We spoke to the vice-president and chief environment officer of Daimler AG about the company’s green initiatives and where the market is headed.
Are hybrid vehicles for the medium term, or will we see this technology progressing into the future?
That is a rather difficult question. Sometimes we are very quick to say that something is bridging technology. I’m not that sure, because products and technology that are popular in Europe today might only be popular in the rest of the world tomorrow.
I do think that hybridisation will be the basic technology for all internal-combustion engines. Depending on the market and customers’ financial capability, electric-drive battery fuel cells is a technology that we predict might stay for the future.
What is the biggest challenge in your line of work?
For Mercedes-Benz and for me it is to have the right infrastructure for all these advanced technologies. We need additional infrastructure and we need modified infrastructure. It is a very difficult situation, because this is not an internal decision, these are partners, which are not directly link to the OEM business. But without that it is difficult because the customer always inquires about driving range, charging time and fuelling capacity. Of course we are looking into the development of the battery, development of the fuel cell and the internal combustion engine. But these are homemade solutions.
Will batteries ever really be recyclable?
The material by itself is about 60% recyclable. Everybody is currently looking at “repairability”, meaning how can we repair the battery’s charging capacity instead of throwing it away. This is not easy though, for several reasons. But we have a dedicated facility in Mannheim that specialises in this direction.