MUMBAI: Mercedes Benz on Tuesday launched the long wheel base E Class, the first “made in India - for India” car in the Daimler world Mercedes Benz is largest luxury carmaker by volumes in India. The new stretched E class sedan, is priced at 56.15 lakh and Rs 69.47 lakh, ex-showroom Mumbai , the E Class will be assembled at the company’s Chakan factory on the outskirts of Pune, making it the only right hand drive manufacturing base for the E Class.Of over 1 lakh vehicles sold by Mercedes Benz in India, about 34,000 units have been the E Class sedans. Interestingly, out of these 34,000 E Class owners, 80% of the owners are driven by a Chauffeur.In its 10th generation, the new E Class – with an extended wheel base, Mercedes Benz is offering 50% more space at the back with seats that can recline upto 37 degree. The new E Class is 188 mm longer than predecessor, making it longer than 5 metres.Roland Folger, MD of Mercedes Benz India told ET with over three fourth of their E Class buyers being chauffeured around it was a natural decision for Mercedes to introduce the long wheelbase E-Class in India.“With the new E Class, we create a new benchmark in the luxury executive segment. India becomes the only country in the world to offer the right hand drive long wheelbase version of the new E-Class, and it took almost 48 months to develop this car from scratch,” said FolgerHaving regained the number one position in 2015, Mercedes Benz was on a high, but the diesel ban in National Capital Region and demonetisation pulled down the company’s growth in negative territory.With the sentiment improving, Folger says Mercedes Benz will be looking at coming back to double digit growth in 2017 and has lined up over a dozen new products in 2017, with the new E Class being the big launch of the year.The new E Class is priced just Rs 4 lakh to Rs 7 lakh over the existing E Class and to further improve the value proposition, Mercedes Benz is offering service packages for two years for as low as Rs 64,000 to Rs 94,000 for the E Class with unlimited kilometres.To be sure, Mercedes Benz was rated for the lowest average maintenance cost in Indian Blue Book’s residual value of luxury car segment report 2016. The Mercedes Benz Service Package for the new E Class (for 4 years), which is 40-60% lower on total cost ownership for petrol and 25-50% on diesel variant as against the competing models.The company offers over 45 different service package option to the customers with warranty running up to 10 years with maximum outgo of Rs 10 lakh for a luxury sedan. And service package can be financed along with the car.If one calculates the total cost of ownership by adding the price of the car, maintenance cost, warranty cost and residual value of the car, the new E Class will cost less than the competition, claims Mercedes Benz India.