The all-electric Mercedes EQS may well be one of the most important cars in company’s history. And that’s saying a lot, because that’s a whole bunch of history.

Mercedes-Benz and its direct ancestor companies have been making internal combustion-powered automobiles longer than any company on Earth. Karl Benz applied for a patent on a gas-engined car in 1886, a decade before Henry Ford built his first car. Throughout much of that history, Mercedes-Benz has remained a dominant maker of big luxury cars. Over the past few decades, if you wanted a nice, comfortable car for around a hundred thousand inflation-adjusted dollars, your handful of top choices would almost surely have included a Mercedes and maybe a few European competitors and maybe a Lexus.

But Mercedes is facing a worldwide shift towards electric cars that’s bringing entirely new competitors into the market. Not just Tesla, but new startups like Lucid and Faraday Future are bringing, or planning to bring, high-priced electric luxury cars over the next couple of years, and they threaten that formerly small market with new competition.

Mercedes has taken a big step by creating an electric version of its flagship model, the car that defines the brand. This is like Porsche making an electric 911 or Jeep an electric Wrangler. Those things haven’t happened yet but, when they do, it will be critical that those vehicles are done right because the brand image will be riding on them. Mercedes has, with the EQS, brought its brand into the electric era and done it properly. With the hardest job out of the way, Mercedes now has a chance to capture future electric vehicle buyers with upcoming less expensive models. With all the new competition entering the market — startups like Tesla and Lucid and traditional rivals like Audi — Mercedes is starting out from strength.