Mercedes EQC US Launch Delayed As Company Decides To Focus On Europe First

If you’re an American looking to get behind the wheel of the Mercedes EQC, we have some bad news for you as the US launch has reportedly been delayed by at least a year.

According to Automotive News, the company recently informed dealers that the US launch will now occur in 2021. That’s a significant change as the EQC was originally slated to go on sale in early next year.

Unsurprisingly, the crossover has been scrubbed from Mercedes’ US website.  The Wayback Machine shows the EQC landing page was operational as recently as December 8th, but now it just redirects to the homepage where the EQC isn’t listed at all.

While the delay will likely be upsetting for fans, it appears the model is already a hit in Europe. As mentioned in the memo, the company made a “strategic decision to first support the growing customer demand for the EQC in Europe.”

Early sales figures in Europe aren’t too impressive as Carsalesbase data shows only 212 EQCs were bought in September, with another 271 snapped up in October. Despite this, former CEO Dieter Zetsche told Welt “We are certain that we will not be able to meet demand [for the EQC] in 2019 and probably not in 2020 either.” That suggests the automaker has plenty of orders and is struggling to keep up with demand.

If that’s the case, things could improve in the future as Automotive News says EQC production is slated to double to 200 units per day. This should increase capacity to around 50,000 EQCs annually.

Regardless, the delay is bad news for US consumers as Mercedes used to the Los Angeles Auto Show to announce the EQC would be priced from $67,900. This is $17,090 less than the Tesla Model X and the announcement probably generated quite a bit of interest.

It remains unclear if Mercedes will keep the value pricing intact when the EQC eventually arrives stateside, but the crossover has an 80 kWh lithium-ion battery and two electric motors. The latter give the model all-wheel drive as well as a combined output of 402 hp (300 kW / 408 PS) and 561 lb-ft (760 Nm) of torque. This allows the crossover to accelerate from 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) in 4.8 seconds and hit a limited top speed of 112 mph (180 km/h).