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Daimler boss says fuel cell vehicles will be disappointing for at least 10 years

Daimler AG CEO Dieter Zetsche is pretty confident about the imminence of self-driving cars. Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles? Not so much. He didn't even get into the possibility of self-driving fuel-cell vehicles, but we're okay taking future technologies one at a time. Zetsche, in an interview from the Detroit Auto Show last week, said the automotive industry is about a decade away from avoiding disappointing experiences with production fuel-cell vehicles, In Auto News says. Zetsche was quick to note that the Mercedes-Benz parent entered into a fuel-cell partnership with Ford and Nissan early last year in an effort to split costs and speed things along, with the expectation that the group would develop something together by 2017, but even that won't be able to smooth things out fully. Toyota and Hyundai have said they'd have their own production vehicles on the road sooner than that. Multi-corporation-partnerships notwithstanding, Zetsche bemoaned the high costs, lack of vehicle volume and minimal refueling infrastructure as the proverbial roadblocks to more rapid development and adoption of fuel-cell vehicles. As it is, the US has just 10 publicly accessible hydrogen refueling stations, eight of which are in Southern California, according to the US Department of Energy. As for autonomous automobiles, Zetsche was more upbeat. Daimler already has what it calls the "Distronic" cruise control system that includes an automatic braking feature and has successfully driven a car 60 miles with "with relatively modest adjustments to the existing onboard technology." Featured Gallery Mercedes-Benz F-Cell View 9 Photos News Source: In Auto News Green Mercedes-Benz Hydrogen Cars

Mercedes-AMG considering turbo fours, hybrid sixes for future performance sedans

Think of the letters AMG and you'll probably end up picturing a performance sedan with a big V8. Such has become, after all, the Mercedes turning division's calling card. But with the introduction of its 2.0-liter turbo four, AMG is working at turning that notion on its head.
The highly potent engine produces 355 horsepower and is presently installed in the A45 AMG hatchback, CLA45 AMG sedan and GLA45 AMG crossover, giving Benz's smallest family a full range of performance models. But that might not be the full extent of the high-strung four-pot's use.
Speaking with AMG boss Tobias Moers, Britain's What Car? magazine reports that Affalterbach is considering slotting the same engine into larger models, particularly performance sedans like the C-Class. As we recently reported, Mercedes is already preparing to up the power from the turbo V6 in the C400 to slot a C450 Sport in below the C63 AMG. The C450 is expected to offer around 367 horsepower where the CLA45 AMG et al pack 355, but the lighter weight of the four-cylinder engine would likely offset the truancy of those extra dozen horses. Of course such a prospect would be much further down the pipeline than the C450 Sport which is expected to arrive much sooner.

Mercedes has already booked 30k orders for new S-Class

When Toyota snags 30,000 Corolla orders over a three-month span, it's entirely possible we're in the midst of a global economic collapse and that the end is nigh. That's because the scale for Toyota is so very large. Mercedes-Benz, on the other hand, operates on a much smaller scale, particularly when we talk about its higher-end models, like the S-Class.
In 2012, Mercedes sold 65,000 of its flagship sedans in Germany and the EU. That's 178 units per day, for 365 days. Based on that, you can imagine the excitement at Stuttgart when it accepted 30,000 orders for the new S-Class in just three months. That's an average of 333 per day on a continent with a notoriously shaky economy. Now, admittedly, this enthusiasm could wane as the refitted S-Class becomes more common and Mercedes achieves market saturation in Europe's many chauffeur and livery services, but Mercedes isn't choosing to look at it that way.
"The new S-Class has already jumped back into the lead in terms of new vehicle registrations in Germany and its neighboring European countries," Mercedes-Benz head of sales and marketing, Ola Kaellenius, said in a statement last week.