Mercedes-Benz: Mercedes-Benz electric and hybrid vehicles are expected to account for 50% of sales in 2025

Mercedes-Benz reportedly expects to have a dedicated factory for electric vehicles in the years after 2025, but will avoid building pure electric vehicle factories and instead keep production lines flexible to meet market demand. In an interview with the media, the company's production director Joerg Burzer said that it is expected that some production lines in its factories will be fully converted to electric vehicle production earlier.

"It takes time to build a whole new pure electric vehicle factory. We take a different approach," he said. "In the next few years, we will definitely have some production lines that only produce electric vehicles... We also see entire factories turning to electric vehicles, which will be a topic five years from now."

Mercedes-Benz unveiled the EQE at the IAA Mobility show in Germany last September and will show it in Bremen, Germany, Beijing and Tuscaloosa, U.S. later this year. Mercedes-Benz said it will put the EQE into production.

Mercedes-Benz is betting on the model, an electric makeover of the E-Class with a range of up to 660km, to boost electric vehicle sales as it shifts investment from internal combustion vehicles to pure electric production platforms.

“With the presentation of the EQE in Bremen and later in Beijing, we will enter a higher volume segment,” Burzer said.

Mercedes-Benz said pure electric cars accounted for just 2.3% of its sales last year, but now that plug-in hybrids are included, that share has risen to 11%.

The company expects electric and hybrid vehicles to account for 50% of its vehicle sales by 2025, with pure electric vehicles expected to account for the majority of that.

Existing models are built in factories that make combustion engine cars, with batteries transported by rail from the main plant in Sindelfingen, Germany, to factories in Germany and Hungary.

As vehicles are increasingly designed with batteries in mind, battery assembly and production may be located closer to vehicle factories, Burzer said.