Susanne Hahn (44) saw a bad end. In December 2019, she fought once again on the Daimler Board of Management to maintain her unit, the start-up machine Lab1886. But no chance: Your already reduced 50-million-euro budget was canceled, the rest of the group was forbidden to give further orders to the four offices in Stuttgart, Berlin, Atlanta and Beijing. The 150 employees were bored.
Hahn’s plans for the future fell victim to the new strategy of CEO Ola Källenius (51): focus on core business, There are hardly any plans to invest in vague future hopes. The lab’s best-known product, the loss-making car sharing provider Car2go, has since been merged and stripped down.
“The lab was too expensive,” says a Daimler insider. Källenius did not want to soundlessly stifle the Lab, which was celebrated by predecessor Dieter Zetsche (67). It was important to save face: “The idea should somehow be preserved and the defeat should not become too visible.”