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DaimlerChrysler Corporation's Juergen Schrempp Calls Engineers to Action On New Energy for Future

19 June 2000

DaimlerChrysler Corporation's Juergen Schrempp Calls Engineers to Action On New Energy for Future

    HANOVER and STUTTGART, Germany - In just two years, DaimlerChrysler will 
become the world's first automaker to launch fuel cell vehicles on the market.  
That is the scheduled delivery date for new city buses equipped with fuel cell 
drives.  In the same year, DaimlerChrysler's plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama will 
start drawing power from a stationary fuel cell manufactured by the company's 
subsidiary MTU Friedrichshafen.  And the first fuel cell passenger cars will be 
ready to roll another two years after that.  These announcements were made by 
Juergen E. Schrempp, chairman of the DaimlerChrysler Board of Management, at 
World Engineers Day in Hanover on June 19, 2000.

    Schrempp views the fuel cell as the most promising of all alternative
drive systems.

    "The fuel cell boasts efficiency levels greater than those offered by the
combustion engine.  It can be used in both mobile and stationary applications,
can run on regenerative fuels and has the potential to become the drive of the
future," he said.  The company intends to invest around one billion dollars in
the development of this drive between now and 2004.

    In Schrempp's opinion, the energy issue is one of the central challenges
facing humanity, for the simple reason that energy offers the chance of
simultaneously providing the solution to other problems.  As examples, he
cited water, adequate quantities of which can be produced by desalination of
sea water (but only through the input of energy), as well as hunger and
protection of the environment and the climate.

    Schrempp quoted neutral observers, who have predicted a growing demand for
fossil fuels in the coming years, leading to continued increases in the price
of oil.  This would give rise to the danger that energy could become a luxury
item for the prosperous, deepening the division between rich and poor in the
world.

    Schrempp called on the roughly 3,300 participants at World Engineers Day
in Hanover and on engineers around the globe to organize themselves using the
Internet.  In this way, he said, they would be able to work on securing future
supplies of energy without regard to national boundaries.  In his speech,
Schrempp also dealt extensively with the current discussion, particularly in
the U.S., on the dangers inherent in technological progress.  One of the
leading promoters of this discussion is Bill Joy, chief engineer of the U.S.
software company Sun Microsystems.

    Schrempp pointed out that the estimation of future developments should not
be conducted on the basis of what will happen, but on the basis of what can
happen.  "The decisive factor is that one is well prepared and able to react
quickly to events," he said.  He distanced himself from the "two-camp theory"
as represented by the dispute between euphoric optimists and apocalyptic
pessimists.  Schrempp categorically pointed to the ability of human beings and
the ethically guided will of engineers to tackle the problems of the coming
decades in a manner that benefits human beings and the environment.