Mercedes-Benz CEO talks EV Strategy, future cars

Ola Källenius is a Swedish business executive who has served as CEO of Mercedes-Benz since 2019, becoming the first non-German to lead the legendary luxury automaker. Kallenius joined Opening Bid Unfiltered with Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi to chat about the future of the auto industry, his decision to massively increase the AMG brand's presence, leaning into tech-heavy car interiors, and playing a role in a driverless-car future.

All right. Welcome to a new episode of Opening Bid Unfiltered. I'm Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sazi, and I, I am a car guy. I've said this repeatedly on this podcast, no matter who I talk to, and I, um, I got a special guest here, and I am so excited to bring in Ola Kalanius, um, someone who I've talked to a little bit in the past, but, um, the CEO Mercedes Benz, I mean, Ola, good to see you. Um, I'm gonna try so hard not to talk about.My car that I just got, um, but it is from your brand, and good to see you, and what I've, there's so many places where I can go to start this, but I just want to start off with this. Uh, I traded it in a, a four door, uh, luxury, uh, car from another brand to get what I got from your brand, and the attention to detail on your automobiles never ceases to amaze me. Where does this come from?

So Brian, uh, uh, great to be on your show today and good to see you again, and I'm really, really happy that you're also part of the, uh, Mercedes family, uh, but where does the attention to detail come from? This year, we're celebrating the 140th anniversary of the invention of the automobile, and for, for those of you who know the story, it was two inventors from southern Germany. On the one hand, Gottlieb Daimler, and on the other hand.Uh, Karl Benz that back in 1886 said that horse great, uh, but car even greater, and he invented the automobile and, uh, Gottlieb Daimler, um, uh, used to have a saying, the best or nothing. Uh, when he talked about that, it's not just talking about the product itself, he's talking about an attitude that if you are that.This part of Germany is called Swabia. If you're that Swabian engineer with an inner unrest for what's next, you never ever rest on your laurels, and that core DNA of the Mercedes-Benz brand is with us still today. So our engineers, when they do something, they don't do it half baked. Uh, so it's about performance. I know what you're driving. Congratulations, but it's about performance and also solid engineering, something that is built to last.Uh, hang on to that car, give it to your children or grandchildren one day. I'm sure it's gonna be worth more than than it is now. I,

I, I guess, that's kind of like what I'm hoping for, but out of everything this car, you know, I just really, I'm a car geek, um, and it's the interior that ultimately got me, and out of all the buttons and all the switches and how fast it is, and the sound of it.It's the little radio wheel um on the steering wheel that just like captured my heart, it's just no, it's it's easy to use, it just, it all works, like as CEO how do you keep that attention to detail ingrained in the company's culture, after all these years?

So innovation is of course the name of the game for a brand like Mercedes. Not only did we invent the car, we have invented so many new technologies over the decades, uh, but we have one motto, if you will. It's not technology for the sake of technology, it's technology for the sake of humans. So take the thing on the steering wheel that uh even though you have everything high tech, latest digital, supercomput, all of those things, uh, latest generation sensors, what have you.Uh, Gen AI agents already now in the car helping you as a little, little helper or butler in the background doing whatever you can, but some things.You just wanna have something that you touch and feel it needs to feel valuable. The materials need to be real and it needs to be intuitive. So, uh, engineering, I think it was Steve Jobs that said this, uh, design is not just how it looks, it's also how it works. And that thing, engineering things for humans, not technology for the sake of technology, that is something that we follow very, very clearly.And the interior of the car has always been important, but I would argue today it's even more important. We used to think cars outside in. Now in many vehicles we think the car inside out. That is the space. That's your third space. You live there part of the time at least, and it needs to feel like home.

I I'm glad you met. I do live in there a lot of my time. Um, I can't tell you how many times or even in the since I've gotten this car that I've just pulled up on my laptop and uh gotten some, some work done. But actually that brings me up to my other point, and I'm gonna get, I want to get into your career a little bit in the future of autos, but are we, there's so many screens, and I, I caught the new interior of the, uh, I think it was the AMG GT and the whole front as all these screens, is that where, is that the future of the automobile interior? I mean, it's just all these screens.

So that new AMG GT that we're going to launch later this spring, I'm going to do a spoiler alert here without saying too much, the launch will be in the United States, so watch this space hereby you are invited. Thank you. If you, if you put yourself in the driver's seat of that car and you watch carefully on these sneak preview pictures that we sent of the interior.You will see that the cockpit is very driver oriented, so those screens are tilted towards you. So if you want to go into track mode and really use one of those race applications from AMG, it is like you're George Russell, but at the same time you're also George Russell's race engineer with the information that he has on the pit wall driving around the lab. So it's there for a purpose.Uh, but it's also your everyday car, and your everyday car, you wanna have, uh, latest and greatest navigation, uh, you wanna be able to use any one of the music apps in a smooth and intuitive way that you use. Maybe you make a break, maybe you're going for a longer trip and you, uh, uh, charge, even though it's super fast charging on this car. Maybe you wanna watch an episode of your show or any show that you like.Uh, and if you have a passenger, that passenger can also on the screen on the other side, uh, do whatever he or she wants. So, uh, maybe you're traveling with one of your children and that person wants to watch a movie. Maybe you're traveling with a business associate, that person can, you know, with the AirPods have a live video conference on that screen while you're driving. Let's face it, uh, the car today is so much more than a driving machine.Uh, it's an entertainment center, uh, it's an office. It's maybe a lounge for relaxation, and all of those things is blending the beautiful furniture with the latest high-tech on the digital side. That's what you get in any Mercedes from this point forward.

Is it a tricky balance though between putting in all of these like new technologies like screens, and also keeping that visceral feel of hopping into an AMG and hearing that amazing exhaust note? I mean, how do you balance that?

No, you will have both, uh, and even on the, uh, electric cars we have developed for the connoisseurs and the traditionalists in the, uh, performance, um, uh, customer segment, kind of a V8 mode. So even if you drive the next generation electric AMGs, you can step into V8 mode and your brain tells you it's a V8.Uh, if you want to go into stealth mode, not wake your neighbors when you come home late at night, you can do that as well, so you have both. But here's a, here's a secret tip for you. If you have one of the new cars with a screen also on the passenger side, if you're driving alone, you can personalize that screen, and I do that, and you can put any picture up there.I took a picture from my summer home in Sweden, so as I drive home from a stressful day, I can, I can look at that picture as an exclusive trim part and think to myself, what a beautiful place. So there is more to it than just screens.

You've, I think you've just sold me on screens. I've been not a big screen guy, but, you know, I think you may, you just made a strong case for that. To that end, I, I'm trying to get my brother to get the new AMG GT. I mean, it's a family, he's got 4 doors. I take him into my local Mercedes dealer or and uh everything is AMG. I mean, you know AMG, you used to lead AMG. Uh what, what is the, what is the reason behind expanding that performance brand across every model?

The magic behind AMG is, of course, the origins of AMG is the racetrack. So the two guys that started that company, the A and the N, Alfrecht and Melscher.Uh, they used to say when they uh founded AMG in the late 60s, uh, you can't make a Mercedes-Benz better, but you can make it different. And that was the birth of the performance dimension, the true performance dimension of the Mercedes-Benz brand. Uh they did what many famous racing people did before them, such as uh Enzo Ferrari and Colin Chapman. You had to, you had to produce the road car to finance your racing, and the purpose was going racing. So every AMG has a.As a track racing gene, but what I think is unique with the AMG brand and we certainly honed that, uh, uh, when I was there and and my successor have taken it to the next level is you can buy a car that you can literally take to, I don't know, the famous Nurburgring or, or any track around the world and do a very, very serious lap time if you're a good driver, but at the same time, if you drive back and forth to the office and you live in any city.It doesn't feel like the car is.Is off in the city. It's not intrusive. It's actually very smooth. So as strange as it sounds, you have a street legal racing machine which is an everyday car, and that's the magic of AMG that it's best of both worlds, and this is one of the reasons why it's so success