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Ola K ä llenius, chairman and CEO of Mercedes-Benz Group AG, said at the annual shareholders' meeting that Mercedes-Benz will abandon its all-electric car plan. Kang Linsong said that given that the popularity of electric vehicles is not as fast as expected, Mercedes-Benz will no longer adhere to its original goal of a full shift to electric vehicle sales in major markets by 2030.

In 2021, Mercedes-Benz proposed a "all-electric" strategy, with a nine-year investment of more than 40 billion euros. The goal is to reach 50% of the sales of pure electric and plug-in hybrid models by 2025, and each newly released model will launch a pure electric version; starting from 2030, Mercedes-Benz has basically transformed into an all-electric model.

Judging from Kang Linsong's view this time, Mercedes-Benz is abandoning the comprehensive tram plan, which does not mean giving up trams, that is to say, both Mercedes-Benz electric cars and fuel cars are produced. Kang Linsong pointed out that Mercedes-Benz is ready to continue to produce internal combustion engine cars and plans to upgrade its technology over the next decade, and the current plan is to launch a new line-up of internal combustion engine models by 2027, so that the internal combustion engine can last until the 2030s.

As for why Mercedes-Benz abandoned the all-electric car program, the main reason is that Mercedes-Benz failed to achieve the desired results in the field of electric vehicles. Take the Chinese market as an example, the electric vehicles currently sold by Mercedes-Benz in China include EQC, EQB, EQA, EQE and EQE SUV, among which EQA, EQB and EQC are all oil-to-electric models. EQC is the first model of Mercedes-Benz electrification, which was listed in November 2019; EQE SUV was listed in May 2023 with a price range of 486000-630600 yuan, positioning medium-and large-scale pure electric SUV. However, the sales performance of the above models in the market is not satisfactory.

Retail data show that the cumulative sales of EQE in 2023 were 8471, while the sales of EQB, EQE SUV, EQA and EQC were 6667, 6120, 4012 and 169respectively. It is far from the current mainstream tram sales in China.

It is worth mentioning that Kang Linsong said in an interview with German media that Mercedes-Benz would make China, the world's largest car market, the center of the next-generation electric vehicle program starting in 2025. According to the plan, Mercedes-Benz will launch or launch 15 new / new generation products in 2024, including new pure electric G-class off-road vehicles, new Maybach EQS pure electric SUV, new CLE family, new long wheelbase GLC SUV plug-in hybrid models, new long wheelbase E-class plug-in hybrid models and so on.

As a century-old brand born in the era of internal combustion engine, Mercedes-Benz can be said to be a "leader" in the fuel field, but in the era of electrification, the pace of Mercedes-Benz is obviously relatively heavy, which is attributed to the mistake of its original strategy of "changing oil to electricity". From the perspective of the layout of the electric transformation, compared with BMW and Audi, Mercedes-Benz is advancing faster in the electric transformation, but it is a pity that the sales of Mercedes-Benz EQ electric cars are low in the domestic market. Mercedes-Benz still needs to make more efforts in building electric cars.

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