Ola Kallenius has called for a relaxation of CO2 emission rules for 2025 because customer preferences cannot be ignored and the electric car market is shrinking.
Ola Kallenius, Mercedes CEO, said Mercedes “cannot ignore customer preferences” and that this has led to a drop in demand for electric cars. Kallenius supports the position of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) and says the 2025 emissions targets set by politicians in Brussels are unachievable.
ACEA petitioned the European Commission on September 15 to revise emission limits in response to the shrinking market for electric cars. Currently, emission rules on the fleet of vehicles sold set a limit of 95 g/km CO2 in 2025, down from 106.6 g/km CO2 in 2023. Under these conditions, manufacturers have only two options: either stop production of some 2 million cars with conventional engines or pay fines totaling €13bn.
Ola Kallenius’ statement comes as sales of Mercedes-Benz electric models have plummeted.
In the first quarter of 2024, Mercedes sold only 47,500 electric models (-8%), and in the second quarter of 2024, 45,800 units (-19%). Thus, in the first half of 2024, Mercedes sold 93,300 electric models out of a total of 959,700 units, meaning that the share of electric cars in total sales has fallen below 10%.
Therefore, the plan to sell 50% of production electric and PHEV models by 2025 is totally unrealistic. Incidentally, Mercedes has also revised its platform policy and dropped the top version of the MB.EA platform called MB.EA Large.
Under these circumstances, the successor to the Mercedes EQS will be built on a revised and upgraded EVA II platform with 800V technology, and some sources have announced that the Mercedes EQE will not have a successor.
Mercedes is now focusing on the MB.EA Medium platform with 800V technology, an eATS 2.0 drive system from the EQXX concept, a silicon carbide inverter to reduce losses when switching from DC to AC, and a 2-speed gearbox on the rear engine. This platform will be used for the new Mercedes C-Class EV and GLC EV models.
By the end of this year, Mercedes will also launch the new Mercedes CLA EV based on the MMA multidrive platform.
Mercedes hopes to increase sales of electric models with the new CLA EV, C-Class EV, and GLC EV. The fact that Mercedes initially focused on the EQE/EQS/EQE SUV and EQS SUV luxury electric models was a mistake. Equally as big a mistake was the fact that Mercedes built these models focusing on offering traditional Mercedes luxury at the expense of more advanced electric technology. The EVA II platform offers much less charging power than Tesla models.
