Zetsche believes picking the right time to join the e-mobility movement is a lot like choosing the right time to get to a party: “Whoever arrives too early is alone on the dance floor. Whoever comes too late may have already missed the best part,” Zetsche said.
Daimler doesn’t plan to launch the production version of the Generation EQ concept until the end of the decade because electric vehicles currently account for less than 1 percent of Europe’s car sales.
For Zetsche, whose company once owned a 10 percent stake in Tesla, the more important year is 2025. By then, the Daimler CEO – who holds a degree in electrical engineering – believes that battery costs will drop to 100 euros per kilowatt hour, or one-third what it was in 2012 when the Tesla Model S debuted.