The road toward the electric future is not a straight and narrow path. Nobody ever said it would be. There will be ups and downs, twists and turns, trade wars and economic turmoil, new rivals and price wars, not to mention an ever-shifting sea of regulations that every car company is trying desperately to navigate. The end goal for most of the global auto industry remains the same as ever — decarbonize, electrify, profit — but how and when the world will get there is increasingly impossible to pin down.
As a result of all the recent turbulence, Mercedes-Benz is among the many automakers hitting the reset button on their electrification strategies.
For its part, the German luxury juggernaut is still going electric, but will now take a more flexible approach, offering a broader mix of battery and gas-powered vehicles well into the next decade.
Before we take an early look at all the hot new cars you can expect to see in Mercedes-Benz showrooms over the coming years, it’s worth taking a look back at where the brand is coming from. In 2021, the firm promised to go all-electric by 2030, where market conditions allow, and set an interim target of 50 percent electrified vehicle sales by the middle of the decade. (Electrified is industry-speak that encompasses both hybrid and pure battery-powered vehicles.)
In 2022, Mercedes-Benz chief executive officer Ola Källenius told The Verge, “We have made a clear and definitive decision that we are going all-in on electric. In fact, as of 2025, all new vehicle architectures for Mercedes — on which we will have several different models — will be electric-only.”
By 2024, the company was pushing back sales targets for electrified vehicles; targeting 50 percent electrified sales by 2030, rather than 2025. Through 2024, sales of electrified vehicles were stagnant globally, hovering at just around 20 percent of overall volume. The company noted “weak EV demand” as one of the reasons last year’s sales results were down slightly. Operating margins took a hit, too. The reasons for all this are varied and complex — supply shortages, market turmoil — and many of them don’t just hit Mercedes. Some things, however, were in Mercedes’s control. The smooth, jelly-bean shaped design of its EQ models, for example, has been polarizing to say the least.
Enter 2025, and Mercedes is doing away with its EQ brand as a stand-alone entity. Case in point: instead of the EQG, the (hotly anticipated and totally-worth-the-wait) electric G-Class arrived as the G 580 with EQ technology.
Going forward, expect to see less of a divide between electric and combustion models from Mercedes, both in terms of styling and nomenclature.
The all-new CLA, for example, is being touted as the first model in a “completely new family of vehicles from Mercedes-Benz.” The battery-powered 2026 CLA was unveiled earlier this year — as an entry-level sedan based on a new 800-volt architecture and a fancy new AI-enhanced MB.OS software platform — but the company promises the new CLA will also be available with hybrid powertrains as well.
In fact, 2025 marks the beginning of a huge wave of new combustion, electric and hybrid cars from the German giant. In an interview with Top Gear, Källenius described the coming years as, “probably the most intense amount of launches in a three-year period in the history of our company.”
All told, Mercedes is said to be launching 18 new and revised models in 2026 alone, and 25 new models globally over the three years starting this past January. Among the new members of the three-pointed star family will be the long-awaited “baby G-Wagon” with an official name yet to be announced. We also expect a C Class–sized EV, as well as an electric GLC compact SUV. There are seven mid-size models coming, but the bulk of the new models — 19 in total, both combustion, and electric — will be in what Mercedes calls its “top end” segment.
Earlier this year, the firm finally dropped the CONCEPT AMG GT XX as a preview of the first AMG EV built on its own dedicated high-performance platform. We first heard whispers about this car back in 2022, and now — finally — it’s here in the metal (and carbon) flesh. The specs can only be described as shocking: more than 1,360 horsepower, 360 km/h, three axial-flux motors developed in-house, a battery developed with Merc’s F1 engineers, and ultra-fast charging at up to 850 kW.
The electric sports car wars are just heating up. Still, combustion engine fans won’t be disappointed either, with news breaking that AMG is also developing a new flat-plane crank V8 engine. Mercedes even has a special treat for fans of fast wagons (it’s us) with the new 2026 AMG E 53 hybrid wagon coming in hot with up to 604 hp, 553 lb-ft of torque, all-wheel drive, and family-friendly practicality.
This list just scratches the surface of what’s coming, of course, but the takeaway here is it looks as if Mercedes is planning something new for all types of drivers.
You know what they say, when the global car market hands you lemons, make 25 different kinds of lemonade and just give people what they want. Was it Ola Källenius who said that? Possibly
