In a bid to maximize efficiency and range, Mercedes gave its first handful of modern electric vehicles a very distinctive, if somewhat personality-free design. However, the smooth look hasn’t been all that well-received, and the automaker now says that it wants to give its EVs a little more style.
For example, the EQS has a drag coefficient of 0.20, making it one of the slipperiest cars on the road. Unfortunately, reports indicate that its design doesn’t appeal all that strongly to Mercedes‘ core buyers, presenting it with a conundrum. According to Christoph Starzynski, the company’s VP of car engineering, the brand will be putting more effort into ensuring its vehicles are more aesthetically pleasing.
“We have had that comment, and we are taking this comment seriously,” Starzynski told Top Gear. “Looking at the [design] language in the Concept CLA, and maybe looking a little bit more in the future, I think we can definitely see there’s going to be adoptions to that.”
Read: Mercedes CLA Concept Debuts With Sleek Design And 466+ Mile Electric Range
While the Concept CLA remains quite smooth, its proportions are a little more traditional, with a long flat hood, unlike the EQS’s short rounded front end. Despite that, it’s still quite aerodynamic, and Mercedes promises that it will deliver more than 466 miles (750 km) of range on the WLTP test cycle.
Starzynski said that the Concept CLA is indicative of what we should expect from the future of Mercedes-EQ design. It is also a sign of things to come with regard to names. Unlike the EQE, EQS, and EQC, it eschews the “EQ” branding from the model.
This is part of the automaker’s upcoming naming strategy. Although it does not want to give up on EQ as a brand, Starzynski said Mercedes’ plan to go all-electric means that adding the two letters to the start of every model will someday be unnecessary.
And that day may come sooner than you expect. The executive revealed that the all-electric G-Class will be the first to drop the EQ-blank naming convention when it debuts in the first quarter of this year.
Despite the adjustments, Starzynski said that Mercedes is quite happy with the EQ brand. Although it is experiencing some difficulties in China where the desire for luxurious EVs is weaker than it had hoped, the brand is performing well elsewhere.
“We’re quite happy also in Europe, we see that BEV [battery electric vehicles] overall is going up,” said Starzynski. Meanwhile, in the U.S. “there were early adopters here on the EV side, who were basically going into a different brand because they didn’t have an electric Mercedes in the segment. We contracted a lot of customers back to our brand. This is a very positive sign.”
While he admits that Germans “are not the most optimistic people,” he called the EQ brand’s performance in most markets “actually pretty optimistic.”
