Mercedes Benz 300 Sel Leather 4 Door No Reserve Auction on 2040-cars

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Daimler, Toyota, BMW to lead $10-billion hydrogen investment

Daimler, BMW, and Toyota are leading a group of 13 companies pledging to invest more than $10 billion during the next five years to spur enough infrastructure-building and technology advancements to get more of the general public to buy hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. The automakers, which also include Honda and Hyundai, as well as companies such as Shell, AirLiquide, Linde Group, and Total SA, are part of what they're calling the Hydrogen Council. The group made its announcement in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. The Hydrogen Council will pledge to accelerate its rate of hydrogen-related investments, which currently stand at about $1.5 billion annually. The coalition says its work represents a continuation of the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which many of the companies agreed to address the issue of climate change. The group says that hydrogen, which emits water vapor when used in fuel-cell vehicles, "can play an important role in the transition to a clean, low-carbon, energy system." The Hydrogen Council also vowed to push global governments to accelerate public investment in hydrogen-related infrastructure. Relative to other drivetrain technologies, hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles are in their relative infancy in terms of adoption because of the high cost of both building fuel cell vehicles and setting up a hydrogen-refueling infrastructure. Toyota is the only automaker that sells a production fuel-cell vehicle in the US. The Japanese company, which introduced its Mirai domestically in late 2015, sold 1,034 of them in the US last year. Daimler subsidiary, Mercedes-Benz, used Tuesday's announcement to remind people that it would start selling its GLC plug-in hydrogen fuel-cell crossover this year. There are only 33 publicly accessible hydrogen refueling stations in the US, including 30 in California, and one each in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and South Carolina, according to the US Department of Energy. By comparison, there are more than 15,000 electric-vehicle charging stations with almost 40,000 outlets in the US. Related Video: Featured Gallery 2017 Mercedes-AMG GLC43 News Source: Daimler/Hydrogen Council via Bloomberg, Automotive News-sub.req. Green BMW Honda Hyundai Mercedes-Benz Toyota Hydrogen Cars infrastructure mercedes f-cell

Mercedes G500 4x4 rumbles into view

Mercedes keeps raising the bar with the G-Class: just when you think the legendary Gelandewagen couldn't get any more hardcore, it mashes the throttle and does exactly that, plowing through a bank of snow, sand, hell or high water in the process. What you see here is the latest. It's called the G500 4x42. Aside from the various engine specs, the G-Class has been offered in a number of body-styles. Right around the same time that the two-door convertible was discontinued, Benz rolled out the indomitable G63 AMG 6x6 – a half-million-dollar, six-wheeled monster truck powered by Affalterbach's 5.5-liter twin-turbo V8. Evidently enough people liked the idea but didn't see the point in that extra set of wheels, so Mercedes has toned it down – just a little – but kept the high-riding suspension. The result is the truck we've seen testing a couple of times now in a bright shade of Hulk green, and which is now just about ready for its debut. On the scale of extreme G-Wagens, it slots in between the standard model and the 6x6, keeping the jacked-up suspension and giant wheels, but losing the extra axle. The G500 moniker also indicates that it'll at least be available with the 382-horsepower, naturally aspirated, non-AMG version of the 5.5-liter V8 that we'd know as the G550. Just how much of a premium Benz will charge for the beefed-up version, we don't know, as further details are set to be released next week ahead of a likely debut in Geneva. But hopefully it'll be closer to the $115k it gets for the standard version than the $500+k the 6x6 goes for.

Mercedes may be working on a new electric car dubbed 'Ecoluxe'

Automobile has a lengthy piece this month on how the four German mass-market luxury manufacturers each plan to go after Tesla with their own electric vehicles. It was written by Georg Kacher, the magazine's European bureau chief, and the English version came a month after he wrote the German-language original for Autobild. Tesla isn't exactly a threat to the Germans, but, according to the report, the Model S is planting the right kinds of seeds in niches that are important to the luxury players. The thinking is that - in addition to needed electric vehicles anyway for stricter US regulations - it's better to start designing the machinery now. The article posited Porsche's attack would rest on the coming Panamera platform, but a big hurdle would be battery placement. Unable to find one large space for a lithium-ion pack, engineers would instead put batteries everywhere they could, for a supposed tally of some "108 battery pouches" throughout the body. A few days after the Automobile piece, however, Porsche publicly said it had no intention of challenging the Model S, because the enthusiastic driving the brand is known for doesn't jive with useful range. In Kacher's retelling, Mercedes' plans are even more ambitious, supposedly taking aim at the Model S and the coming Model X. It would do this with an investment in excess of $2 billion in a program called "Ecoluxe" – Mercedes has no brand division akin to BMW's i and Audi's e-tron. The new brand would create a four-strong family of bespoke electric vehicles: a smaller platform with a wheelbase around 106 inches and a larger one with a wheelbase around 118 inches. In addition, the range would have "provisions for rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, and rear-wheel steering." The numbers are impressive: seating for seven in the larger vehicles, both longer than 16 feet, front and rear storage areas, ratings of up to 610 horsepower and production capacity of 80,000 units per year. When would we see such creatures? Perhaps as soon as 2019. We do know that if Tesla can knock the Model X over the outfield fence, automakers are going to have to do something. We don't know what the chances are that Ecoluxe is Mercedes' first move - but such a plan could help explain the weird Mercedes concept spied in October.