Mercedes 1999 Annual Report Download - page 22

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FRONTRUNNER
16
attitudes and ambitions that are integral to the company’s
position as a market leader. Klaus-Dieter Vöhringer, who
heads the company’s research and technology thrust, en-
capsulates the role innovation plays in the company’s over-
all strategy for brand leadership: “Every euro, every dollar
that we spend on R&D goes to providing our customers with
a safer, more comfortable and more ecologically friendly
ride. These innovations are a key to securing and consoli-
dating the business success of this company.”
What makes this effort so awesome is the sheer scale of
human and financial resources the company is able to deploy.
Here are the hard numbers of DaimlerChrysler’s ever-tighten-
ing grip on the future. In terms of input, one in every 12
employees (i.e. about 40,000 people) is engaged in research
and development, and the company has embarked on a three-
year spending program for R&D and investments in plant,
property and equipment, to which it has committed €50 bil-
lion, a budget equivalent to the GDP of several developing
countries. Output is equally staggering. Last year, throughout
the group, there were 466 different research projects under
way. In that time, 70 of those projects were completed and
their results transferred to the company’s internal “custom-
ers” for application in products and services; 85 new develop-
ments were unveiled for passenger car and commercial
vehicle manufacturing; and almost 2,000 patents were
registered to protect the group’s competitive edge.
MOBILITY MEGATRENDS. In the future that DaimlerChrysler
anticipates, its managers, futurologists and researchers
have identified several ‘megatrends’ they believe will be
critical to the company’s performance and value.
“The first,” says Klaus-Dieter Vöhringer, “is sustainable
mobility. We expect fuel to become scarcer in the not-too-
distant future. Moreover, the automobile is still an environ-
mental factor – there are ecological implications to the
now almost unlimited mobility of humans and goods.”
That means developing vehicles that use less fuel. Like the
smart cdi for traffic-congested, emission-sensitive Europe.
Powered by a direct injection turbocharged diesel engine, the
smart achieves a combination of high output and low con-
sumption. Or the Dodge Durango hybrid concept for the US,
which provides a boost in fuel economy in the popular sport-
utilities which are big gas guzzlers. The new Durango proto-
type has two power trains: one a conventional engine that
drives the back wheels; the other an auxiliary electric motor
that drives the front wheels and stores electrical energy for
distribution during braking and acceleration. Net effect: a
20% cut in the fuel consumption of a 3.9-liter V-6 engine
with the power of a 5.9-litre V-8.
At the further edge of this quest for sustainable mobility is
the fuel cell. Ferdinand Panik, head of DaimlerChrysler’s
fuel cell project, believes this technology will initiate a
change in mobility that will “go far beyond normal inno-
vation”, and could revolutionize propulsion in the way the
microchip revolutionized IT. It’s a potent index of the fuel
cell’s importance that 60 companies, including eight of the
world’s top ten revenue earners, are presently at work on it.
But DaimlerChrysler has claimed the edge. In five years its
engineers have reduced the weight of their drive system,
and extended their test vehicles’ power and range, drama-
tically.
Propulsion aside, the fuel cell provides an on-board power
supply for the growing array of electronics revolutionizing the
driving experience inside, and around, the vehicle. And here’s
another megatrend. While the automobile’s crucial compo-
nents are still the chassis, drive train and running gear, elec-
tronics and sensor systems are becoming increasingly impor-
tant. “The future,” says Vöhringer, “belongs to drive-by-wire
vehicles that do away with the steering wheel, accelerator and
brake pedals, while new electronic assistance systems will
help the driver in critical situations or take over monotonous
routine tasks during normal operation.” For example,
DaimlerChrysler engineers are developing autonomous on-
board systems comprising sensors connected by ‘neural net-
works’ capable of recognizing patterns and signals around the
car – a traffic sign, a pedestrian, a potentially dangerous situa-
tion – and enhancing the driver’s response and the general
safety of the vehicle.