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Author | Truman

Editor | on the continent

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

U. S. automotive media "Car&Driver" revealed that Mercedes-Benz will make major changes to its product line, eliminating most of the two-door sports cars and station wagons in the line-up.

Of the 33 Mercedes-Benz models sold in the United States and Europe, only 14 are likely to remain, while the remaining 19 will face elimination.

According to Mercedes-Benz insiders, the future of station wagons, sedans and convertibles is uncertain and Mercedes-Benz does not need underperforming products to boost sales.

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

In fact, before this, Mercedes-Benz's EQ brand was also rumored to be "dying". Foreign media reported that Mercedes-Benz planned to abandon the EQ brand used in electric vehicles in 2024.

First give up the EQ, and then cut off most of the fuel cars. Obviously, after the transformation of All in electrification, the landlord's family will also have to make a simple effort.

01, 19 fuel vehicles will be eliminated as early as last year, Mercedes-Benz released a long-term strategic plan to strengthen profitability, including a plan to significantly resize and reshape its vast product portfolio.

However, it was only a notice at the time, and it did not say which models would stop production until this time more specific plans were revealed.

Car&Driver reported that Mercedes-Benz will retain only 14 of the current 33 models in Europe and the United States, and more than half of them will be "sent away".

Generally speaking, most of the models that have been cut are those with poor sales and low profitability, but the streamlining of Mercedes-Benz's product line includes not only some unpopular models and niche products, but even popular models such as the CLS.

Source: Mercedes-Benz specifically includes:

C-class and E-class two-door sports cars and convertibles are not needed.

Two-door sports cars and convertibles of the C and E classes will disappear sometime between 2023 and 2024 and will be replaced by a pair of two-door CLE-class models.

Source: Mercedes-Benz while Mercedes-Benz has launched the new S-Class, it has also stopped production of S-Class Coupe and convertible models.

CLS will be discontinued in 2024.

Even if you don't want a sports car, even the once popular CLS will stop production in 2024. Since its launch in 2004, more than 450000 models have been sold.

Source: Mercedes-Benz AMG GT is also doomed.

After CLS will stop production in 2024, AMG GT four-door Coupe will also stop production in 2024 or 2025. It is reported that at the end of this year, Mercedes-AMG will launch a new GT sports car based on the current SL and expand its lineup by adding a new product line of Maybach SL.

Source: Mercedes-Benz by 2026, we will see a new four-door coupe, a next-generation SL with more space, and a new AMG GT coupe, but these will be electric.

The sedan car SUV was also cracked off.

The SUV Coupe lineup is also on the cut list. At present, both 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 will also come to an end.

Source: Mercedes-Benz hunting car goodbye.

Mercedes-Benz has not let go of the station wagons and hunting wagons that are popular in the European market. The C-class station wagons in the European market will disappear after 2028, while the E-class station wagons plan to stop production in 2030.

Source: Mercedes-Benz will see the debut of the next generation of E-Class station wagons in the second half of this year, which will be the last generation of the car and will bid farewell to Volkswagen after production ends in 2030.

In addition, the next generation of CLA-class hunting cars will use the MMA all-electric platform and will debut in 2025, which will be the last Mercedes-Benz hunting car in Europe.

Source: Mercedes-Benz so far, Mercedes-Benz has not responded to the relevant information, while the "slimming" plan may be mainly in the United States and Europe, as to whether it will spread to the Chinese market is still uncertain.

02, EQ series ill-fated not only the above models, not long ago, Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kaellenius said that as the product line is increasingly dominated by electric models, the EQ brand is very superfluous.

Source: Mercedes-Benz also seems to announce the fate of the EQ brand, with several German media reports that Mercedes-Benz plans to launch a new compact car in 2024 based on Mercedes-Benz's pure electric platform, the MMA platform, and will no longer use the EQ name.

Although a Mercedes-Benz spokesman later replied that it was too early to discuss the details. But it is undeniable that it is expected that Mercedes-Benz gave up the EQ series.

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

At the 2016 Paris Auto Show, the EQ concept car was officially unveiled for the first time, side by side with AMG, Smart and Maybach inside. Two years later, Mercedes-Benz officially launched the pure electric brand EQ and its first model, EQC, an all-electric SUV, which now sells for 491900-571900 yuan.

Source: in recent years, Mercedes-Benz electric cars are also basically named after EQ, such as EQA, EQB, EQC, equivalent to Mercedes-Benz GLA, GLB and GLC.

However, the first model of the EQ series did not carry the banner of sales, terminal sales have been poor performance, and has been criticized for quality problems.

All this comes from the birth of EQC-Mercedes-Benz MEA platform, although it is called an electrified platform, but it is actually based on the architecture of Mercedes-Benz fuel cars, and the birth is not pure enough.

This also leads to frequent quality problems. Previously, EQC owners had a wide range of problems on major car complaint platforms, ranging from faulty display screens to faulty air-conditioning systems to "coolant leaks that burned out motors" of core components.

Source: Mercedes-Benz motor damage problem, some car owners even if the motor is replaced twice, there is still a fault. The reason why the motor failure occurred in EQC is that the design defect occurred in the process of changing oil to electricity.

Mercedes-Benz eventually had to use a recall to solve these historical problems.

In 2021, Mercedes-Benz successively launched EQA and EQB models, which are also "oil-to-electricity". Even if the positioning is entry-level, the starting prices of the two models have reached 32.18 million and 351800 respectively.

Source: Mercedes-Benz beat down the reality, Mercedes-Benz did not give up oil to electricity until the last two years, really began the "all-electric" road, and brought a new pure electric platform EVA, and non-"oil-to-electricity" products EQS and EQE.

Although EQS has got rid of the problem of changing from oil to electricity, as the S-class of electric vehicles, the price is bound to be "like Mercedes-Benz", with an initial price of more than one million RMB. The direct consequence is that consumers do not buy it.

Source: Mercedes-Benz "oil to electricity" product with the lowest cost and the shortest development cycle, the collapse of word-of-mouth caused by Mercedes-Benz is obviously unexpected.

Sales speak for themselves.

In 2022, a total of 2.0439 million new Mercedes-Benz passenger cars were delivered worldwide, down 1% from a year earlier, of which 117800 were pure electric models, accounting for 5.8% of total sales, an increase of 124% over the same period last year.

Even if the sales of electric cars soar 124% from the same period last year, it still lags far behind Tesla and BYD's annual sales of 1 million +, even compared with the new forces of "Wei Xiaoli" in China.

Over the years, Mercedes-Benz has invested a lot of resources in the EQ brand to achieve its strategic goal of full and pure electrification by 2030, but the poor performance of the EQ series has added more uncertainty to its fate.

03, in order to "Mercedes-Benz" slimming down, one of the benefits is that the group will have more energy to invest in and focus on high-end models and core models, such as AMG, Maybach.

Source: Mercedes-Benz car & Driver reports that Mercedes-Benz will launch the advanced off-road SUV GLG,V-class Maybach in 2026.

In addition, there are positioning higher than Maybach, Mercedes-Benz's all-new sub-brand "MYTHOS" series, which may be born in the future, including Gullwing reincarnation, four-door G-class pickups and SL-based supercar models.

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

In addition to the new model, Mercedes-Benz will launch a new all-electric modular platform, MMA, in 2024, which is also the second pure electric platform launched by Mercedes-Benz.

When Mercedes-Benz unveiled its MMA platform in May last year, it revealed that one of its major goals was to push entry-level Mercedes-Benz models to a higher-end position.

Source: Mercedes-Benz will be able to achieve higher profits while reducing the share of entry-level model sales and ensure that Mercedes-Benz achieves an overall profit margin target of 14% by 2050.

According to Mercedes-Benz's previous plan, the number of entry-level models will be reduced from seven to four, and the share of entry-level product sales will be cut by 25 per cent from 2019 by 2026.

Overall, whether it is a major change in the product line, all in motorization, or to push entry-level models to a higher-end position, we can see Mercedes-Benz's understanding of the 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 luxurious and more Mercedes-Benz.

Even if you lose some of the more compassionate products, this is the way change is. In the process of pushing through the old and bringing forth the new, classics are destined to become feelings, or only exist in a 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 bearers to pass on.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: Super Electric Lab (ID:SuperEV-Lab). Author: Truman.

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