Mercedes-Benz

Korean energy company SK Innovation announced today that they will build a gigafactory to manufacture electric car battery cells in Hungary in order to support the electric vehicle plans of European automakers. 
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We haven’t had the chance to get a very good look at Mercedes-Benz’s Concept EQ, its first next-gen electric car (its first EV built to be electric from the ground up).

The vehicle serves as the basis for the first Mercedes EQ vehicle, Daimler’s new electric car brand, but the concept hasn’t been around much. Now we get the chance to see it move thanks to a Youtuber.
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Daimler has unveiled a new part of its electrification plan today. Mercedes-Benz will add electric drive to all its commercial vans and it is starting by taking orders for the new eVito all-electric van.
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Almost every automaker working on electric cars is also currently looking at ways to leverage their battery technology development into other products. It started with Tesla’s launch of ‘Tesla Energy’ in 2015 and now BMW, Renault, Nissan, and several others have also launched similar products or even new energy divisions.

Daimler has its ‘Mercedes-Benz Energy’ subsidiary and the company unveils today an impressive new project using its vehicle battery packs for stationary energy storage.
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At the company’s investor day in Sindelfingen, Germany, Daimler, Mercedes-Benz’s parent company, clarified its plan to electrify its vehicle lineup and the expected impact on its bottom line.
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Mercedes-Benz is about to expand its lineup of all-electric vehicles under its new ‘EQ’ brand with an all-electric compact car to be unveiled at the Frankfurt International Motor Show (IAA) next month.
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Mercedes has unveiled a new cabriolet all-electric concept as part of its ‘Vision’ design series at the Monterey Car Week.

The ‘Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 Cabriolet’  is Daimler’s idea of an “ultra-stylish luxury-class cabriolet” with an all-electric powertrain.
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Automotive News reports that Mercedes has officially made the decision to stop production of the electric B-Class. Production will be phased out within the next few months, according to Mercedes USA spokesman Rob Moran.

This means that, despite big talk from Mercedes about future EV plans, including their recent jump into Formula E, adding battery production to factories, and rumors of future EV models from their new EQ sub-brand, the company will no longer produce any battery-electric model for the time being.

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The first few seasons of the all-electric Formula E championship have been more successful than most motorsport fans would have ever predicted.

Over the past few months, it managed to convince Audi and BMW to take spots for future seasons and this week, Mercedes-Benz has now announced that it will have its own team.

While all those premium automakers are joining the Formula E, Tesla has been surprisingly staying away from the all-electric championship despite being a leader in the development and commercialization of EVs.
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Mercedes-Benz is not only talking about electric car concepts and show models anymore. The German automaker is increasingly securing manufacturing capacity at its existing plants in order to produce its upcoming EQ electric vehicles.

The company announced today that it reached a deal with the management and works council of the Mercedes-Benz plant in Rastatt in order to build ‘compact electric vehicles’ at the factory.
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Daimler is among one of the few major automakers with aggressive all-electric vehicle plans. The German automaker recently announced acceleration of electric car plans by 3 years and that they will spend $11 billion on 10 models by 2022.

They are backing this up with a new battery factory, which they officially unveiled today.
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Logistic companies are increasingly finding it economical to convert their fleet to electric vehicles, especially for urban routes. Daimler is early in the segment with its Mercedes-Benz vans and it now announced an important contract that will help them kickstart the effort.

They will make 1,500 all-electric Mercedes-Benz vans for Germany’s largest independent logistic firm, Hermes.
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Exciting news coming out of Germany today. Mercedes-Benz announced that it started small series production of its first all-electric heavy truck, the Urban eTruck, and launched trials with customers in order to test the vehicle’s capacity on urban routes.

The company has been moving quickly on this project. After unveiling the prototype in September 2016, it’s already on the roads and in the hands of customers.
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As part of its shareholder letter posted ahead of its earnings call today, Tesla demonstrated its catastrophic affect on the US luxury car market with a simple table. If you start at the bottom, the market is at about 100,000 cars a year and it’s basically unchanged from 2014 to 2015.

The market is for “large luxury” cars and includes not only the Model S but Audi’s A7 and A8, BMW’s 6 and 7 series, the Jaguar XJ, Lexus LS Mercedes CLS and S Class and the Porsche Panamera. Each of these models has fallen in sales from almost 5%-over 15% from 2014-2015.  Where did these sales go?
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Mercedes unveiled an interesting new concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show: a sedan which can change its features automatically from design mode to aerodynamic mode once it reaches a speed of 80 km/h (50 mph). The concept is called the IAA, which stands for Intelligent Aerodynamic Automobile, not to be confused with Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (IAA), also known as the Frankfurt Motor Show, at which the concept is being unveiled.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlhGE7N0poM]