Ola Kallenius, CEO of Daimler AG and global president of Mercedes-Benz Cars, warned at a press conference ahead of the Munich Auto show on Sunday that the global semiconductor shortage may not disappear completely next year and may not be resolved until 2023.

"Several chip suppliers have mentioned structural demand issues," Kalenius said. "This is likely to continue until 2022, and [the situation] may ease by 2023."

Daimler recently cut its annual sales forecast for its automotive division, expecting deliveries to be roughly in line with 2020, rather than rising significantly.

Carmakers such as General Motors of the US, India's Mahindra and Japan's Toyota have cut their production and sales forecasts due to a shortage of chips, while Asia's main semiconductor production centres have been slow to recover from the impact of the pandemic.

This quarter, a considerable number of factories in Malaysia temporarily closed due to the epidemic control. Malaysia has become one of the world's major chip testing and packaging centers in recent years, and Infineon, NXP Semiconductors and ST all have operational plants in the country, which further increases the pressure on Daimler to supply semiconductors.

Kalenius said on Sunday that tight supply and demand for chips could begin to ease in the fourth quarter of this year, but he expects "structural" demand issues to affect the industry through 2022. Japanese chipmakers that supply Toyota also forecast last month that the chip supply crunch could continue into next year.

Accelerated electrification

It is reported that Mercedes-Benz will show several all-electric cars at the Munich Motor Show.

These include the EQE, Mercedes-AMG's first all-electric luxury sedan, and a concept car that showcases Mercedes-Maybach's entry into the era of electric vehicles. The company will also introduce an all-electric SUV, the EQB, to the European market.

In July, Daimler said it would spend more than 40 billion euros ($47.5 billion) by 2030 to compete with Tesla in the all-electric car market, but warned that the technology shift would lead to some job cuts.

The German automaker said it will build eight battery factories in order to boost production of electric vehicles (EVs). From 2025 onwards, all newly released model architectures will be pure level stations, and each model will be available to customers in a pure electric version.

Kalenius also said Sunday that the company's plan to spin off its truck subsidiary Daimler Trucks by the end of 2021 remains on track.