Mercedes-Benz technology chief Jörg Burzer has praised Chinese carmakers’ development speed and their close connection to customers, while maintaining that Mercedes can compete in China and Europe. His comments, reported by Australian publication Drive on 4 November, arrive as the company prepares PLM.AI, a development programme intended to shorten the time needed to bring new products to production maturity by up to 30%.
The two developments have separate dates. Mercedes announced PLM.AI on 16 October, describing an investment of around €500 million and technology partnerships with CONTACT Software and Siemens. Its projected time savings are targets and potential benefits, rather than published proof that the entire Mercedes range already takes 30% less time to develop. No specific European customer launch date accompanies the programme announcement.
What Burzer sees in the Chinese competition
Speaking to Australian media including Drive, Burzer highlighted the pace of development, customer focus and connection with China’s technology ecosystem. He also expressed confidence in Mercedes’ ability to compete in both markets. His assessment does not establish a ranking of all Chinese and European cars, or a common development timetable applying to every Chinese manufacturer.
Burzer gave a narrower engineering example to explain where algorithms can save time. Preparing a calculation network for a simulated body crash, he said, could previously occupy an engineer for two to four weeks. An algorithm can perform that operation in two or three hours, according to his account. Those durations describe a preparation step, not the complete crash-validation programme of a production car.
That distinction matters when comparing a specific automated task with the wider 30% ambition. The interview illustrates an existing application of digital tools. PLM.AI is meant to connect information across functions so that decisions made in one area can be assessed against their consequences elsewhere. Mercedes is not presenting every example of automation as a newly introduced PLM.AI capability.
Connecting development with manufacturing and service
PLM stands for Product Lifecycle Management. Mercedes describes its new architecture as a common information foundation linking development, procurement, production, sales and after-sales. Standardised data models are intended to make information available across these activities and allow teams to identify engineering trade-offs earlier, rather than evaluate each change only within the department that proposed it.
The company says AI agents already support material-cost optimisation, certification and homologation, fault detection and resolution, and software development. These tools are currently used mainly in individual process steps. PLM.AI is intended to connect the applications through consistent development data and shared standards, making coordination less dependent on separate information structures.
Mercedes uses component weight reduction to explain the proposed benefits. Altering one part can affect costs, crash behaviour, hardware and software functions, and production processes. Specialised agents are intended to analyse these relationships simultaneously. Engineers would receive a broader picture sooner and compare solutions with safety, quality and commercial consequences in view. Product decisions remain the responsibility of the teams.
Three percentages with different meanings
The headline figure of up to 30% concerns development time and bringing technologies to series maturity. A separate estimate of up to 50% efficiency improvement applies to individual engineering processes. Mercedes does not say that the total cost of every vehicle programme will fall by half, or that assembly lines will produce cars twice as quickly.
A further estimate concerns physical testing. Over time, AI-supported simulation and digital development could reduce the need for physical tests by half, according to the announcement. Mercedes describes more targeted testing, while maintaining its quality and safety standards. The release does not announce the removal of validation or provide an independent audit demonstrating that all of these projected benefits have already been achieved.
CONTACT Software supplies the open PLM core through CONTACT Elements, supporting the integration of product data, processes and applications. Siemens contributes automotive design, simulation and digital validation capabilities for the digital twin. Mercedes defines the target architecture, data models and governance, leads global implementation, and says it retains ownership and control of its data and the AI models developed from it.
The China sales figures belong to the correct period
The commercial pressure is documented in Mercedes’ interim report at 30 September 2026. Mercedes-Benz Cars sold 297,037 vehicles in China in the first nine months, compared with 418,305 in January–September 2025, a reported decline of 29%. The China figure includes sales of associated company Beijing Benz Automotive Co., Ltd., accounted for using the equity method.
Worldwide Cars unit sales were 1,244,427 in the first nine months of 2026, against 1,341,427 a year earlier, down 7% in the report’s rounded presentation. These are passenger-car division figures, not a combined total including Mercedes-Benz Vans. The report points to difficult conditions in China and model-change effects; the figures do not measure how much of the decline is caused specifically by competitors’ development speed.
For buyers, PLM.AI does not establish an automatic price reduction or a shorter delivery time for an existing order. Its target concerns product development before market introduction. Mercedes has not identified in this announcement the first vehicle to complete the entire new process, or a market-by-market launch schedule for products developed through the architecture.
Illustration: Mercedes-Benz. Official PLM.AI press artwork for editorial use, converted to WebP.
