The new E-Class will not be presented until 2023.
(Photo: Daimler AG)
Stuttgart The carmaker Mercedes-Benz has imposed an order freeze in Germany for the current version of the E-Class sedan. Due to the increasing number of orders worldwide, the production volume at the Sindelfingen plant was exhausted, a company spokesman said on Wednesday in Stuttgart. The newspapers “Stuttgarter Zeitung” and “Stuttgarter Nachrichten” had previously reported.
The order freeze has been in effect since Friday last week. The spokesman continued to say that customers would have individual exhibition, demonstration and dealer vehicles available. The T-model of the E-Class with a rear door can still be ordered.
The successor to the current E-Class is planned for the coming year – more precise dates were not given.
The newspapers reported that the order freeze in the German market was also linked to the supply bottleneck for chips. Mercedes-Benz did not provide any further information.
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The G-Class can no longer be ordered either
A few weeks ago, Mercedes had already imposed an order freeze for the G-Class off-road vehicles – production there is fully utilized until 2024. The delivery times for the model are currently up to two years – even though Mercedes prioritizes all available semiconductors in expensive and high-margin brands such as the G-Class.
However, the demand for the vehicle is so great that dealers in the USA can sometimes even sell the model at a surcharge of 50 percent, according to Daimler group circles. While around 6,000 G-Classes were sold in 2011, by 2021 there were already 42,000. The 2.5-ton vehicle with high fuel consumption has become a status symbol in some circles and is correspondingly popular.
The manufacturer delivered five percent fewer cars last year than in 2020, mainly because of the semiconductor crisis, but doubled the profit. With around 2.05 million vehicles, the Stuttgart-based company was behind arch-rival BMW.
According to the manufacturer, the E-Class is the best-selling model series of the brand with the star. Around 14 million vehicles have been delivered since its introduction in 1946. The current model series was therefore revised in 2020.
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