Mercedes To Drive India’s Luxury EV Market, Poised To Overtake Tesla

According to its country head, Martin Schwenk, Mercedes-Benz wants to dominate the market for premium electric vehicles in India. This will help it maintain its lead over rival Tesla and solidify its position as the most popular luxury automobile brand. According to Martin Schwenk, Mercedes-Benz will introduce three new electric vehicles in India this year, become the first manufacturer to produce a luxury EV, and establish a statewide fast-charging network. According to him, the business may eventually produce batteries domestically as well.

“Now, we are starting our aggressive offensive into the EV market. In the next five years, 25% of our sales (in India) will be electric,” Schwenk said. “Our ambition is to lead the market on the electric side as well.” With an imported electric version of its AMG EQS 53 4MATIC performance car, which it unveiled on Wednesday, Mercedes will begin its campaign in India. Later this year, an imported electric people carrier and a locally built electric version of the company’s flagship S-Class sedan will be released.

The AMG EQS will cost roughly $307,000 (24.5 million rupees) and have a driving range of about 580 kilometers (360 miles). Luxury automobile sales in India, which have an annual market of roughly 3 million, account for 1% of the country’s overall small- and low-cost car sales. Even more unproven and limited is the luxury EV market.
The first luxury EV will be assembled in India by Mercedes, which already sells its imported EQC sport-utility vehicle (SUV) there. This will allow Mercedes to price the vehicle reasonably compared to rivals because local EVs are subject to a 5% tax rate instead of a 100% tax on imported ones.

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This will give it the upper hand over Audi and BMW in Germany and a certain advantage over Tesla. According to Schwenk, the 5% tax rate is “quite an incentive” for customers to switch to electricity.
By year’s end, he said, Mercedes will install 140 EV chargers across the country, including ultra-fast ones that can charge up to 80% in 40 minutes.

Although current quantities were too low to warrant such an expenditure, Schwenk added that the company would also explore producing EV batteries and other components domestically if it started selling “thousands” of a certain model.
“You need a certain scale to make sense. I will not exclude that for the future but at this stage, it’s not part of the plan,” he said.

Mercedes intends to spend more than 40 billion euros ($40 billion) worldwide by 2030 on the development of battery electric vehicles. Schwenk anticipates that India will move quickly and adopt EVs in line with the company’s ambitions.

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“We will be in line with the global aspiration of converting to electrification because we believe we can be as fast, or sometimes maybe even faster, than some other markets,” he said.