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If you were just settling in with the latest round of Mercedes-Benz changes of nomenclature, the brand is most definitely not done with its renaming game quite yet. The Frankfurt auto show heralded the debut of a new badge worn by the Mercedes-Benz S560e plug-in hybrid, the GLC F-Cell fuel-cell vehicle, and the Mercedes-AMG Project One supercar. It says EQ Power—or in the Project One’s case, EQ Power+. And, looking ahead, it’s going to be bestowed on pretty much anything that plugs in or takes advantage of powertrain electrification.
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Mercedes also displayed EQ Power–branded charging hardware at the Frankfurt show. And it even rolled out an app, called EQ Ready, that helps judge a shopper’s readiness level for going electric (it’s only available in Germany for now).
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That’s an unexpectedly diffuse—and different—approach than what Mercedes-Benz had suggested last year—that we might see the EQ badge first appear in some kind of mobility-services effort. Instead it’s being deployed to a current generation of plug-in hybrids that tend to position the electric motor as secondary to internal combustion.
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The badging will be used in Europe late this year; but as we found out, it isn’t coming to the United States that soon. Existing U.S.-market plug-in hybrids won’t get the EQ Power name until close to the end of the year, with changes in the 2019 model year. The refreshed S560, as shown at Frankfurt, isn’t due until mid-2019.
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Ten EVs by 2022
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Mercedes-Benz recently announced a plan to invest $ 10 billion in electromobility—culminating in 10 fully electric vehicles by 2022, covering all segments from Smart to large SUVs. At the show, we caught up with Wilko Andreas Stark, the product strategy and planning chief for Mercedes-Benz cars, and he gave us an overview of tentative timing for the first few EVs:
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- 2019: The first full-fledged Mercedes EQ product—the one presaged by the Concept EQ that could, effectively, be a reskinned GLC with an all-electric powertrain—goes on sale in the U.S., among other markets.
- 2020: A compact battery-electric vehicle arrives, built on the updated NMA2 architecture that will underpin Mercedes’ compact models such as the CLA and GLA.
- Late 2020: Debut of the first vehicle built on a dedicated electric-vehicle platform, which will cover a wide range of segments, and might be assembled in Alabama.
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Regarding the latter vehicle: “We can vary the wheelbase; we can vary how many batteries we pack in; we are highly flexible with electric motors, front- or rear-wheel drive,” Stark said of the platform, which is currently in development.
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As we pushed for a little more clarification on the nomenclature, Stark said that it will be called out by the company as Mercedes-EQ, similar to Mercedes-AMG or Mercedes-Maybach. Everything will still wear the three-pointed star, but an EQ badge would be reserved for BEVs. An EQ Power badge would be worn by plug-in hybrids, charging hardware, and other technology. And AMG plug-in hybrids will wear a different badge: EQ Power+.
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- Mercedes-Benz’s EQ Sub-Brand Aims to Launch a New Electric Model Every Year
- Alabama Mercedes-Benz Plant to Assemble Battery-Electric SUV
- Mercedes-Benz S-Class: Review, Photos, News
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While all these levels of EQ badging might lost on most shoppers, fully electric Mercedes-EQ vehicles will be easy to pick out by their “progressive luxury” design language, Stark noted, pointing to the Concept EQ A. “It will be a very, very clean design language, without any lines,” he said. “If you have a steam train and compare it to an electric train, this is the same difference.”
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