Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz complied with Europe’s tighter emissions limits final 12 months as a late surge in plug-in car gross sales spared the world’s largest luxury-car maker from fines.

Mercedes shipped slightly below 160,000 plug-in hybrid and fully-electric automobiles in 2020, with the fourth quarter accounting for about half of these deliveries, Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius informed reporters on Thursday. He had cautioned prior to now that assembly the emissions goal can be a detailed name.

“The nice pattern we’ve seen within the third quarter continued within the fourth quarter pushed by China, however not solely China as different markets improved as nicely,” Kallenius mentioned of general demand. Mercedes plans to hurry up the rollout of electrical fashions and is dedicated to assembly extra stringent emissions guidelines within the coming years, he mentioned.

Daimler navigated the most important business droop since World Battle II higher than initially feared and likewise made progress restructuring its sprawling industrial operations to bolster returns. It’s going to publish detailed gross sales outcomes for 2020 on Friday.

PSA Group and Volvo Vehicles, together with BMW and Renault, are amongst automakers anticipated to fulfill the EU’s emissions guidelines. Volkswagen Group  has mentioned it’d narrowly miss its goal.

Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler will introduce the electrical compact automobile EQA this month after rolling out the most recent iteration of its flagship S-Class sedan final 12 months. It’s going to launch 4 purely-battery powered autos in 2021 to step up its problem of Tesla Inc.

Kallenius additionally acknowledged that Mercedes-Benz is affected by an industrywide provide bottleneck of semiconductor elements that has hit bigger German rival Volkswagen. The producer is doing all the things it may to reduce results on manufacturing, he mentioned.