Mercedes Rolls Out New Electric Car To Taker On Tesla,

It’s the first dedicated electric vehicle from Mercedes, and goes up against the likes of the Tesla Model X and Jaguar I-Pace.

The Mercedes EQC crossover is expected to go into production in the first half of 2019, Daimler AG Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche told reporters in Stockholm before the car’s unveiling.

Mercedes-Benz is claiming a range of over 450km (280 miles), which is an internal testing figure based on NEDC (New European Driving Cycle).

The company had meant to invest €10 billion ($11.5 billion) on the line, but the spending has since increased, Daimler AG Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche said Wednesday in Stockholm. Audi says its e-Tron can fully recharge (95 kWh) in only 30 minutes on a special 150-kilowatt charging system around which it was designed, meaning it can recover range 69 percent faster than the Mercedes can.

BMW and Volkswagen are making similar pushes.

The EQC will also include Mercedes-Benz’s new user interface, MBUX (Mercedes-Benz User Experience), which features a digital instrument panel and touch screen. The E-tron will officially be unveiled in San Francisco, California on September 19, 2018.

Production of the new EQC is scheduled to start in 2019 at the automaker’s plant in Bremen.

Fielding questions about whether the company could launch more variants as the electric market explodes, Zetsche said that the planned 10 electric variants would already allow Daimler to cater to 60 percent of its relevant electric cars market. At the time, the company announced that EQ would become a new line of fully electric cars and SUVs. To underscore the shift, Mercedes will spend €1-billion on battery production to create a network of eight facilities globally.

The auto is due for release in the USA in 2020, by which time the EV market will be even more fierce, so you might expect it to have some eye-catching features to one-up its competitors.

While we’ve gotten used to both hybrid and electric vehicles on the road, there has always been a nagging concern about the safety of these vehicles in the event of an accident.

The launch is the centrepiece of a three-day event that features DJ sets and yoga with a YouTube star – nearly literally bending over backwards to telegraph 21st-century kudos.