Mercedes says goodbye to its B-class Electric Drive after five years in the market. The German automaker is reportedly dropping the model to focus on its electric vehicle efforts for the upcoming EQ lineup.
Rob Moran, Mercedes’ spokesman in the United States, confirmed this development and said in a statement that the model will be phased out soon. There is no news if there will be a replacement to the model.
Its assembly in Rastatt, Germany will be halted by the third quarter of this year as the manufacturing plant is being readied to produce Mercedes-Benz’ compact vehicles.
News about Mercedes saying bye-bye to the model won’t hurt other places though because the carmaker will continue to make diesel and gasoline-powered B-class hatchback models. Unfortunately, the said models are not sold in the United States.
The carmaker sold over 3,000 of the B-class Electric Drive since it launched a sale in December of 2013 but sales were slow due to the limited number of places in the US that encourage the use of zero-emission vehicles.
There is some good news though as Mercedes’ parent company Daimler AG announced that it is investing over $11 billion to manufacture 10 new electric vehicles. These EVs will be available by 2022.