(Newswire.net — January 28, 2018) —
It is the end of an era as the German car giant Mercedes decided to stop selling diesel models to the US.
Member of the Board Mnagement of Daimler AG. And Group Research and Mercedes-Benz Cars Development chief Ola Kaellenius claims the reason is mainly the lack of interest of the Americans for cars with diesel engines. According to him, there are no more than 3% of diesel engines in the US market.
Another reason, however, is a disagreement between German car sellers and the EPA, the US agency for environment protection which delayed issuing the certificate for the new e-class diesel engine.
Negotiators representing EPA and Mercedes were unable to reach an agreement so the Stuttgart based company decided to stop selling all of its models with diesel engines to the US market.
Mercedes planned to introduce diesel engine models for new c-class and GLS SUV models, but now only transport model Sprinter with a diesel engine will be available to Americans since it is made in the US factory in South Carolina.
The decision came after Ola Kallenius announced that Mercedes is going to abolish V6 engines and switch to regular six cylinder ones. It is practically a model with similar performance but significantly cheaper in construction.
This process will not occur overnight, and it take some time for the company to completely transfer to parallel cylinder engines which are pretty much dominant in the European market.
Mercedes-Benz, however, didn’t give up on the US market. Contrary to its decision regarding diesel engine models, Mercedes-Benz announced in September that would invest $1bn into electric car production in the US, the Financial Times reports.
The German group said it would invest in a manufacturing plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Beside Europe and China, the batteries for Mercedes electric vehicles would be also produced in the US.
It is expected that the investment will create more than 600 new jobs on top of the 3.700 already being employed in the US by Daimler Group.
The first Mercedes EQ series model will go into production in 2019 in Germany, and the first electric SUV is expected by 2022.