Germany's Daimler Group's luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz has announced that it will be fully electric by 2030. To this end, it will invest 40 billion euros (about 54 trillion won) and compete head-to-head with Tesla in the electric vehicle market.
As Mercedes-Benz has maintained its brand identity as a luxury car, Reuters predicted that it will target Tesla, which belongs to the luxury brand category in the electric vehicle market. Mercedes-Benz judges that an all-out war with Tesla is inevitable when the electric vehicle era begins in earnest.
“The speed of conversion to electric vehicles is accelerating, especially in the luxury car sector,” said CEO Shellenius, explaining the background to the rush to electrify products. Mercedes-Benz plans to add an electrified version to all car models in 2025, allowing consumers to choose between internal combustion engine vehicles and electric vehicles, and then produce only electric vehicles by 2030.
At the same time, Mercedes-Benz will end its investment in internal combustion engines by 2025. The world's No. 1 company in internal combustion engine technology will stop researching engines.
Instead, Mercedes-Benz is preparing for the transition to the electric vehicle era by establishing eight gigafactories for battery manufacturing with its partners. “The tipping point of the electric vehicle transition is approaching, and we plan to complete the preparations by the end of the 2020s,” said CEO Shellenius.
At the same time, the Daimler Group also decided to acquire YASA, a British motor and controller company, in order to enhance its high-performance motors for electric vehicles.
Daimler Group said that in the process of electrification, a reduction in manpower is inevitable. Electric vehicles have a simple assembly process due to the small number of parts, and above all, there is no need to mobilize manpower to assemble the complex engine and transmission.
