Daimler renames itself - and thus makes concentration on the business field clear

Created: 01/29/2022, 18:39

A Mercedes star, the logo of the Mercedes-Benz brand, stands on a showroom.

© Sebastian Gollnow/dpa/archive image

Daimler renames itself the Mercedes-Benz Group - thus showing its focus on the car and van business.

According to CEO Källenius, there are good prospects despite the chip crisis.

Stuttgart – According to Daimler boss Ola Källenius, self-driving cars offer good prospects for Mercedes* business.

"Autonomous driving has incredible potential for the future," said Källenius in an online conversation with journalists on Friday.

He pointed out that the Stuttgart-based manufacturer would enable highly automated driving in series-production luxury sedans of the S-Class and was thus an industry pioneer.

The fact that customers will want more of it in the future is “crystal clear” for the car manufacturer.

Daimler will be called the Mercedes-Benz Group in the future - autonomous driving as an important industry topic

Autonomous driving is a big industry topic.

The VW Group* and the large supplier Bosch had recently announced that they would take the next steps together on the way to the self-driving car.

At Mercedes, in the future, drivers of certain S-Class cars will be able to hand over responsibility to the vehicle in traffic jams on certain sections of the motorway, for example, it said at the end of last year.

For the first time in the more than 130-year history of the automobile, the vehicle takes over “the dynamic driving task” under certain conditions, according to the manufacturer’s assessment.

Källenius sees good prospects for the remaining business with cars and vans after the spin-off of the truck business.

"We have considerable growth potential in the Mercedes brand." The top manager did not go into detail about the supply bottleneck with semiconductors, which affects the entire industry, because of the upcoming press conference on February 24th.

Daimler board member Markus Schäfer had said at the beginning of the month that the shortage would persist in the first half of the year, and that the situation could relax somewhat in the second half of the year.

Daimler boss confirms earlier company announcements: New name

Daimler spun off Daimler Truck in December, made it an independent company and listed it on the stock exchange.

The remaining Daimler AG will be renamed Mercedes-Benz Group AG this Tuesday (February 1), Källenius said, confirming earlier company announcements.

The manufacturer focuses on cars and vans.

Internally, the renaming will already take place on Saturday, since the car pioneer Carl Benz filed the patent for the first motor car exactly 136 years ago - i.e. on January 29, 1886.

Källenius said Mercedes-Benz will be involved as a shareholder in decisions made by the battery cell joint venture Automotive Cells Company (ACC).

Daimler announced last year that it would join ACC - the European car manufacturer Stellantis (Fiat, Peugeot) and the energy group Totalenergies are also represented there.

There will be two plants for battery production, in Kaiserslautern and in Douvrin in northern France.

There is currently no decision for another factory, said Källenius.

The Mercedes-Benz business is to be geared towards electric driving in the future.

By the end of the decade, the Stuttgart-based company wants to be fully electric wherever “market conditions allow”.