Mercedes-Benz recently announced that it will reduce production of its S-Class, and the reason is lower demand for these cars. The intention is to move to single-shift work, which will affect almost 1,500 employees, while some of them will be redeployed to other production sectors at the Sindelfingen plant. The German manufacturer now has a new plan, to put EQS and S-Class under one name.

Mercedes will not give up on internal combustion engines, at least not until the end of the decade. “In the future, there will be two S-Classes, one with ICE and one with electric drive,” said Mercedes director Ola Kallenius. This means that buyers will have more choice, as with the G-Class which is offered with internal combustion engines and as all-electric.

This is not a surprise, because sales of electric vehicles are not going according to the manufacturer’s plan. In the year 2023, Mercedes sold over 2 million cars worldwide, and it was expected that 20% of them would be electric cars, but that did not happen. Customers are increasingly turning to gasoline and diesel cars, as well as hybrids.

In Q2 2024, Mercedes sold just 33,400 cars from its S-Class (EQS, EQS SUV and GLS), which is a drop of 25 percent compared to 44,200 cars sold in the same period last year. The biggest decline was recorded in the markets of Europe (-27 percent), USA (-19 percent) and China (-13 percent).

It seems that customers are not making the switch to electric cars easily, even though the number of electric cars on European roads has increased by 2% in 2024.

Source: Mercedes-Benz