FRANKFURT, GERMANY • Daimler’s luxury car brand Mercedes-benz says it is stepping up its transition to electric cars, doubling the share of sales planned by 2025 and sketching out a market scenario in which new car sales would “in essence” be fully electric by the end of the decade.

The shift to electric vehicles “is picking up speed — especially in the luxury segment, where Mercedes-benz belongs,” said Ola Kallenius, CEO of Daimler and also head of the Mercedes-benz division. ”The tipping point is getting closer and we will be ready as markets switch to electric-only by the end of this decade.”

The company plans to invest 40 billion euros ($47 billion) in battery-driven vehicles between 2022 and 2080. It also intends to work with partners on setting up eight factories producing battery cells — the individual components that are assembled into larger battery packs in different vehicles.

The company said Thursday it foresaw half its sales as battery-only or plug-in hybrid cars by 2025, up from a quarter in previous forecasts.

In the first six months of this year, such vehicles were 10.3% of sales. The company sold 39,000 battery cars and 121,500 plug-in hybrids.

The company’s statement updating its strategy portrayed going all-electric as a “market scenario” the company intended to be ready for, rather than as a fixed deadline for abandoning sales of diesel or gasoline vehicles. The company said it was “getting ready to go electric by the end of the decade, where market conditions allow.”

Mercedes said Thursday that from 2025 all newly launched vehicle architectures would be electric only, referring to mechanical structures that can be shared among different models.

The company has said that its model lineup will be climate neutral by 2039 throughout its chain of production, but had not specified any date for halting sales of internal combustion engines.