Mercedes CEO talks 800-volt future, electric G-Wagen

Mercedes-Benz is altering. For the German luxurious model that popularized the four-stroke combustion engine, the shift to electrification and carbon neutrality is about far more than propulsion. Like each different established and startup automaker, the business faces an unprecedented crossroads the place digitization, electrification, power, and possession fashions converge. To name it an inflection level could be reductive. 

How Mercedes-Benz pivots to electrification and embraces digitization may function both a boilerplate or a cautionary story for different automakers. The newest individual overseeing this seismic paradigm shift is Ola Källenius, CEO of Mercedes-Benz AG and Chairman of the Board from Could 22, 2019 through Could 2024.

The tall Swede, with a depth of automotive data matched solely by his breadth of worldwide enterprise affairs, has labored for Mercedes since 1993, with a quick cease at McLaren, and has held Mercedes management positions protecting every thing from engine emissions techniques to AMG efficiency. 

On the opening of the Paris auto present, Mr. Källenius sat down with Inexperienced Automobile Studies and a small group of journalists following the launch of the 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV. The electrical crossover guarantees to be the quantity mannequin within the model’s rising EQ electrical household in North America. 

From the approaching U.S. arrival of the EQC electrical compact crossover and subsequent launch of the peerless electrical G-Wagen to the urgency for the model to decarbonize by 2039, the affable government maintained his infectious optimism—even hours after his beloved Alabama Crimson Tide suffered an upset loss to the Tennessee Volunteers in collegiate soccer. 

“Now we have an opportunity,” he stated, referring to vying for the nationwide championship in postseason seeding. 

The identical could possibly be stated for Mercedes main the way in which on this new period because it had within the combustion period.

This interview has been edited and reference factors in brackets have been added for readability. 

How are you driving sustainable demand for the EV transformation?

I believe what we’re now seeing on this journey to finish zero emission, and we’re saying let’s go there as rapidly as we are able to—though it’s a 10+-year journey—if we take a look at how that’s creating now, proper now as we sit right here in 2022, we are actually past the early adopter part and we’re beginning the mass adoption part. 

The momentum is nearly constructing by itself. It’s not a coincidence that now that we come again to Paris after two years and the pandemic, that we make an enormous splash with two electrical automobiles. We are going to proceed to unfold the phrase. 

What are your issues about infrastructure?

We’re a part of a consortium right here in Europe with Ionity to construct infrastructure. Many gamers are stepping in, the power firms are additionally stepping in. There’s lots of momentum in it. However it’s nonetheless very a lot underdeveloped. In Japan there’s a protracted strategy to go. That’s one of many markets the place the space is a bit bit longer. 

We as an organization are what else we are able to do to enhance it. Now we have the most important and greatest roaming system on this planet now, at over 850,000 public charging factors. We’re what else we are able to do to construct momentum, construct belief within the product, create comfort for the client. Watch this house. Extra to come back.

What else is being executed when it comes to expediency and effectivity?

Effectivity is the brand new forex. Within the EQXX we wished to reveal what is feasible. Then one can ask your self, was that only a science venture with one thing that’s within the far distinct future? No. The EQXX has phenomenal efficiency. [It gets up to 8.6 kwh per 100 km of real driving]. It’s a automobile you may placed on the road, however with out sure power customers comparable to therapeutic massage seats, or 15-speaker Dolby Atmos. However when you transport that right into a Mercedes luxurious tech automobile, a few of the applied sciences from the EQXX will already be with us within the subsequent architectures which can be approaching on the finish of 2024 and 2025. 

Reminiscent of?

The MMA, our entry-level lux automobiles [currently the A-Class, B-Class, CLA-Class, GLA and EQA, and GLB and EQB]; MB.EA, a few of the core lux positions; and naturally we are going to proliferate it all through our complete portfolio. So you’ve gotten a subsequent gen with important effectivity features to come back within the ‘24-’25-’26 mannequin yr timeframe, which is actually across the nook. Paired with that, we’re additionally making progress on power density. So higher effectivity provides longer vary and extra power density provides longer vary. So each are taking place in parallel.

The EQG platform is a devoted platform. Is there something it’s restricted by?

The G-Wagen has cult standing, it’s simply distinctive. The G will at all times stay a G. It’s not on a platform. It’s its personal automobile. Full cease. And it’ll stay its personal automobile. We’re not going to do a G off, let’s say, the EVA2 platform. The G stays the G. Now we’ve determined to electrify the G, we gotta do it, it was completely apparent. We’re engaged on it, within the yr 2024 we intend to come back to market. 

We’re some thrilling applied sciences there with silicone anodes [Mercedes is partnering with the California-based startup Sila Nano to make more efficient silicon anodes]. We may have one excessive energy-density battery cell that we’re engaged on for this automobile. And the powertrain itself might be, from a efficiency viewpoint, phenomenal.

I had the chance late final fall to take an early powertrain mule for a spin in our off-road facility exterior of Graz—we make this automobile in Austria, as you already know. We had been within the automobile for an hour and we did every thing, like each angle, every thing you may think about, it’s fairly complete terrain we constructed up there. And we walked out of the automobile and had been like, any more going off-road is electrical.  

It’s mind-blowing. I do know I’m elevating expectations right here…nevertheless it was so competent, really easy to drive it. It’ll have phenomenal efficiency on and off the street coupled with essentially the most energy-dense battery that we are able to discover in a automobile that’s barely aerodynamically challenged.

Is the G-Wagen going to be the one automobile to have the 800-volt structure? 

We are going to progressively change over to 800-volt structure. The provider of the subsequent era, the very first with 800-volt, would be the MMA structure.

Will we see an EQC in the next generation for North America?

Completely. [The MB.EA platform for mid-size and large vehicles is expected around 2025.] 

How do you see a path ahead working along with companions and the place do you see a should be distinct [Mercedes announced a partnership with Apple Music and Universal Music Group this week]?

It’s one of many cornerstones of how we cope with that. Let me begin from the highest. We essentially imagine as an automotive OEM, it’s important to be the architect of your working system. Let me broaden on that. The working system that we’re creating we name MB OS. It’s not simply concerning the software program stack and the totally different domains throughout the software program stack. It’s concerning the corresponding software program. You may’t take a look at this in a single dimension, you at all times take a look at {hardware} and software program collectively. 

We made the choice a couple of years in the past that now that we’re on this paradigm shift of how software program is deployed within the automobile, that we should be the architect of it. However it goes past the automobile. It’s automobile, cloud, and the distinctive buyer ID and every thing that occurs customer-facing in your advertising and marketing and gross sales system. It’s actually a triangle.

If in case you have determined that you’re the architect of this constructing however you continue to want to complete the constructing and put furnishings into the rooms and all these issues, when you try this it’s important to have virtually like an open supply mentality. You’re not making a fortress, the place you sit inside a fortress and you may’t talk anything. You wish to construct bridges to tech firms and different gamers related to the patron.

So we cooperate with a number of massive tech firms, whether or not it’s well-known ones from the U.S. or in China, as a result of China has its personal ecosystem, or in different international locations world wide. 

What’s the standing of the brand new gigafactory places?

The U.S. one is being constructed now. We introduced most not too long ago we’re doing one in Hungary with CATL. You already know we’ve a shareholding in ACC [Automotive Cell Company]. ACC has introduced three vegetation, not devoted to us, however the two starting customers are Stellantis and Mercedes. In China we’re just about decked out. So we’re transferring quick on this. 

What progress is being made on battery recycling?

We’re constructing our personal recycling plant in southern Germany as we converse in order that we additionally be taught what the most recent and best recycling applied sciences might be. And we work with a few of the main gamers within the house. If I take a look at the perfect recycling know-how which can be within the pipeline, of the valuable supplies that we’ve in lithium-ion batteries, we may get north of 90% recycling quota out of these as soon as we get them out of service. 

They’ve a really excessive financial worth. So by definition, that is going to have a—like metal is recycled at this time, nobody throws away metal—so at some point the recycling of batteries would be the greatest digital mine on this planet. However it’s most likely not less than 10 years away. As a result of earlier than significant quantity comes again from the market, we’re going to be a while within the 2030s. So we have to now develop the know-how and begin constructing the infrastructure to prepare for this. However we don’t want it subsequent yr, we’d like it progressively.

What are you able to say concerning the profitability of the EQ vary?

What we’ve stated is that the contribution of particularly the EVA2 automobiles [the EQE and EQS sedans and SUVs] are wholesome from the phrase go, whereas we don’t disclose particular person revenue margins on automobiles and we received’t. In our monetary market communication, the place we put out the climate chart of the place we wish to be in numerous financial climates, we’ve additionally stated that when we’re on the opposite facet of the transformation, this climate chart additionally applies to the corporate in these situations. It’s completely clear on the way in which to 2030—and past—to be as robustly worthwhile in an electrical period as within the combustion period.