HeadLights - a Daimler Podcast (English only)

How does Ola Källenius want to refocus Mercedes-Benz AG strategically? How does he intend to reconcile luxury, electrification and digitization with swabian cost efficency? And what was it actually like for him to switch to the role of CEO? That is what the CEO of Daimler AG and Mercedes-Benz AG, Ola Källenius, talks about in this HeadLights episode. He explains in detail how he intends to have the "world's most desirable cars" built and what is behind the "moonshot project“ Vision EQXX. He talks about how he deals with difficult decisions such as reducing personnel costs. And he reveals what a piece of bread has to do with his personal luxury experience.

The infotainment-system MBUX wants to be on equal terms with other voice assistants like Siri, Google or Alexa. Which skills can we therefore expect from MBUX in the near future? Georges Massing, Vice President Digital Vehicle & Mobility tells us in the second episode of his interview with HeadLights. He reveals how Mercedes customers use MBUX most commonly and explains, why he’s a fan of cooperations with competitors on a software level.

MBUX can check the stock market, order a chauffeur to drive your car back home or tell you whether your favorite team won or lost that important match today. Admittedly: What MBUX can do for you, still depends on the country the system is used. But since its world premiere, the infotainment system has been praised for its voice control management, which doesn’t even require special commands. The development of the infotainment system MBUX and its integration into our vehicles is one of the responsibilities of Georges Massing, Vice President Digital Vehicle & Mobility at Mercedes-Benz AG. In this episode of HeadLights he speaks about the inspirational moment he had when talking to his five-year-old son about voice control, he reveals which features of MBUX he likes the most and he explains, why we decided to launch the system first in our new A-Class.

Future of software, future of culture, future of the planet: When the CEOs of two of the biggest German companies meet up and chat for almost an hour, you can be sure that they will speak about all the topics the world of business is currently dealing with. In this special episode of HeadLights, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges and Daimler CEO Ola Källenius discuss how we can keep our personal freedom without affecting our planet. Ola Källenius explains how Daimler wants to catch up with Tesla on the software side of their cars. And both of them discuss which new skills we need to transform the culture of traditional companys – so that they are ready for a world with open software and worldwide communities.

Leslie Kilgore is Vice President of Engineering at Thomas Built Buses in High Point, North Carolina. She is responsible for product development of the school buses: The design, the testing, the analysis. Innovations and technologies as well as supporting the production unit are also part of her daily work.

Clare Jones is CCO of the Daimler venture What3Words, a navigation program that displays the world in a grid of 3x3 meters. Each of these squares is labelled with a combination of three words. This means that it is even possible to find places not allocated to a specific street.

Adi Ofek is the CEO of our Mercedes-Benz Tech Hub in Tel Aviv. In April 2000 she joined Daimler as the first female employee of Daimler Financial Services in Israel. In 2007 Adi then went to Singapore for six years, where she was Regional Credit Operations Director, and responsible for the Africa and Asia/Pacific regions. She spent three further years in South Korea as CEO of Mercedes-Benz Financial Services. Her passion is getting multinational teams to achieve top performance.

David Hailey is Head of Personnel Strategy at the Daimler venture Lab 1886. Born in America, he completed his Bachelor of Law at Kingston University in London in 2008 and has lived in Berlin since 2013. This is where he has been responsible for finding the right talents for our Innovation Lab 1886 since May 2017. He likes comparing his job with that of a bouncer who is allowed to decide who is invited to the "Start-up Party". His passion is technology, and he is also a fan of FC Chelsea.

Dr. Dieter Zetsche had been a member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG since 1998 and Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG from 2006 until May 2019. He was also Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars Division. He was born in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 5, 1953. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and graduated as an engineer. He joined the research department of the then Daimler-Benz AG in 1976. Dr. Zetsche completed a doctorate in engineering in 1982 at the University of Paderborn.

Why Daimler now also needs a podcast? Many of you are already on the road with us as a mobility service provider every day anyway - but above all with our products. In the Actros on the way to the next forwarding agent, in the yellow school bus e-Jouley to high school, in the A-, B- or V-class to work and shopping, with one of our Share Now Services in the city and so on - we now have various possibilities. With the Daimler Podcast "HeadLights" you can now take our colleagues directly with you on the passenger seat or in the train - and that's less creepy than it might sound right now.