Official Mercedes EQC topic

Electric Mercedes-Benz EQC to start in US from $67,900

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Mercedes-Benz delays American EQC deliveries until 2021
The delay could save the automaker billions in European fines

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. . . Allocating the bulk of the production run to the European market is also a way for Mercedes to avoid paying jaw-dropping fines. Starting in 2020, only 5% of each automaker's fleet can exceed 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer; that number will drop to zero in 2021. Automakers are calling these European regulations the 2020 CO2 cliff, and those who can't slip under the draconian 95-gram limit will need to pay 95 euros (about $106) for each gram over the limit. That doesn't sound like much, but fines are expected to snowball into the millions — and possibly the billions — for the worst offenders.

Viewed in this light, it makes sense for Mercedes to keep most of the 50,000 EQCs its Bremen, Germany, factory is capable of building annually in the European Union. Kia interestingly came to a very similar conclusion when it delayed the American launch of the battery-powered third-generation Soul until the 2021 model year, while the model is readily available in many European nations. . . .

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Mercedes halves EV production target due to battery shortage
It wanted to sell 25,000 EQCs in 2019 but only managed to build around 7,000

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Daimler has been forced to reduce production targets for its Mercedes-Benz EQC electric car from about 60,000 to 30,000 this year, due to a supply shortage of battery cells from LG Chem, Manager Magazin said on Thursday. . . .

The supply bottleneck comes as carmakers face huge fines next year if they fail to cut their fleet emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) to an average 95 grams per kilometer.

Carmakers have been given individual targets based on the weight and size of their vehicle fleet. Daimler had average fleet emissions of 130.4 grams in 2018 and needs to hit a target of 103.1 by 2021, according to forecasting group PA Consulting. If it fails to make progress cutting its CO2 footprint, Daimler faces a fine of 997 million euros ($1.1 billion), PA Consulting said in report published earlier this month.

In 2018, average CO2 emissions in the European Union rose by 1.6% to 120.4 grams per kilometer as customers abandoned diesel vehicles and gravitated towards buying bigger vehicles. Figures for 2019 are not yet available.

Daimler’s works council chief Michael Brecht told Manager Magazin that one of the reasons the company is struggling to meet battery demand is because Tesla bought Grohmann Engineering, a battery automation specialist hired by Mercedes-Benz to build up its own battery manufacturing capacity.

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