It is not only the electric cars themselves that have been given a new course at Mercedes. So have the battery factories that the brand will build.
Mercedes has regretted its own electric car strategy so much that the German car brand is now also pausing the construction of a number of factories.
The factories would otherwise have to build the batteries that Mercedes wanted to use in the electric cars. But because the brand for Stuttgart has scaled back when it comes to electric cars, there is no longer a rush to get the battery factories up and running.
That's what Automotive News Europe writes.
The media writes that Mercedes now takes the position that it 'will wait and see' whether the demand for electric cars increases, for a possible expansion of battery production to materialize.
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– We are relatively flexible. We will think about the next step when we have more insight into the demand, says Markus Schäfer, Mercedes development manager in a comment to the media.
As late as 2022, Mercedes otherwise said that the factories would be up to full speed by 2030 at the latest. Ever since, however, Mercedes has been busy regretting this sort of thing.
Most recently, the brand's Swedish top manager Ola Källenius announced that Mercedes will spend as much as DKK 105 billion on new internal combustion engines with added electricity. That is, hybrid cars.
Back in 2022, Mercedes also said it expected to sell two million electric cars a year by the start of the next year ten. The Germans are not so safe today.
This means that out of eight new battery factories that the car brand has planned to build around the world, two have been completely put on hold. This is due to the low demand for electric cars.
In Germany alone, the latest figures show that sales of electric cars have fallen by 16 percent compared to June 2023. However, this must be seen in the light of the fact that in December last year, Germany stopped supporting electric cars with immediate effect. Read more about it here .
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