BERLIN, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- German carmaker Daimler would like to encourage its suppliers to become climate neutral, chief executive officer (CEO) Ola Kaellenius announced on Tuesday.
"This will become an award criterion," he said at the International Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt.
Kaellenius noted that many of Daimler's partners had "already recognized" the issue of climate neutrality and were moving in the right direction.
Daimler is also planning for its own factories to be climate neutral by 2022. Kaellenius said that Daimler would compensate for any remaining carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions through offsets.
"The transformation of our company is in full swing," he stated while presenting new electric vehicle models for Daimler's luxury car brand, Mercedes-Benz.
Mercedes-Benz aims to transform its passenger cars into "a carbon-neutral product range as of 2039," according to an announcement made by the Stuttgart-based carmaker on Tuesday.
Mercedes-Benz has launched a "sustainability partnership" with Farasis Energy (Ganzhou), a developer and supplier of lithium-ion batteries, which would provide the German carmaker with sustainably produced battery cells.
The German carmaker noted that Farasis Energy produced its battery cells using electricity from renewable sources.
"We will save well over 30 percent of the carbon footprint of future vehicle models' entire battery," said Markus Schaefer, Daimler AG's board member responsible for Mercedes-Benz car development.
A carbon-neutral production site for the sustainably produced battery cells was "currently being planned" in Germany, and other locations in China and the United States were scheduled to follow, Mercedes-Benz announced.
The next step would be for the German luxury car brand to review its "upstream materials supply chain" and to make CO2 reduction targets a "key criterion" for supplier decisions and contracts.
Daimler CEO Kaellenius emphasized that the German carmaker was "well on its way" to meeting the European Union's carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction limits for passenger cars by 2021.
However, he noted that Daimler "cannot determine what vehicles customers end up buying" and "cannot rule out the possibility that we will not be in line with our targets."
