Mercedes expects big things from the EQA, its compact electric car

Singapore

DAIMLER held a virtual launch on Wednesday for the Mercedes-EQ EQA, a battery-powered crossover that is the first of four electric cars it is launching in 2021. Engineers are working on the EQB, a stretched version with seven seats, as well as the EQS and EQE, electric counterparts to Mercedes' popular S-Class and E-Class luxury saloons.

The Business Times estimates the EQA will cost around S$200,000 here at today's Certificate Of Entitlement prices (and after rebates and incentives for electric vehicles), based on its retail pricing in Europe.

When it arrives in the second half of this year, the EQA will be Mercedes-EQ's second car in Singapore. The all-electric sub-brand is planning to launch the EQC, a larger SUV, in the second quarter.

Worldwide, Daimler aims to nearly double the share of plug-in and full electric cars in its production volume this year to 13 per cent. Britta Seeger, member of the board of management of Daimler AG and Mercedes-Benz AG responsible for marketing and sales, told BT that the company is seeing heavy interest in small electric cars.

"We want to address the compact segment with the launch of the EQA and later in the year the EQB, due to the high (volume of) request from our customers," she said. She said every tenth car Mercedes sells is either a GLA or GLB, the combustion engine counterparts to the EQA and EQB. Building electric versions of them was "a very obvious strategy", she told BT over the phone.

The EQA can travel more than 400km on a single charge, with a longer range version capable of exceeding 500km in the works. The launch variant has a 190 horsepower motor that drives the front wheels. It accelerates to 100km/h in 8.9 seconds, but Mercedes-EQ is planning an all-wheel drive, twin-motor variant with more than 270 hp for speedier performance.

Electric vehicle (EV) sales are still a hot sector of a cooling car market. According to EV Volumes, a consultancy, the auto industry saw its total output drop 14 per cent worldwide last year, but sales of plug-in hybrids and full electric cars rose 43 per cent. Such cars accounted for a record 3.24 million sales in 2020, about 4.2 per cent of total car volume.

Asked if Mercedes-EQ would have space in its lineup for fun cars such as convertibles, Ms Seeger (herself an avowed convertible fan) said she would not rule it out, but pointed out that demand for open-top cars is falling. "It's a shrinking segment," she said. "Still, I believe there are a lot of important customers out there who are interested in these kinds of cars." She said Mercedes-EQ would unveil a "very emotional product" later this year.

In the meantime, Ms Seeger said the four EQ models that Daimler is rolling out this year are what EV buyers have asked for so far. "These are the segments where we do see the most and the biggest requests for full electric vehicles," she said.

Daimler is kicking off its EV rollout this year with the compact EQA not because it is thinking small, but because it is thinking big.