Renewable Gossip

Mercedes Vision S500 Plug-in Hybrid

The growing list of part- or pure-electric cars to be displayed at next week’s Frankfurt Auto Show establishes a new litmus test for green cars at auto shows: Cars without plugs are behind the times.

It’s not enough that Mercedes-Benz announced that it might make the next generation of its S-Class sedans all hybrid. That would mark the first time that an entire model line is converted to gas-electric technology. The S-Class mild hybrid, which is already on sale in Europe and goes on sale later this year in the US, is equipped with a 3.5-liter gasoline engine and electric motor powered by lithium ion batteries. (Mercedes’s use of lithium ion batteries in a mild hybrid is used to reduce size, not to increase power or electric drive.)

In the new reality, converting an entire line to hybrid is not enough to demonstrate a green commitment—so Mercedes will unveil the Vision S500 Plug-in Hybrid. (BMW also uses the word “vision” in the name of its new plug-in hybrid.) The S500 Plug-in will provide 18 miles of electric-only driving before the gas engine kicks in. Mercedes also will present the E-Cell Plus electric car concept that it showed in Detroit in January—but this time, the small car takes on a turbocharged, 1-liter, three-cylinder engine, to turn it into a plug-in hybrid with 60 or so miles of all-electric range. The two Mercedes plug-in cars—as well as plug-in hybrids and electric cars from other European carmakers—are pure auto show spectacle at this stage. But the creation and display of plug-in concept cars represents a shift of direction that could eventually yield production vehicles.

European Plug-in Car Debuts in Frankfurt

BMW Vision EfficientDynamics (left), Mercedes E-Cell Plus Plug-in Hybrid (top right), and Peugeot iON (bottom right).

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