In a bid to go green, Mercedes-Benz has become the latest automaker to embrace electrification. The company has announced that by 2020 it will electrify its entire vehicle lineup. It is expected that more and more car makers will now choose this path of producing e-cars, especially after China, the most important car market in the world right now, announcing its plans to eventually ban the sale of traditional fossil fuel vehicles entirely.
Mercedes-Benz chief Dieter Zetsche said that the automaker will offer either hybrid or fully electric versions of its cars by 2022 and also add a minimum 50 new electric models by this timeframe. In the meantime, another Daimler-owned sub-brand, Smart has decided to go fully electric by 2020 as well.
Other than Mercedes-Benz other high-end car manufacturers have also revealed their plans of going electric. While Volvo has committed to offer a fully electrified lineup by 2019, Ford's Lincoln luxury sub-brand has set 2022 deadline for itself for offering electric variants of each of its car models.
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As mentioned earlier, China has recently announced that it would eventually ban the sale of all traditional fuel powered cars entirely in the country. However, the timeline as to when the ban will be implanted, has not been decided yet but as per the Chinese government, the authorities have started the necessary ground work on the issue.
China is currently the top car-selling market in the world and the numbers are increasing at an impressive rate annually. So, China's ban on fossil fuel powered vehicles will, indeed, affect the entire car-industry worldwide.
Therefore, automakers changing or shifting their long-term strategy of focusing on EVs makes plenty of sense. France and the UK have also announced their plans of banning fossil fuel cars by 2040 and India has set an ambitious target of making all vehicles electrical by 2030.
