Daimler Sustainability Report 2010 - Daimler Sustainability Report ...

CO2 emissions can be prevented during cultivation, production,
and use. BTL fuels can be used in all diesel passenger
cars and commercial vehicles without any need
for retrofitting. q D
Hydrogen and electricity: the fuels of the future.
Electric vehicles with batteries and fuel cells offer CO2neutral
mobility, as long as the electricity and hydrogen
needed comes from renewable sources of energy. In
addition, widespread use will require the creation of a
suitable infrastructure of filling stations and charging
points. These goals will not be achievable without cooperation
between political decision-makers, the oil industry,
the energy sector, and further potential investors.
Daimler is playing an active role in these proceedings,
for example by participating in cooperative projects
such as the Clean Energy Partnership (CEP) in Europe.
Since September 2009 the company has been active
as a partner in the H2 Mobility initiative, which is studying
possibilities for the creation of a sufficiently extensive
infrastructure for the supply of hydrogen in Germany.
2.3 Environmentally responsible product development.
A product’s environmental impact is already
largely defined during the early development phase.
The earlier that environmentally compatible product
development (Design for Environment, DfE) is integrated
into the development process, the greater the benefits
in terms of minimizing environmental impacts will be.
Later corrections to product design are only possible
at great cost and effort. This is why the continual
improvement of the environmental compatibility of
Daimler vehicles are already part of our development
specifications.
Serving as a cross-divisional team, the Group’s DfE
experts are involved in all stages of the vehicle development
process. Their job is to evaluate all new component
and vehicle concepts as part of a comprehensive
audit.
Methodology of a comprehensive audit. The extent to
which a vehicle’s environmental compatibility has been
improved is ultimately defined by the amount by which
vehicle emissions and resource consumption have been
reduced during its entire lifecycle. Environmentally
responsible product development begins with the selection
of suitable raw materials and ends with recyclingfriendly
design and production processes. These make it
possible to reuse or recycle used components at a later
stage. Thanks to appropriate disassembly and recycling
concepts, Daimler is now forced to dispose of fewer and
fewer parts from end-of-life passenger cars and commercial
vehicles. We closely examine more than 40,000
individual processes. The resulting analyses, calculations,
and assessments are used to draw up a comprehensive
ecological profile. q E
Environmental protection,
innovation, and safety
Environmentally responsible car development. The
requirements of an ecologically oriented product development
process are specified in the ISO 14062 standard.
In 2005 the Mercedes-Benz S-Class became
the world’s first automobile to receive a TÜV environmental
certificate for fulfilling this standard. The environmental
certificate has now also been granted to
the C-Class, the C-Class station wagon, the updated
A-Class and B-Class, the GLK, the new E-Class, and the
S 400 HYBRID, thus confirming that these products
were developed in line with high environmental standards
and have made great progress compared to their
predecessors and comparable models. q F
2.4 Safety. Vehicle safety is one of our core areas of
expertise and a key component of our product strategy.
For more than 60 years, Daimler’s developments have
been leading the way when it comes to passive and active
vehicle safety in passenger cars, trucks, vans, and
buses. No other manufacturer worldwide invests more
in the development of life-saving safety systems. Daimler
regards its commitment to enhancing road safety as
a responsibility toward society that is in the interest of
all road users. We are therefore consistently pursuing
our “Vision of Accident-free Driving” and gradually turning
it into reality. These efforts also serve to support the
European Union’s goal to cut the number of road fatalities
in half in the period between 2001 and 2010, despite
the drastic increase in traffic volumes.
Daimler defines safety as a holistic goal that involves
much more than meeting legal requirements and successfully
completing standardized crash tests. Our integral
safety concept encompasses all vehicle-related
aspects and focuses on four phases:
1. Drive safely: Avoid danger, provide plenty of
warning and assist.
2. In case of danger: Take preventive action with
PRE-SAFE ® .
3. In case of accident: Provide suitable protection for
the situation in hand.
4. After an accident: Prevent a deterioriation of the
situation and offer fast assistance.
Drive safely: Avoid danger, provide plenty of
warning and assist.Preventing accidents is the overriding
goal of our safety philosophy. Active safety systems
like ESP ® and Brake Assist have already been making
important contributions to enhanced road safety for
years. The new fatigue-detection system ATTENTION
ASSIST uses sensors to continuously monitor the driver’s
behavior behind the wheel, recognizing typical indicators
of fatigue and giving the driver an appropriate
warning. The DISTRONIC PLUS proximity control system
uses radar to enable the driver to keep his or her car at a
predefined distance from the vehicle up ahead. Depending
on the specific situation, the cruise control can
q
More about electric drives:
Online 306
33
q B
The well-to-wheel assessment of the
energy efficiency of passenger vehicle
drives:
Online 307
q
C
More about Daimler’s fuel road map:
Online 308
q
D
More about second-generation
biofuels:
Online 309
q
A
E
Information regarding the
environmental profile of the
Mercedes-Benz E-Class:
Online 310
q F
Information on the Mercedes-Benz
models with an environmental
certificate:
Online 311
q
For further information, please enter
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