Latest electric sedan prototypes have a different hood shape, suggesting Mercedes is making the grille bigger
January 21, 2025 at 07:45
- New spy shots show the first ever Mercedes C-Class EV sedan testing.
- Images appear to show a new front-end design and bigger grille.
- The C-Class with EQ Technology will battle BMW’s i330 EV in 2026.
Even a facelift couldn’t stop sales of Tesla’s Model 3 sliding in 2024, and life for the electric sedan is only going to get tougher. Within two years BMW, Audi and Mercedes will all be armed with brand new electric sedans, and these fresh spy shots show Benz’s contender testing.
It’s not the first time spy photographers have snapped prototypes of the 2027 electric C-Class – we’ve previously seen it in both regular and AMG guises. But this is the first time we’ve seen a prototype with this style of front-end design.
Related: 2026 Mercedes C-Class Keeps Gas Power Alive With A Facelift
Compared with older test cars, this one has a new hood line that’s cut back at its leading edge, suggesting Mercedes has had a rethink and decided to make the grille bigger in time for production. The company has form here: in 2024 we noticed the exact same thing had happened to prototypes of the GLC.
And when you think about what has happened to Mercedes EQ cars already on sale, it’s entirely believable that Mercedes might have opted for a pre-launch facelift. Sales of EQ electric cars like the EQS have been far lower than expected, and that can’t all be blamed on an EV market that hasn’t matured the way automakers hoped.
EQ models have been criticized for their boring bar-of-soap styling, and last year Mercedes facelifted the EQS to give it a more traditional Benz grille in an effort to boost its appeal. Is that’s what’s happened to this C-Class?
We’re still at least a year away from officially seeing the electric C-Class in finished form, so this car still wears plenty of disguise and placeholder lights – expect star-motif LEDs front and back. But there are still details we can take away from this image set, including that while the shape of the tail suggests a liftback configuration, the trunk shutlines look like those of a formal notchback sedan.
Mercedes is keeping the tech spec under its hat for now, but we do know that the electric C- and GLC-Class models will ride on the bigger MB.EA platform and not the MMA one that forms the base of this year’s CLA, the C-Class’s little brother. But Mercedes has promised 800-volt tech and an electric range of 466 miles (750 km) for the small car, and we’d expect the C-Class to match and get close to those numbers respectively.
A couple of year ago we might have expected this car to be called the EQC, but Mercedes has tweaked its EV naming strategy recently, and we now predict it’ll be badged C-Class with EQ Technology, following the lead of the electric G-Class. Mercedes CEO Ola Kallenius confirmed last year the C-Class EV would debut in 2026, so a MY27 arrival looks likely.
