Tesla, Porsche, and (as of a couple of days ago) Audi may have the high-performance luxury EV market to themselves for now, but pretty soon Mercedes will be joining the party with multiple AMG versions of its EQ-branded electric cars. Confirmed by Mercedes-Benz COO and R&D boss Markus Schäfer via Autocar, “an electrical platform in the direction of AMG is coming…there will be performance variants of the EQA, B, S, E,” the executive told the publication.
Our only question is: will one person be dedicated to building one electric motor from start to finish?
As a reference, the company’s EV nomenclature runs fairly parallel with the naming of its regular gas cars so the already-released, non-U.S.-bound, entry-level EQA is a subcompact crossover while the upcoming EQB will… also be a subcompact crossover albeit boxier, like the GLB with which it reportedly shares a platform. The future EQS and EQE, meanwhile, will each apparently get a sedan and SUV version, becoming the electric equivalents of the S-Class, GLS, E-Class, and GLE.
In terms of timeline, expect the Mercedes-AMG EQA to arrive first considering it’s the only car out of the four mentioned already been unveiled to the public in vanilla, non-AMG form. The regular versions of the EQB, EQE, and EQS are scheduled to go into production sometime this year with the EQS slated for the first half of 2021 and the EQE set for the second half. The AMG editions should come into play sometime later.
When those AMG versions do release, expect higher-end models like the AMG EQS to dole out more than 600 horsepower, a figure that’s all but required if the company wants to compete with the 750-hp Porsche Taycan Turbo S, 637-hp Audi RS E-Tron GT and, of course, whatever four-digit-hp road-rocket Tesla has to offer by the time these things actually come out.
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