Transcript
Well, the initial slow drip of auto manufacturers walking away from their foolish EV promises has now turned into a flood. Almost every week, you read of yet another automaker desperately backtracking on their electrification plans as the market dries up and sales plummet. The latest car makers to cave and back away from these mad electrification plans are Volkswagen and Mercedes, who have hedged their bets with more hybrids, allowing production of internal combustion engines to continue. There’s also more good news from Mercedes, which we’ll get to later in the video.
This isn’t rocket science. There’s a simple principle which these manufacturers should follow if they want to be successful: build the cars people want and to hell with what the government says. Welcome back to M-Guy, British engineer and lawyer, now Sydney-based YouTuber. Be sure to follow me on the usual socials for more content, links in the description, and there’s a code on screen; scan that with your phone if you want to sign up for an occasional M-Guy email. It’d be great to have you on board.
Bloomberg reports on how Volkswagen’s EV fantasy has just collided with reality. Volkswagen walks back EV or bus strategy that rankled rivals. CEO Oliver Blumer is turning to hybrids and striking partnerships as EV sales slow. Volkswagen AG’s all-in on electric vehicle plan is no more. The namesake VW brand, which pitched its ID family of electric cars as central to its future, admitted last week it will need more plug-in hybrids as EV sales decelerate. This marks just the latest adjustment VW has made to its electrification strategy after the company botched several model releases and fell behind in China, where local brands now dominate. The manufacturer has also shelved efforts to seek outside investors for its battery unit and scrapped plans for a 2 billion Euro ($2.2 billion) EV factory in Germany. In fact, the automaker is selling so many cars still running on combustion engines that it’s on track to overshoot its emissions allowance next year, leading Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blumer to ask European regulators for leniency.
It’s a sharp turnabout from only 3 years ago when VW’s aggressive lobbying for EVs in the European Union opened up rifts between the company and some of its peers in the region. Yep, give the punters what they want; works every time. But this is a far cry from VW’s posturing on electrification barely years ago. “Electric mobility has won the race,” D said when presenting VW’s battery strategy in 2021. Many in the industry questioned our approach; today they are following suit while we are reaping the fruit. Well, that fruit must be tasting pretty sour by now, if it isn’t completely rotten.
And Mercedes has dumped an entire EV platform after a woeful sale of its larger EV models. As Top Gear reports, Mercedes has reportedly cancelled an entire EV platform, and apparently, slow EV sales are to blame. Farewell, MBEA; we hardly knew you. Mercedes is putting the kibosh on the development of its MBEA large electric vehicle platform, having apparently been put off by the EQE and EQS’s slower than expected sales. OD Deia first reported by Handelsblut, the move will supposedly save billions in development costs as Mercedes rethinks its future luxury car strategy.
This is a big shift because the MBEA platform, which was due to be ready for 2028, was meant to bring several of the technologies previewed on the ultra-long range Vision EQXX to the table. Don’t expect 750 mi from a single charge anytime soon then. And Bloomberg again dives into why the EQS has been such a disaster for Mercedes. Why Mercedes’ $100,000 electric jelly bean flopped: The German automaker’s limousine customers care as much about comfort and status as saving the planet. Now they should worry about residual values too. When Mercedes-Benz Group unveiled a luxury electric sedan called the EQS in 2021, managers boasted about the radical aerodynamic design, billing it as the German automaker’s most significant launch in decades. Film director James Cameron and singer Alicia Keys were on hand to add their own superlatives for a vehicle that cost in excess of $100,000. “This concept car was inspired by the values of Avatar’s indigenous people, the Na’vi, who believe that we must not only limit what we take from nature but find ways to replenish what we use.” The all-new EQS is not just an impressive vehicle; it’s a commitment to a more balanced world.
Three years later, the electric version of the flagship S-Class risks becoming one of the biggest flops in Mercedes’ storied history, and its shortcomings have contributed to the company’s decision to ditch a goal of selling only electric vehicles by 2030. Sales of the luxury electric sedan declined 40% to just 14,100 units last year, according to Mercedes’ annual report. Price cuts in China and heavily discounted U.S. lease deals failed to revive demand while undermining the company’s strategy of prioritizing high values over sales volumes. Combustion engine S-Class deliveries were more than six times higher.
And the final piece of good news from Mercedes is that the ignominious slide of its once legendary AMG brand into abject mediocrity has been halted, at least for the time being. AMG started going downhill when Mercedes started applying the badge to ghastly little hatchbacks like the A45, and worst of all, applied the legendary C63 badge, which used to stand for a glorious 6.2 L naturally aspirated V8, on a pissy little 4-cylinder car with an electric motor—sacrilege. But the market has spoken, and for the upcoming CLLE 63 AMG is going back to the next best thing to the 6.2 L, the venerable 4 L twin turbo, which is about the best we can hope for in this mad net-zero climate. Mercedes AMG CL63 switches four-pot PH for 585 BHP V8. AMG lines up twin-turbo V8 power for upcoming super coupe amid slow sales for four-cylinder hybrid C63 H. Wonder why that would be?
The upcoming Mercedes AMG CL63 will receive a twin-turbocharged 4 L V8 petrol engine, developing up to 585 BHP, senior officials at the division’s Mercedes-Benz parent company have confirmed. The decision reverses an earlier plan to give the hot new coupe and cabriolet the same 670 BHP plug-in hybrid drivetrain as the latest C63 and GLC63, due to slow sales of the saloon, estate, and SUV, despite its class-leading performance. Traditional AMG buyers haven’t taken to the E Performance PHV drivetrain, which combines a turbocharged 2 L 4-cylinder petrol engine and a rear axle mounted electric motor—ghastly. I wouldn’t drive one if they paid me. I’d go and find a nice C63 Edition 507 coupe from 2012 or 2013, one of the most fun cars you could ever imagine when the 63 on the badge actually meant something.
Volkswagen and Mercedes aren’t the first automakers to get cold feet over their earlier ludicrous electrification promises in the face of clear market apathy, but we can be 100% sure of one thing: they won’t be the last.
HT/observa
Ford in the US reported losing $130,000 on each electric car they sold.
Seems like they’re mastering Bidenomics.
They didn’t learn from Tesla. The way to make money on an electric car is to:
1) Get government subsidies
2) Go to 1) as many times as you can
3) Don’t include an interior or buttons. Just a screen to tap through for everything.
4) Use customers for alpha/beta testing
5) overwork/underpay your employees.
6) Don’t let workers unionize.
7) Pay workers in stock options – much cheaper.
8) Make a generally sh** car with fit&finish that would make Lada or Zastava (of Yugo fame) blush.
9) Get your CEO to generate a cult following that will buy the sh** cars for exorbitant prices.
Otherwise it’s kind of impossible.
They’ll make it up in volume.
Just like the Penn Central.
Who the hell needs so many bhp whether it’s IC or EV? If the EV manufacturers put 200 HP motors in instead of 400 HP, they’d get twice the mlieage per charge (or something close to it) and might be more popular.
I think you’ll find that horsepower and mileage are not that closely related. The weight of the vehicle has much more to do with it.
With EVs, the windage and rolling resistance are the main consumers of energy. They need the power to get the performance but it does not reflect so much in range. The bigger rated motor can also recharge more on dynamic braking so less energy burnt when bringing the car to a stop..
Need? Well Mercedes apparently. If they want to sell some cars.
I don’t want to make accusations against any particular person without adequate evidence but there seems to be a movement developing, with about the same lack of intelligence and reasoning ability as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and similar gangs, that is pushing for more destruction of liberty by advocating for very low speed limits such as 20 or 25 mph.
They tried that in Wales
At some point you get down to a point where, if half your drivers are below average, that having them on the road 100% longer by reducing speed limits 50% actually causes more accidents.
Andy, is your reply supposed to be to me? I don’t see how it connects to my reply to atticman.
Doubtful. Half the hp moving the same load will cut performance, but I doubt it would improve the pitiful range by much.
There is no such thing as “Too Much Horsepower”! There are people who purchase EV’s solely for the visceral experience of acceleration. No concern for the environment, just the joy of going fast. This is also why people buy sports cars, they enjoy going around corners, the faster the better. Cars can and should be fun, and not just appliances. But there are those that want to take all the joy out of life and make us like Russia and China. Just drones for the system.
I love the old axiom–“engines that are large and lazy lead a long life.” Unsaid is the joy of using a periodic burst of pure power for fun. That’s why I’m not giving up my 5 liter normally aspirated many horsepower Jag.
If you are doing 40mph and need to punch it in order to pass safely, then you do.
This goes double if you happen to be going uphill.
Having unused horses under the hood, available when the need occurs, is a safety feature.
This is the result when politicians, bureaucrats, academics and environmentalists gain the upper hand in deciding what sort of products consumers should be buying, not what they want. And when those products are badly overpriced and have a variety of limitations and reliability issues, the public will simply boycott them. Anyone with a background in marketing could have predicted the above scenario well in advance of its getting started.
Yes, I did! (predict the fall)
There are far too many people that think capitalism is a dirty word. It starts from the U.S.’s worthless public school system. This is the same kind of thinking from those who hate oil and gas but buy North Face clothing.
Right, $50-100 for a tea shirt.
Always replace “capitalism” in your response in an economic discussion with “a free market system”.
The left has turned the former label (coined by Marx) into an irrational pejorative.
It’s called Socialism – the ideology that says central planning and control of an economy is more efficient than free market capitalism. It is also the technocratic element of Fascist State directed economy.
It has never worked, because it cannot, but some refuse to accept this.
The old idea that an elite knows what’s best for the rest.
Johnston’s Law – “That which cannot happen will not happen”.
You can legislate away a whole lot of things but common sense isn’t one of them.
… on track to overshoot its emissions allowance next year, leading Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blumer to ask European regulators for leniency.
Solution: GET OUT OF THE EU!
Toll!
SMILING AND SMILING AND SMILING 😃
VW was aggressively lobbying for EV’s because going electric was part of the punishment for cheating the emissions tests on their diesels. The real pity is that the diesel standards were absurdly low, the full size Passat got 50 mpg highway and passed drive-by emissions testing even with the cheat mode off.
“residual values“
Just a 2-word mention of an important issue. Color me surprised.
Also, folks without off-street parking need an out-in-the-wild plan,
otherwise known as seek-and-might-find.
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. All these car manufacturers need to google the word “Edsel”.
Or “Detroit”, when chinese EVs run them over.
Americans won’t buy those either.
A useless car with a cheaper price is still useless.
The Trabant was cheap as well.
Not to mention the Yugo.
Chinese EVs have been sitting in many European ports for up to !8 months as nobody wants to buy them and the ports are beginning to refuse to take any more without proof that they are sold and will be moving on.
Do you live in the real world?
The left lives in a world entirely of their own making.
Mr. Andrews: I’m gonna assume that he lives in this world, and he’s out to prove the bliss that willful blindness brings is persuasive to others, even those who observe.
Oops!
From Apr 28, 2023:
Canada won Volkswagen plant despite offer of ‘way, way more’ money from U.S.: Trudeau
If Justin Trudeau has embraced EV’s you just know the whole sector is doomed.
US will just put duties on Canadian batteries until the US economy benefits from those same batteries as much or more than the Canadian economy and won’t have to put a $15Bn subsidy in place to do it. In fact, the justification for the US duty will be the Canadian subsidy. No dummies, these bureaucrats, when collecting a paycheck is at stake…they go to the same self-help courses as CliSci’s.
No duties allowed. See USMCA (or NAFTA before it).
Mercedes don’t appear to be ditching their EVs, just the use of the term EQ, replaced by EV in the names of their electric models.
Neither do they appear to be ditching their EVs going on the following taken from their German website.
“At Mercedes-Benz, we are convinced that the future will be electric. That is why we are continuing to expand our expertise in the field of electric mobility, and the vertical integration is also to be increased by insourcing drive-system technologies for electric vehicles. At the same time, the preparation of the global manufacturing network for the production of all-electric vehicles is proceeding at full speed.”
Electric | Mercedes-Benz Group > Innovations > Drive systems > Electric
As for Volkswagen, from their German website:
“The focus of Volkswagen’s transformation process is e-mobility: eleven new e-models will be introduced by 2027.”
Volkswagen | Volkswagen Group (volkswagen-group.com)
Just saying.
Give them a chance to update their website…
Revealed preferences. The maxim is, pay attention to what is done, not what is said.
Fine, if they can sell them at a profit.
Ev was pushed a way too hard. It’s as if even governments didn’t really believe in them, despite all the legislation to kill off the ICE. There was dragging of feet on readying a suitable network of charging stations.
Didn’t the car companies know what butcher, baker and candlestick maker customers knew? If they bought an ev, they would be spending countless hours a day lining up for for the few and far between chargers. They should at least have built in a Turkey dinner compartment for traveling to family holiday by ev. Well publicized frustrations with this problem were prominently in the news.
Finally, did any manufacturer outside of China and Henry Ford know that you don’t start off with building $100,000 cars!! (Tesla did, too my initial surprise, but even he is at the edge of the cliff pictured at the head of this article). I thought the hybrid was a smart start – yeah, take your own charger with you! I would have expected for the ev, smart operators would have produced puddle jumpers with a range a range of 75 miles or so with a price tag of $20,000 just to get started – a feasibility exercise to improve on.
Actually, Tesla was smart to start off with the expensive luxury hi-tech hot-rod side of the market, where the ‘punters’ don’t care so much about price, only performance and the show-off factor. That gave them a way to develop their products and build up their production capacity to be ready to produce the high volume cars that will necessarily have lower margins.
Tesla isn’t stupid.
Tesla was smart in getting in first to hoover up all the taxpayer loot to subsidise its otherwise financially unviable business.
Yes -THIS.
Tesla’s business was built on the back of taxpayers thanks to government interference in the auto market.
That must explain why Tesla has been slashing its work force lately.
Haha… this is funny & ironic
I think pretty much any consumer outside of the green fanatics would have easily predicted this outcome…. Yet these auto executives couldn’t see it coming. Talk about believing your own BS… that’s the fast road to failure
That, and believing the Politicians’ BS too.
The people who run the EU will be looking down on the revolting rabble and getting angry like the Ceauşescus on their balcony, I’m waiting for the (metaphoric) firing squad.
The pesky deplorables are still demanding liquid fuelled convenience and cost over elite edicts-
Car companies spending up on ads for SUVs despite Australia’s new fuel efficiency standards (msn.com)
and the carmakers are happy to tell them all about getting in before the price rise.
But certainly, one takeaway from NEVS is this: if you’ve ever wanted that V8 Mustang or a manual Toyota GR86, a Hyundai i30 N, BMW M2 or one of the countless other brilliant internal combustion sports cars available new now, best get yourself down to a showroom tomorrow.
How exactly will Australia’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standard affect the new car market? (whichcar.com.au)
Yep and any of them still in the showrooms going to cop a decent penalty come Jan1 2025 will be registered quick smart as demos in late December so end of year ICE model runout prices are about to end.(for info a Corolla Cross hybrid ordered today that isn’t impacted next year will take 12 months on order from Toyota San)
I want a straight 6.
Mazda.
Ooops! You said straight 6 and my brain auto-corrected to longitudinal 6, but it’s a V6.
In my old Ford F150 purchased in ’88. All the mechanics I saw said it was a great engine. Worked well for me for 20 years, but the rest of that truck was junk.
Gotta love the narcissism of just about every Youtuber. They have to put they have to put their face up there with a silly expression, for no reason but “look at meee!”.
When the wall of reality labelled, customer preference looms into full frontal focus, the only option is to recognise it and respect it, or go bust.
The only alternative is the ‘command’ political system where the state decides who can have what and when. That did not work out so well in the USSR or Cuba or North Korea. The Jury is still out in China but rumours are circulating…..
And who can forget the Mercedes double A battery skit..
Plug-in hybrids do not overcome the problems of availability of charging units, capacity to generate increased demand, and infrastructure to distribute increased load.
The majority of car owners, at least in UK & Europe do not have garages or driveways to accommodate home-charger units, so where will they plug-in that is convenient?
It is clear that nobody neither policy-makers nor automakers understands or is willing to understand that the problem is not so much with the vehicles, but with the infrastructure. There are none so blind as those who cannot see.
In a hybrid there is no reason the gasoline engine can’t charge the battery while it is running. Whether or not you get a full charge is dependent on use.
Yes. ×1,000.
Plug-in hybrids suck almost as much as EVs, because when the battery isn’t charged you have an underpowered piece of shit that can’t get out of its own way. And if you’re driving your overweight and underpowered PHEV on just the inadequate engine, they’ll be little if anything to spare to put any charge into the battery.
Leaving you with two lousy choices; either deal with the same sitting in the charging station for an hour (assuming you’re first in line) waiting to charge the battery, or drive on just your woefully inadequate ICE and reminisce about what it was like to drive a 1973 Honda Civic.
Oh, plus you retain that propensity for it to light itself on fire and maybe take your home with it.
No thanks. I don’t want any car that plugs in, period.
I’ll stick with my 1966 Sunbeam Tiger, specially retrofitted with an 18 cylinder, 3,350 cubic inch, 2,200 hp Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone engine. It only gets 50 feet per gallon, but those feet are a blast!