Daimler CEO Källenius is increasing the pace of the e-revolution - and making a surprising announcement

Daimler is increasing the pace at Mercedes-Benz: after “Electric first”, the group is now opting for “Electric only” and is now gearing the brand with the star fully towards electric drives.

Stuttgart - Daimler wants to achieve half of all new sales with fully electric or plug-in cars by 2025.

The number would be twice as large as previously planned.

From the end of the decade, people also want to be exclusively “fully electric”.

Daimler is thus following other manufacturers such as Audi * or Opel.

Investments of more than 40 billion euros in battery electric vehicles are planned between 2022 and 2030, as the company announced.

Specifically, all new vehicle architectures at Mercedes - the technical basis of car models - are to be exclusively electric from 2025.

In the same year three new platforms will be introduced.

Also by the middle of the decade, customers should always be able to choose from a fully electric alternative for every Mercedes model.

Daimler: Own giant factories instead of suppliers

In view of the realignment, Daimler - like VW, for example - now also wants to produce battery cells on a larger scale together with other companies.

Together with partners, the plan is to build eight gigafactories worldwide for cell production with a total capacity of more than 200 gigawatt hours.

So far, the group had refused an independent large-scale cell production and relied on suppliers.

Now Daimler is also following Tesla's path. *

The planned battery cell factories are to complement the already planned network of nine factories that will assemble battery systems from the cell packs.

The next generation of batteries will be highly standardized and suitable for use in more than 90 percent of all future Mercedes cars, it said.