Mercedes-Benz Takes On Tesla With Its Blazing-Fast Electric Luxury Sedan

Mercedes-Benz has Tesla Motors in its crosshairs. The German automaker, which once partnered with Tesla and was once credited with saving the nascent company, has announced that it will unveil its own all-electric luxury sedan at the Paris Auto Show later in September.

According to the Australian website Motoring, the car will have all-wheel drive along with rear and front electric motors. Mercedes is billing this car as “dangerously fast”- among the top three fastest models offered by the company- suggesting that Tesla ought to be concerned about this new entrant into the electric vehicle (EV) game. The company is also claiming that the Mercedes EV will be priced similarly to the Tesla Model S while offering a hefty range of about 310 miles.

In an interview with Motoring, David McCarthy, who is a senior manager at Mercedes-Benz, raised doubts about Tesla’s ability to manufacture enough cars to meet demand while keeping prices at marketable rates. Tesla is currently working on more than 350,000 orders for the Model 3 car.

While crediting Tesla with popularizing EV’s and generating demand for them, McCarthy expressed confidence in the forthcoming Mercedes EV, stating, “we wouldn’t be doing it unless we thought we could sell it.” While he refrained from saying the new car would be a “Tesla-killer,” McCarthy did say have this to say: “It’ll be a Mercedes, so I think Tesla probably has good reason to be concerned about it.”

While industry observers are looking forward to seeing the concept version in Paris this fall, the production model isn’t expected to hit the streets until at least 2018. Mercedes isn’t the only prominent automaker making forays into the EV industry. Porsche also has plans in the works to debut a high-performance electric car in 2020, Yahoo News reports.