Mercedes-Benz

Magazine for Sustainability · Issue 2

Into the Future with 300 Kilowatts

Brand EQ launches into the era of electromobility.

Every Cent Helps

“ProCent” supports charitable projects all over the world.

Electric Intelligence by
Mercedes-Benz

#switchtoEQ
e-mobility.mercedes-benz.com
 EDITORIAL EDITORIAL

In a Few
Dear readers, this is the second issue of “365,” the sustainabil- Renata Jungo Brüngger I’ve also got an offen-
ity magazine from Mercedes-Benz. On the following pages you sive to report: Our team of experts from the brand protec-
will find a presentation of our most important activities in the tion unit tracks down product counterfeiters all over the
area of sustainability, introduced by two Board of Management world. That’s because the number of pirated replacement

Words
members: Renata Jungo Brüngger (Integrity and Legal Affairs) parts on the market is increasing. In terms of appearance it’s
and Ola Källenius, (Mercedes-Benz Cars Marketing & Sales). hard to distinguish them from genuine parts, but most of them
are of poor quality and therefore pose a huge risk. If the parts
in question are safety-relevant, such as brake disks, pirated
Ola Källenius This time around we’re reporting on parts can be dangerous for the buyers. In addition, product
a world premiere that truly points to the future — not only the counterfeiters are not interested in fair working conditions or
future of our company but also the future of zero-emission environmental protection. This is why we’re cooperating close-
mobility. I’m referring to the EQ showcar, which we presented ly — and very successfully — with the authorities to capture the
at the Paris Motor Show 2016 in October. It’s the forerunner criminals in question.
of a completely new generation of battery-powered elec-
tric vehicles from Mercedes-Benz. With this vehicle, we aim
to take electromobility into the fast lane. And we’re not limiting Ola Källenius This is very important — above
ourselves to the vehicle itself. In the future we will be offering a all, to prevent any harm from coming to our customers.
complete system consisting of products, services, and innova- But there’s also another reason for our involvement:
tions related to electromobility. Customers who buy pirated parts don’t always know they
are counterfeit. But we want the people who buy products
from Mercedes-Benz to be able to rely on top quality and
Renata Jungo Brüngger This is a visionary safety. By fighting against product piracy we are protecting
approach. In Paris it was clear to see that at Daimler we’re our customers and our brand.
already putting more electric vehicles on the road today. For
example, the new smart electric drive was presented in three
versions in Paris: the smart fortwo, the smart fortwo cabrio Renata Jungo Brüngger And that’s why
and, in a premiere version, the smart forfour. we’re drawing our customers’ attention to the risks posed
by pirated parts — for example, in the article on page 16.
Our goal is very clear: We want to make it as difficult as possi-
Ola Källenius Yes. The electric smart was already ble for counterfeiters to produce and sell their dangerous
Renata Jungo Brüngger
a pioneer of electric driving when it was introduced in 2007. products.
Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG,
But now we’re going a crucial step farther and launching an Integrity and Legal Affairs
offensive to make all of our vehicle segments electric,
ranging from the A-Class to the S-Class.

Navigator
04 INTO THE FUTURE WITH 300 KILOWATTS 20 INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS ARE LEARNING TO SAVE ENERGY
12 PANORAMA 24 EVERY CENT HELPS
14 WORLD PREMIERE IN PARIS 30 MOBILEKIDS
16 TRACKING DOWN THE PRODUCT PIRATES

Ola Källenius
Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG,
Mercedes-Benz Cars Marketing & Sales

02 365 Magazine for Sustainability 03

 ELECTROMOBILITY ELECTROMOBILITY

the with
Future
Into
The EQ showcar is ushering in the age of a new, battery-electric vehicle
generation at Mercedes-Benz. The near-series concept vehicle provides a preview
of a not so distant future of digitally connected zero-emission mobility.

300 Kilowatts

EQ — Facts & Figures

ACCELERATION DRIVE CONCEPT
0 to 100 km/h: less than 5 sec All-wheel drive with one electric motor
0 to 60 km/h: less than 2.5 sec at the front axle and one at the rear axle

RANGE OUTPUT
up to 500 kilometers up to 300 kW

DRIVE TORQUE BATTERY CAPACITY

up to 7,000 Nm over 70 KWh

THINKING INTO THE FUTURE. The EQ showcar,

which was unveiled in Paris in October 2016,
provides a preview of the first model of Mercedes-Benz’
new brand: EQ.

04 365 Magazine for Sustainability 05

 ELECTROMOBILITY
CHARGING WITHOUT CABLES.
The EQ showcar doesn’t necessarily need
a power socket to recharge its battery.
An especially convenient option is inductive
charging, in which energy is transmitted
without any contact between a charging
base in the floor and the vehicle.
Travel up to
500 kilometers
without recharging the battery.
06 365 Magazine for Sustainability
T
his vehicle is obviously the harbinger of a
new era. The fact that the EQ showcar is
ahead of its time is apparent at first glance.
“Everyone who has seen the car has ex-
claimed ‘WOW!’,” says Jürgen Schenk, the
senior engineer for electric vehicles who was
in charge of the concept SUV’s development.
“The vehicle’s design idiom already puts it into the next
decade.”
The basic shape of the showcar combines the genes of
an SUV with the characteristics of a coupe. The dynamic
silhouette looks similar to that of a sports car. Almost no
seams can be seen in the extremely aerodynamic body.
Windshield wipers aren’t visible either, because they
are cleverly covered. And you won’t find the usual door
handles or side-view mirrors, mainly because they would
interfere with the aerodynamics. To enable the driver to
see vehicles in the rear, the showcar instead uses cameras,
whose images appear on the displays that are integrated
into the doors. Traditional switches and buttons are dis-
pensed with in the cockpit, where they have been replaced
by easily operable touchscreen features. Because all of this
looks very futuristic, it’s hard to believe that this vehicle is
intended to go into series production in just a few years.
Although its appearance alone is already very impressive,
the showcar demonstrates its true values while driving.
Two electric motors (one each on the front and rear axles)
enable the vehicle to achieve an overall output of up to 300
kW so that it can accelerate to 100 km/h in less than five
seconds. The electric SUV has also taken a big leap for-
ward in terms of range. When measured according to the
New European Driving Cycle (NEDC), the EQ showcar can
travel up to 500 kilometers before it has to be recharged.
This is due not only to the high-performance lithium-ion
batteries but also to the intelligent operating strategy that
the engineers gave the vehicle. Another positive feature is
the shorter charging period. Thanks to the CCS standard,
public charging stations will rapidly recharge vehicles at a
considerably higher output in the future than is possible
today. In the best case, it will then take just 40 minutes to
recharge depleted batteries to 80 percent of their capacity.
THE FUTURE IS ELECTRIC — AND RENEWABLE
These technological innovations ensure that the brand EQ
is well equipped for the pioneering role that the engineers
at Mercedes-Benz have planned for it. “We have devel-
oped a distinctive architecture for our new generation of
electric vehicles. We can use this architecture for all of
ELECTROMOBILITY
the models. The modular system enables us to adjust the
wheelbase, the tread, and all the other system compo-
nents. This is especially true of the batteries. As a result,
the vehicle concept is optimized for all of the requirements
that a family of battery-electric models has to meet. The
basic architecture is suitable for SUVs, sedans, coupes,
convertibles, and other model series,” says Jürgen Schenk
about the strategy.
Schenk and his colleagues are convinced that two major
global trends will intensify in the years ahead: the switch to
renewable sources of energy and the growing demand for
electric vehicles. “If both of these trends continue to de-
velop as they have to date, we can expect all new electric
vehicles registered in the next decade to be supplied with
energy from renewable sources. This means that we will
be entering a future of zero-emission vehicles,” he says.
Although this forecast might be optimistic, market
researchers think that half of all the new vehicles reg-
istered worldwide in 2025 could be electric vehicles.
­Mercedes-Benz wants to be prepared for this develop-
ment, but that’s not all. It also plans to be one of the
driving forces behind these changes with the showcar and
its new electromobility brand.
To ensure that we can effectively shift from the old world
of mobility to the new one, the EQ model series will be
produced in the same plants that already manufacture
the vehicles’ conventionally powered counterparts. This
will enable the company to flexibly adjust to new condi-
tions if the situation should develop faster or slower than
expected.
STRONG DRIVE SYSTEM. The two electric motors (one each on the
front and rear axles) produce a total output of up to 300 kW. The
energy for the motors is supplied by a lithium-ion battery in the floor
of the vehicle.
Electric drive
module
Charger
Electric drive
module
Lithium-ion battery
07
 ELECTROMOBILITY ELECTROMOBILITY

The brand EQ is an entire

ecosystem of
innovations — electrical, digital, and connected.

AN INTERIOR WITH AN “ELECTRIFYING” LOOK. The interior combines

state-of-the-art luxury with user-friendly digital control systems. Switches
and buttons are a thing of the past.

08 365 Magazine for Sustainability 09


DRIVING FARTHER
The long list of development goals that the engineers drew
up for the showcar focused on three areas in particular:
acceleration, range, and charging time. Says Jürgen Schenk,
“Electromobility has to be fun. That’s why our main
objective was to make sure that the new EQ brand offers
more driving pleasure than any of the drive systems that
are currently available in our product range.” This target
was clearly achieved, as demonstrated by a test drive. The
driver was perceptibly pushed back into his seat when
the electric SUV took less than 2.5 seconds to accelerate
to 60 km/h after a traffic light turned green. This rapid
acceleration far surpasses that of any competing vehicle
powered by a combustion engine.
The second goal was a tough task for the developers,
because they somehow had to extend the range to the
target distance of 500 kilometers, even though the space
for the battery was limited and the vehicle had to meet
high safety requirements at the same time. “We’ve spent
many decades optimizing conventional vehicles so that
the combustion engine can practically dive down through
the car during a crash. In the case of the EQ showcar, we
had to completely rethink a car’s layout so that we could
divide the space inside the underbody between the battery
and the safety-related structures as optimally as possible,”
says Schenk.
As it turned out, the engineers managed to provide the
battery with the approximately 400 liters of space that it
required. The engineers organized the battery cells for the
lithium-ion battery in cooperation with their colleagues
at ­Daimler’s in-house battery manufacturer, Deutscher
­ACCUmotive. The chemistry of the cells meets very high
10
ELECTROMOBILITY
“In 2007 the electric smart was a pioneer of electric
driving. We will now step up a gear, as we are ready
to launch an electric offensive that will cover all
vehicle segments, from compact cars to luxury class
automobiles.”
DIETER ZETSCHE, CEO of Daimler
requirements with regard to energy capacity and service
life. These cells were then packed as densely as possible
into the available space and intelligently interconnected.
The result is a very efficient modular battery system that
has a total capacity of more than 70 kilowatt-hours.
FASTER CHARGING
After the engineers had found the right recipe for the bat-
tery technology, they were faced with goal number three:
shorter charging times. Private homes in Germany are
normally equipped with energy technology that can supply
11 kW of power to charge cars parked in their garages. As
a result, it takes about one hour to charge the battery with
enough electricity to travel 50 kilometers — the distance
that is typically driven in one day. However, people who
often drive longer distances need shorter charging times.
That’s why the onboard charger of the showcar is designed
not only for “normal” charging with 11 kW at home or at
a charging station but also for rapid charging using public
facilities rated at 100 kW direct current. This latter type of
system can charge the vehicle with sufficient energy within
40 minutes to travel a distance of 400 kilometers. A corre-
sponding fast-charging infrastructure is currently being set
up in Germany and other European countries.
However, the engineers are not yet satisfied with the
progress that the showcar project has achieved. “We will
have to reduce the recharging times to far less than half an
hour,” says Schenk. “That’s our goal — and we also aim to
extend the vehicle’s range. But because the 400 liters of
volume available for this purpose in the automobile cannot
be changed, we will have to achieve more in the same
amount of space.” Although this is a considerable chal-
365 Magazine for Sustainability
ELECTROMOBILITY
lenge, the engineers are benefiting from a trend that could THE MARKET IS PICKING UP SPEED
be called “Moore’s law of battery development.” “We have There are many reasons why the trend toward electromo-
observed that technological developments are doubling bility might attain a crucial tipping point as early as 2017,
battery capacity every five years or so,” says Schenk. “If a after which the current linear growth would change to
lithium-ion battery such as the one in the showcar makes it exponential growth. According to experts, this tipping point
possible to travel 500 kilometers today, it might enable us
to achieve almost 1,000 kilometers in 2025.”
will be reached when one percent of the new cars that
are registered worldwide in a year are electric vehicles.
At the moment, this figure would be about 750,000 units.
LESS FRONTAL AREA MEANS LOWER AIR RESISTANCE The market would then develop into a mass market at an
Further improvements of the vehicle’s aerodynamics could increasingly faster pace. It would also make electromobility
also help the engineers achieve the planned efficiency
gains. In electric automobiles, such improvements have a
affordable for more and more people. Jürgen Schenk thinks
that this is exactly what will happen. He is also convinced
much bigger effect than do weight reductions. Thanks to that our new e-mobility brand will enable us to spearhead
an intelligent multi-material mix of steel, aluminum, and this market.”
carbon, the showcar has very good values for lightweight
construction and strength. However, the heavy high-volt-
age battery nevertheless makes the concept vehicle
heavier than a comparable automobile with a combustion
engine. The greater weight plays only a negligible role in
the electric SUV’s energy balance, because 65 percent of
the kinetic energy that is needed to accelerate the vehicle
is recovered during braking or deceleration.
For this reason, the engineers will focus more on im-
proving the vehicle’s aerodynamics than on lightweight
construction. In an electric SUV, the biggest challenge
is posed by the frontal area, i.e. the total cross-sectional
Digital
area that resists the wind head-on. “It’s not easy to reduce
the frontal area. We’re mainly trying to make the battery A VIDEO about the presentation of the
somewhat thinner so that the vehicle’s roof line can be a EQ showcar and of Daimler’s electro-
bit lower as well,” says Schenk. All in all, the objective of mobility strategy at the Paris Motor Show
2016:
the aerodynamics experts is to achieve a drag coefficient
http://mb4.me/JfwBczTx
of approximately 0.3. “That would be a fantastic value for
an SUV,” says Schenk.
A DRIVER-ORIENTED COCKPIT. Uncompli-
cated, touch-based operation can be found
here as well. The instrument panel with the
high-resolution widescreen display puts all
of the key information within the driver’s field
of vision. The driver can freely select how
much information is provided.
11
 KURZ UND GUT PANORAMA

STATIONARY ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS CLIMATE PROTECTION

1,000
S-Class Coupe to Feature
Cutting-edge CO2 A/C Technology
In early 2017 Mercedes-Benz will unveil its new S-Class coupe. In a
world first for a series-production car, this vehicle will be equipped

Batteries with a CO2 air conditioner. CO2 is a natural refrigerant. It is neither

toxic nor flammable and has a very low global warming potential
compared to other chemical refrigerants. Another advantage is that the
DIGITAL NETWORKING

First Daimler
new a/c technology is more powerful than conventional systems, so it
In mid-September 2016 the world’s largest
second-use battery storage system went on- can cool the passenger compartment at a noticeably faster rate. Hackathon in China
line in Lünen, Germany. The system consists In early September 2016 a total of 75 talented computer
FREIGHT TRAFFIC
of 1,000 batteries from smart fortwo electric

adVANce
scientists, software developers, and information special-
drive cars. The idea is to use batteries from ists worked for 26 hours on creating innovative concepts
hybrid or electric vehicles in stationary for e-commerce in the automotive industry and on
programming prototypes. The participants were grouped
applications for about ten years after they into five-member teams, where they worked on ideas
have been used in cars. Doing so doubles the for user interfaces as well as on apps that advise buyers
batteries’ economic value and improves their on how to finance their dream cars, for example. A panel
environmental performance. Battery storage of Daimler managers and external experts determined
is the future-focused initiative at Mercedes-Benz Vans. Over the next five years, which projects were especially promising and awarded
Daimler’s vans division plans to invest around €500 million in digitization, automa-
systems such as the one in Lünen also pro- cash prizes to the winners.
tion, and robotics. Around 200 employees are already working in Stuttgart, Berlin, mote Germany’s energy transition by helping
and Silicon Valley on concepts for making vans even faster, more efficient, and more to offset the grid fluctuations caused by the
environmentally compatible. A recent concept vehicle shows how this can look in switch to renewable sources of energy. SHORT-RANGE DISTRIBUTION
practice. Called the Vision Van, the vehicle is fully electric and completely networked,
and has an automated cargo area that also contains delivery drones. Very Quiet and Zero
Emissions
SKILLED EMPLOYEES The Urban eTruck is the first fully electric
truck with a gross vehicle weight of 26 tons.
Job Opportunities Thanks to its range of up to 200 kilometers,
it’s ideal for city use. Daimler presented the
for Digital prototype of the Urban eTruck at the IAA auto
show in September 2016. Series production

Experts is scheduled to begin by 2020.

A video report about the Daimler eTruck Campus in
July 2016: http://mb4.me/1hwOAMuV LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS

Environmental Certificate for New E-Class

Vehicles from Mercedes-Benz not only offer outstanding safety, comfort, and agility,
On October 21 and 22, 2016, the GoDigitalDays@Daimler in Stuttgart enabled people who already but are also in the top league when it comes to environmental compatibility.
have job experience or who are just starting out on their careers to learn about the digital They can prove this too, as testified by the environmental certificates for the current
car model series, which anyone can view on the Internet. The results come from
transformation of Daimler and talk with managers and human resources experts. Participants who tests conducted by external experts. The certified automobiles have now been
joined by the new E-Class, which achieves much better results than its predecessor.
applied for a job afterward had the opportunity to join the newly created Digital Unit or The E 220 d (Fuel consumption urban/extra-urban/combined: 4.7-4.3/ 4.1-3.6/
Daimler’s Digital Vehicle & Mobility department. 4.3-3.9 l/100 km; CO2 emissions combined: 112 - 102 g/km), for example, produces
29 percent (around 15 tons) less CO2 during its life cycle than its predecessor.
http://mb4.me/hjchKvel

12 365 Magazine for Sustainability 13


ELECTROMOBILITY smart electric drive

World Premiere
in Paris P
aris is probably the ideal city for an auto-
mobile that was always designed to move in
urban traffic like a fish in water: agile, flexible,
and efficient. The fourth electrically powered
generation of this city car celebrated its
premiere at the Paris Motor Show in October
2016. It appeared in no less than three model
Battery capacity

Output (electric motor)

Torque (electric motor)

EU energy
efficiency class

Acceleration
17.6 kWh

60/81 kW/hp

160 Nm

A+

11.5 s fortwo
(0-100 km/h) 11.8 s fortwo cabrio
variants. Besides the smart fortwo and the smart fortwo
12.7 s forfour
cabrio, the four-seat smart forfour was also presented in
an electric drive version — for the first time ever. Range (NEDC) 160 km fortwo

The Paris Motor Show 2016 witnessed the debut of the fourth- As a result, smart is now the world’s first and thus far only
automaker to offer its entire model range with combustion


155 km fortwo cabrio
155 km forfour

generation smart electric drive. For the first time, engines as well as with battery-electric drive systems. The
smart fortwo cabrio is especially noteworthy, because it
Top speed 130 km/h

all smart models are now also available in electric versions.

is the only electric convertible in the world. Like its two
companion models, the convertible is extremely agile and
dynamic. In the case of the two-seat models, the agility
is heightened by the car’s small turning circle of only 6.95
meters.
CITY DRIVING WITH ZERO LOCAL EMISSIONS
In the rear of every smart electric drive is a 60 kW (81 hp)
electric motor, which provides 160 Nm of torque as soon
as it is turned on. Although the drive system is very agile
and powerful, it produces minimal noise and no emissions.
In fact, people who recharge their electric smarts with
electricity from renewable sources can reach their destina-
tions without any emissions whatsoever.
After it’s started with a fully charged battery, an electric
smart doesn’t have to be connected to the grid again
smart fortwo cabrio until it has traveled around 160 kilometers.* Thanks to its
extremely powerful onboard charging system, it can, under
smart fortwo
favorable conditions, be recharged up to twice as fast as
its predecessor. If the vehicle is also equipped with the
smart forfour optional new fast charging unit, the battery might even be
completely recharged after an extended coffee break of
less than 45 minutes. Moreover, the smart control app en-
ables users to conveniently monitor the charging process
from a distance.
FARTHER INSTEAD OF FASTER
Because high speeds aren’t very important in city traffic,
the vehicle’s top speed is electronically limited to 130
km/h in the ECO mode, which smart drivers can select
instead of the standard driving program. Besides extending
the car’s range, the ECO mode selects maximum energy
recovery as the default setting. By contrast, the standard
Charging time 6 h (WEU/UK)
(20-100%) 13 h (USA)
at household
power socket
Charging time 3.5 h (WEU)
(20-100%) 2.5 h (UK/USA)
at Wallbox
Electric energy 12,9 kWh/100 km fortwo
consumption* 13,0 kWh/100 km fortwo cabrio
13,1 kWh/100 km forfour
CO2 emissions 0 g/km
combined*
*The listed values for fuel consumption
and CO2 emissions refer to the data available at the time
of the editorial deadline (October 20, 2016).
driving program uses a radar sensor to monitor the driving
conditions and then electronically selects the energy
recovery rate appropriate to the given situation. Another
example of how the vehicle’s range can be extended is to
adjust the interior temperature to the desired level while
the car is still being recharged at a power socket.
People who own a smart or would like to buy one can dis-
cover and try out these and many other features beginning
in spring 2017, when the three smart models of the new
electric drive generation will hit showrooms throughout
Europe. They will then be able to see for themselves that
a perfect city car has become an even cooler and more
sustainable electric vehicle for urban requirements.
Measured according to the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC)
*

14 365 Magazine for Sustainability 15

 BRAND PROTECTION BRAND PROTECTION

ALARMING RESULT. Whereas a genuine brake disk from Mercedes-Benz easily

withstands the tough testing conditions (above), the counterfeit product is a big
failure. It becomes so hot that it glows yellow (large image) and finally breaks.

Tracking Down the

Product Pirates Although counterfeit car components
may look like brand-name parts, they are
anything but. The market is being
swamped by more and more such fake products.
However, buyers don’t realize that
counterfeit parts can represent a real hazard.
The brand protection team at Daimler
is therefore doing all it can to put an end
to product piracy.

16 365 Magazine for Sustainability 17

 BRAND PROTECTION
T
he investigators can barely believe their
eyes. Based on everything they know, this
underground garage should serve as the
counterfeiters’ warehouse. However, nothing
is to be seen — only empty parking spaces
and a few parked cars, surrounded by bare
walls. Suddenly, one of the investigators
walks toward one of the walls. It looks suspicious to him
and is clearly covered with bumps when viewed up close.
The detective’s intuitions are correct, as the plaster falls
off after only a few strong blows. They reveal the outline
of a door lock. The men quickly uncover the door and
open it. Bull’s-eye! The investigators’ flashlights glide over
shelves upon shelves filled down to the last centimeter
with more than 6,000 counterfeit windshields from various
brands. The brand protection team in China can report the
strikingly successful raid to the company’s headquarters
in Germany.
The big haul causes the experts at Global Brand Protec-
tion in Stuttgart to rejoice, as more than seven months
of painstaking investigative work were needed to make
the raid possible. “We are professionals when it comes to
tracking down counterfeit Mercedes-Benz products on the
market,” says the team’s leader, Peter Stiefel. “We investi-
gate dubious offers on the Internet and cooperate closely
with customs officials and law enforcement agencies. It’s
often like putting together a complicated puzzle, because
our opponents generally operate worldwide in mafia-like
organizations.”
As shown here, the imitation products
often look almost identical to the genuine parts —
a genuine Mercedes-Benz rim is pictured
on the left, while the rim on the right is a fake.
18 365 Magazine for Sustainability
DANGEROUS PARTS
The production of counterfeit brand-name parts has
greatly expanded in recent years and is now being per-
formed on an industrial scale. Almost all automotive parts
are pirated, from windshield wipers and wheel rims to oil
filters and tie rods. Although there is a great demand for
the cheap parts, few customers suspect that they might
be risking their lives by buying them. “You literally risk
losing your life and limb with safety-relevant parts such
as brake disks,” says Peter Stiefel. In order to arrive at
a more precise assessment of the risks, Stiefel’s team
regularly cooperates with development engineers from
Mercedes-Benz to test confiscated counterfeit parts. The
results are shocking. When subjected to the great stresses
of the tests, counterfeit control units sometimes catch
fire, rims break, and brake disks begin to glow and burst.
But the risks are also high when parts do not suffer such
dramatic failures. “We now know that the effectiveness
of a counterfeit brake lining is up to two times worse than
that of a genuine part,” says Stiefel. “This means that the
vehicle’s braking distance can almost double. You can
therefore imagine what can happen out on the road.”
The experts at Daimler recently simulated such a real-life
driving situation in a test drive. On a test track, drivers
conducted evasive maneuvers with two Mercedes-Benz
C-Class sedans. One of the vehicles was equipped with
a genuine Mercedes-Benz tie rod, while the other con-
tained a counterfeit one. It came as no surprise that while
the sedan with the genuine Mercedes-Benz part easily
navigated the obstacle course, the other vehicle’s tie rod
couldn’t withstand the stress and broke. The vehicle began
to swerve and could no longer be controlled.
A SHADOW ECONOMY WITH HIGH GROWTH RATES
The brand protection unit is in action worldwide so that
customers do not suffer such catastrophic consequences.
Throughout the world, around 100 lawyers and external
investigators help the Stuttgart-based team track down
product counterfeiters. “We want to catch the big players
and destroy their production and sales organizations,” says
Stiefel. That’s why the investigators don’t let up in their ef-
forts even after a successful raid. “We file criminal charges
and initiate civil lawsuits for prohibitory injunctions and the
compensation of damages in order to make the counter-
feiting business as unattractive as possible. To this end,
we use all of the legal means at our disposal,” says Stiefel.
Such rigorous action is indispensable because the days
when counterfeit products were assembled in relatively
small numbers in back-alley workshops are long gone.
Today the business with allegedly brand-name products
is run by a globally operating, criminal industry. It makes
profits that are as high as those in drug trafficking, but has
to fear penalties that are much less severe.
This has serious consequences for the economy and soci-
ety at large. Not only do counterfeiters pay no taxes, they
also reduce the revenue of the producers of genuine parts
and thus often endanger the associated jobs. Moreover,
BRAND PROTECTION
the manufacturers of counterfeit products care as little
about employee rights and fair working conditions as
they do about the prevention of environmental risks. They
make no quality checks and are not interested in possible
drawbacks or risks for the users of their products. The only
thing that counts for them is making money.
According to a recent study by the auditing and business
consulting firm Ernst & Young, counterfeit products cause
an estimated E56 billion in financial losses each year to
German companies alone. The culprits benefit from tech-
nological advances and global sales opportunities. Fake
brand-name products are especially swamping the market
in Germany and other European countries. The focus is no
longer just on luxury watches, sports shoes, and designer
handbags, as counterfeiters are increasingly targeting
brand-name spare parts and accessories for automobiles.
Such parts are a lucrative business that promises secure
sales and high profit margins.
SEEMINGLY GENUINE, BUT APPEARANCES
ARE DECEPTIVE
The counterfeiters generally offer their products through
large online trading platforms that are becoming in-
creasingly popular among drivers. According to a study
conducted by the market research institute TNS Infratest,
around 6.5 million customers bought automotive spare
parts, accessories or tires on the Internet in 2014. That’s
an increase of 15 percent on the previous year’s result,
and the numbers continue to grow.
Today’s product counterfeiters know how to make their
imitation parts look authentic — so authentic, in fact, that A FAILURE WITH SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES. This incident would
even experts have trouble distinguishing them from gen- have been disastrous in real-life traffic: The counterfeit tie rod in
uine parts with the naked eye. Products often need to be the black C-Class breaks during an evasive maneuver on a test track.
The vehicle swerves and only barely evades the inflated obstacle.
tested in order to determine whether they are fake or not.
That’s why customs officials and police officers cooperate
The silver C-Class that contains a genuine tied rod easily performs
the maneuver.
closely with manufacturers like Daimler. No matter how
perfect counterfeit products seem to be, appearances are
deceptive. The “brand-name” surface that is imitated down
to the last detail generally covers a badly made product
spare parts,” says Stiefel. Moreover, the culprits are often
caught and brought to justice. Peter Stiefel and his team
consisting of low-quality materials that can’t meet any
quality or safety standards. If this weren’t the case, these
were especially lucky with the Chinese counterfeiter ware-
house mentioned at the beginning of this article, because
parts could never be sold at the “bargain-basement” prices the main suspects gave themselves up to the police after
for which they often are offered. the raid.
Few buyers of fake spare parts probably know that they
are purchasing illegally manufactured products. And even
if they suspect that parts are being offered by a dubious
supplier, the low prices will nevertheless tempt many of
them to buy the items. However, people who think they
can save money with a low-priced imitation product will
often be disappointed. The cheap parts can lead to costly
Digital
repairs, not to mention the risks they can pose to drivers.
That’s why it’s good to know that the brand protection TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT FAKE PARTS,
unit’s investigations have repeatedly been successful. product tests, and the work of the brand
“Together with our colleagues at Global Service & Parts, protection team, watch the video at:
we help to confiscate huge numbers of counterfeit http://mb4.me/LUMwvhK3
products each year. More than 1.6 million products were
confiscated in 2015 alone, with most of these items being
19
 AUTOMOBILE PRODUCTION AUTOMOBILE PRODUCTION

Industrial Robots Potential benefits of a direct-current smart

industrial micro-grid

Are Learning to Save

10–20% MORE ENERGY EFFICIENCY
The direct-current architecture reduces the losses of
active power during energy conversion and transmission
Recovery of braking energy

Energy
THE ROBOTS’ MOVEMENTS GREATER ENERGY FLEXIBILITY
are intelligently controlled to achieve Direct incorporation of renewable sources of energy
maximum energy efficiency. Robots (e.g. solar power)
recover braking energy when their
movements slow down. GREATER RESOURCE EFFICIENCY
Reduced copper consumption due to the direct-current
architecture and state-of-the-art semiconductor technology
In the EU project AREUS, researchers and engineers have developed the components of an
MORE STABLE GRIDS, IMPROVED SECURITY OF SUPPLY
energy-efficient automobile production system of the future. Basically, the idea is to have Measures for network filtering and compensation are no
a direct-current network supply robots with “green” electricity, some of which is subsequently longer needed
recovered and temporarily stored. Digital measurement technology and intelligent networking No more production stoppages due to disturbances in the grid

will ensure that the industrial smart grid operates flexibly and reliably. ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY
Reduced energy procurement costs due to intelligent
energy distribution and storage

INDUSTRIAL ENERGY WHEN ELECTRIC VEHICLES

STORAGE UNITS such as the new smart electric
store surplus electricity that can drive are integrated into a smart
be released when it is needed. industrial micro-grid, they
These units can consist of lithium-ion can be recharged with energy
batteries, for example. recovered from robots.
WIND AND SUN
are the most important energy
suppliers for a smart industrial LOGISTICS SYSTEMS
micro-grid. The green electricity such as forklift trucks and driver-
can be directly fed into the grid. less transportation systems
are made completely electric and
also incorporated into a smart
industrial micro-grid.

THE ACTIVE FRONT END

links the internal direct-current
network with the external alternat-
ing-current grid. It can draw energy
from the external grid or give it back.

20 365 Magazine for Sustainability 21


30%
more efficiency is achieved by the
new generation of robots. AREUS
aims to achieve another substantial
increase.
The four work packages of the AREUS project
1. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE FOR MORE
ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND FLEXIBILITY
The focus here was to create the techno-
logical basis for a kind of self-supplying
system that uses renewable energies. In
this system, robots would no longer simply
consume energy, but also generate it through
the recovery of braking energy. Storage tech-
nologies are needed here to offset fluctuating
energy volumes.
3. OPTIMIZED ROBOT MOVEMENTS
AND PATHS
Robots move in specified ways and along
predetermined paths. To ensure that they
can do so efficiently, the project participants
had to develop tools for offline predictive
planning and online adaptive control. One
of the aims was to optimally coordinate the
actions of several robots.
22
AUTOMOBILE PRODUCTION
2. DIGITAL PLANNING AND SIMULATION
TOOLS
Optimized hardware is not the only means of
boosting energy efficiency. It is also important
to take energy consumption into account
in advance during the offline programming
phase. The aim is to create mathematical
models that can be integrated into the devel-
opment tools that are commonly used today.
4. SUCCESS MONITORING AND LIFE
CYCLE ASSESSMENT
In order to measure the effects of the
approaches and technologies developed
during the project, the participants had
to develop a comprehensive Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA) tool for taking the entire
life cycle of the automated production
system into account.
365 Magazine for Sustainability
T
he automotive industry uses more robots than
any other sector. The computer-controlled
machines are taking on more and increasingly
complex tasks. They work reliably, efficiently,
and with high precision. Engineers are now
even teaching them how to learn. But how
energy-efficient are these mechanical helpers in reality?
A robot isn’t necessary an energy hog. Even a robot that
weighs a ton and moves components weighing hundreds
of kilograms consumes only 2.5 kilowatts to do its job in
active operation — the same as three standard toasters.
But that’s the average value. The actual energy consump-
tion depends largely on how a robot is used and for what
purpose. For example, robots account for a large share of
the energy consumed in car body construction.
That’s why the engineers at Daimler are looking for ways
to further reduce the energy needs of robotic systems.
“We began to focus more on this issue six years ago. Many
components have been improved since then, and as a re-
sult the new generation of robots is now about 30 percent
more efficient than the previous one,” says Davis Meike,
who manages the EU project AREUS at Daimler in Sin-
delfingen. “If we want to achieve further improvements, we
will have to do more than just optimize individual compo-
nents. We now have to take the entire system into account,
including the changing energy environment.”
SMART GRIDS FOR COUNTRIES AND FACTORIES
The transition to renewable energies is picking up steam
worldwide. For example, countries like China are making
huge investments in wind and solar energy. Germany,
meanwhile, is creating a scenario in which numerous dis-
tributed producers will supply the country with renewable
energy. The purchasers of this energy will no longer just
be consumers; they will be producers as well, due to the
solar panels on their roofs, for example. They can store the
energy they don’t need themselves in household battery
banks, for example, or in their electric cars.
Digital measurement technology and intelligent networking
will ensure that the smart grid, as this concept is called,
operates flexibly and reliably.
Davis Meike and his colleagues at the process develop-
ment unit are convinced that such a smart energy supply
system can also be used for vehicle production. Their
vision is to create a smart industrial micro-grid. How-
ever, this cannot be achieved without a thorough system
change. What the engineers are planning sounds like the
completion of the energy transition and the digitization of
production at the same time. Says Meike, “For one thing,
we want to manage our facilities more intelligently than is
currently the case. To do that, we need digital measure-
ment technology that tells us at all times how much energy
is being consumed and how much is available at each point
of the system. Our second aim is to make our robots do
what our cars can already do: recover braking energy.
Our third goal is to store energy that the system doesn’t
need at a particular time so that it is available when it’s in
AUTOMOBILE PRODUCTION
THE TEST CELL IN SINDELFINGEN is a complete production facility
that uses direct current. It is supplied with solar power from its own
photovoltaic system.
demand. This is important because we want to use renew-
able energy that isn’t uniformly available.”
Although achieving these three objectives will already
require a lot of work, Meike and his colleagues have even
more goals in sight. Specifically, they want to switch the
energy supply of industrial robots from alternating current,
which is usually employed today, to direct current. “All of
the electricity consumers at our plants use direct current —
that’s the case with everything from the computers to the
drive control systems for the individual electric motors that
move the robot arms,” says Meike. “However, the power
sockets supply alternating current, which we first have to
convert. This causes unnecessary losses.” A direct-current
grid would be much more efficient. It would also have the
advantage of being more robust against fluctuations in the
power supply and in the grid quality — a common occur-
rence in renewable energy supply systems.
All of these projects combined add up to a program that
will likely change the energy supply structure of automobile
production as thoroughly as the switch from the classic
combustion engine to the intelligently controlled electric
drive will change the vehicles themselves.
AREUS KICKS OFF
The Daimler engineers quickly realized that they needed
expert partners from the scientific and business commu-
nities in order to achieve such a far-reaching goal. These
partners were quickly found and the EU provided funding.
The resulting EU project AREUS (Automation and Robotics
for European Sustainable Manufacturing) was launched
in mid-2013. Experts from four European universities and
eight companies spent the next three years cooperating
on the project in order to develop innovative technologies,
tools, and algorithms for the sustainable robot technology
of the future. The teams’ tasks were defined by four work
packages (see page 22).
The results of this work were immediately tested at Daimler
in Sindelfingen. At this plant, the company set up the
first prototype of a completely new kind of robot cell, the
“Demo Cell,” which the AREUS experts used to test the
concepts and technologies they had developed. In this
cell, four robots operate on a square area measuring nine
meters on a side. Together, they create an entire produc-
tion facility composed of direct-current systems. The cell is
supplied with solar power from a photovoltaic system that
was specifically installed for this project, and it can store
surplus energy. In addition, the cell is connected to the
external alternating-current grid. The cell works, and the
robots are already producing components.
“We want to show here that direct-current technology
actually works and make it measurable,” says Meike.
“However, we also want to find out where there are still
problems. Because nobody has constructed such a facility
before, such problems have never been measured or tech-
nologically resolved.”
The AREUS project ended as scheduled in September
2016. The researchers and engineers had achieved what
they set out to do: to take the first steps toward the cre-
ation of a more efficient production facility composed of
direct-current systems. It is estimated that future tech-
nologies of this kind will be at least 10 to 20 percent more
efficient than current ones. However, there is still a long
way to go before that goal is achieved.
PREPARATIONS FOR A DIRECT-CURRENT REVOLUTION
That’s why a follow-up project, DC-INDUSTRIE, was
launched in July 2016. It focuses on the creation of con-
cepts for supplying energy to industrial facilities by means
of an intelligently controlled direct-current network. A total
of 21 industrial companies are involved in this project, as
are four research institutes and the German Electrical and
Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (ZVEI). The three-
year project receives funding from the German Ministry
for Economic Affairs and Energy. According to Meike,
Daimler expects the partnership to benefit it greatly in
Sindelfingen. “We need to cooperate on a broad basis, and
also do so with competitors, component manufacturers,
industry associations, and standardization committees,” he
says. “That’s the only way we can achieve the necessary
momentum. After all, what we are planning to achieve here
is nothing less than a revolution in the field of industrial
energy supply.”
Digital
You can find out more about AREUS
at the project’s official website:
www.areus-project.eu
Information about the follow-up project
DC-INDUSTRIE is provided by ZVEI, for
example: www.zvei.org
23
 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

M
ost of the guests from abroad who
visit the city of Arusha in northeast-
ern Tanzania are coming in order to
observe animals in the wild. For them,
the city is a starting point for safaris
in the national park of the same name.
But when people from time2help
come to Arusha, they stay in order to help local people,
especially children. This association, which is based in
Böblingen, Germany, supports the work of a local initiative
that operates an orphanage and a boarding school in
Ngulelo, six kilometers east of Arusha. The initiative’s work
is funded solely by donations.
More than 130 children have found a loving home at the
Living Water Children’s Center (LWCC). Many of them are
AIDS orphans; others were rejected by their families or

In Tanzania, children with albinism live in

constant danger. At the Living Water Children’s
Center, a high wall helps to protect them.

ran away from home because there they had experienced

more suffering than love. Since 2015, 14 children with
albinism have also been living at the LWCC. They stand out
because of their light-colored skin and hair. They have to
avoid sunlight because their skin lacks protective pig-
ments. But that’s not the only reason why they can’t move
around freely. These children’s lives are constantly under
threat, because many people in Tanzania and all of East
Africa believe in the superstition that the body parts of al-
binos bring good luck. As a result, people with albinism are
ruthlessly hunted and killed. The fact that the sale of such
supposedly magical body parts lets the sellers earn good

Every Cent Helps

money makes it even more difficult to protect albinos.
The government of Tanzania has declared it will deal
severely with the perpetrators, but so far only a few of
them have been tried and sentenced. The children who
are at risk are brought to state-operated orphanages for
protection, but in many cases they lead a miserable life
there without proper care or assistance. The albino chil-
dren came to Ngulelo from one of these badly overcrowded
DAIMLER EMPLOYEES can help a good cause by donating the cents part of their monthly state-operated orphanages.
salaries. The company matches the amounts that are donated. In this way, the ProCent fund “Even though security guards had been posted at LWCC
around the clock, shortly after the children arrived a group
supports charitable projects in Germany and other countries all over the world.
of manhunters tried to attack the boarding school,” reports
Esther Nestle, the director of the time2help association.
It had quickly become obvious that the school needed
CONSTRUCTION CAN BEGIN: Workers unload more protection. It needed to have a high wall surrounding
the stones for building the protective wall. not only the Children’s Center but also the outdoor area
around the primary school and the secondary school that
is under construction. The problem was that the school did
not have the €44,000 it required to build such a wall.

24 365 Magazine for Sustainability 25

 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
“When you hear something like that, the
only thing you can do is to help.”
ANGELO KRECZMARSKY, engine production worker at the Sindelfingen plant
HELPING THE HELPERS
“When you hear something like that, the only thing you can
do is to help if you have the opportunity,” says 30-year-old
Angelo Kreczmarsky, who works on the S-Class engine
production line at the Daimler plant in Sindelfingen. His
sister-in-law had worked as a teacher in Arusha during her
semester break. When she told him about the school’s
problems, he decided immediately to apply to ProCent for
funds to finance the construction of the wall. Like many of
his colleagues, Angelo Kreczmarsky has been contributing
the cents part of his monthly salary for years to a charita-
ble fund that was initiated by the General Works Council.
About 100,000 Daimler employees participate in ProCent.
52
PROJECTS IN AFRICA
have been funded by ProCent, part of almost
800 worldwide.
STEP BY STEP, the protective wall rises around the schools
and the children’s center.
26
Daimler matches the amounts that are donated. As a
result, many small contributions eventually generate an
astonishing total. ProCent has already donated approxi-
mately €4.6 million to charitable projects. The employees
themselves decide who should receive the donations.
They can apply to ProCent for a donation to an initiative in
which they themselves are active volunteers, or they can
recommend other projects that they believe are deserving
of support.
Angelo Kreczmarsky worked together with the time2help
association to formulate arguments, list the costs of
building the wall, and finally hand in his application to the
ProCent coordinator in Sindelfingen. A selection commit-
tee consisting of equal numbers of General Works Council
members, company managers, and members of the
Group’s Management Representative Committee approved
the application. A short time later, Angelo Kreczmarsky had
the crucial letter in his hand: ProCent promised to provide
the missing funds for building the protective wall.
By now the wall has been finished, and since then there
have been no attacks on the albino children. What’s more,
the operation of the LWCC now rests on a more stable
foundation. Thanks to the school’s excellent reputation, TRAINING FOR EMERGENCIES: At the ASB Esslingen, rescue
dogs and their handlers train on the demolition site of the
Esslingen Savings Bank.
655
PROJECTS IN GERMANY
Most of the projects supported
by ProCent are local initiatives based
near Daimler facilities.
FARM OF THE GENERATIONS: In a meadow in the town of Weil
der Stadt leased by “MehrGenerationenFarm,” children and adults
of all ages have planted a community garden and vegetable plots.
They also raise domestic animals. In 2015, six used containers
were bought and renovated for use as recreation rooms and work-
shops. ProCent helped to finance this purchase.
27
 100 NEW WELLS now give families in the Mekong Delta
access to clean drinking water. ProCent helped to make this
possible.
MENNI MOTIVATES: Menni is a therapy dog who is part of the
staff at Murgtal Workshops & Communes, a facility for people with
disabilities in Gaggenau. ProCent financed the dog’s training.
The variety of projects that are
supported reflects the multifaceted
commitment of Daimler employees.
today more than 500 boys and girls attend the school.
Many of them come from the local area, and their parents
pay their school fees. When the secondary school is
opened in 2017 according to plan, even more albino
children can be accepted at the center to live and learn
in Ngulelo without any fear of persecution.
FROM CHILDREN’S PROTECTION TO A RESCUE
DOG UNIT
The protective wall for the children in Ngulelo is just one
of 788 charitable projects that have received assistance
€4.6
from ProCent since it was launched in 2011. The projects
include assistance for children and teenagers as well as
people with disabilities, other kinds of charitable work, and
MILLION
initiatives for protecting nature and the environment. Most
of the projects receiving assistance are in Germany, and
the majority of them are located near a Daimler facility.
has been donated to charitable projects by ProCent
They reflect the Daimler employees’ strong and extremely
since its founding in late 2011.
varied range of commitments.
For example, during his leisure time Thomas Pompe from
Department 2 of the factory fire brigade in Sindelfingen
volunteers at the rescue dog unit of the Workers’ Samari-
tan Foundation (ASB) in Esslingen. The unit has 15 rescue
28 365 Magazine for Sustainability
dog teams, each one consisting of a handler and a dog. In
seven of the teams, the dogs are still in the training phase.
The eight active teams are called in about once a month
to help search for missing persons in the region. They may
also be sent on assignments abroad, for example to re-
gions that have been hit by an earthquake. In the past, the
unit did not have a trailer for transporting its equipment.
Pompe applied to ProCent for funding — and his request
was approved. The team is now ideally equipped. “Now
that we have a trailer, we’re more flexible, especially on
assignments covering large areas. This way we can orga-
nize our searches even more efficiently,” explains Carsten
Holzer, who heads the rescue dog unit.
Although ProCent has strong local roots, the initiative’s
radius is international. It has already provided funds for
projects on five continents, including 52 in Africa. There
are more than 30 ProCent projects in Asia. Matthias Heck
is assisting one of them. He works in the Facility Manage-
ment unit at the Daimler plant in Rastatt and has been a
member of Bác Ái for many years. Bác Ái is an associa-
tion based in Karlsruhe that supports impoverished rural
communities in southern Vietnam. Its name, which means
“brotherly love” in Vietnamese, sums up the work it does.
Bác Ái focuses on well-digging projects in remote areas of
the Mekong Delta. In the past, the local people drew their
drinking water from rivers that in many cases had been
contaminated with fertilizer. Thanks to more than €13,000
in funding from ProCent, a total of 100 wells have been
dug in the region since 2015. The main beneficiaries of the
new wells are the local children, who had previously often
suffered from life-threatening diarrhea because of the
contaminated water.
In many projects like this one, the support from ProCent
benefits children in particular. Many of the people who
donate to the foundation are especially committed to
enabling children to have a better future. One of these
children is Pendo from Tanzania, a 12-year-old girl with
albinism who has been able to start a new life in Ngulelo
thanks to ProCent. She has a dream: She’d like to become
a politician so that she herself can fight for a better life
for albinos in her homeland. In order to do that, she wants
to go to school. And thanks to the protective wall around
her school, she will be able to do that safely.
Digital
ProCent: http://mb4.me/G8L2TIUF
The time2help association: www.time2help.net
ABS Esslingen: www.abs-es.de
MehrGenerationenFarm: www.mf-wds.de (in German only)
The Bác Ái association: www.bacai.de
29
 TRAFFIC SAFETY TRAFFIC SAFETY

C
ool! I like the way you did that!” Max is
visibly impressed as he hands a small
card to the bewildered young man stand-
ing at the curb. He has just held back
two teenagers who were about to dash
across the pedestrian crossing without
looking right or left — a cyclist was barely
able to brake in time. The young man is
initially surprised to hear this praise from the mouth of an
eight-year-old, but he suddenly realizes something. “You’re
from the school that’s doing a traffic safety training course,
right?” he asks. “Yes, we are,” says Max’s classmate Lea,
who has been watching. “We’re traffic inspectors. We’re
watching to see how people behave out on the street. And
every person who does something really good gets one of
these thumbs-up cards.” “That’s great,” says the young
man, beaming — and Max and Lea are sure that they too
have just done something really good.
At the start of their first training session, the young traffic
inspectors had fanned out to do their tours of inspection.
The 18 boys and girls from the third grade at the local
primary school were armed with pencils and notebooks
for writing down their observations. During the previous
days they had participated in the MobileKids program at
KIDS AT A BUS TRAINING SESSION: their school and learned how to negotiate traffic safely.
It’s important to stay alert, even at the bus stop. The playful sessions were entertaining and imaginative.
At the end of the sessions, all the children passed a test
and proudly received their diplomas as MobileKids traffic
inspectors.
PROMOTING TRAFFIC SAFETY FOR 15 YEARS
Every year, thousands of children like Max, Lea, and their
initiative could look back on many successes on its 15th
anniversary in September 2016. However, the MobileKids
team members don’t regard this milestone as a reason
to slacken their efforts. It’s true that we no longer live in
a time when traffic-calmed play streets were a rarity and
children rode their bikes without helmets on and went on
car trips without sitting in a car seat. And it’s also true
that in spite of the increase in traffic density, for almost 40
years now the number of children who are injured in traffic
accidents has been steadily declining, thanks to technical
innovations, improved infrastructure, and growing public
awareness of traffic safety. Nonetheless, children are
still being injured on streets and roads in Germany, not to
mention the situation in other parts of the world. In many
countries there’s still a lot of catching up to do in the area
of traffic safety.
GUIDING CHILDREN’S FIRST STEPS AS ROAD USERS
Primary-school children require particular protection.
They might be taking a bus to school or riding their bikes
to sport practice or a friend’s house after school. For
children, these are the first steps on the way to becoming
independent road users. Because their cognitive faculties
are not yet fully developed, they may not initially be able
to perceive and evaluate the dangers that may face them
on the street. That makes it all the more important to
direct their attention to possible risks in age-appropriate
ways and help them practice cautious behavior.
This is where MobileKids comes in. The initiative sensitizes
parents and educational institutions to the requirements of

MobileKids
Daimler launched it in 2001, and today it’s active
all over the world: The MobileKids traffic safety initiative teaches
children how to negotiate traffic safely.
classmates participate in the MobileKids program to learn
how to avoid dangers and move through traffic safely.
MobileKids is the biggest traffic safety initiative for chil-
dren attending primary school. Since it was launched in
2001, it has reached more than 2 million children between
Kids intensely rehearse
the ages of six and ten — not only in Germany but all over
the world. Today MobileKids is implementing its multifac- typical traffic situations.
eted program, which addresses teachers, schoolchildren,
and parents, in 11 countries.
The content of the traffic safety program is based on a
uniform worldwide concept that includes not only the
children but also the grown-ups with whom they interact.
For example, parents are assisted in their efforts to pre-
pare their children to negotiate traffic safely. The initiative
cooperates with local partners all over the world. Together
with these partners, it adapts the program activities to the
specific needs of each location. For example, the teaching
materials are adapted to the needs of bilingual schools in
Brazil so that they can supplement the teachers’ curricula
and their lesson plans. In Romania, on the other hand, the
MobileKids program consists of informative events and
interactive school lessons, at the end of which the children
can receive their diplomas as traffic inspectors. In Russia,
the focus is on nationwide roadshows and workshops.
This sustainable approach was a major reason why the

30 365 Magazine for Sustainability

 TRAFFIC SAFETY

Traffic Education That’s Fun — Worldwide

The one requirement for all submissions is that the idea
must help to increase traffic safety over the long term.
For example, it might focus on what a safe bicycle should
look like or on how to find out the safest route to school.
The most impressive project ideas will receive rewards and
will be presented on the MobileKids website. The awards
include bike helmets and a school bus safety training ses-
sion for the entire winning class.

A STRONG ONLINE COMMUNITY

It goes without saying that MobileKids is also accessible
on the Internet. On the MobileKids website, boys and girls
__ EUROPE __ CENTRAL AMERICA __ SOUTH AMERICA __ ASIA
can find a realm that is devoted to them, with games that

LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

IN MOKI ZONES
ACTIVITIES FOR CHILDREN
AND ADULTS
EVERYONE BEARS
RESPONSIBILITY
TRAFFIC EDUCATION FOR
DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN
Kids who are having fun enable them to test and expand their knowledge of traffic
safety. For the grown-ups, there’s an online magazine that

Since 2015 there have been special In Mexico, MobileKids is engaging in a MobileKids reaches more than 1,000 Integrating the basic principles of traffic learn more — in traffic safety provides updated and entertaining information about top-
ics related to traffic safety. The spectrum of articles ranges

school too.
play areas in several Moscow shopping variety of activities to address children, children and their parents every year safety and accident avoidance into daily from tips on traffic education to information about scientif-
centers. In these “MOKI zones,” children grown-ups, and teenagers. For example, at the Colégio Humboldt, a German- life — that’s the aim of MobileKids South ic trends and technical innovations and features about the
can participate in traffic education parents and children can take part in Brazilian school in São Paulo. The Korea. This initiative is mainly aimed future of mobility. The magazine also offers downloads and
workshops or train for a MobileKids summer courses where they find out Daimler initiative helped to develop the at disadvantaged children who live in a regularly published newsletter.
“driver’s license” on a traffic parkour. what kinds of danger to watch out for in school’s traffic education program socially deprived areas. Experienced
For children, there’s also a very practical MobileKids
MobileKids Russia is also working with traffic and practice appropriate behavior and continues to provide it with support. trainers, supported by student assistants,
Safety Map. It’s an online planner that a child can use to
popular celebrities in the region to in training sessions. Younger participants The program is being offered to children offer the children traffic education and
develop videos that children can watch especially enjoy the games and the and teenagers aged between four and help them practice safe behavior on the plan his or her individual route to school. Since 2011,
online. coloring books. 17. The program’s motto is “Pedestrians, street. risk prevention and gives them — and the children them- adults and children from the MobileKids community have
bike riders, car drivers, and motorcyclists selves — comprehensive information and teaching mate- been busily entering traffic points into the Safety Map and
— everyone bears responsibility.” rials. The MobileKids school campaign plays a central tagging them as being especially safe or especially danger-
role in these activities. Educational institutions can benefit ous. With the help of this information, parents and children
from the pedagogically valuable learning concepts that can work together to map out the safest possible route for
MobileKids has developed with support from experts. The the child to take to school. And with the MobileKids app
Europe aim of these concepts is to make traffic safety and acci- kids can use the Safety Map easily on their smartphones.
dent prevention everyday topics of conversation in family MobileKids also addresses children and parents during var-
Since 2001 __ GERMANY life. In this way, adults and children can work together to ious leisure activities in order to keep them aware of traffic
Since 2012 __ HUNGARY
increase safety and move confidently when they’re out on education topics. For example, the initiative participates
Since 2013 __ ROMANIA
the streets. in folk festivals and street parties and cooperates with
Since 2013 __ TURKEY
On the move Since 2014 __ RUSSIA
The initiative provides comprehensive materials free of family parks and amusement parks. The young traffic
charge to teachers who want to participate in the Mobile- inspectors Max and Lea have heard about these activities
in 11 countries for Since 2015 __ POLAND
Kids school campaign with their classes and enter the too. At school, a classmate told them about the Spieleland
greater safety school competition that is related to the campaign. The amusement park on Lake Constance, which features a
written materials are designed in a way that allows them to MobileKids traffic safety school — with “real Mercedes
be integrated into regular learning units on traffic safety. cars.” Max now has a dream: getting his “children’s driver’s
Asia In addition to a teachers’ manual, there are four modules license” there. After all, he says, “A traffic inspector with-
dealing with specific situations and requirements: “Seeing out a driver’s license — that’s just not right.” His family has
Since 2012 __ CHINA
Since 2013 __ MALAYSIA
and Being Seen,” “Crossing the Street,” “Riding Your Bike already included a stop at Lake Constance in their plans
Central
Since 2014 __ SOUTH KOREA in the Street,” and a new module, “Staying Safe on the Way for their next vacation trip.
America
to School.” The fifth module, “Being a Road User,” is all
about being cautious and considerate out on the road — a
Since 2011 __ MEXICO
habit that is not easy for children to develop, on account
of their intense urge to move around and their frequently
impulsive behavior. Finally, the sixth module deals with
Digital
South America
general themes and takes a look at the future of mobility.
Since 2014 __ BRAZIL In Germany’s nationwide MobileKids school competition, MOKI AND MORE. All over the world,
the children can once again receive recognition for the our mascot Moki represents traffic safety
knowledge they’ve gained — and in the best of cases, an with games and fun. You can find out
more about the international activities of
entire class can win an award. The classes with the best
MobileKids at www.mobilekids.net
prospects for winning will be those that come up with a
creative project and carry it out with lots of commitment.

32 365 Magazine for Sustainability 33


A Habitat for The botanical garden that Daimler created at the edge of the grounds of the
Mercedes-Benz bus plant in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2015 is an oasis of peace
and relaxation for the facility’s employees. Conservationists are happy about
Rattlesnake
this pocket paradise, because it is helping to preserve indigenous fauna and
vegetation.
& Co.
A wide variety of cactuses, shrubs, palms, and other trees flourishes in this
approximately 2,000-square-meter garden. The semi-arid landscape that has
been left here in its natural state also serves as a habitat for numerous animal
species, ranging from cacomistles and gopher tortoises to rattlesnakes.
Like the facility in Monterrey, other Daimler plants also design their outdoor
areas to serve as habitats for indigenous plants and animals as far as possible.
Daimler considers the preservation of a wide variety of natural biotopes and
the creation of new habitats to be part of its corporate responsibility.
34 365 Magazine for Sustainability
IMPRINT
Imprint and Contact Mercedes-Benz
Publisher
Daimler AG
Mercedesstraße 137
70327 Stuttgart
Germany
For the publisher Magazine for Sustainability
Mirjam Bendak
Editing and design
Tell Us What
SLau Konzepte & Kommunikation (consulting/editing)
TEAMKOM Kommunikation&Design (design)
TransForm GmbH (translation)
Illustrations
rotwerk visuelle kommunikation (pp. 20, 21)
Photos
Daimler AG Image Archive, Thinkstock (pp. 13, 32)
You Think!
Production
Dr. Cantz’sche Druckerei Medien GmbH (prepress)
Did you find this issue of our sustainability magazine interesting?
Gmähle-Scheel Print-Medien GmbH (print) Did we manage to draw your attention to certain topics or
spark your curiosity? Or did the issue lack important content
Contact
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70546 Stuttgart, Germany Mercedes-Benz’ commitment to sustainability? — We look
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(FSC)®. This label certifies not only compliance with stringent
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In this magazine, wherever increases in fuel economy or reductions
in emissions – including but not limited to CO2 , NOX , and particulate
emissions – are discussed, the discussion is based upon measure-
ments done in accordance with the New European Driving Cycle
(NEDC), as required by German laws governing labelling of passenger
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35