Just in time for the passage of President Joe Biden's infrastructure bill, German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz took a plunge into the U.S. electric vehicle market.
"The EQS is definitely a game-changer for us. It's really a turning point for the brand in the United States. It is our first dedicated electric model that we bring here into the market," said Heiko Schmidt, Mercedes-Benz Dept. Manager of EQ Brand Management.
The EQS resembles Mercedes-Benz's top-of-the-line S-class. The EQS 580 starts at $119,110. Its EPA range is 340 miles, meaning it can travel that far on a single charge. With a 516 horsepower engine, it can accelerate 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4.1 seconds.
The EQS 450+ is less expensive and slightly slower. It starts at about $102,000 and accelerates to 60 miles per hour in 5.9 seconds. Its EPA range is 350 miles.
The EQS faces stiff competition from existing electric vehicles in the market, some of which have longer ranges or higher horsepower. But Schmidt said the EQS is "the best package."
"It is the vehicle that offers the luxury, the quality, the safety, and the performance that our customers expect and certainly [for the] customers that are willing to come new into the brand," he said.
The Biden administration has an ambitious vision for electric vehicles. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocates $7.5 billion toward electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
"We're going to put IBEW members and other union members to work installing a national network of charging stations along our roads and highways in our communities — over 500,000," Biden said during a media appearance on a tour of the GM plant in Detroit.
Biden also announced a goal in August that half of the vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030 will be electric.
Although Schmidt would not comment on the feasibility of the president's goals, he did say Mercedes-Benz is up to the challenge.
"We have the product offering, we have the dealer network and the partnerships to cope with these numbers. And of course, we appreciate the tailwind that we're seeing there from an infrastructure side," Schmidt said.
Updated on December 6, 2021, at 4:43 p.m. ET with a correction adding hyphens to "Mercedes-Benz."
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
