To Ease the Long-Distance Car Journeys, Mercedes-Benz Plans 140 ultra-fast charging Points
Mercedes-Benz India, was the 1st luxury carmaker to launch an EV in the nation. The company is yet to make inroads in the EV space unlike its competitors.
Two years ago, the company has launched its maiden EV offering, the EQC, and at that point, it was asked as to whether India is ready for EV’s. Should the company really get into EVs at this stage? But then we saw the demand, we were fully convinced that the customer demand exist for EV and hence 18 month ago, we have a made a decision to locally assemble the EQS, which is our flagship car, equivalent to the S-Class, which would rollout of the Chakan plan next year.
The Chief learnings from the time the EQC arrived to the launch of the EQS? Have customer preferences evolved or is the customer conversion higher in the high-end luxury EV segment.
Almost all Luxury car customer are saying “My next car is an EV” hence it is clear, they wish to make a shift. We have found, that many owners have taken steps to install chargers at home, particularly in large residential societies in Bombay and Delhi, where we saw few resistances from housing societies. Hence, we are not only launching the EQS, we are also announcing the biggest ultra-fast charging network in India, exclusively for Mercedes-Benz customers in India. We would have around 140 charging points across our network, out of which, more than 20 would 180kw chargers where the customers can get a full charge in mere 30 minutes and they can proceed to Lonavala, Goa and so on. We are setting-up chargers in Goa, Pune and Kolhapur. It would be available 24×7 and they can also have coffee, while their car gets charged.
The company believes that their showrooms as well as workshops are located in numerous hotspots of customer activity by design. Based on that, the company has done a detailed Pin Code analysis on customer density and set up charging stations accordingly. For the first year, the company is not thinking of charging their customer. We wish to offer our customer, hassle free luxury experience. We would be investing around close to 15 crores on charging infrastructure for Mumbai-Goa, Mumbai-Nashik, Bengaluru-Calicut, Kochi. We would be placing these in our dealership, as we do not want our customers to suffer from long queues at public charging stations or from a patchwork electric supply.
For the first time, the company telling its customer, that they require to come into the workshop once every two years and not once in a year- an industry-first service interval. Secondly, AMG customers wish to push their cars and they should not have to worry about batteries, so they are offering a 10-year warranty on the battery. That, with the charging network, it would allow our customer to push their cars.
As the company is expecting 25% of its sales would come from EVs from 2025, when asked what portion of that, they would expect to come from high-end luxury EVs, where the conversion rate would be higher? And what kind of demand, they are foreseeing for the EQS?.
The Mercedes Benz India, does not hesitate to state that, more than 50% of its overall EV sales would come from top-end EVs.
