Mercedes' CEO Took a Reporter for a Drive — And Then His Own Car Interrupted the Interview
Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius personally demonstrated the brand's newest EV to reporters in Finland, offering a glimpse into how the automaker is balancing electrification with the emotional driving experience longtime fans expect.
Image source : Autocar
Ola Källenius flew from Stuttgart to Helsinki just to make a point in person.
Mercedes-Benz's CEO personally attended the launch event for the automaker's newest electric model in Finland this week, spending 20 minutes fielding questions from a pack of reporters before doing something unusual for a company boss — taking a journalist on a private 45-minute drive through the Finnish countryside himself, determined to show off exactly what the car could do.
Speaking with Autocar during the drive, Källenius described the electric vehicle's on-road manners in terms that sounded almost nostalgic for a company betting heavily on an electric future. "It's nice and quiet and feels more like an E-Class," he said, cruising at around 50 mph. He went on to make a point about the car's composure at higher speeds too — comparing the sensation at 50 mph to what a driver would feel doing 124 mph on the German autobahn.
The interview took an unexpectedly surreal turn moments later. Before Källenius could finish making his point, the car itself interrupted him — its onboard voice assistant chiming in unprompted with a line about how driving at high speeds on the autobahn "can be exhilarating." It was, by Källenius's own account, the first time his own vehicle had cut him off mid-sentence during a press interview.
Beyond the moment of comic timing, the episode captures something Mercedes has been trying to communicate more broadly about its EV strategy: the balance between adding heavy digital and software capability to its cars while still preserving the driving character longtime Mercedes buyers expect.
Källenius, who has previously described himself as something of a "petrol head" despite steering the company hard toward electrification, has talked in other recent interviews about not wanting the emotional side of driving to get lost in the transition. For enthusiasts specifically, he's pointed to an upcoming high-performance electric AMG model — one he's promised will be dramatic enough to "blow your mind" — as proof that going electric doesn't have to mean going quiet or characterless. Mercedes has also built in options for drivers who want their EV to sound more like a traditional V8 under acceleration, a nod to buyers not ready to fully let go of combustion-era theatrics.
The broader context matters here too. Mercedes has an unusually packed product calendar over the next two years, with executives describing it internally as one of the most intense stretches of new model launches in the company's history — a mix of new combustion and electric vehicles arriving side by side, rather than a hard, immediate switch to EV-only.
Whether that balancing act — quiet, composed, digitally capable cars that still manage to feel emotionally engaging behind the wheel — actually lands with longtime Mercedes buyers remains to be seen. But if Källenius's impromptu Finnish road trip is any indication, the company's leadership is clearly betting its own personal involvement can help make that case.
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