Daimler has been fairly open about its electric vehicle plans in recent times, but much still remains unclear about these plans and the company’s overall intentions. How serious is the company?
An unnamed source who is reportedly familiar with the company’s plans, recently quoted by Reuters, may have shed some new light on the matter. The source stated that Daimler was intending to release at least 6, and as many as 9, electric models in the coming years (by ~2024) in order to compete with Tesla and others.
At first glance, that sounds like a relatively serious stance for the company, but without details on the “electric” models in question, it’s too early to tell. Daimler will be revealing a new all-electric car at the Paris Motor Show next month, though, so we’ll probably get a better idea then of the firm’s seriousness.
Note that Volkswagen has said it aims to have 30 new fully electric models on the market by 2025. By our count, 30 is a lot more than 6–9, and it’s still not clear if these Mercedes models would be fully electric or plug-in hybrids.
The unnamed source shared some strange news as well, revealing that “Mercedes would also make an SUV model with a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) engine powered by fuel cells, which would have a range of up to 50 km (30 miles) on battery power and would then run on electricity generated by hydrogen.”
That’s a seemingly strange thing to do. I have to wonder what company execs are thinking with that.
As far as the types of electric vehicles to be revealed, earlier rumors suggested that at least 2 SUVs and 2 sedans where in the works, or scheduled to be in the works. Other unnamed sources have suggested that the company would be focusing on SUVs and crossovers.
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