Automobility: Daimler boss: Fewer jobs after switching to electric

According to its boss Ola Källenius, the transformation of the car manufacturer Daimler from internal combustion engines to electromobility will cost the Stuttgart company jobs.

“You also have to be honest with people: assembling an internal combustion engine involves more work than building an electric axle,” said Källenius of “Welt am Sonntag”. “Even if we built the entire electric drive train ourselves, we will employ fewer people by the end of the decade.” But there are also new, high-quality jobs in the course of the changeover.

Daimler recently set itself much more ambitious goals for the breakthrough of its own e-fleet and, for the core car brand Mercedes-Benz, also announced that it would soon abandon the internal combustion engine. In future, the entire Mercedes business is to be geared towards electric driving under the heading of “Electric only”. As early as 2025, the Swabians want to achieve around 50 percent of their new sales with fully electric or plug-in cars – twice as much as previously planned.

According to the Daimler works council, there is no alternative to battery-electric drives. “You can’t swim against the current when the whole world is pushing the battery-electric drive,” said employee representative Michael Brecht. However, there are also doubts in the workforce about the Group’s pure electrical course and the imminent end of the internal combustion engine. “Some colleagues still believe that we can go on like this for a while.”

So far, Daimler has made by far the most money with conventional combustion cars, i.e. gasoline or diesel vehicles. The number of fully electric cars sold in the first half of the year made up just over 3 percent of all cars delivered, plus a slightly higher proportion of hybrid cars. However, the industry expects – also in view of political requirements – to see rapidly growing sales quotas for e-cars in the next few years.