Mercedes may be toning down EQC targets
According to a report, Daimler is said to have significantly reduced the sales targets of the Mercedes EQC for 2020 – mainly because of battery scarcity. The company denied this and maintains they are sticking to the original plans.
According to Manager Magazin, citing insiders who have not been named in detail, Daimler is supposed to plan for sales of only about 30,000 EQC this year – instead of the 50,000 to 60,000 units actually calculated. The reason is that Daimler cannot build enough batteries for the electric SUV because LG Chem, in turn, does not supply enough cells.
Internally, Daimler boss Ola Källenius is said to have declared an “electron emergency”; allegedly, production boss Jörg Burzer is said to report daily on battery production. However, the company refuted this insider information from the magazine report to Reuters. The production plans for 2020 have not changed, a spokesperson for the Stuttgart car manufacturer said. According to the report, approximately 50,000 EQC are to be built in 2020. This has been confirmed. A Mercedes spokeswoman told electrive: “The production planning for 2020 has not been withdrawn. We are still planning to have around 50,000 EQC units in production for this year and have purchased cells from various suppliers accordingly.”
There were repeated reports about low batteries at Mercedes and also around the market launch of the Audi e-tron quattro. At the end of 2019, Daimler had even postponed the US start of the EQC planned for early 2020 by one year – in order to “first meet the growing customer demand for the EQC in Europe”. But it is also likely that the Stuttgart-based company wants to use the few existing batteries in Europe first because of the EU’s strict CO2 targets.
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