Mercedes Postpones U.S. Sales of Its First All-Electric SUV after Bad Results of Competitors

UTC by Teuta Franjkovic · 3 min read
Mercedes Postpones U.S. Sales of Its First All-Electric SUV after Bad Results of Competitors
Photo: Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes Benz said that it decided to support the growing demand for the EQC crossover in Europe first.

The German automaker Daimler AG’s brand Mercedes-Benz decided to postpone the presentation of its latest electric vehicle in the United States after the sales for electric SUVs by Audi and Jaguar came to be pretty disappointing.

The introduction of the EQC crossover model, the first-ever electric SUV by Mercedes Benz, to the U.S. will probably happen in 2021, a year later than previously expected.

As per the company’s official statement, Europe is the ever-growing market for the new model and the demand is rising every day since the sale started. That is why the company won’t feel many problems when it comes to numbers.

This decision came as a discreet measure by Mercedes after electric SUVs introduced this year by Audi and Jaguar saw sales lower than expected.

For example, Audi sold 4,623 of its E-Tron crossovers in 2019 through November while Jaguar only sold 2,418 of its I-Pace SUVs over the same time period.

Just for comparison, Tesla sold 111,650 of its Model 3 sedans.

Last year Daimler AG Chairman and Mercedes-Benz CEO Dieter Zetsche said that Mercedes invested more than $11 billion in an effort to expand its electric vehicle portfolio.

Mercedes-Benz Production and Supply Chain executive board member Markus Schäfer said the company is currently trying to reach a progressive CO2-neutral energy supply to its German plants by 2022 to play its part in combatting climate change.

He said:

“Digital solutions help us to network production with things for us: emission-free vehicles and ‘clean’ production. With a CO2-neutral energy supply to our German plants by 2022, we are actively promoting the sustainability of our production.”

The thing is, more severe EU regulations are forcing carmakers to rise their electric vehicle sales in the region. Together with slower EV sales from already mentioned Jaguar and Audi, this has also obviously played a role in the company’s decision. On the other hand, luxury-car makers’ biggest retailers cannot decide what would the outlook be like for electric cars in the U.S. In February, the president of Sonic Automotive Inc., the fifth-largest U.S. dealership group in the country, voiced on an earnings call whether Tesla had built a cult following for its cars and said the brand needed to be taken seriously by BMW and others.

Stock on the Rise

As per the company’s stock, DDAIF has been moved at 4.38% throughout last twelve months. The stock has performed -4.43% in the last thirty days and changed 4.9% over the last three months. It has five years performance of -31.88% and weekly performance of 2.98%.

Daimler AG stock has performed 0.97% and changed $0.54 while share value reached at $56.29 on Friday. At the time of writing it was down 0.30% to $56.25. Analysts estimated that stock to reach value at $60.57 price in a one-year period.

BMW-Daimler Ride-Hailing Venture to Conquer Uber?

Meanwhile, the company owned ride-hailing venture FreeNow created in partnership with BMW AG, expects to double revenue in the next few years by challenging Uber Inc. in Europe and Latin America. FreeNow’s so-called gross merchandise volume is predicted to gain approximately 2.4 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in 2019.

The German carmakers on Monday presented a new holding structure for the partnership, which includes car-sharing and other mobility services.

“We know it is aggressive and really ambitious, but we want to double our revenue again next year while further improving our profitability,” said Chief Executive Officer Marc Berg. Half of the 130 cities in Europe and Latin America where the company that was previously named MyTaxi currently operates are already profitable, he said.

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