In an internal affair, Mercedes-Benz announced their plan to make 10 Mercedes electric cars by 2025 that would cater to the growing market of EVs and will make them the top brand for electrification. A production model based on the Generation EQ SUV shown at the Paris Motor Show will be its first offering and is expected to arrive by 2018.
Coincidentally, Volkswagen also announces in the same week that they will be spending 2 million dollars to advance in the EV market and targets 30 electric vehicles at the same year 2025.
The Generation EQ will be Mercedes-Benz's new brand for electric cars and will have the goals to be Connected, Autonomous, Shared and 100% percent Electrical, summarized in the acronym CASE, according to Green Car Reports.
The architecture of the new power generation EQ is developed for electric cars powered exclusively by a battery . The first EQ SUV will be offered with lithium batteries with a capacity of 70 kWh which will allow a range of up to 500 km. The EQ architecture that is scalable with different wheelbases and width thereof, and also suitable for models of "classic" or derivatives body SUV or coupe.
In Mercedes electric cars plan, there will be another SUV with another platform and will be the first plug-in hybrid with hydrogen fuel cell. it will be called the GLC Mercedes F-Cell and will be manufactured at the Bremen factory, according to CS Monitor. The Mercedes GLC F-Cell will cover the unknown journey in the wilderness of hydrogen powered cars, with lithium batteries 9 kWh produced by Mercedes-Benz's subsidiary Accumotive.
As of now, it is still difficult to find charging station for hydrogen fuel cars and that's why Mercedes are already planning a solution to this. For long journeys with electric propulsion by producing electricity aboard the hydrogen fuel cell, they have developed two carbon fiber tanks capable of holding four kilos of hydrogen at a pressure of 700 bars, one of the current standards. Thereby GLC Mercedes F-Cell can deliver up to 500 km of autonomy.
The fuel cell will be built on a nearby plant, based on a development of the Canadian company Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation (AFCC), owned by Ford and Daimler. It will considerably reduce the cost of the fuel cell by reducing 90 percent of the amount of platinum used. The size of the fuel cell has also been reduced by 30 percent over the last generation.
Watch the future of Mercedes electric cars at the video below:
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