"Not that our homeland is less important": Mercedes boss is committed to Baden-Württemberg
Created: 12/21/2022 13:22
By: Julian Baumann
In the SWR interview, Mercedes boss Ola Källenius made a clear commitment to the Baden-Württemberg location and also dispelled customer concerns about the group's luxury strategy.
Stuttgart - In an interview with
Südwestrundfunk , which was broadcast on
SWR
television
on Tuesday evening (December 20, 8:15 p.m.) , Mercedes boss Ola Källenius clearly acknowledged the Baden-Württemberg location.
As an international company, Mercedes-Benz builds the models, which now also include a growing number of fully electric cars from the Mercedes-EQ brand, all over the world, but the home country is no less important for the global company, as Källenius emphasized.
The automotive industry in Baden-Württemberg is considered the engine of prosperity in the region, in which several important companies have their headquarters.
Especially in the recent past, Mercedes-Benz has repeatedly been accused of focusing too much on what is now the world's largest car market in China and the US market, and of neglecting production in Europe.
For example, the small cars from the subsidiary Smart are now produced exclusively in China and other production steps have also been shifted to the People's Republic.
Last year it became known that China's influence on Mercedes-Benz is greater than previously thought.
In the SWR interview
, Ola Källenius left
no doubt that he still sees the global corporation as part of Baden-Württemberg's key industry.
Mercedes boss on the car industry in Baden-Württemberg: "This cluster is incredibly important"
The automobile is undoubtedly an invention from Baden-Württemberg.
After all, the minds behind the most important development in mobility with Carl Benz (Karlsruhe), Gottlieb Daimler (Schorndorf) and Wilhelm Maybach (Heilbronn) all came from the southwestern state.
Even today, Mercedes-Benz still has its headquarters in the Untertürkheim district of Stuttgart and its world's largest plant in nearby Sindelfingen.
However, due to ongoing digitization and international networking, the car industry is constantly changing and the Mercedes boss must also prepare his company accordingly for the future.
However, Ola Källenius clearly contradicted the concern that sooner or later the group could withdraw entirely from its homeland.
Mercedes-Benz and Baden-Württemberg are inextricably linked.
In an interview, CEO Ola Källenius (left) reaffirmed the connection to home.
© Bernd Weißbrod/dpa
"We employ 70,000 people here in the greater Stuttgart area," explained the Mercedes boss in an
SWR
interview.
"And this is where our important partners are based - Bosch, Mahle etc." In addition, Trumpf and Co. are also other important partners of the large car company based in the region.
"This entire automotive cluster is incredibly important," Källenius continues.
"It is by no means the case that our homeland of Baden-Württemberg is somehow less important." Apart from the economy, Mercedes-Benz also shows its connection to its homeland as a sponsor of VfB Stuttgart or as one of the sponsors of the annual JazzOpen music festival in Stuttgart.
Mercedes-Benz does not want to completely say goodbye to classic entry-level models
Precisely because Mercedes-Benz is still inseparably linked to Stuttgart and Baden-Württemberg, the group also has to put up with criticism from the state in relation to the luxury strategy.
Baden-Württemberg's Transport Minister Winfried Hermann (Greens) had criticized the fact that Mercedes "only wanted to build cars for sheikhs and the rich".
Specifically, the Board of Management announced in May that it would focus more on the high-priced models of the core brand and the Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-Maybach and Mercedes-EQ brands.
The group gave a first foretaste of a particularly luxurious model with the presentation of the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class Haute Voiture.
In addition, according to Mercedes-Benz, it intends to reduce the entry-level segment from the current seven to four models.
In a media Q&A in May, Ola Källenius left it open that the popular A and B classes would fall victim to the strategy.
However, customers later feared that they would no longer be able to afford a model with the star in the future.
In the SWR
interview, however
, the Mercedes boss denied that the carmaker would say goodbye to classic entry-level models.
"We will continue to be present in the segments in which we are today," he made clear.
"I know the importance of compact cars."
