For those of you American drivers who were hoping to get your hands on the electric Mercedes EQC this coming year, your wait has unfortunately grown longer, and it might be time to second guess that decision.
Mercedes’s first electric car that can comfortably not be called a simple compliance car has already made its debut in Europe over the past summer. The United States market was planned to receive the electric SUV in mid-2019, then early 2020, and now we have to wait until early 2021, barring any further delays.
A spokesperson told Automotive News:
“In a recent direction from Daimler AG, it is a strategic decision to first support the growing customer demand for the EQC in Europe,”
AutoBlog had also reached out for a comment a received:
“The EQC launch in Europe and other markets earlier in 2019 generated high interest worldwide for the EQC. In a recent direction from Daimler AG, it is a strategic decision to first support the growing customer demand for the EQC in Europe. As a result of this decision, the U.S. market launch date of the Mercedes-Benz EQC will be rescheduled to 2021 (originally Q1 2020).”
The prevailing theory for the reason for the delay has to do with the European Union’s further tightening of carbon emission regulations over the next few years. Starting in 2020, only 5% of an automaker’s cars will be able to have emissions over 95g CO2 per km, this goes down to 0% after 2021 so automakers in the European market need as many electric cars as they possibly can muster up to offset their fleet’s emissions.
Mercedes’s Bremen factory will be able to produce about 50,000 EQCs annually, so Mercedes will hope to make use of as many as possible before sending them out to overseas markets.
The problem lies in the fact that, assuming there are no updates, the EQC that will make it to American shores will be two years old already. With a price of about $68,895 and a range that is expected to be in the range of 210 miles, it already was not going to win any awards, but it certainly won’t look too appealing in two years. The EQC’s main competitors, the Audi e-tron and Jaguar I-Pace have been selling, but still not enough to overtake the Tesla Model X. We have to wonder if Mercedes might abandon this generation of EQC for the US market and wait for the next iteration of the car so that they can be more competitive, especially with cars like the Tesla Model Y and Rivian R1S making their debuts at the same time.
Mercedes-Benz plans to have 10 electric models out by 2022, but how many of them will actually be available outside of Europe at that time?
What do you guys think of the Mercedes EQC delay? What do you think Mercedes will end up doing? Let us know down in the comments below.
Source: Automotive News
