Daimler has taken another organizational step on the way to the joint venture around commercial vehicle fuel cells with Volvo Trucks: All of the Group's fuel cell activities are now bundled in the newly founded Daimler Truck Fuel Cell GmbH & Co. KG.


Andreas Gorbach (45) and Christian Mohrdieck (60) are appointed managing directors of the new company, as Daimler announced in a message. In April, Daimler Trucks and the Volvo Group entered into a preliminary, non-binding agreement to establish a new joint venture for the development, production and marketing of fuel cell systems for use in heavy commercial vehicles, among others. The future focus on fuel cells on commercial vehicles is synonymous with the end of FCEV in the Daimler car segment, the Mercedes GLC F-Cell.

The now founded Daimler Truck Fuel Cell GmbH & Co.KG is initially intended to bundle all group-wide fuel cell activities, including the previous Mercedes-Benz Fuel Cell GmbH. The company is later to merge into the planned joint venture. The Volvo Group will acquire 50 percent of the company for this, said Daimler.

However, with "later" the group remains vague when the joint venture is possible: All potential transactions are subject to examination and approval by the responsible competition authorities. The declared goal of the two groups is "to mass-produce heavy fuel cell commercial vehicles for demanding and heavy long-distance traffic" in the second half of the decade.

Martin Daum, member of the Daimler Group Management Board and Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck AG, describes the new subsidiary as "the immediate predecessor organization of the joint venture". “We will now bundle the great expertise and enormous wealth of experience from several decades of development around the fuel cell at Daimler - and combine it with the right know-how when it comes to trucks,” says Daum.

The two managing directors of Daimler Truck Fuel Cell are already working on the topic of fuel cells. Mohrdieck is currently the managing director of Mercedes-Benz Fuel Cell GmbH and has headed fuel cell development in the Daimler Group since 2003. Gorbach has been responsible for all fuel cell issues at Daimler Truck AG since May.

However, what the management of the joint venture will look like after the merger with Volvo Trucks is not yet known.


daimler.com