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Recently, some media reported that Mercedes-Benz plans to give up oil and electricity and abolish the EQ brand as early as 2024. It is understood that the news comes from Mercedes-Benz insiders, who said Mercedes-Benz plans to abandon the EQ brand for electric vehicles when the next generation of compact cars are launched at the end of 2024 at the earliest.

At the same time, sources also pointed out that the decision is based on the fact that Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kaellenius is focusing on the transition to pure electric vehicles, making the "gas-to-electricity" EQ brand superfluous.

Relevant data show that: EQ series is a new pure electric brand specially launched by Mercedes-Benz, in which Mercedes-Benz EQC is the first pure electric model of Mercedes-Benz, which is officially listed in China on November 8, 2019, positioning medium-sized pure electric SUV, the price is 57.98-622800 yuan. Subsequently, Mercedes-Benz launched EQA and EQB models one after another in 2021, of which the EQA model sold for 365800 yuan and the EQB model sold for 437800 yuan. On December 17, 2021, Mercedes-Benz EQS went public. The Mercedes-Benz EQE will be launched in August 2022, with a price ranging from 528000 yuan to 585000 yuan.

However, as Mercedes-Benz EQA, EQB, EQC are all oil-to-electric models, the sales performance of the three models in the market is not ideal. The so-called conversion from oil to electricity is to replace the engine, fuel tank and other components with batteries, motors and electronic control systems without changing the structure of fuel vehicles, and then become a new energy model.

Although the oil to electricity mode for manufacturers, the biggest advantage is to save time and effort, can minimize manufacturers'R & D and production costs. However, the "oil to electricity" model also has great safety risks, after all, the battery safety protection is poor, once subjected to external forces, the probability of spontaneous combustion is high. In addition, because it is the fuel vehicle frame, so the appropriate motor and electronic control system will be limited, can not guarantee good stability.

As the first pure electricity of Mercedes-Benz, it is exposed that there are quality problems. EQC has been recalled many times in China for more than three years. In January last year, a joint statement entitled "Mercedes-Benz EQC owners launched a joint statement on issues related to a large number of motor failures" circulated on the Internet. In the statement, the owners of the Mercedes-Benz EQC jointly demanded that Daimler China admit its mistake in a timely manner and give the owner a reasonable reply as soon as possible. Subsequently, Beijing Mercedes-Benz responded: "it is being solved one by one and formulate an optimization plan." It recalled 10104 Mercedes-Benz EQCs in China in February.

But the incident did not end with the recall of Beijing Mercedes-Benz. Later, hundreds of car owners issued two more statements to safeguard their rights: disagree with Beijing Mercedes-Benz's recall of Mercedes-Benz EQC, and put forward seven "questions" and four "demands", while demanding that Mercedes-Benz immediately recall the problem vehicles and solve the problem. Some car owners said that after the replacement of the motor, there are still fault problems, there are major safety risks. The joint statement of car owners also triggered the collapse of the reputation of Mercedes-Benz EQ brand, in other words, the collapse of Mercedes-Benz "oil-to-electricity" products.

According to Mercedes-Benz's official plan, the goal is to provide pure electric models for all market segments by 2022, with pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids accounting for 50 per cent of sales by 2025. In addition, between 2022 and 2030, Mercedes-Benz will invest more than 40 billion euros in all-electric models. However, judging from the current sales of the Mercedes-Benz EQ brand, it is not easy to achieve this goal.

In order to reverse sales, Mercedes-Benz officially announced price cuts on some EQ models in November last year, including the EQE and EQS models, with a price reduction of more than 200000 yuan. However, after Mercedes-Benz announced the price adjustment, the market sales performance of the Mercedes-Benz EQ series did not improve. Related data show that in November 2022, Mercedes-Benz EQE sold 206 vehicles, while EQA, EQB and EQC sold 8, 4 and 6 vehicles respectively. In December 2022, the four models of EQA, EQB, EQC and EQE are 213,406,5 and 443 respectively. As for whether the future EQ brand will be abandoned by Mercedes-Benz, or closely related to the subsequent sales performance of EQ.

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