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There may be no such name as "Daimler" after February this year. According to media reports, Daimler will officially change its name to "Mercedes-Benz Group" from February 1 this year. The change is due to the company's desire to unleash shareholder value and focus more on the electrification transformation of the automotive industry, and this will be the third time in its history that the company has changed its name.

Ola Kallenius, Daimler's chief executive, is seeking a higher valuation for the luxury carmaker to cope with the electrification of the car industry, Reuters reported. Tom Narayan, European automotive analyst at Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets, said: "after this name change, investors may start to see Mercedes-Benz as an electric carmaker, a competitor to Tesla or Lucid Motors, but Tesla or Lucid start with 100% pure electric, and Mercedes-Benz must shift its existing internal combustion engine business to electric vehicles, which may be a restriction on Mercedes-Benz's recent increase in price-to-earnings ratios."

According to the automotive industry's focus on access to information, Daimler's board of directors and supervisory board had decided in February 2021 to make a fundamental adjustment to the group structure and planned to list Daimler trucks independently. Since then, the company has the idea of changing its name to "Mercedes-Benz", with the renaming of the group meaning that it will become a more flexible independent department and more focused on electrification transformation. On December 10, 2021, Daimler trucks were also officially listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Reviewing the history of Daimler's renaming, the renaming is the third major change in Daimler's history and the latest in a series of restructuring of the company. It is understood that the Mercedes brand was named after the daughter of an automobile entrepreneur and was officially adopted by Daimler in 1902.

The company was founded in 1926 as Daimler-Benz. Its first name change was the formation of DaimlerChrysler (DaimlerChrysler) from 1998 to 2007, and the second was the sale of Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management in 2007, turning it into Daimler AG (Daimler AG).

According to public information, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, Daimler AG is the world's largest commercial vehicle manufacturer, the first largest luxury car manufacturer and the second largest truck manufacturer in the world. Daimler AG includes four major business units: Mercedes-Benz, Mercedes-Benz light commercial vehicles, Daimler trucks and Daimler financial services. In 2013, Daimler bought Beijing Automobile, a Hong Kong-listed company of BAIC, and has since become a member of Beijing Automotive's board of directors. In July 2019, BAIC invested in Daimler AG to become the third largest shareholder of the latter. At that time, Daimler's largest shareholder was Geely, with 9.69% of the shares. In February 2018, Geely Group became Daimler's largest shareholder, and then in March 2019, Geely and Daimler announced a joint venture in China, each with a 50% stake, to jointly operate and promote the transformation of the smart brand around the world, turning smart into an electric smart car brand and manufacturing in a new factory in China, which is expected to launch and sell globally this year. But after BAIC became Daimler's third shareholder in 2019, analysts pointed out that BAIC would overtake Geely's shareholdings. On December 13 last year, BAIC announced that it would increase its stake in Daimler to 9.98%. The move also makes it the largest shareholder in Daimler.

In terms of sales volume, due to the global shortage of semiconductors, 2.4 million new Mercedes-Benz passenger cars and light commercial vehicles were delivered worldwide in 2021, of which 758863 were delivered in China.

For this year's domestic market product planning, Mercedes-Benz will launch 21 new products this year, including 8 pure electric and plug-in hybrid models. By the end of 2021, Mercedes-Benz will introduce four pure electric models in China, including EQA, EQB, EQC and EQS, of which EQA (365800 yuan), EQB (437800 yuan) and EQC (49.98-579800 yuan) have been put into production in China. In addition, on December 17 last year, Mercedes-Benz officially announced the price of its all-electric large car in China. The price range is 107.96-1.5186 million yuan, the new car has launched two power versions of four models, positioning Taiwan large pure electric sedan, is expected to be officially put on sale this year. The new EQE, Mercedes-EQ's first pure electric car produced in China based on the EVA platform, is also expected to be made in China by the end of this year.

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