Cl63 Amg Designo Performance Pkg Loaded And Custom Full Warranty on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Mercedes-Benz starts internship program for refugees

Mercedes-Benz has started a new internship program for refugees in Germany, which offers participants work training and German language lessons over the course of fourteen weeks. Its aim is to help refugees and asylum seekers integrate into the German workforce, but not necessarily at the automaker. The "bridge intern" program is a joint effort between Daimler and the German government's Federal Employment Agency. It starts each day on the early shift at 6:00 a.m. with three and a half hours of work in areas like axle production and logistics. That's followed by another three and a half hours of language courses where they learn to converse in German in 10-person groups, which includes help with writing letters for job applications and other critical employment skills. Germany has been flooded recently with refugees and asylum seekers. Many of them have been coming in from the war zone in Syria. However the program also welcomes refugees from other Central Asian and African countries, including Afghanistan, Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria, and Pakistan. The program is open to participants between the ages of 20 and 51. "The best way for people to integrate is at the workplace," said Michael Brecht, chairman of Daimler's General Works Council. "Doing things together creates understanding for one another. That is why we are delighted that many colleagues have expressed a willingness to mentor the 'bridge interns'." In the statement below, Brecht stresses that the internship participants "are not in competition with temporary agency workers or our core workforce. This program does not put anybody at a disadvantage." The first six weeks of the program are financed by the Federal Employment Agency, but after that, Daimler foots the bull for another eight weeks, paying the interns the standard minimum wage. The first such program has already started at the Unterurkheim plant in Stuttgart, and is set to be followed by other similar programs at additional locations. 40 refugees start 'bridge internships' at Daimler Stuttgart, Nov 09, 2015 - Participants from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria - Fourteen-week internship in cooperation with the German Federal Employment Agency - Daimler qualifies refugees for the German labor market - Internships for several hundred more refugees are planned at other company locations Forty refugees and asylum seekers have started a so-called 'bridge internship' at Daimler.

Mercedes could make EV batteries with Audi, BMW

It's not a big leap from digital maps to batteries, it turns out.The head of Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler said recently that he envisions his company working together with German automotive competitors BMW and Volkswagen to further accelerate electric-vehicle battery technology. The three automakers recently worked together to enhance their in-car maps systems. Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche talked about "commonalities" between automakers, not the least of which is the need for all of them to achieve increasingly stringent fuel-economy requirements in the European Union, at the Frankfurt Auto Show last week, according to Reuters. While these companies have made their own inroads as far as plug-in vehicles go, they are all behind the Renault-Nissan Alliance when it comes to public deployment of electric vehicles. This summer, Daimler, Audi and BMW hooked up to acquire the Nokia Here digital-mapping service for about $2.8 billion. The triad of automakers beat out companies such as Apple and Uber to buy the entity, which was founded in 1986 as Navteq. Nokia bought the company in 2007. The acquisition makes sense as the automakers work on improving their products with features like cloud-based data to warn drivers of icy roads and traffic jams. The technology will likely also eventually be used in autonomous vehicles. Automakers working together for a common goal of improved technology is nothing new, of course. General Motors and Honda agreed in 2013 to work together to accelerate hydrogen fuel-cell drivetrain development. Earlier that same year, Daimler said it would work with Ford and Nissan in a separate collaboration to speed up the development of hydrogen fuel-cell technology. Related Video:

Pre-Race notes from the 2015 Nurburgring 24-Hours

Autoblog has come to the German countryside to watch the Nurburgring 24-Hour race, and just one day in, we have to say it's outstanding. Le Mans has been the highlight of our summer racing schedule for the past few years, the 'Ring 24-Hour event being the appetizer we always skipped. Earlier this year, however, while visiting Miami to check out the Cigarette Racing 50 Marauder GT S, we met Scott Preacher. He oversees digital marketing for both Cigarette and AMG during the week, then comes to Germany to compete in the VLN race series on the weekends, driving an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 for Team Mathol. If Le Mans is the Oscars of endurance racing, the Nurburgring 24-Hour race is the Screen Actors Guild award – the one voted on by the actors, for the actors. In this case it's the race by the teams and fans, for the teams and fans, even though the increasing manufacturer presence has altered the team equation. We were told that it wasn't so long ago that true privateers could win the overall, but that's not really the case anymore. Front-running teams have heavy factory involvement – Audi Sport Team Phoenix, for instance, which finished in first and third last year, has its own 'Ring race center and is running the 2016 R8; Aston Martin is represented by Aston Martin Racing and Aston Martin Test Center, and Bentley has a Bentley Motors team and uses HPT to run another team. The fan component hasn't changed, though, and you can't talk about the race for more than 60 seconds before someone brings up the battalions of spectators. Every driver we spoke to cited them as the most incredible part of this race after the track itself. It feels to us like a giant German Sebring, with thousands of people camped out in the ginormous, forested infield, many of whom have been here since Monday erecting their ornate camping compounds. There will be parties everywhere Saturday night, and so much bratwurst on the grill that the drivers can smell it when as they're blasting full speed through Wehrseifen. Even when we drove a Mercedes S63 AMG Coupe on a lap before the race, the fans waved like it was a competition. Scott Preacher's Australian co-driver Robert Thompson said, "You come around a corner and it's like you're driving full speed through the middle of a carnival." The race field itself could also be called a carnival, with an officially invited field of more than 170 cars. Even on a track that's 24.4-km long, that's like racing on the 405 at midday.