No country for old tech (or something)

With Tesla pushing ever stronger into the classic car market dominated by combustion engine vehicles and political demands by the German government for a fast transition of the car fleet, Germany‘s car-makers are massively investing into electric cars. So far though, the German car industry is far behind with only Porsche having a competitive electric model with the Panamera.

Especially Mercedes seems to have trouble with the development of its own technolgy for electric driving. For too long, the long-time primus on Germany‘s car market for medium-sized and luxury cars with a significant global global marketshare, hesitated to shift its R&D into the new direction. With its dominance in the area of combustion engines and further improvements of the technology possible, a positive future seemed too obvious. The Daimler AG, the company behind the Mercedes brand, even sold its Tesla shares in 2014.

It took still ongoing pressure by both politics and the still successful incursion into the car market by Elon Musk‘s Tesla to bring the Daimler AG to develop its first full-electric vehicle, the EQC.

Hefty price-tag but little performance

German customers can buy the new EQC since mid-2019. The car comes with a Mercedes-style price-tag of at least 71,000 Euro. The top model by AMG, Mercedes‘ own tuning company, even costs beyond 100,000 Euro.

For Mercedes customers this is not news and the past shows, they are willing to buy Mercedes even if they have flaws - and the new EQC has plenty of them.

The biggest of these flaws and perhaps the only relevant one is the utter lack of range. As usually, car manufacturers tweak official numbers as much as they can. But even the short range of 450 kilometers the EQC is supposed to have compared to the 540 kilometers of the Tesla Model Y as its direct competitor, seems to be a vast exaggeration.

A very telling story about the EQC's range as the new decisive attribute of a post-gasoline era car recently came from Die Welt. The author was one of the first who were allowed to test the car extensively and use it as daily vehicle. Normally, these kinds of test reports end with a very flattering „buy this car“, which is especially the case with German cars. After all, some journalists still know who buys their ad-space.

In the case of the EQC though, things ended a bit differently. You don‘t need to be particularly skilled in reading between the lines that the driving experience must have been abysmal. The car seems to be utterly useless because of its limited range. More than the daily commute to the workplace and back again seems not possible with this car – but only if your workplace is not too far away from where you live and better don‘t try do make a detour to the supermarket.

Massive marketing campaign plus political pressure plus zeitgeist minus customers

Apparently, the car is so bad that not even a massive full-spectrum marketing campaign could help saving it. For months, television, cinema, the internet, magazines, reports and what not were telling Germas about this new „Mercedes among electric vehicles“. The marketing budget for the must have been significantly in the 3-digit Millions.

It should have become the perfect storm for Mercedes. Because after all, the entire zeitgeist is in for a sustainable eco-lifestyle with Greta, windmills and battery powered cars being the heroes of the new era.

On top comes the political landscape, which is in Germany fully polarized away from gasoline cars and completely committed to force electric driving into existence. Currently, the government still gives out a 5,000 Euro check plus plenty of discounts on taxes and fees to everyone who buys an electric car, may that be Tesla, Renault or Mercedes.

But while Telsa and Renault sold each more than 5,000 of their electric models in Germany in the first half of 2019 and even BMW‘s i3 „failure“ as CEO Oliver Zispe put it found more than 4,000 buyers, the EQC doesn‘t even get close to the number of these cars sold per day for the enire existence of the car. According to official statistics, Mercedes so far could only sell 19 of the EQC top version and in total 55 EQCs overall since it entered the market. That's practically nothing.

One more attempt or Tesla again?

Such a record can only be described as far beyond abysmal with basically no need for any further explanation. The revenue turned over with the model was some 4.5 Million Euro, which is all too close to the salary of its CEO with some 1 Million Euro for the same time period.

Daimler has perhaps one last chance to built a successful electric vehicle. But so far, they only the retro-fitted electric Smart in its two-seater version which is somewhat successful, but no hit. On top, the electric Smart is a patchwork of componenty by other companies, among them Telsa. Not to speak that Mercedes is a high-value manufactuerer and not specialized on tiny inner-city runabouts.

In case Mercedes has another blunder – and they have to act quickly and decisively given the dynamics of the market – the company could lose so much that even Telsa or perhaps a Chinese automaker might be able to purchase Daimler. It is no wonder there are rumors about Tesla and Daimler cooperating again. Given the complete desaster of the EQC, it‘s unlikely that none of the decision-makers in Stuttgart regret ditching Telsa in 2014.

The question though is who's going to be the boss in case of. What remains as probably the most astounding fact is that of all car-manufacturers, it‘s the most prestigeous, successful and arguably the first one, which along with its almost 300,000 employees might not make it into the future.

Mercedes-Benz new electric EQC model is a total failure with only 19 vehicles sold despite massive marketing campaign