Mercedes-Benz sees itself as a luxury brand and wants to play a leading role in the digitization of automobiles. There is a lot of investment in this. In Swabia, a software factory is built next to car production. It is also a challenge for Tesla!

Sindelphingen – To take a leading role in automotive software, Mercedes-Benz is recruiting around 3,000 experts worldwide.

In Sindelfingen, southwest of Stuttgart, around 1,100 employees develop software, and there have already been around 700 new hires at this location alone, as Mercedes board member Markus Schäfer said at the opening of the development center on Friday. software there. The car manufacturer invested more than 200 million euros. Mercedes has been running a large car factory in Sindelfingen for a long time.

“We want to be at the forefront when it comes to vehicle software,” said Schäfer, who, as the so-called Chief Technology Officer, is responsible for development and purchasing. He cited the development of autonomous cars as an example.

According to Schäfer, new working time models were agreed with the works council for the software specialists in Sindelfingen. Experts are in high demand all over the world. For example, a developer might go home at noon and then come back later.

►Including new hires, Mercedes wants to have around 10,000 software specialists in the global network. Important places are also India, China and the US.

“The car is the most complicated product when it comes to software,” said Schäfer. The manufacturer relies on its own operating system MB.OS in this area.

The technical challenges of the coming years are the electrification and digitization of cars. According to the CEO, Ola Källenius, autonomous cars offer great potential. The manufacturer wants to enable highly automated driving in the series-production luxury sedans of the S-Class.