Santosh Iyer, Managing Director and CEO, Mercedes-Benz India, at the AMG E 53 plug-in hybrid electric vehicle launch
Luxury carmaker, Mercedes-Benz India, on Thursday, said that all the vehicles — more than 10,000 — it sold since January are E25-compatible and there has been no incidences of any issue with E20 fuel till now, for even cars sold before 2026.The company recently had reported a record first-half retail sales of 9,768 vehicles, up 9 per cent year-on-year compared with 9,013 units sold in January-June 2025.“We started with the BS-VI transition that happened in 2018 and since 2020, the entire portfolio of Mercedes-Benz in India was E20-compliant. So, I think none of our customers need to worry about the fuel and the future also because, as I said, the future cars are already compliant to the E25 fuel as well as the cars that we sell today are compliant to E25,” Santosh Iyer, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mercedes-Benz India, told businessline on the sidelines of a launch here.CAFE-3 normsOn another big debate going on about the proposals under the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE-3) norms, wherein the government has indicated of carbon trading between companies, Iyer said Mercedes-Benz has a neutral stand because its portfolio has a mix of petrol, diesel, electric and now plug-in hybrids.“Powertrain choice is a strategic choice by different OEMs. At times, you gain competitive advantage, at times it may not be helpful for meeting certain fuel efficiency norms. As far as we are concerned, we have no issues because we are neutral on this topic; we would comply to any of the new notifications,” he noted.Meanwhile, the company launched its AMG E 53 plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) in two editions priced at ₹1.45 crore and ₹1.48 crore, respectively (ex-showroom, all-India), the second hybrid after it launched the S-Class—the S 450 e last month.Published on July 23, 2026
