Mercedes-Benz delays American EQC deliveries until 2021

American motorists who were hoping to start the next decade behind the wheel of Mercedes-Benz’s first purpose-designed, mass-produced electric vehicle will be sorely disappointed. The German company informed its dealers it delayed EQC deliveries in the United States until 2021.

Unveiled at the 2018 Paris auto show, the EQC is now scheduled to appear in American showrooms in early 2021 because Mercedes-Benz first wants to meet demand for the model in Europe. “In a recent direction from [parent company] Daimler AG, it is a strategic decision to first support the growing customer demand for the EQC in Europe,” a company spokesperson told Automotive News.

Allocating the bulk of the production run to the European market is also a way for Mercedes to avoid paying jaw-dropping fines. Starting in 2020, only 5% of each automaker’s fleet can exceed 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer; that number will drop to zero in 2021. Automakers are calling these European regulations the 2020 CO2 cliff, and those who can’t slip under the draconian 95-gram limit will need to pay 95 euros (about $106) for each gram over the limit. That doesn’t sound like much, but fines are expected to snowball into the millions — and possibly the billions — for the worst offenders. 

Viewed in this light, it makes sense for Mercedes to keep most of the 50,000 EQCs its Bremen, Germany, factory is capable of building annually in the European Union. Kia interestingly came to a very similar conclusion when it delayed the American launch of the battery-powered third-generation Soul until the 2021 model year, while the model is readily available in many European nations.

Autoblog has reached out to Mercedes-Benz, and we’ll update this story if we learn more. When it finally arrives, the EQC will offer a 402-horsepower electric powertrain, and it should deliver about 210 miles of driving range. Pricing starts at $68,895 including a mandatory $995 destination charge, a figure that makes it cheaper than the Audi E-Tron and the Jaguar I-Pace, the EQC’s main rivals. Time will tell whether undercutting competitors on price can make up for a late start.