Make up your mind, Mercedes-Benz! Plug to be pulled on EQ electric car sub-brand: report

It feels like only yesterday that Mercedes-Benz’s first announced that EQ would be the title its range of emerging electric vehicles would live under, but now reports have it that the EQ name is about to be dropped.

It was a bit further back than yesterday, more like 2016 when Mercedes-Benz officially introduced its EQ brand to the world with the reveal of the Concept EQ at the 2016 Paris Motor Show.

Since then we’ve seen the EQ range fast become a production reality, first with the EQC mid-size SUV which arrived in 2020 and then there was the the EQA, EQB and EQE, SUV versions of the EQE and EQS and the first electric Mercedes-AMG, the EQS 53.

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Now reports are coming out that the EQ name is dead or about to be, because, well, all cars are heading towards electrification now, so why continue to differentiate them from the soon to be retired combustion models.

According to German newspaper Handelsblatt, the carmaker plans to “dispense with the EQ logo on new battery-powered car from 2024”, quoting inside sources.

It feels like only yesterday that Mercedes-Benz’s first announced that EQ would be the title its range of emerging electric vehicles would live under.

A Reuters report questioned Mercedes-Benz over the rumours to which the car maker responded with this statement:

“With the goal of our parent Mercedes-Benz becoming fully electric by the end of the decade, we will adapt the positioning  of the vehicles and thus the use of the brand in line with the times, but it is too early for details on this at the moment.’

Sounds like they’re dropping the EQ to us.

All cars are heading towards electrification now, so why continue to differentiate them from the soon to be retired combustion models.

It’s not the first time Mercedes-Benz has changed its naming strategy. 

In 2014, the company changed the letters signifying its SUV line-up from ML to GL. A monumental shift in nomenclature happened in 1994 when Mercedes-Benz changed its model designations from engine size followed by body style to the reverse. An 500 SL became an SL 500.