21 April 2023

Thank you for forwarding the article “Dirty metals for clean cars: Indonesian nickel could be key to EV battery industry” that we have read with interest.

With regard to your query, please find our response in the following:

• Mercedes-Benz is currently not intending to source Nickel directly from Indonesia, but is monitoring the worldwide market situation.
• In the case of a potential consideration of direct sourcing from Indonesia in the future, the Responsible Sourcing Standards would be taken into consideration accordingly.
• With regard to Nickel in Mercedes-Benz’ production material supply chains, the raw material supply chain is currently being assessed in the framework of Mercedes-Benz’ raw material assessments.
  • Increasing transparency along the raw material supply chains – especially with regard to certain key components such as battery cells. To this end, MercedesBenz AG contacts the suppliers of the relevant components, for example, and asks them to disclose their structure of subcontractors.
  • Identification of risk hotspots in these supply chains, e.g. on the basis of the specific risks in the individual mining countries.
  • Definition and implementation of measures for the risk hotspots and review of whether they are effective over the long term.
• The Mercedes-Benz Group publishes the results of these assessments in its MercedesBenz Raw Materials Report.