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Here still camouflaged with adhesive film: The new edition of the S-Class from Mercedes-Benz
Photo: Mercedes-Benz / dpa
The time has come every few years, when Daimler presents a revised version of its models for Mercedes-Benz.
Now the new generation of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class luxury sedan is ready.
The longing for the premium automaker's most profitable car model must have been particularly great this year.
Because in the middle of the Corona crisis, which is increasing the pressure on the industry through the costly switch to electric cars, the Swabians need a hoped-for money maker more urgently than ever.
In the past few weeks, Daimler boss
Ola Källenius
(51) has expected a lot from his workforce.
On the one hand, HR manager
Wilfried Porth
(61) is sifting out rustic in management, on the other hand, Daimler is reducing working hours in Germany and cutting the bonus.
In this way, the dreaded job cuts should be avoided, at least for the time being.
In the group, however, up to 30,000 jobs are on the brink - the "toughest clear-cut in history", as manager magazin reported at the end of July.
Daimler also wants to sell the Smart plant in Hambach, France - to the British Ineos group, which plans to build an off-road vehicle there in the future.
Källenius will hardly put all of this in the foreground in his S-Class presentation - but first refer to the new features of the car.
It is full of technology and should - of course - set new standards.
For example, the turning circle of the 5.15-meter-long sedan is significantly smaller than that of the competition - thanks to a new all-wheel steering system that also turns up to ten degrees on the rear wheels.
The operating system interpreted the looks and movements of drivers.
The adaptive chassis raises the car by up to eight centimeters in the event of an impending side impact in order to better cushion the consequences of a crash.
And there are also up to 16 airbags in the luxury sedan.
more on the subject
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Sale before the deal: Ineos submits a binding offer for Daimler's smart factory
Car company in upheaval: Daimler boss starts toughest clear-cut in history by Margret Hucko and Michael Freitag
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"The S-Class is an important image carrier and, measured in terms of the margin, the greatest source of income," says
Frank Schwope
, an analyst at Norddeutsche Landesbank.
The luxury limousine, which Daimler boss Ola Källenius presented in an online event on Wednesday, could bring the Dax group back into the profit zone in the coming year.
Perhaps, after losing 1.7 billion euros in the first half of the year, 2020 will be in the black.
New, fully digital work as a bonus
In parallel to the ongoing online premiere of the S-Class, Daimler has opened a new factory at its traditional location in Sindelfingen.
The "Factory 56", which is about 30 soccer fields in size, cost around 730 million euros and is intended to make production much more flexible and efficient, as Daimler announced on Wednesday.
In the future, the Mercedes flagships will be built in the plant, which is also fully networked and digitized with 5G technology and is also operated in a CO2-neutral manner: in addition to the S-Class, the EQS electric model and the Maybach will also be built.
However, the hall is designed in such a way that, depending on demand, any other model from compact cars to SUVs can be integrated into ongoing production, it said.
Daimler also wants "Factory 56" to be understood as a commitment to Germany as a location.
In total, the group is investing around 2.1 billion euros in expanding the Sindelfingen plant, which employs around 35,000 people.
In the new S-Class factory alone, it should be around 1,500 in two shifts per day.
S-class yield is a corporate secret
The carmaker does not reveal the returns on the individual models.
Analysts estimate it to be 15 to 20 percent profit on sales.
"Mercedes is very dependent on the success of the S-Class," says
Daniel Schwarz
, auto expert from the Mainfirst bank.
And their success depends in turn on the world's largest and most important single market for Mercedes, China.
Since demand is recovering well in the country where the Covid pandemic broke out and was the first to be contained, the analyst Daimler believes that sales of 95,000 units in the first full sales year of 2021 will be achieved.
At prices over 100,000 euros, the top model could shovel in two billion euros in earnings, he estimates.
To do this, it has to outdo the rivals BMW 7 Series and A8 from Audi, which came onto the market in 2019 and 2017 and are therefore older.
In the next two years, Mercedes could score points with the latest model range from premium manufacturers, explains Schwarz.
The CO2 emissions of mostly more than 200 grams per kilometer, however, are no glory from a climate protection point of view.
The high-horsepower model with its six-cylinder diesel and gasoline engines is indispensable because it makes the switch to electric cars financially possible.
"Electric cars are necessary, but you don't earn any money with them - you need models like the S-Class for that," explains Schwarz.
The EQS, the electric version of the S-Class, will also follow in 2021.
"It would have been a good symbol for a determined change of direction to climate-friendly vehicles to bring the EQS at the same time as the S-Class," says Schwope.
wed / dpa, Reuters
