24 MOTORTREND.COM APRIL 2021O
la Källenius took over as Daimler
AG’s chairman of the board
of management in 2019. His
tenure has been marked by the launch
of high tech within vehicles, the need
to cut fixed costs, and a pandemic that
could have easily thrown everything off
course. In his first media roundtable of
2021, Källenius focused on the premiere
of the massive MBUX Hyperscreen that
constitutes the dashboard of the new
2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS flagship elec-
tric vehicle. Mercedes largely designed
the EQ vehicle family around the massive
screen, and the digital services such a
screen makes possible are seen as a vital
revenue stream going forward.After the Hyperscreen launches on the
EQS, will it roll out across the lineup? The
EQS will be the first on a fully dedicated,
large luxury electric car. And that will be
a family of at least four vehicles. All those
four will have access to the Hyperscreen.What about other brands and vehicles?
This is a big physical part literally
designed for the interior of those vehicles.
So, at the moment, it will be [only for] the
family of electric vehicles that come off of
that architecture.Is it standard equipment? It’s not stan-
dard equipment; it is an option. There
will be another version, which will also be
pretty fantastic, but this is so spectacular
that this will be a high-end option. We
expect a very high take rate.Is this being driven by the tech business
or coming from consumers asking for it?
Since we introduced the first generation
of MBUX, which was a game changer,
the take rate has gone up significantly.reinvent the wheel on everything. We have
strong tech partners in many areas to help
us do this, but we remain the architects.What are some of the revenue streams
this will open? At the point of sale, when
you buy different packages of this MBUX,
that is still the biggest revenue source
right now. Customers also make over-
the-air downloads. There are the obvious
things like live traffic services. There is
a growing pool of revenue and profit in
subscription. We’re looking forward to
this growing significantly. In the strategy
we presented in the fall for Mercedes
as a whole, growing digital and recur-
ring revenues is one of the pillars. We’re
targeting about 1 billion euro [earnings
before interest and taxes] by the year
2025 for this.How much of your overall cost-reduction
efforts are to develop technology like this?
In terms of overall cost-down efforts,
lowering our fixed costs, also lowering
the break-even point of our business as
a whole, we accelerated those efforts in- We took a new look at this on a
transformation plan that we had decided
upon by the end of 2019 and doubled
down on some of those efforts, and made
a very big step in the right direction in - But this is not something you stop.
You don’t do it once. It’s like mowing the
lawn. You cannot stop.
How far along are you on your cost-
reduction targets? We have a significant
efficiency program put in place up until
2025, because we’re in the transformation
of the auto industry. So we’re investing at
levels like never before into new technolo-
gies, electrification of a whole fleet. It is a
dual effort, investing at the highest level
ever and at the same time doubling down
on efficiencies, and we’re on track for that.Are there more layoffs to come? Techni-
cally we’re not laying people off. We are
offering severance packages to people that
want that, and we’re using attrition and
other means. In some areas, such as the
software side, we’re hiring. Alisa PriddleChairman, Daimler AG
Mercedes’ massive
curved MBUX Hyperscreen
measures 56 inches across.WE’RE INVESTING
LIKE NEVER BEFORE INTO
NEW TECHNOLOGIES.”NEWSI OPINIONI GOSSIPI STUFF[Customers] want the most beautiful,
high-tech screen, the physical piece like
a piece of art. But as digital content has
increased, customers are also looking at
buying lots more content.Will Mercedes partner with streaming
services like Netflix and Hulu to provide
entertainment content? Yes, we are
targeting music and streaming services.
Not all of that is available yet in the car
world, but we are ready to go and are
talking to all of them. For music it is
already there, and on movies it will come.How much work was done in-house?
We are the architects, and we do a lot of it
in-house, especially artificial intelligence
features. The whole software stack we
are gradually building up, the Mercedes-
Benz OS, will essentially be an in-house
effort, but that doesn’t mean you shouldInterview