‘Will stay at top end with our EV offerings’
NEW DELHI : Mercedes-Benz India Pvt. Ltd, the country’s largest luxury carmaker, will follow a top-down strategy with its electric vehicles (EVs) in alignment with its global plan to exit the “volume segment" play, and hopes to benefit from the fact that its rivals are launching EVs in more affordable price brackets, competing with mass-market players, a top company executive said.
Top-end vehicles contribute to a quarter of the German carmaker’s sales in India, whereas entry-level luxury models contribute close to 15% of its sales. Mercedes-Benz India on Friday launched its first EV for the market in this year, the EQE SUV at ₹1.39 crore, after introducing the locally-assembled EQS sedan and the EQB SUV last year.
This will be the Stuttgart-based carmaker’s seventh new launch in India in the calendar year, and the third product in its battery electric vehicle (BEV) portfolio at present. The carmaker expects to achieve double-digit growth in 2023.
Building on the positive customer sentiment seen during the festival season, which now stretches from August to November, the company will also launch two more products, in the core luxury segment and top-end categories, respectively. India is expected to see the launch of the new Concept CLA class, unveiled in Munich earlier this month, in 2025, Ola Kallenius, the chairman of the board of management at Mercedes-Benz Group AG had told Mint.
“Fortunately, the brand positioning and also the way we are configuring the products in India are all in the top-end segment. So, even if there are cheaper EVs coming to India, our product will be highly differentiated with better technology and better software," Santosh Iyer, the managing director and chief executive of Mercedes-Benz India,
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