Mercedes-Benz boss plays down car sharing

News of the death of the privately-owned car is exaggerated, suggests new Mercedes-Benz and Daimler boss, Ola Kallenius.

Indeed, the man who now heads Daimler AG, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz and Smart, asserts global car ownership will increase in the decades to come.

Kallenius, who replaced Dieter Zetsche at the helm of the German giant, suggests personal mobility will for some time involve car ownership. And his company wants a bigger share of the pie.

Speaking at an Australian roundtable on the same day he delivered Ambition2039, Mercedes’ blueprint for the next 20 years, Kallenius told carsales that both mobility solutions and car ownership would increase. And that Mercedes-Benz wants to grow its share – especially at the premium end of the marketplace.

“It’s our goal to build more cars. Yep,” the CEO-in-waiting stated.

“Mobility services are going to be a growing segment of the market, of which on the premium luxury side, we want to have a healthy market share, no doubt,” Kallenius posited.

“I don’t want to speculate into the far, far future, but if I look at the next ten years and I see how markets develop, [how] wealth growth develops – especially Asia as that market develops – [and] we believe that... ownership per se as a business model remains the main business model,” he stated.

Kallenius conceded that private-ownership would be increasingly complemented by “mobility services” and flagged Mercedes' place in the provision of these services.

In a joint venture with Bosch, Mercedes-Benz is set to begin a trial of driverless taxis in a geo-fenced area of tech mecca San Jose in California, during the coming weeks

“Here [in services] we [Daimler] also as a vehicle producer want to have a healthy market share,” he stated.

The future Kallenius envisages for Mercedes-Benz and parent company Daimler AG will likely see more cooperation between companies, although he would not comment on potential consolidation within the auto sector.

“I don’t want to speculate on OEM consolidations. What I do think though, it’s probably more cooperation [that will result]. Because the massive investments [for electrification and autonomous driving] that we’re talking about, drive pragmatic, win-win cooperation,” he opined.

And the partners that Daimler works with may not be existing automotive brands or suppliers either, Kallenius hinted.

“It’s not unusual when a business is in transformation, that players that where not in that business before, seek an opportunity to enter. So, we need to look at both traditional competition and potential new competition in this era,” he stated.