Is Daimler freaking serious? This is a joke, right?
Skip to 7:51 in Now You Know’s Tesla Times News video, a must-subscribe:
“We are making every effort to bring more facts and objectivity into the discussion about the diesel engine. We are placing our emphasis on innovation rather than driving prohibitions.” -Dieter Zetsche, Chairman, Daimler/Mercedes-Benz
Sounds like a ‘clean coal’ scam. There is no greening diesel, or any fossil fuel-powered car. There is only shredding and replacing with pure EVs. Or, bicycling.
But wait, it gets worse:
“We advocate technically practical and financially responsible ways to further reduce the emissions of vehicles that are already owned by our customers. The software updates we have announced for more than three million vehicles will reduce the vehicles’ nitrous oxide emissions by 25 to 30%. In the drive system mix of the future, the high-tech diesel engine will not be the problem, it will be a key part of the solution.”
What is he smoking? Did he suck on some diesel tailpipes before his speech, like he and his German colleagues forced these monkeys to do?
When Tesla updates its software, the car drives faster, you get more battery life, the windshield wipers automatically detect rain, the car saves your life, or you get Santa mode.
When Daimler updates its software, the car is still a diesel-emitting, life-killing, biosphere-destroying disaster. The Terminator should add Daimler to his lawsuit against Big Oil for ‘knowingly killing people all over the world.’1
But here’s the crux of the matter:
“An increase in electric cars is good for CO2 balance, but it’s not so good for our group’s balance sheet, at least in the short term.”
Translation: “I care more about my retirement package than the survival of human life on Earth.”
What Daimler should do is rip off the band-aid, discontinue all fossil fuel cars, and shift the entire company to 100% EVs. Immediately. This would produce massive short-term pain and staggering financial losses for a few years, but would set the company up for long-term profitability and a position as one of the few post-Tesla Revolution survivors.
But, Dieter would rather milk short-term, destructive diesel profits for as long as he can, and sail off into retirement a few years from now, right around the time Tesla takes the rest of Daimler’s business and bankrupts the company.
Inspired by this speech of incomprehensibly self-destructive madness, RT inaugurates a new feature: Dieter’s Dead Pool (coming soon), which will serve as a semi-regularly-updated repository of the impending wave of auto and fossil fuel industry Game Overs. Daimler debuts at #1.
Dieter’s remarks will be remembered as approximately as prescient as Steve Ballmer’s reaction to the debut of the iPhone.
- In addition to Big Oil and Daimler, Schwarzenegger should sue all of the legacy auto companies. All. Of. Them. ↩︎