The Daimler CEO on Friday stressed the importance of low-emission technologies and innovation and told CNBC that the automotive industry is ‘in the midst of a transformation’.
“Besides the things we know well – to honestly build the world’s most popular cars – there are two technological trends that are doubling us up: electrification and digitization,” Ola Källenius told Annette Weisbach, CNBC.
The firm, headquartered in Stuttgart, “has poured billions into these new technologies”, he added, saying they would ‘drive our path to CO2-free driving’. This decade, he claims, would be ‘transformative’.
Källenius’ comment comes on the same day that Daimler announced that its Mercedes-Benz car division would sell more than 160,000 plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles by 2020, a tripling compared to the previous year.
In the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, the German car giant said about 87,000 xEVs – a term that refers to both plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles – were sold.
Daimler added that the share of xEVs at Mercedes-Benz Cars increased by 7.4% in 2020, compared to just 2% in 2019. Looking ahead, it predicts that the share of xEVs at Mercedes-Benz Cars will rise to around 13% this year. will grow, with several new models to be launched in 2021.
“We have more than tripled the sales of our plug-in hybrids and electric cars,” Källenius said in a statement issued on the company’s website. “The demand for these vehicles increased sharply especially towards the end of the year,” he added.
New goals, symbolic shifts
The rise in sales of electric vehicles for Daimler comes at a time when both politicians and companies are looking for low and no emissions from transportation.
Last month, the European Commission, the EU’s executive, presented its strategy for sustainable and smart mobility. Among other things, it aims to have at least 30 million cars without emissions by 2030.
Drivers’ habits seem to be changing. In the UK – which recently announced plans to stop selling diesel and petrol-powered cars and vans by 2030 – road users’ demand for battery-powered electric vehicles rose by 185.9% in 2020, with 108,205 new registrations , according to the Association of Motor Manufacturers. and traders.
Sales of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles reached 66,877 last year, an increase of 91.2%, according to figures from the SMMT. The industry body said that combined, hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric motors’ make up more than one in ten registrations – by about one in 30 in 2019.
For December, the Tesla Model 3 – an electric vehicle – was the best-selling car in the UK
In Norway, the inclusion of electric vehicles is even more pronounced than in the United Kingdom. On Tuesday, Reuters, referring to the Norwegian Road Federation, reported that electric vehicles for batteries accounted for 54.3% of new car sales in Norway last year. It was, according to him, a world record.
Daimler is one of the many large car companies that want to play a major role in the electric vehicle sector and challenge Elon Musk’s Tesla.
The Volkswagen Group, for example, is investing 35 billion euros (about $ 42.86 billion) in electric vehicles and says it wants to roll out about 70 all-electric models by 2030.
Nissan also wants to increase its EV offering. Ashwani Gupta, chief operating officer of the firm, said in an interview with CNBC last month that a “turning point” had been reached when it came to electrifying vehicles.
Gupta added that the Japanese company is “ready to address the opportunity anywhere in the world.”