Mercedes EQ subbrand to launch in U.S. with electric variant of S-Class sedan

Mercedes-Benz will introduce its new EQ subbrand in the U.S. with an electric variant of the S-Class sedan, Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius told Automotive News Wednesday.

Initially, the automaker had planned to launch with the EQC compact crossover.

"We will start and lead with the EQS, that's our strategy for the U.S.," Kallenius said. "We said that for positioning the EQ brand in the U.S., start from the top and then go from there."

It's a noteworthy strategy for the truck-obsessed U.S. market. Light trucks account for 75.5 percent of total vehicle sales in the U.S.

Still, the S-class draws some of the brand's most loyal customers, with 70 percent of owners staying with the nameplate or another Mercedes model, the company says.

The EQS sedan is Mercedes' full-electric rival to the Tesla Model S and is slated to arrive in the U.S. next summer. It will travel more than 700 km (435 miles) on a single charge, based on the WLTP testing cycle.

The EQC crossover, which had been scheduled to arrive in the U.S. earlier this year, has been delayed until 2021.

The EQC, powered by an 80-kilowatt-hour battery, has about a 280-mile range on a full charge, based on New European Driving Cycle estimates.

The EQ subbrand is the cornerstone of Mercedes' campaign to embrace electrification to meet stringent emissions targets, primarily in Europe and China.

The German automaker expects to launch five battery-electric vehicles and 20 plug-in hybrids globally by 2021, rising to 10 EVs and 25 plug-in hybrids by 2025. It currently has just two electric vehicles, the EQC and the EQV minivan.

The EQS, slated to be built in Daimler's state-of-the-art Factory 56 in Sindelfingen, near Stuttgart, will be underpinned by a platform dedicated to battery-electric vehicles called EVA2.

Daimler said that using the EVA2 platform allows Mercedes to offer improved packaging and design compared with the EQC, which employs a version of the rear-wheel-drive MRA platform usually used for combustion engine vehicles.

Despite a slow start, the EQC is seeing an uptick in demand. Sales have steadily risen in the second half of the year.

Last month, Mercedes sold about 2,500 EQCs, Kallenius said

“We kind of launched the EQC in volume into the COVID lockdown, which was perhaps not ideal,” the CEO said. "October is going to be bigger and November is going to be bigger than that. So, we’re really picking up speed.”