From birth to abandonment, the life span of Mercedes-Benz EQ series is only 8 years.
Ola Kaellenius, CEO of Mercedes-Benz, said frankly: "As Mercedes-Benz focuses on the transformation of pure electric vehicles, this makes the EQ brand of' oil to electricity' redundant."
At one time, the fuel car faucet actually launched a redundant electrical brand in the electrification transformation. Unexpectedly reasonable, it can be seen from the increasingly stingy design of EQ series.
First, the development process of EQ brand
After 20 14, new energy automobile brands entered the blowout stage, and "Wei Xiaoli" and "Zero Run" were established one after another, and a subversive change was brewing in the automobile industry.
Traditional fuel manufacturers represented by Mercedes-Benz are naturally unwilling to lag behind, and they have also launched electric sub-brands or new series, among which EQ brand is following suit.
About two years later than the new domestic forces, Mercedes-Benz officially released the EQ brand at the Paris Motor Show in 20 16, and the first concept car of EQ brand, Generation EQ, was launched in the world.
EQ brand positioning electric travel brand, still taking luxury as its selling point. According to Mercedes-Benz China official website, EQ brand currently has seven models.
The model layout of EQ brand mainly focuses on SUVs, including four SUV models, two cars and a concept car. The vehicle layout is relatively perfect.
EQA positioning pure electric compact SUV, priced at 3,265,438+0.8 million.
EQB positioning compact SUV, priced at 35.18-423,700.
EQC is positioned as a medium-sized SUV with a price of 49.19-57.190,000, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has a pure cruising range of 440/443km.
EQE locates medium and large cars, with a price of 47.80-53.43 million, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has a pure battery life of 752km.
EQS is positioned as a large car with a price of 84.50- 1339000 and a cruising range of 720-813/849km for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
EQS SUV is positioned as a large SUV with a price of 91.05-1100500, and the battery life of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is 670/673/742km.
The last model is VisionAVTR concept car, which is a joint product of Mercedes-Benz and Avatar.
There are many models, but the market performance is very poor.
According to public data, in 2022, the global delivery volume of pure electric vehicles of Mercedes-Benz was 65,438+065,438+07,800, which was obviously different from the sales volume of fuel vehicles. In the China market, the sales volume of EQ brand of Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles is even worse, and the average monthly sales volume of the whole brand is less than 1000 vehicles.
However, Mercedes-Benz adjusted its strategy in time. In June last year, 1 1, Mercedes-Benz adjusted the price of EQ brand, covering EQE series, EQS series, etc., with a price reduction of 50,000-237,600 yuan, becoming the brand with the highest price reduction at that time.
However, the strategy of exchanging price for quantity has not worked. Last June, 5438+February, the whole EQ brand delivered less than 500 vehicles in China. During the period of 65438+ 10 this year, the situation continued to deteriorate, among which the sales volume of EQE, the main model, was only 289, and EQC was only double-digit, with a monthly sales volume of 26.
Judging from the market performance, EQ brand is a complete failure. According to the research of J.D.POWER in the United States, the biggest reason why consumers don't choose specific products when buying a car is design, so the design of Mercedes-Benz EQ should bear some responsibility for its poor market performance.
design concept
The design of the EQ brand of Mercedes-Benz is the responsibility of the team of Gorden Wagener, the design director of Mercedes-Benz.
Gordon Wagner took office in 2008, replacing former chief designer Peter Pfeiffer. Looking back from the works, the design styles of the two are quite different.
During Peter Pavelli's tenure, Mercedes-Benz showed its tough and serious lines and solemn and mature luxury, which can be seen in Mercedes-Benz E-Class and Mercedes-Benz GLK.
After Gordon Wagner took office, the design theme of Mercedes-Benz changed to highlight simple lines and shapes and pursue the ultimate purity of the senses.
Therefore, Mercedes-Benz E-Class, AMG SL, Mercedes-Benz Maibakh S-Class cars and other models are mainly sleek and streamlined. This is more intense in EQ brand, and the most extreme performance is the VisionAVTR concept car designed by EQ brand in cooperation with Avatar.
But Mercedes-Benz has been mellow and dignified for more than ten years, and no one can say it is bad. How can it not work for EQ brands? Because the core reason is not here.
On the one hand, it is because of "changing oil into electricity", on the other hand, the new design is getting smaller and smaller.
"oil-to-electricity transformation"-a sign of failure
Although Mercedes-Benz EQ brand was officially announced as early as 20 16, its first model EQC was officially launched in 20 19. As the pioneering work of EQ brand, EQC banned EQ brand from the beginning because of "changing oil to electricity".
"Changing from oil to electricity" generally refers to changing the engine, fuel tank and other components into batteries, motors and electronic control systems without changing the structure of fuel vehicles, thus forming a new energy product.
Apart from the power system, what ordinary people can best distinguish between the "oil to electricity" attribute of EQC is its appearance, which was once described as "similar to GLC".
Although it was officially announced that EQC adopted a brand-new family-style design language, two conspicuous chrome-plated lines on the Internet betrayed it.
Traditional fuel vehicles, whether naturally aspirated or turbocharged, need air from the engine, and most vehicles are front engines, so the air intake grille provides the source of air and the channel for heat dissipation.
The chrome-plated lines of fuel vehicles can not only highlight the sense of luxury, but also enhance the aggressiveness of the air intake grille and create a strong power performance of the fuel vehicle engine.
However, the logic of dynamic performance of new energy electric vehicles is different. The electric car has no internal combustion engine and a special cooling system to dissipate heat, so it doesn't need the air intake grille to dissipate heat, and it doesn't need those two protruding chrome wires to increase the presence of the grille.
Therefore, from the beginning, EQC's design concept was based on fuel vehicles. If this idea is wrong, the rest are also wrong. Unfortunately, the Mercedes EQB launched by 20211adopts the same double chrome-plated line design.
In addition to the front face, "oil to electricity" also affects the size of the car body.
The battery of Mercedes-Benz EQC is directly installed on the chassis, which leads to the shortening of the ground clearance of the vehicle. The minimum ground clearance is only 144mm, while the ground clearance of the SUV is maintained at about 200-250 mm This will not only reduce the vehicle passability, but also increase the risk of battery friction.
Of course, Mercedes-Benz also knows that "changing from oil to electricity" is not a long-term solution, so it launched a brand-new EVA pure electric platform at 202 1.
After the EVA platform, the design of EQ brand has changed a lot, but it has lost its old flavor.
A stingy new front face-walking into the abyss
Updated EQC, EQB, etc. Changed a brand-new design language. At present, EQ brands are using new design languages.
This design language has been criticized by many people. Personally, it seems to be caused by petty. There are two main reasons for petty. One is the exaggerated size of the trident LOGO, and the other is the clutter caused by the partition design.
Everyone should have heard that the bigger the logo of Mercedes-Benz, the less valuable it is. Like luxury goods, the more you get started, you need to print a big LOGO or a full LOGO to enhance the sense of luxury, while the advanced ones are not needed at all.
Therefore, the enlarged and paved "Trident" LOGO did not enhance the sense of luxury of the front face, but bred a sense of embarrassment of being afraid of luxury. It seems that designers do not have much confidence in the luxury of the new front face of EQ brand.
Coupled with the color division of the new front face, the front face is smaller and more cramped in visual effect, and petty bourgeoisie naturally comes.
The two chrome-plated wires mentioned above smell like fuel cars. After the cancellation of the new front face, the smell of the fuel car is less, but not much, mainly with the same design as the China Net. This is the obvious fuel car practice.
New energy vehicles that are selling well now basically don't need this set. The front face is almost simple and neat, and the color and body color are unified.
After a blogger unified the color of his front face, the harmony was obviously high.
I tried to understand the designer's idea, but I didn't understand what it meant. The only thing I can think of is that the silver trident can stand out with a black base. In that case, then again.
Write at the end:
Mercedes-Benz plans to give up the EQ brand as early as 2024 when the next-generation model goes on the market. Now this situation is really embarrassing. Appearance modeling is consumers' first impression of automobile products, which will have a great influence on the purchase decision. Mercedes-Benz EQ brand has come to this day, which makes sense. Mercedes-Benz EQ brand was full of perfunctory design in the early stage and lost its atmosphere in the later stage. I am ashamed of products like Mercedes-Benz.
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