Mercedes-Benz claims it will improve EV resale values by aligning with ICE models on price, design

Mercedes-Benz is moving to align its electric vehicles (EVs) and internal combustion-engined (ICE) models visually and mechanically, which it says will bring price parity and improved resale values.

The German automaker's early forays into the EV space, specifically the EQE and EQS, differed completely in look and feel from the marque’s petrol and diesel models, but recent releases have brought its battery-powered and combustion models in close visual alignment with each other.

Mercedes-Benz’s head of product management and global training, Klaus Rehkugler, says this is by design.

“The feedback from our customers is that they want to see cars with one face – different drivetrains, but the look and feel of the car has to be more or less identical,” he told CarExpert.

“You’re seeing that already with the models on the MMA platform [CLA, GLA and GLB] as the ICE and BEV models differ very little visually.”

And while the new C-Class electric (designated W520) sits on a completely different platform to the upcoming refreshed version of the current combustion-powered W206-series C-Class – which still has two or three years left to run – the electric and combustion-powered C-Class won’t differ much outwardly, even though they share almost nothing under the skin.

The timeline for the introduction of the C-Class electric means it’s out of sync with its petrol counterpart architecturally, but Mr Rehkugler says a point in time will come when Mercedes-Benz can “close the zipper” and bring the two together.

He said the aim for the future is to also have a much greater degree of architectural commonality between electric and ICE models, explaining that Mercedes-Benz “needs to be cost-competitive as well as tech-competitive”.

“A modular approach, whereby ICE models and their EV counterparts share the same interior structure, seating structure and body panels will introduce much greater economies of scale,” he adds.

By aligning its EVs and ICE models more closely, Mercedes-Benz says it's able to reach price parity.

“In the past the list price of an EV was significantly higher than that of a similar combustion vehicle,” said Mr Rehkugler.

“We are now moving to a strategy in which we have price parity between the two. As an example, the new GLC250 electric at 60,000 euros is the same price as the combustion-powered GLC250.

“With this pricing strategy you will also see that residuals of EVs and their ICE counterparts will come to the same level. You would have experienced with the C-Class electric... that you don’t need to make any compromises vis-à-vis the petrol version, so why should the residual price be lower?”

In Australia, the new GLC400 electric is priced at $112,200 before on-road costs, only around $6000 more than the petrol-powered GLC300.

Depreciation has been a significant topic in relation to EVs, but Mr Rehkugler says this is largely a function of the list price. “If you have the list price is wrong, the resale price is also wrong,” he said.

Mr Rehkugler countered a suggestion that concerns around battery degradation in used EVs remains a deterrent for some buyers by saying: “When you look at the state of health of an electric car that’s two or three years old, it’s actually not losing too much battery capacity, so confidence is gradually building up over time.

“When we look at residual values of used EVs over the past three or six months, we see that they’ve gone up. This is also linked to higher fuel prices, but there’s a definite trend of stabilising of EV residuals.”

MORE: Explore the Mercedes-Benz showroom