With rival BMW warming up to the idea of turbocharging in a big way, Mercedes-Benz is poised to embrace the technology across its entire line. “We will go turbocharging across the board on gasoline engines,” R&D boss Dr. Thomas Weber told Leftlane in an interview last week. “Even the next A-Class generation will get a turbo engine.” But that’s not all — we questioned Weber on a variety of issues, and got some very interesting responses.

Mercedes-Benz will spend an astonishing 14 billion euros in the next two years in an attempt to go from zero to hero in environmentally friendly cars. Admitting it is playing “catch up” after years of profiting from high-horsepower sedans and SUVs, Benz now acknowledges it has been caught on the hop by booming oil prices and shrinking V8 sales.

What’s on the immediate horizon for Mercedes in terms of becoming more environmentally friendly and having cheaper cars to run?

“Everybody knows [gas prices] will never go back and that we are running out of oil. We just need to know if and where the prices will stabilize. Technology that was not economical 10 years ago — the calculations are completely different today.”

“By 2010 we will have fuel-cell B-Classes on sale and by September this year we will have the S400 Hybrid on sale, too. The battery is the key. Lithium-ion technology offers a lot of advantages and we will be the first car maker on sale with one. We have 25 patents on it.”

“The current generation smart will get the lithium battery in a full electric car in large numbers.”

All this technology is well and good, but your cars, on average, are 300-400kg heavier than they were 20 years ago. If cars keep getting heavier, isn’t that a bit self-defeating?

“We have to reduce weight, we have to keep the length of the vehicle to the numbers we have today. We have set up a clear strategic target of five percent weight reduction, successor to successor, before each new generation of Mercedes-Benz will be approved.”

“It used to be that they got five-to-six percent heavier.”

“We are the world’s largest aluminium user with the E-Class (its panels are aluminium), but we don’t have a 100 percent aluminium structure. Those that have it today have it for marketing reasons, not for any benefit. If you look to the potential of steel and tailor-welded blanks, we have to fight for a mix of the most intelligent materials on the market. Steel still has a lot to offer.”

Okay, just say that I’m taken in by this new environmental earnestness. But I still remember the R-Class…

We need to look to the overall trend and, today, a lot of customers like crossovers. I believe we made some mistakes during the launch of the current R-Class and one important question is the future of SUVs. Do they have one? The only question is do we need them in the long run and what are the future trends?”

There was a time when Benz was determined to be first to market with any new technology, but you’ve lost that, haven’t you?

“It’s important that we decide the key technology fields where we want to have a leading position. It will not be possible for a brand to have a leading position in every field. That was our strategy before, but now we have to understand what are the inventions that add value to the customer.”

But this awareness of your environmental shortcomings isn’t the first time you’ve been caught short lately, is it? There was the E-Class…

“We will never damage quality to introduce something to be first. We had a problem with the E-Class and it was a disaster. We will never ever put the brand at risk like this again.”

Fuel cells have taken a while to mature. Where are you at with them?

“We are in a leading position and I expect that some of our competitors have to manage earnings, innovation and complexity in a way that doesn’t apply to us. The real question is: who will be strong enough to bring the important fields up to the buyer?” (Above Weber noted a fuel-cell B-Class will launch in 2010).

There is a lot of talk about the cost of developing hybrids and fuel cells and there’s also a lot of talk about Mercedes doing an engine deal with Aston Martin after 2012. If you’re the leaders, will you license out the technology?

“Why not license the drive-train technology for hybrids or fuel cells?”

“Aston? Why not? To do something in co-operation is a clever strategy. It gives someone else to offset your research and it helps develop faster.”

So, that all works out for fuel savings, but what about your performance models?

“If you are talking about future types of sports cars, we are finding another way. There are competitors working with similar principals to our Diesotto, with variable combustion, turbocharging, direct injection, variable compression and self-combustion.”

“We believe we are in good shape to be first on the market with this technology and we believe the potential is huge.”

Interview by Michael Taylor.