“Who's in the name? What we call a rose by any other name would smell good.” Those words, uttered by Juliet in Shakespeare's great tragedy “Romeo and Juliet,” suggest that words mean nothing. But don't tell that to a product manager, especially one in the automotive industry. Car names follow trends in culture and history. For example, the mid-century Atomic Age gave us powerful monograms for the American car that either reflected space travel (Comet, Starfire, Galaxy, Mercury, Taurus) or luxury (Continental, Riviera, Monte Carlo). , Eldorado, Monaco), while Europeans remain prosaic, using numbers with an inner meaning more than anything else (2002, 240D, 500, 401, 320iS).
However, when American automakers amid the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 had to downsize their cars in bulk, a slew of names—from Sedan de Ville to yes, even Eldorado—began to resemble the names of places with Wi-Fi. . It seems that overnight, the aerodynamic look of American cars was replaced by the boxy shape of Europe. Despite this, certain nameplates—examples include the Chevy Suburban (1935), Honda Accord (1976), Volkswagen Beetle (1938), and Mercedes S-Class (1972)—have enjoyed significant staying power.
This explains why Mercedes-Benz has announced a significant change in the nomenclature it uses for electric vehicles, and if there's one thing Mercedes has had with names, it's not always consistent.
The Stuttgart-based automaker will no longer use the “EQ” prefix on its EVs. The use of the prefix was in direct conflict with the naming policy announced by Mercedes 10 years ago, when it started using lowercase letters to indicate the type of engine of the car, such as “d” for diesel and “e” for electric.
The prefix “EQ” has fallen out of control in recent years, as it has caused confusion with combustion engine vehicles using single letter or single letter initials followed by the class name. For example, in the E-Class, or E-Klasse in German, there was both the EQE which was an E-Class EV sedan and the EQE SUV which was clearly not a sedan.
The fact that Mercedes' second quarter US sales report showed that combined sales of the EQS sedan and EQS SUV fell 52% in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023 didn't make the naming scheme any more appealing.
So news of another Mercedes name change.
Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius told UK weekly auto magazine Autocar that “there will be two S-Classes in the future—ICE and electric.”
That solution effectively allows the Stuttgarters to ditch the EQS name, which obviously didn't enjoy the same status among luxury car buyers as the S-Class did.
The two new S-Class cars, however, will not be based on the same platform. The EV variant of the S-Class will use the upcoming MB.EA Large platform, while the ICE variant of the S-Class will be based on an upgraded version of the existing MRA architecture.
It is important to note that, although Mercedes-Benz initially predicted that EV sales would be more than 20% of its global sales of 2,043,800 by 2023, electrics only got 11% of the market share at best, despite a total increase of 73 %. The automaker's total EV sales through 2022.
Considering these sales figures, perhaps the Stuttgarters should have used the time and energy spent on revamping the nomenclature to plan a way to offer low-priced EVs that could beat the competition from China.
Earlier the automaker announced a major change to the names of its vehicles in 2014 in an effort to simplify the model names. At the time, Mercedes was standard in a system that created model names from combinations of between one and three letters. Different types of power would be indicated by lowercase letters. Mercedes also ditched the BlueTec diesel model, reverting to the unadorned “D” used in the past, as in the 240D, albeit in lower case. Hybrid cars would get an “h,” while electric cars would get an “e”.
Before that, the most important change was in 1993, when the letters “C” and “E” became the initials of the company's compact and mid-size sedans.
Source: A motor vehicle
