100 Things You Should Know About Mercedes-Benz | #11
The sun never sets at Mercedes-Benz.
To prevent any confusion about the astronomical facts, let’s clarify one point before we begin: It goes without saying that the sun sets every day in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim, casting a wonderful rosy glow over the Mercedes-Benz Museum, the Mercedes-Benz plant, the Daimler Group Headquarters, and the nearby vineyards.
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Still, while people in Stuttgart have to turn on the lights, the day for our colleagues somewhere else has just begun — for example, at Mercedes-Benz New Zealand in Auckland. On the North Island of New Zealand, it’s ten to twelve hours later than in Germany, depending on the season.
Mercedes-Benz’s subsidiaries operate on every continent, and thus in (almost) every time zone. That’s why there’s always bright daylight in one or another Mercedes-Benz location out there in the wide world. This becomes glaringly obvious on any summer day: When it’s 10 a.m. in Stuttgart, it’s already 8 p.m. at Mercedes-Benz New Zealand, 5 p.m. at FUSO in Japan, and 1:30 p.m. at Daimler India Commercial Vehicles in Chennai. And at the very same time, our colleagues at Daimler Trucks North America in Portland, Oregon are still enjoying their well-earned nightly rest at 1 a.m.
So from a purely chronometric perspective, the truism that clocks tick somewhat differently at different locations is absolutely correct. However, if you’ve just about to miss a deadline, suddenly the time is the same everywhere: five minutes to midnight.
In this column we present interesting, odd, or generally unknown facts from the world of Mercedes-Benz. We publish a new story in the series of “100 things you should know about Mercedes-Benz” regularly here on Mercedes-Benz Magazine.