Mercedes-Benz AG will invest 60 billion euros over the next five years. The Supervisory Board of Daimler AG confirmed this investment plan at its meeting on Thursday, as did the associated savings targets. “Mercedes-Benz is preparing to go fully electric before the end of the decade, wherever market conditions allow. Against this background, the supervisory board supports the path taken to increase efficiency and the associated reduction in fixed costs, ”says the message that the company distributed on the evening after the supervisory board meeting. This is clearly not a new strategy. Rather, a new transparency is created bythat Daimler AG is splitting into a car and a commercial vehicle company these days and these are reporting in more detail on their business plans than the previous divisions.
In the short term, the 60 billion euros will primarily flow into the electrification of the fleet, but then also into digitization and autonomous driving.
However, the budget is not growing, on the contrary: In 2025, spending on capital expenditures and research and development is to be reduced by more than a fifth compared to 2019, after which the item should continue to shrink.
Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius expressly points out that by rigorously prioritizing future investments, even in an accelerated transformation, the previous return targets can be achieved in the long term.
An important lever for this is the increase in sales per vehicle, both in terms of the model range and the sales model.
In the future, discounts are to be prevented even more than before.
In addition, digital services are to be turned into money.
The variable costs of electric cars, in turn, should decrease through the standardization of battery platforms and vehicle architectures.