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Mercedes Benz B-Class Electric Drive

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German car magazine Automobilwoche reports that Daimler has placed an order to build the powertrain for a MB B-Class E-Cell, but also mentions a feasibility study.

Maybe the German native speakers can take a peek at the article: Automobilwoche

The press statement mentions emission regulations and tax credits "mainly in the USA" as a reason to postpone a range-extended B-Class in favor of a pure electric one. In my opinion this sounds as another "compliance car", like the new Toyota RAV4 EV, to comply with regulations in the worlds seventh largest car market: California. So no, this is not the beginning of Daimler going EV with a mainstream car in a mainstream market in serious numbers. For Tesla, it still is a warm rain of money.
 
I think I heard on the Tesla conference call that the Benz EV would not be a compliance car but would in fact be price competitive with its ICE counterparts.

You seem to touch on the outrageous price aspect of "compliance cars" that is aimed to schreck off customers? If that's not the case on this car, great. Next thing we all want to see is planned number of production/sales and buy or lease only options.
 
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Will it do 3-phase charging? ;)
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I saw the B-Class E-Call at the Geneva Motor Show of this year and I liked it. Normally I'm not a real fan of Mercedes, but this one looked nice, just like the new A-class.

There is still a danger here for Tesla. Mercedes and other big car companies have a huge fanbase, those people might be waiting for their brand to release an EV before buying one.
 
I wonder if they'll tweak the chassis to allow for a flat floor like the Model S, or just go with the stock chassis and stuff batteries somewhere? Is there any risk of Toyota or Daimler just reverse engineering whatever Tesla does and going it alone? Not that I think Daimler would (owning so much stake, and they seem to be doing this just to meet guidelines), but still...
 
I wonder if they'll tweak the chassis to allow for a flat floor like the Model S, or just go with the stock chassis and stuff batteries somewhere? Is there any risk of Toyota or Daimler just reverse engineering whatever Tesla does and going it alone? Not that I think Daimler would (owning so much stake, and they seem to be doing this just to meet guidelines), but still...

They have over 250 patents on the Model S alone, this is the benefit of doing what the big automakers would not. They can just pay Tesla later ;)
 
I wonder if they'll tweak the chassis to allow for a flat floor like the Model S, or just go with the stock chassis and stuff batteries somewhere? Is there any risk of Toyota or Daimler just reverse engineering whatever Tesla does and going it alone? Not that I think Daimler would (owning so much stake, and they seem to be doing this just to meet guidelines), but still...

According to Wikipedia:

Having evolved from the even smaller A-Class, a car that was originally intended to have a battery-powered version that would meet California’s since-rescinded zero-emissions mandate. The sandwich floor concept—the structure of the car under the floor where the batteries were supposed to go—was retained in the B-Class.
Sandwich floor concept

. . . .
As a secondary benefit, because the seats have been raised by 20 cm, the passengers are taken away from the more common area of lateral impact in accidents.

Sounds like there is 20 cm of space in between the "sandwich" which would be a great place to put the Tesla "skateboard."

Also read that the B-Class will be competitive in "cost of ownership" to its ICE counterparts, so this could be very compelling and not a compliance car.
 
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It price/performance/range work out nicely, I might switch from LEAF to B-class rather than wait for Tesla GEN-III.
RAV4-EV performance, although OK, is not up to Tesla sports car standards. I wonder if B-class will accelerate briskly or be just run-of-the-mill due to issues such as small-pack-output-limits or desire to get low insurance ratings.

LEAF was good for price vs practicality, but I am hoping for better performance and styling with my next EV.
A little more range would be nice too, but I can't afford to pay for 200+ mile range right now.
 
I wonder if they'll tweak the chassis to allow for a flat floor like the Model S, or just go with the stock chassis and stuff batteries somewhere?
As has been said, they're pretty much already set up with a flat floor. I am curious about the packaging, though.

Here's the diagram for the plug-in hybrid version.
Mercedes-Concept-B-Class-E-Cell-Plus-e05-800.jpg


The fuel-cell version:
27452725-623x415.jpg



So I wonder what changed over the last year?
Despite Tesla Tie, Daimler Moving EV Work In-House - AutoObserver
 
Here is the main section of the Q1 Tesla Earnings Call where they discuss the Mercedes deal:

Ben Schuman – Pacific Crest Securities LLC
All right, great thanks. And then I guess with the Toyota announcement given the size of the production contract, we get to about $38,000 Tesla content per vehicle. You’ve mentioned in the shareholder letter that the Mercedes powertrain costs can be sort of low enough on higher volumes to fit a higher volume vehicle. Can you sort of walk through the steps there. Did it all just appear to economy to scale or is there are some additional cost reductions that you can point to.

Deepak Ahuja


. . . .
So, I want to just clarify that and also keep in mind that the volumes we are talking here on the Toyota program are far lower and there is an inherent design in efficiency when you are trying to develop a powertrain and make it fit in an internal combustion engine vehicle, it doesn't give us those cost savings that we get inherently from the Model S platform. When we look at the higher volumes for the Daimler program, the huge economies of scale and other design factors that help us out.


Elon R. Musk

Yeah, I mean just to be clear, the economies of scale is the single biggest driver of cost reduction, I think first it's an approximation, if you scale up production by a factor of 10, your costs would generate drop by half.
And that’s a good generalization I think. And so that’s where most of the cost savings is coming from. And then there will also be continued design improvements as we figure out how to achieve the same end goal in a smarter way. Those are the two drivers of mass market, a technology gains mass market which is continued iteration on the design and economies of scale and that’s generally true for any technology.

. . . .

Jesse W. Pichel – Jefferies & Co., Inc.
Yes, good evening gentlemen. I’d like to ask you that the Daimler drivetrains. In your letter, you allude to tremendous volumes. Can these volumes be large enough to change the cost structure of the S drivetrains and was a contract of this magnitude factored into your 25% margin guide?

Elon R. Musk

So with respect to the margin that’s not really, we are not talking about the 25% gross margin model, we are talking about the Model S, just by itself, so no that’s been factored in. And I think economies of scale, does need to be some commonality to achieve those economies of scale. And there will be some amount of commonality, so I guess it would probably just some help to the Model S costs to add the Daimler volume in there. It's not directly additive, but I think it's at least partially added it to the economies of scale.

. . . .

Andrea James – Dougherty & Company LLC
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Trying to gauge the opportunity in the Daimler partnership, if we look at all the powertrain agreements signed in Tesla history is about $140 million in agreements is that about right? Are you talking about a Mercedes contract value that’s an order of magnitude greater than that or just simply greater?

Deepak Ahuja

Yeah, the $140 million is probably what’s partially in our financial statements, Andrea there is a little bit more to it, as well as our existing Toyota agreement, which is not in our financial system and will happen over the next few years. So the number is north of that roughly in the $280 so million range.
In terms of the Daimler contract, its north of that, how much, I think probably best to just wait until we mature or get to that level and talk beyond, but we just wanted to still give you some sense of scale by providing that guidance.

Andrea James – Dougherty & Company LLC
Okay. Thank you.

Elon R. Musk
Yeah, there is certainly, I mean there is a possibility for it to lead to something that’s order of magnitude greater, but we need to get things, we reach one level after another. So the question is proving ourselves that at each successive level, which we’ve been able to do thus far and but we need to keep doing that in order to progress to essentially the next level.

When I re-read this in light of what we now know about the Mercedes B-Class it sounds like:
  • the B-class battery pack will share some commonality with the Model S battery pack - enough to help to some extent with economies of scale - maybe it's a smaller size "skateboard"
  • the contract is bigger than all the others combined which would mean the volume is bigger than all the others combined (especially since unit costs appear to be less)
  • the contract has the potential at some point to be 10x bigger than all their other contracts combined (measured in the billions of dollars and tens of thousands of units) - this clearly would be a significantly high volume vehicle if that were to take place
This was the statement in their Q1 Earnings Shareholder Letter:

We recently signed an agreement with Daimler to create an entire electric powertrain for a new Mercedes-Benz EV, thus formalizing the joint effort kicked off in Q4 last year. This program is expected to exceed in value the sum of all powertrain agreements signed in Tesla history. Producing at this expected volume will allow for economies of scale that give the resulting vehicle a cost of ownership that is on par with its gasoline equivalent.

So Tesla says the B-Class will have a cost of ownership on par with its ICE version. So sticker price will be higher but when you factor in the cost of gasoline it will be about equal.

Sounds like it will be pretty sweet and might outsell the Model S once it is introduced.
 
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Tesla showed off a small motor unit for the front wheels of the AWD Model X concept. I wonder if they would use this on the front wheels of the B-class? A smaller, lower priced car might not justify the full ("monster") Model S motor package.

But with that said, I hope they make it as powerful as they can get away with.
 
Sounds like it will be pretty sweet and might outsell the Model S once it is introduced.
Depending on the details, I think it might actually compete with the Model S. A functional wagon with a Mercedes interior that's not as huge as the Model S. One assumes they'd have at least a 40 kWh battery pack.

Here's a comparison of the dimensions:

B-ClassModel S
Wheelbase109.4 in
2,779 mm
116.5 in
2,959 mm
Length 168.2 in
4,272 mm
195.9 in
4,976 mm
Width70.0 in
1,778 mm
77.3 in
1,963 mm
Height63.1 in
1,603 mm
56.5 in
1,435 mm