Mercedes-Benz India plans 140 ultra-fast charging points for long-distance car journeys 

Although it was the first luxury carmaker to launch an Electric Vehicle (EV) in the country, Mercedes-Benz India is yet to make inroads in the EV space, like its compatriots have.

By announcing the local assembly of its flagship luxury EV, the country’s leading luxury car maker is taking a huge leap forward, and expects 25% of its total sales to come from EVs over the next five years.

Launching the range-topping CBU EQS AMG 53 before the locally assembled EQS, Mercedes-Benz  India’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing Santosh Iyer talks about the brand’s EV strategy and plans to build an extensive charging network. Edited excerpts:

Where does this rank in terms of the milestones that Mercedes-Benz India has notched up in the last 28 years? 

We were the first luxury brand to come out of India, we have been committed to this market in many ways and manner. Two years ago, we launched our maiden EV offering, the EQC, and at that point we were asked, is India ready for EVs?. Should we really get into EVs at this stage? But then we saw the demand and we were absolutely convinced that the customer demand was there. Based on that, we made a decision 18 months ago to locally assemble the EQS, which is our flagship car, equivalent to the S-Class, which will roll out of the Chakan plant next year.

What were the chief learnings from the time the EQC arrived to the launch of the EQS? Have customer preferences evolved or is the customer conversion rate higher in the high-end luxury EV segment? 

Every luxury car customer says ‘my next car is an EV.’ So that clearly shows that they all want to shift. Then there are those who think luxury customers have multiple cars in a household. They depend on one car, so I realized they have options. But having said that, many owners took steps to install chargers at home, particularly in large residential societies in Bombay and Delhi, where we saw some resistance from housing societies. So not only are we launching the EQS, we are also announcing the biggest ultra-fast charging network in India, exclusively for Mercedes-Benz customers in India. We will have 140 charging points across our network, out of which, more than 20 will be 180kw chargers where the customer can get a full charge in 30 minutes and he can proceed to Lonavala, Goa... We are setting-up chargers in Goa, Pune, Kolhapur. It’s available 24x7 and they can have a cup of coffee while their car gets charged.

Thankfully, our showrooms and workshops are located in several hotspots of customer activity, by design. Based on that, we’ve done a detailed Pin Code analysis on customer density and set up charging stations accordingly. For the first year, we won’t even charge them. We just want an experience of a hassle-free luxury experience. Mumbai-Goa, Mumbai-Nashik, Bengaluru, Calicut, Kochi – we will be investing close to Rs 15 crore on the charging infrastructure. We have placed these in our dealerships, because we don’t want customers to suffer from long queues at public charging stations, or from a patchwork electricity supply.

Do you see an overlap between the S-Class customer profile and the EQS customer profile? 

When we lent the “S” name to an EV, firstly we had to ensure that the car meets the standards of an S-Class. But I think we’re fine with it...an S-Class is by definition leaning towards luxury, technological innovation etc. The initial feedback we have received is that many S-Class customers want this as an additional car. But I think it will be 2-3 years before we’re able to see any cannibalisation. There is a set of customers who want to set a trend in their neighborhood. They want to drive an S-Class, but they need something new, they believe in sustainability etc. So I think we will expand the market at the top of this spectrum.

On one hand, there are a lot of supply-chain constraints and on the other we’ve seen Mercedes-Benz have their most successful second quarter in history

Our order bank today is more than 6,000 cars. Can production ramp up to meet this requirement? The answer is yes, but it takes time. The more we ramp up, we see the demand going up even more. We are taking big steps, our supply-chain colleagues are working on parts supply. Our logistics situation has gone from chip shortage to ship shortage. We are facing a huge shortage in containers, shipment. We have air freights planned every week which are landing in Mumbai. Another six to eight months, I think the parts supply situation will remain challenging.

Do you foresee the local assembly of AMG EVs becoming easier as a result of not having to rely on the ‘one man one engine’ manufacturing in Affalterbach (production location in Germany)? 

I think AMG EVs also have very advanced electronics and a very different setup. I am not saying it’s considerably more challenging to locally assemble an AMG EQS than a standard one, but there is still a long way to go when it comes to volumes and thresholds. In the long run, eight to 10 years, everything will be manufactured here. But our immediate focus is to get the series models , by starting with the EQS 580, and move on from there. AMGs will continue to be on the CBU (Completely Built-Up side, we don’t have kits, there is no CKD (Completely Knocked Down) plant for AMGs anywhere in the world. So, it has to be a CBU.

Given that the EQS is based on a born-electric platform, does it simply things from an after-sales perspective? 

For the first time we are telling our customers that they need to come into the workshop once every two years and not once in a year – an industry-first service interval. Secondly, AMG customers want to push their cars, and they shouldn’t have to worry about batteries, so we are offering a 10-year warranty on the battery. That, with the charging network, should allow our customers to push their cars. Leave the rest to us, we will take care of the battery for 10 years.

With 25% of Mercedes-Benz India sales expected to come from EVs by 2025, what portion of that do you expect will come from high-end luxury EVs, where the conversion rate will be higher? What kind of demand are you foreseeing for the EQS? 

I wouldn’t hesitate to say that more than 50% of our overall EV sales will come from top-end EVs.