At present, we constantly hear that the German car industry is holding fast to the status quo, rather than driving the transformation forward. But the reality at Daimler is quite different.
Accordingly, the most important message in this list of points comes right at the end. For Mercedes-Benz Cars, it is quite clear that our aim continues to be emission-free mobility. In the next 20 years, i.e. by 2039, our ambition is a completely carbon-neutral new car fleet, and by as soon as 2030 the company will seek to achieve more than 50 percent of passenger car unit sales with plug-in hybrids or all-electric vehicles.
Our answer to these challenges has two letters: EQ. Our strategy in this respect consists of three parallel tracks on the road to emission-free mobility. Track one: electrified combustion engines, track two: plug-in hybrids and track three, all-electric battery or fuel-cell models.
As always, we are pursuing an integrated approach, and are also electrifying our trucks, buses and vans, the latter in both the commercial and the private sector. The eVito is already on the market, the eSprinter will follow in the second half of 2019 and our EQV (Combined power consumption: 26.4-26.3 kWh/100 km; combined CO₂ emissions: 0 g/km. * **) will celebrate its public premiere at the International Motor Show (IAA) in September 2019.
We will have electrified our entire MBC portfolio already by 2022. This means that we will be able to offer our customers various electrified alternatives in every model series.
We expect to reach a 25 percent proportion of all-electric models by 2025. Conversely, this means that 75 percent will still be powered by a combustion engine – with appropriate electrification.
Our current plans for Europe show that by 2025, well over 40 percent of our vehicles could be delivered to customers as xEVs. We are systematically adjusting our portfolio so that by 2030, more than half of our passenger car unit sales could be achieved with plug-in hybrids or even all-electric models, and we are also electrifying our commercially positioned vans.
In the next few years, we are taking a whole series of e-cars into series production, and investing more than 10 billion euros to this end. We are also investing 1 billion euros in our worldwide battery production. This will create the planned annual production capacity for one million batteries. With the purchase of battery cells for more than 20 billion euros, we are systematically driving forward the change to an electric future for our company. Our patent applications in recent years also show that the focus has increasingly moved from the conventional powertrain towards the electric powertrain.
In the coming years, we will likewise help to shape the future of mobility with trailblazing innovations, and at the same time drive digitisation forward throughout the company. Accordingly, we have slightly increased our research & development expenditure from its already high level in 2017 to 9.1 (prev. year 8.7) billion euros. The focus was on new vehicle models, particularly fuel-efficient and environmentally compatible powertrains and new safety technologies, automated and autonomous driving, and the digital networking of our products.
