Mercedes-Maybach EQS SUV teased during Strategy Update

Daimler CEO Olla Kaellenius and a brace of Mercedes executives took the mic this week to go through the company's newest strategy update. The afternoon was all the automaker's accelerated electrification plans, walking away from ICE development come 2025, making half of its vehicles hybrid or all-electric by then, and pledging all next-gen vehicles after 2025 will be electric only and built on three new EV platforms. The presentation's marquee EV was the Vision EQXX, a technology concept being used to develop and prove innovations that improve efficiency and range. Two EVs announced for production also made splashes: Britta Seeger, Daimler board member for sales and marketing, told the livestream audience, "You can look forward to a top-notch EQS SUV version of Mercedes-Maybach," and, "In 2024, we will launch our full-electric G-Class as well."

The electric Maybach EQS SUV will be the wealthy sensualist's version of the standard Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV. Seeger didn't give us anything to go on other than the teaser image, showing mandatory Maybach cues like two-tone burgundy and black paint, plus the Maybach badge on the D-pillar. A section of thin LED taillamp recalls the electric EQC crossover, here more bejeweled. Spy photographers have already snapped prototypes of the Benz version of the civilian personnel carrier that's due later this year, to be joined by the EQA, EQB, and EQE before we roll into 2022. The Maybach trim is expected next year. Like the EQS and EQE sedans, both EQS SUVs will ride on the Electric Vehicle Architecture. The EQS sedan hides a 107.8-kWh battery powering either a rear-drive setup with 329-horsepower, or a 4Matic setup with 516-hp. We'd expect the latter for the Maybach. The automaker's said to be working on a 715-hp version of the sedan as well. If so, it seems assured that it would make the step up to the larger models.  

As for the G-Class sub-brand, scuttlebutt posits a concept version arriving at this year's Munich Auto Show in October. We're clueless about what might take the stage, if anything, but we know that Mercedes has requested trademarks for the names EQG 560 and EQG 580 in the EU at the beginning of this year.

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