80 companies: Mercedes wants to sell all car dealerships in Germany

Vikendi ^ | 01 19 2024 | Eleanor Pearce

[yesthatjallen]

Mercedes-Benz is considering selling its branches in Germany. it’s about everyone [car dealership] and self-owned workshops, the company said on Friday upon request. The review is open-ended and step-by-step. “The Mercedes-Benz Group is ready for discussions with potential buyers of its branches.” Only experienced companies will be considered as buyers.

“We do not plan to sell to pure financial investors and closing locations is not part of the review.” Furthermore, there are no plans to distribute all branches as one package. There are 80 companies with a total of 8,000 employees. “Physical business is and will remain a central pillar of Mercedes-Benz’s success,” the statement said. Neither employees should be removed nor branches should be closed. The company also strives for close coordination with the works council. Job protections will also remain in place for all collectively bargained workers until 2029.

SNIP

[mewzilla]

Here’s the article in Handelsblatt, though it won’t be much help because you have to register to read it...

https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/autohandel-mercedes-will-alle-eigenen-autohaeuser-in-deutschland-verkaufen/100008314.html

Looks like MTO, made to order, will render most sales people...excess to manufacturers requirements.

[drSteve78]

Neither employees should be removed nor branches should be closed.

Which of course means employees would be removed and branches would be closed. Otherwise, why Sell?

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

--- "...most sales people...excess to manufacturers requirements."

With the energy-related recession underway in green Germany, many companies are involved in forms of "shrinkage." We are in a Shrink Age. Courtesy of Lefty politics.

[mewzilla]

Europe went to MTO a long time ago.

Big Auto here has been slavering to do it for almost that long.

Deep State is making it happen.

[cgbg]

Yup—the buyers will run the numbers, talk lots of happy talk—and then tear the company apart to maximize value at a time and place of their choosing.

At the end of the day sellers cannot control the future of their companies—at least not for very long.

[DUMBGRUNT]

Full article but, comes up in German.

https://archive.ph/0gRY5#selection-2412.1-2518.1

Google Translate still works.

Musk set VW on fire and it is still burning.

They fired CEO Diess when he showed Tesla using about 10 hrs to manufacture a car, and Vw about 30.

IIRC HALF of VW’s board are installed by the labor union, and the state of Saxony holds 12% of VW.

No need to have Saxony’s unemployment go to the sky.
Kill the messenger.

[mewzilla]

The EU has a Deep State, too.

Companies, labor unions all serve their Deep State.

What the EU needs, and I’ll include the UK, too, since it never really Brexited, is a Trump.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

The author does not mention that you have to scrap the car at 100,000 miles (MAYBE 150,000) because nobody will pay for a replacement battery pack. The battery is the energy storage device. Nobody scraps a liquid fuel vehicle because the gas/diesel tank wore out.

Nor does the author mention that the neighborhood electrical distribution system in the USA can handle at most FOUR to SIX EV chargers without massive capital cost upgrades. That same transformer serves 10 to 15 houses. So, if this were to take off, either lots of people would be told “Sorry, you’re too late — your neighborhood can’t handle any more chargers. You have to wait until we upgrade your neighborhood.”

All that electrical upgrade cost will be borne by ALL rate-payers, not just the EV owners. So your electrical rates will skyrocket.

(BTW, how did you manage to delete all the periods in all the sentences and turn a bulleted series into a run-on mess?)

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Whoops, posted on wrong thread. Ignore this. No idea how that happened.

[Jumper]

If Mercedes wants to do this and is talking about it, consider that the Germany Government holds a 49% share and veto power at the corporate level.

The German government wants to do this. Mercedes-Benz be damned, they are literally following orders from the politicians.

The Social-Democartic experiment in Europe is over. The Communist Marxist Overlords no longer give any pretense of giving a damn about the citizens.

[bobbo666]

Go for a Tesla marketing model.
Afterall, gov’mt can attack (not regulate, ATTACK) dealerships. Not so easy the other way.

[Lockbox]

Which of course means employees would be removed and branches would be closed. Otherwise, why Sell?

those employees will be on somebody else’s books, so Mercedes-Benz has effectively removed those employees from their books. What happens to them would not be Mercedes-Benz concern anymore. Wonder if MB is going to Drive Sale of EV model to compete with Telsa?

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

We used to take the ICE past the Wolfsburg Volkswagen Plant, complete with its “elevator” storage and delivery building. That was in part showmanship connected to their made-to-order. Some videos of it were popular sometime back. One suspects that the Green-Red coalition’s energy policies are going to erode car manufacturing, and the Chinese and Vietnamese ‘cheapies’ will make market inroads because of it. I recall when almost all the older taxis were Mercedes diesels and very comfy in their way. But then I’m old enough to remember the old Checkers in London. Times change, and sometimes not for the better.

[Brian Griffin]

“The author does not mention that you have to scrap the car at 100,000 miles (MAYBE 150,000) because nobody will pay for a replacement battery pack.”

Battery packs are meant to be disassembled by robot.

The process of getting out the metals will be automated.

The manufacture of new battery packs is automated.

[Brian Griffin]

“electrical rates will skyrocket”

Ja!

“Consistent with EPA’s traditional approach to establishing pollution standards for power plants under section 111 of the Clean Air Act, the proposed standards are based on technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS) low-GHG hydrogen co-firing”

https://www.epa.gov/stationary-sources-air-pollution/greenhouse-gas-standards-and-guidelines-fossil-fuel-fired-power

“Base load affected facilities that follow the CCS pathway must meet a second phase standard based on 90% capture of CO2, using CCS, by 2035”

“Baseload affected facilities that follow the low-GHG hydrogen pathway must meet a second phase standard based on co-firing 30% low-GHG hydrogen by volume by 2032 and a third phase standard based on cofiring 96% by volume low-GHG hydrogen by 2038”

https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-05/FS-OVERVIEW-GHG-for%20Power%20Plants%20FINAL%20CLEAN.pdf

[ProtectOurFreedom]

While that may be in the future, today there is NO quick change-out of battery packs at 100k or 150k miles. The cars are scrap and will go to the junk yard because of failed or failing batteries that won’t hold charge.

Even with quick changeability built in, the capital cost of a replacement battery is way too high.

My son’t Ford Escape has a blown transmission (common problem in that car). At least it reached 230,000 miles before going to the junkyard to be parted-out. It would cost $5k to $7k to replace the tranny with a rebuilt one.

This short economic lifetime of EVs is a SERIOUS problem.

The irony of it is that the people pushing EVs are the same zealots that constantly harangue us with “Reduce / Recycle / Reuse.” They screech that all the time while pushing EVs with short useful lives.

Because the battery will be totally kaput at 100k to 150k, that means the resale value of the car will be close to zero at that point, too. Who wants to buy a car that is known to need an $8,000 to $10,000 battery replacement in the near future?

No doubt all the automation you mention (robotic disassembly of battery pack, recycling of materials, automated manufacturing of battery packs) will be true. If that is wildly successful (AND you add in fast battery pack change-out), you will STILL face a $3,000 to $5,000 bill at 100k miles to extend the life another 100k miles.

Equally concerning is the loss of a viable used car market that serves the poor. The poor count on buying used cars with 100k on the clock and another 100k of useful miles remaining. That market will completely disappear. What will the poor drive?

I just don’t see the economics working out. And there aren’t enough federal subsidies to make it viable...unless we print another $10 or $20 trillion dollars.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Staggering, isn't it?

Get ready for power prices to TRIPLE or more and power to be available in your neighborhood to 9 AM to noon and again from 9 PM to midnight each day.

In 2022, USA electricity consumption was:

• Residential: 1.51 trillion kWh
• Commercial: 1.39 trillion kWh
• Industrial: 1.02 trillion kWh
• Transportation (mostly to public transit systems): 0.01 trillion kWh

People have no sense of this magnitude of power or what it takes to make it reliably (I worked in the power industry for nearly 40 years). Countries that don't buy into this GHG nonsense are going to destroy us economically.

These idiots think they can WILL hydrogen power into existence. They have no idea of where the hydrogen will come from or the energy requirements to produce it at a country-wide economic scale. Hydrogen is VERY hard to keep contained. These idiots yammer all the time about methane leakage to the atmosphere. Wait until they discover that hydrogen leakage will be a million times worse than methane leakage. Have they thought about the problems that will be caused by the huge release of H2 into the atmosphere?

And don't get me started on the dangers of pumping CO2 underground. Here's a NATURAL event in the Mammoth Mountains in the California Sierra Nevada range where high underground CO2 concentrations killed an entire forest:

Then there was the Lake Nyos disaster in northwestern Cameroon on 21 August 1986. A "limnic eruption" triggered the sudden release of about 100,000 to 1.6 million tons (wide variation in estimates) of carbon dioxide. The gas cloud initially rose at 60 mph, then descended onto nearby villages, suffocating people and livestock within 16 mi of the lake. 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock were killed.

Nobody is certain what caused the sudden outgassing.

If we pump tens of millions of tons of CO2 underground, what are the odds of such an unexpected eruption of CO2 happening over a period of decades or centuries? I'd wager 100%.

One survivor, Joseph Nkwain from Subum, described himself when he awoke after the gases had struck:

I could not speak. I became unconscious. I could not open my mouth because then I smelled something terrible ... I heard my daughter snoring in a terrible way, very abnormal ... When crossing to my daughter's bed ... I collapsed and fell. I was there till nine o'clock in the morning (of Friday, the next day) ... until a friend of mine came and knocked at my door ... I was surprised to see that my trousers were red, had some stains like honey. I saw some ... starchy mess on my body. My arms had some wounds ... I didn't really know how I got these wounds ... I opened the door ... I wanted to speak, my breath would not come out ... My daughter was already dead ... I went into my daughter's bed, thinking that she was still sleeping. I slept till it was 4.30 in the afternoon ... on Friday (the same day). (Then) I managed to go over to my neighbours' houses. They were all dead ... I decided to leave ... (because) most of my family was in Wum ... I got my motorcycle ... A friend whose father had died left with me (for) Wum ... As I rode ... through Nyos I didn't see any sign of any living thing ... (When I got to Wum), I was unable to walk, even to talk ... my body was completely weak.

The whole CCS idea is utterly insane.

[StAnDeliver]

Welkommen du PIF. The man in the white scarf laughing his head off is Sheik Derbooty.

[Honest Nigerian]

The majority of EV buyers are NOT the kind of consumer/s that keep a vehicle for 100,000 miles. So the battery swap-out downside is not likely to be something to dissuade Tesla buyers.