- All Mercedes EVs saw a significant drop in year-over-year sales in 2024.
- The EQS sedan and SUV lost the most, while the EQB lost the least.
- Mercedes is preparing to unveil an all-new CLA, which it hopes will bring in a lot of new EV buyers.
Mercedes-Benz took a gamble when it decided to style its line of electric vehicles to look like amorphous blobs. Even though they are objectively good EVs that wear one of the most prestigious badges in the business, Mercedes’ EQ models just aren’t finding buyers. In the U.S. last year, all three available EVs sold considerably fewer cars than in 2023, and the EQS saw the most significant dip.
Mercedes’ annual figures pool sales of the EQS sedan and EQS SUV, which in 2024 totaled 6,963 units compared to 14,499 units in 2023. That’s a 52% drop, and it shows the brutal reality of electric vehicle sales last year, which saw increased competition and more buyers choosing hybrids or plug-in hybrids.
The EQE sedan and SUV didn’t do much better last year, selling 11,660 units compared to 19,104 units in 2023, marking a 39% decrease. The EQB, Mercedes’ smallest electric offering in the U.S., saw the lowest decline (36%), with sales going down from 13,797 in 2023 to 8,885 last year.
Mercedes’ own data proves that demand for plug-in hybrids is on the rise, as it reported a 470% increase year-over-year. This is partly explained by the fact that the manufacturer had more PHEVs on sale in 2024 compared to the year before. It currently sells five PHEVs in the States, which offer class-leading electric-only range.
The GLC350e, for instance, has an EPA-rated range of 54 miles thanks to its large 23.3-kilowatt-hour battery, and it supports DC fast charging at up to 60 kW. Even with the lower EV sales, combined EV and PHEV sales made up 15% of all Mercs sold last year in the States.
EVs accounted for around 8% of total passenger car sales in the U.S. last year (around 1.3 million vehicles), up from 7.6%, according to preliminary estimates provided by Cox Automotive. Even if the final numbers will differ slightly, it still means EVs had a better year than we thought, looking at all the reports about cooling sales and how more buyers were looking at hybrids and PHEVs.
Mercedes will soon reveal an all-new CLA, which promises to be a tech powerhouse with both electric and hybrid powertrains. The electric variant will be rear-wheel-drive-biased, with either NMC or LFP batteries (which Mercedes wants to combine in the same pack in the future) and optional dual-motor all-wheel drive. It’s built on a new bespoke EV platform called MMA, which will also underpin at least two crossovers, one of which will be a seven-seater.
The manufacturer knows the design of its current bespoke EVs wasn’t very well received, so it will make its next generation of electric vehicles look more like the combustion cars it sells. The replacement for the EQS sedan, for instance, promises to be a true electric S-Class, which should help it bring back those buyers who avoided the current model specifically because of the way it looked, some of whom probably bought the more conventional-looking Lucid Air instead or an S-Class plug-in hybrid.
