Mercedes-Benz is abandoning its commitment to go all-electric by 2030, instead pouring millions of euros into developing new internal combustion engines. And it's not just about the position of the company's management, it's happening at the request of wealthy customers.
In particular, buyers in China believe that the prestige of their car depends not only on the emblem on the hood, but also on the power source under the hood. According to several studies, the presence of a powerful gasoline engine brings much more praise from others than an electric drive.
According to the German newspaper Handelsblatt, every month Mercedes-Benz sells more than 4,000 sedans of the S-class model in the Far East, which are known to be equipped with LPG, while only 74 examples of the EQS electric sedan were sold in May.
Against such a decline in sales, the German automaker is changing tack and investing much more money in developing internal combustion engines and cars for them, extending the life of ICE cars to meet demand.