FRANKFURT -- Daimler will be a smaller company five years from now, focused on capturing recurring revenues with software-based services as Mercedes-Benz seeks to redefine luxury in an era of electric and self-driving cars, CEO Ola Kallenius said.
The company founded by Carl Benz, who patented the first gasoline-powered car in 1886, is accelerating plans to shift the automaker beyond combustion-engine vehicles, a step which will result in job losses.
"The next five years we will become a smaller company," Kallenius told a Reuters Events broadcast on Thursday. "We will have a fundamental change in the industrial footprint on the powertrain side," he said.
Jobs will disappear because it takes less time to build an electric car than a conventional gasoline or diesel version.
That's because an electric car's battery and motor have only 200 components, compared with at least 1,400 parts found in a combustion engine and transmission, according to analysts at ING.