Mercedes-Benz ditches the idea of luxury range-extender hybrids

The Stuttgart company had toyed around with the idea of putting small engines into EQ-series EVs to grant them more electric range, but concluded that it wasn’t viable.

In the months preceding this announcement, the company had been testing EQS liftbacks equipped with a 1.0-liter, two-cylinder engine fashioned out of a 2.0-liter, four-cylinder one.

The original expectation was that adding even a tiny IC engine to an electric car would let designers make it lighter and more compact by removing excess batteries. As it turned out, though, the range gain was not worth all the added design complications.

The Mercedes EQ range-extender hybrid project is now officially shut down.