers and redefine comfort as a key value of the brand.

In addition to new models, Mercedes-Benz will launch a new pure electric modular platform in 2024——MMA, this is also the second pure electric platform released by Mercedes-Benz.

When Mercedes-Benz released the MMA platform in May last year, it revealed that one of the major goals of the platform is to integrate Mercedes-BenzMove entry-level models to higher-end positions.

In order to achieve higher profits while reducing the proportion of entry-level model sales, and ensure that Mercedes-Benz reaches the 14% overall profit marginTarget.

According to Mercedes-Benz’s previous plan, the number of models in the entry-level market will be reduced from 7 to 4. By 2026, the sales share of entry-level products will be on the basis of 2019.25% cut.

On the whole, whether it is a major revamp of the product line, all in electrification, or pushing entry-level models to a higher-end position, it can be seen that Mercedes-Benz has an understanding of future luxury, as well as the profitability of high-end models and the focus on core models. .

In a word, Mercedes-Benz will be more “luxury”,more mercedes.

Even if doing so will lose some more sentimental products, this is how change is. In the process of introducing new ones, classics are destined to become sentimental, or only exist in a certain museum for people to commemorate.

But don’t worry that the classics will disappear. In this wave of reform, some models will also have new champions to inherit.

This article comes from the WeChat public account:Super EV Laboratory (ID: SuperEV-Lab)Author: Truman