Mercedes-Benz Launches New R&D Center in Shanghai

German luxury automotive brand Mercedes-Benz announced on Friday that it has opened a new R&D center in Shanghai that will specialize in mobile technologies such as interconnection and autonomous driving. This facility is its second such R&D institution in China.

The company said in January that last year, due to the global shortage of semiconductors, the company’s passenger cars and light commercial vehicles were delivered for a total of more than 2.4 million units worldwide. Among these, 758,863 new cars were delivered to Chinese customers.

As early as 2005, Stuttgart-based German company Daimler AG started the local R&D process in China, with the Mercedes-Benz E-Class being put into production as the first domestic model. In 2009, Daimler opened an advanced design center in China, which currently includes three teams, namely interior design, exterior design and user interface design.

In 2014, Mercedes-Benz’s passenger vehicle R&D center in Beijing was formally launched, becoming Daimler’s most comprehensive R&D institution outside Germany. It is mainly responsible for recruiting and training top local talent and obtaining insight regarding the Chinese market.

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On October 20, 2021, the all-new “R&D Tech Center China” was officially opened in Beijing by Daimler AG. This new center was located in the Yizhuang Economic and Technological Development Zone, Daxing district, Beijing, with a total construction area of 55,000 square meters. The center can accommodate about 1,000 R&D employees with a total investment of 1.1 billion yuan ($173 million), further strengthening the company’s R&D layout and technological ability in the world’s largest automobile market.

In 2022, Mercedes-Benz will launch 21 new models for the Chinese market, including eight pure electric and plug-in hybrid models.