The eco division of Mercedes-Benz is intensely working on a new big-sized luxury sedan with an electric drivetrain. The limousine will be launched in 2020, according to the company’s large-cars project chief, Michael Kelz, and it will come under the EQ brand’s umbrella. The sedan will be called Mercedes-EQ S.
“We will have an electric vehicle at the level of the S-Class, no doubt, but it will not be the S-Class,” Kelz stated for the Autocar magazine on the company’s plans to build a sedan to sit alongside the conventional S-Class, whose next generation should see the light of day around 2020.
The Mercedes-EQ S will be a rival for the Tesla Model S and it will join the family of the models already announced: the EQ A compact hatchback and the EQ C small SUV, already caught testing. A second electric sedan, comparatively as large as the mid-sized C-Class, will also be added to the portofolio. They will all stand on the company’s newly developed modular architecture reserved for the electric cars, designated MEA, previewed at the 2016 Paris Motor Show, with the Generation EQ Concept.
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Mercedes has already trademarked various names of EVs under the EQ brand and the EQ S is on the list. “It will be a luxury, electric car, top-of-the-line car”, Michael Keltz revealed, who also announces that the more efficient packaging of the electric powertrains and batteries leads to building shorter front and rear overhangs and huge wheelbases.
The Mercedes-EQ S should roll off the assembly line as early as 2020. Mercedes is planning on sending no less than 20 electrified models onto the streets by 2022.
