#daimler truck

[archaalen]

https://apnews.com/article/uaw-workers-daimler-strike-311a773c0a2a524839a30e17269a4758

United Auto Workers reaches deal with Daimler Truck, averting potential strike in North Carolina

[iims]

Pioneering Mobility: Daimler Truck's Influence

Learn about Daimler's role in shaping the future of commercial vehicles and mobility solutions in India.

[automobilefascination]

The worlds first transport Truck developed by mercedes

[xtruss]

Hydrogen Is the Future—or a Complete Mirage!

The green-hydrogen industry is a case study in the potential—for better and worse—of our new economic era.

— July 14, 2023 | Foreign Policy | By Adam Tooze

An employee of Air Liquide in front of an electrolyzer at the company's future hydrogen production facility of renewable hydrogen in Oberhausen, Germany, on May 2, 2023. Ina Fassbender/ AFP Via Getty Images

With the vast majority of the world’s governments committed to decarbonizing their economies in the next two generations, we are embarked on a voyage into the unknown. What was once an argument over carbon pricing and emissions trading has turned into an industrial policy race. Along the way there will be resistance and denial. There will also be breakthroughs and unexpected wins. The cost of solar and wind power has fallen spectacularly in the last 20 years. Battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs) have moved from fantasy to ubiquitous reality.

But alongside outright opposition and clear wins, we will also have to contend with situations that are murkier, with wishful thinking and motivated reasoning. As we search for technical solutions to the puzzle of decarbonization, we must beware the mirages of the energy transition.

On a desert trek a mirage can be fatal. Walk too far in the wrong direction, and there may be no way back. You succumb to exhaustion before you can find real water. On the other hand, if you don’t head toward what looks like an oasis, you cannot be sure that you will find another one in time.

Right now, we face a similar dilemma, a dilemma of huge proportions not with regard to H2O but one of its components, H2—hydrogen. Is hydrogen a key part of the world’s energy future or a dangerous fata morgana? It is a question on which tens of trillions of dollars in investment may end up hinging. And scale matters.

For decades, economists warned of the dangers of trying through industrial policy to pick winners. The risk is not just that you might fail, but that in doing so you incur costs. You commit real resources that foreclose other options. The lesson was once that we should leave it to the market. But that was a recipe for a less urgent time. The climate crisis gives us no time. We cannot avoid the challenge of choosing our energy future. As Chuck Sabel and David Victor argue in their important new book Fixing the Climate: Strategies for an Uncertain World, it is through local partnership and experimentation that we are most likely to find answers to these technical dilemmas. But, as the case of hydrogen demonstrates, we must beware the efforts of powerful vested interests to use radical technological visions to channel us toward what are in fact conservative and ruinously expensive options.

A green hydrogen plant built by Spanish company Iberdrola in Puertollano, Spain, on April 18, 2023. Valentine Bontemps/AFP Via Getty Images

In the energy future there are certain elements that seem clear. Electricity is going to play a much bigger role than ever before in our energy mix. But some very knotty problems remain. Can electricity suffice? How do you unleash the chemical reactions necessary to produce essential building blocks of modern life like fertilizer and cement without employing hydrocarbons and applying great heat? To smelt the 1.8 billion tons of steel we use every year, you need temperatures of almost 2,000 degrees Celsius. Can we get there without combustion? How do you power aircraft flying thousands of miles, tens of thousands of feet in the air? How do you propel giant container ships around the world? Electric motors and batteries can hardly suffice.

Hydrogen recommends itself as a solution because it burns very hot. And when it does, it releases only water. We know how to make hydrogen by running electric current through water. And we know how to generate electricity cleanly. Green hydrogen thus seems easily within reach. Alternatively, if hydrogen is manufactured using natural gas rather than electrolysis, the industrial facilities can be adapted to allow immediate, at-source CO2 capture. This kind of hydrogen is known as blue hydrogen.

Following this engineering logic, H2 is presented by its advocates as a Swiss army knife of the energy transition, a versatile adjunct to the basic strategy of electrifying everything. The question is whether H2 solutions, though they may be technically viable, make any sense from the point of view of the broader strategy of energy transition, or whether they might in fact be an expensive wrong turn.

Using hydrogen as an energy store is hugely inefficient. With current technology producing hydrogen from water by way of electrolysis consumes vastly more energy than will be stored and ultimately released by burning the hydrogen. Why not use the same electricity to generate the heat or drive a motor directly? The necessary electrolysis equipment is expensive. And though hydrogen may burn cleanly, as a fuel it is inconvenient because of its corrosive properties, its low energy per unit of volume, and its tendency to explode. Storing and moving hydrogen around will require huge investment in shipping facilities, pipelines, filling stations, or facilities to convert hydrogen into the more stable form of ammonia.

The kind of schemes pushed by hydrogen’s lobbyists foresee annual consumption rising by 2050 to more than 600 million tons per annum, compared to 100 million tons today. This would consume a huge share of green electricity production. In a scenario favored by the Hydrogen Council, of the United States’ 2,900 gigawatts of renewable energy production, 650 gigawatts would be consumed by hydrogen electrolysis. That is almost three times the total capacity of renewable power installed today.

The costs will be gigantic. The cost for a hydrogen build-out over coming decades could run into the tens of trillions of dollars. Added to which, to work as a system, the investment in hydrogen production, transport, and consumption will have to be undertaken simultaneously.

Little wonder, perhaps, that though the vision of the “hydrogen economy” as an integrated economic and technical system has been around for half a century, we have precious little actual experience with hydrogen fuel. Indeed, there is an entire cottage industry of hydrogen skeptics. The most vocal of these is Michael Liebreich, whose consultancy has popularized the so-called hydrogen ladder, designed to highlight how unrealistic many of them are. If one follows the Liebreich analysis, the vast majority of proposed hydrogen uses in transport and industrial heating are, in fact, unrealistic due to their sheer inefficiency. In each case there is an obvious alternative, most of them including the direct application of electricity.

Technicians work on the construction of a hydrogen bus at a plant in Albi, France, on March 4, 2021. Georges Gobet/AFP Via Getty Images

Nevertheless, in the last six years a huge coalition of national governments and industrial interests has assembled around the promise of a hydrogen-based economy.

The Hydrogen Council boasts corporate sponsors ranging from Airbus and Aramco to BMW, Daimler Truck, Honda, Toyota and Hyundai, Siemens, Shell, and Microsoft. The national governments of Japan, South Korea, the EU, the U.K., the U.S., and China all have hydrogen strategies. There are new project announcements regularly. Experimental shipments of ammonia have docked in Japan. The EU is planning an elaborate network of pipelines, known as the hydrogen backbone. All told, the Hydrogen Council counts $320 billion in hydrogen projects announced around the world.

Given the fact that many new uses of hydrogen are untested, and given the skepticism among many influential energy economists and engineers, it is reasonable to ask what motivates this wave of commitments to the hydrogen vision.

In technological terms, hydrogen may represent a shimmering image of possibility on a distant horizon, but in political economy terms, it has a more immediate role. It is a route through which existing fossil fuel interests can imagine a place for themselves in the new energy future. The presence of oil majors and energy companies in the ranks of the Hydrogen Council is not coincidental. Hydrogen enables natural gas suppliers to imagine that they can transition their facilities to green fuels. Makers of combustion engines and gas turbines can conceive of burning hydrogen instead. Storing hydrogen or ammonia like gas or oil promises a solution to the issues of intermittency in renewable power generation and may extend the life of gas turbine power stations. For governments around the world, a more familiar technology than one largely based on solar panels, windmills, and batteries is a way of calming nerves about the transformation they have notionally signed up for.

Looking at several key geographies in which hydrogen projects are currently being discussed offers a compound psychological portrait of the common moment of global uncertainty.

A worker at the Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field, a test facility that produces hydrogen from renewable energy, in Fukushima, Japan, on Feb. 15, 2023. Richard A. Brooks/AFP Via Getty Images

The first country to formulate a national hydrogen strategy was Japan. Japan has long pioneered exotic energy solutions. Since undersea pipelines to Japan are impractical, it was Japanese demand that gave life to the seaborne market for liquefied natural gas (LNG). What motivated the hydrogen turn in 2017 was a combination of post-Fukushima shock, perennial anxiety about energy security, and a long-standing commitment to hydrogen by key Japanese car manufacturers. Though Toyota, the world’s no. 1 car producer, pioneered the hybrid in the form of the ubiquitous Prius, it has been slow to commit to full electric. The same is true for the other East Asian car producers—Honda, Nissan, and South Korea’s Hyundai. In the face of fierce competition from cheap Chinese electric vehicles, they embrace a government commitment to hydrogen, which in the view of many experts concentrates on precisely the wrong areas i.e. transport and electricity generation, rather than industrial applications.

The prospect of a substantial East Asian import demand for hydrogen encourages the economists at the Hydrogen Council to imagine a global trade in hydrogen that essentially mirrors the existing oil and gas markets. These have historically centered on flows of hydrocarbons from key producing regions such as North Africa, the Middle East, and North America to importers in Europe and Asia. Fracked natural gas converted into LNG is following this same route. And it seems possible that hydrogen and ammonia derived from hydrogen may do the same.

CF Industries, the United States’ largest producer of ammonia, has finalized a deal to ship blue ammonia to Japan’s largest power utility for use alongside oil and gas in power generation. The CO2 storage that makes the ammonia blue rather than gray has been contracted between CF Industries and U.S. oil giant Exxon. A highly defensive strategy in Japan thus serves to provide a market for a conservative vision of the energy transition in the United Sates as well. Meanwhile, Saudi Aramco, by far the world’s largest oil company, is touting shipments of blue ammonia, which it hopes to deliver to Japan or East Asia. Though the cost in terms of energy content is the equivalent of around $250 per barrel of oil, Aramco hopes to ship 11 million tons of blue ammonia to world markets by 2030.

To get through the current gas crisis, EU nations have concluded LNG deals with both the Gulf states and the United States. Beyond LNG, it is also fully committed to the hydrogen bandwagon. And again, this follows a defensive logic. The aim is to use green or blue hydrogen or ammonia to find a new niche for European heavy industry, which is otherwise at risk of being entirely knocked out of world markets by high energy prices and Europe’s carbon levy.

The European steel industry today accounts for less than ten percent of global production. It is a leader in green innovation. And the world will need technological first-movers to shake up the fossil-fuel dependent incumbents, notably in China. But whether this justifies Europe’s enormous commitment to hydrogen is another question. It seems motivated more by the desire to hold up the process of deindustrialization and worries about working-class voters drifting into the arms of populists, than by a forward looking strategic calculus.

In the Netherlands, regions that have hitherto served as hubs for global natural gas trading are now competing for designation as Europe’s “hydrogen valley.” In June, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni inked the contract on the SoutH2 Corridor, a pipeline that will carry H2 up the Italian peninsula to Austria and southern Germany. Meanwhile, France has pushed Spain into agreeing to a subsea hydrogen connection rather than a natural gas pipeline over the Pyrenees. Spain and Portugal have ample LNG terminal capacity. But Spain’s solar and wind potential also make it Europe’s natural site for green hydrogen production and a “green hydrogen” pipe, regardless of its eventual uses, in the words of one commentator looks “less pharaonic and fossil-filled” than the original natural gas proposal.

A hydrogen-powered train is refilled by a mobile hydrogen filling station at the Siemens test site in Wegberg, Germany, on Sept. 9, 2022. Bernd/AFP Via Getty Images

How much hydrogen will actually be produced in Europe remains an open question. Proximity to the point of consumption and the low capital costs of investment in Europe speak in favor of local production. But one of the reasons that hydrogen projects appeal to European strategists is that they offer a new vision of European-African cooperation. Given demographic trends and migration pressure, Europe desperately needs to believe that it has a promising African strategy. Africa’s potential for renewable electricity generation is spectacular. Germany has recently entered into a hydrogen partnership with Namibia. But this raises new questions.

First and foremost, where will a largely desert country source the water for electrolysis? Secondly, will Namibia export only hydrogen, ammonia, or some of the industrial products made with the green inputs? It would be advantageous for Namibia to develop a heavy-chemicals and iron-smelting industry. But from Germany’s point of view, that might well defeat the object, which is precisely to provide affordable green energy with which to keep industrial jobs in Europe.

A variety of conservative motives thus converge in the hydrogen coalition. Most explicit of all is the case of post-Brexit Britain. Once a leader in the exit from coal, enabled by a “dash for gas” and offshore wind, the U.K. has recently hit an impasse. Hard-to-abate sectors like household heating, which in the U.K. is heavily dependent on natural gas, require massive investments in electrification, notably in heat pumps. These are expensive. In the United Kingdom, the beleaguered Tory government, which has presided over a decade of stagnating real incomes, is considering as an alternative the widespread introduction of hydrogen for domestic heating. Among energy experts this idea is widely regarded as an impractical boondoggle for the gas industry that defers the eventual and inevitable electrification at the expense of prolonged household emissions. But from the point of view of politics, it has the attraction that it costs relatively less per household to replace natural gas with hydrogen.

Employees work on the assembly line of fuel cell electric vehicles powered by hydrogen at a factory in Qingdao, Shandong province, China, on March 29, 2022. VCG Via Getty Images

As this brief tour suggests, there is every reason to fear that tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, vast amounts of political capital, and precious time are being invested in “green” energy investments, the main attraction of which is that they minimize change and perpetuate as far as possible the existing patterns of the hydrocarbon energy system. This is not greenwashing in the simple sense of rebadging or mislabeling. If carried through, it is far more substantial than that. It will build ships and put pipes in the ground. It will consume huge amounts of desperately scarce green electricity. And this faces us with a dilemma.

In confronting the challenge of the energy transition, we need a bias for action. We need to experiment. There is every reason to trust in learning-curve effects. Electrolyzers, for instance, will get more affordable, reducing the costs of hydrogen production. At certain times and in certain places, green power may well become so abundant that pouring it into electrolysis makes sense. And even if many hydrogen projects do not succeed, that may be a risk worth taking. We will likely learn new techniques in the process. In facing the uncertainties of the energy transition, we need to cultivate a tolerance for failure. Furthermore, even if hydrogen is a prime example of corporate log-rolling, we should presumably welcome the broadening of the green coalition to include powerful fossil fuel interests.

The real and inescapable tradeoff arises when we commit scarce resources—both real and political—to the hydrogen dream. The limits of public tolerance for the costs of the energy transition are already abundantly apparent, in Asia and Europe as well as in the United States. Pumping money into subsidies that generate huge economies of scale and cost reductions is one thing. Wasting money on lame-duck projects with little prospect of success is quite another. What is at stake is ultimately the legitimacy of the energy transition as such.

In the end, there is no patented method distinguishing self-serving hype from real opportunity. There is no alternative but to subject competing claims to intense public, scientific, and technical scrutiny. And if the ship has already sailed and subsidies are already on the table, then retrospective cost-benefit assessment is called for.

Ideally, the approach should be piecemeal and stepwise, and in this regard the crucial thing to note about hydrogen is that to regard it as a futuristic fantasy is itself misguided. We already live in a hydrogen-based world. Two key sectors of modern industry could not operate without it. Oil refining relies on hydrogen, as does the production of fertilizer by the Haber-Bosch process on which we depend for roughly half of our food production. These two sectors generate the bulk of the demand for the masses of hydrogen we currently consume.

We may not need 600 million, 500 million, or even 300 million tons of green and blue hydrogen by 2050. But we currently use about 100 million, and of that total, barely 1 million is clean. It is around that core that hydrogen experimentation should be concentrated, in places where an infrastructure already exists. This is challenging because transporting hydrogen is expensive, and many of the current points of use of hydrogen, notably in Europe, are not awash in cheap green power. But there are two places where the conditions for experimentation within the existing hydrogen economy seem most propitious.

One is China, and specifically northern China and Inner Mongolia, where China currently concentrates a large part of its immense production of fertilizer, cement, and much of its steel industry. China is leading the world in the installation of solar and wind power and is pioneering ultra-high-voltage transmission. Unlike Japan and South Korea, China has shown no particular enthusiasm for hydrogen. It is placing the biggest bet in the world on the more direct route to electrification by way of renewable generation and batteries. But China is already the largest and lowest-cost producer of electrolysis equipment. In 2022, China launched a modestly proportioned hydrogen strategy. In cooperation with the United Nations it has initiated an experiment with green fertilizer production, and who would bet against its chances of establishing a large-scale hydrogen energy system?

The other key player is the United States. After years of delay, the U.S. lags far behind in photovoltaics batteries, and offshore wind. But in hydrogen, and specifically in the adjoining states of Texas and Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico, it has obvious advantages over any other location in the West. The United States is home to a giant petrochemicals complex. It is the only Western economy that can compete with India and China in fertilizer production. In Texas, there are actually more than 2500 kilometers of hardened hydrogen pipelines. And insofar as players like Exxon have a green energy strategy, it is carbon sequestration, which will be the technology needed for blue hydrogen production.

It is not by accident that America’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, targeted its most generous subsidies—the most generous ever offered for green energy in the United States—on hydrogen production. The hydrogen lobby is hard at work, and it has turned Texas into the lowest-cost site for H2 production in the Western world. It is not a model one would want to see emulated anywhere else, but it may serve as a technology incubator that charts what is viable and what is not.

There is very good reason to suspect the motives of every player in the energy transition. Distinguishing true innovation from self-serving conservatism is going to be a key challenge in the new era in which we have to pick winners. We need to develop a culture of vigilance. But there are also good reasons to expect certain key features of the new to grow out of the old. Innovation is miraculous but it rarely falls like mana from heaven. As Sabel and Victor argue in their book, it grows from within expert technical communities with powerful vested interests in change. The petrochemical complex of the Gulf of Mexico may seem an unlikely venue for the birth of a green new future, but it is only logical that the test of whether the hydrogen economy is a real possibility will be run at the heart of the existing hydrocarbon economy.

— Adam Tooze is a Columnist at Foreign Policy and a History Professor and the Director of the European Institute at Columbia University. He is the Author of Chartbook, a newsletter on Rconomics, Geopolitics, and History.

[grandgardenermaker]

Y mercedes? Le harían Caso?

[rianmobili]

Top 7 electric truck companies to watch in 2024

[electronautviews]

Batteriezellenproduktion in Mississippi

Accelera, der Geschäfts­bereich New Power von Cummins Inc., Daimler Trucks & Buses USA  und Paccar haben für ihr geplantes Gemeinschafts­unternehmen den US-Bezirk Marshall County im Bundes­staat Mississippi als zukünftigen Standort für eine hoch­moderne Batterie­zellen­fertigung ausgewählt. Das Joint Venture wird Batterie­zellen für elektrische Nutz­fahrzeuge herstellen und damit voraus­sichtlich…

[transportemx]

Erika Paz es la nueva Gerente Senior de Daimler Truck México

Efectivo al 1 de febrero, Erika Paz Cabrera ha sido nombrada Gerente Senior de Mercadotecnia en Daimler Truck México. Desde esta posición, Erika liderará la planificación, desarrollo e implementación de la comercialización y estrategias de mercadotecnia para la compañía.    “Estamos convencidos de que la experiencia, conocimiento y búsqueda constante en la excelencia de Erika serán clave para…

[cafedeotocom]

Mercedes-Benz eActros300 Türkiye’de Test Edilecek

Daimler Truck, 2039 yılına kadar Avrupa, Japonya ve Kuzey Amerika bölgesinde sadece karbon nötr araçlar sunma hedefiyle çalışmalarını sürdürüyor.

Daimler Truck, 2039 yılına kadar Avrupa, Japonya ve Kuzey Amerika bölgesinde sadece karbon nötr araçlar sunma hedefiyle çalışmalarını sürdürüyor. Daimler Truck’ın önde gelen üretim ve AR-GE merkezlerinden Mercedes-Benz Türk de, yürüttüğü önemli projelerle çatı şirketinin hedeflerini destekliyor. Mercedes-Benz Trucks’ın tüm dünyaya kamyon yol testi ve mühendislik hizmeti sunan ana merkezi…

[taevisionceo]

TAEVision 3D Design Applications Automotive Agriculture Farm Farms Farming MercedesBenz X-Class XClass Pickup Trucks OffRoad Concept (2) ▸ TAEVision Engineering on Pinterest ▸ TAEVision Engineering on Google Photos ▸ Daimler MediaSite... XClass PickUp

Data 411 - Mar 23, 2023

[militarymodeller]

Nr.346, The German Mercedes L3000 ambulance version.

The Mercedes-Benz L3000 was a 4x2 3-tonne rear axle drive truck used by Nazi Germany in World War II, powered by a Daimler-Benz OM 65/4 74 hp 4-cylinder diesel engine.

It was used alongside the Opel Blitz, and proved even more reliable in rough terrain; and was used in all fronts and extensively by the Afrika Korps.

It was manufactured in three versions, the L3000, the L3000A, and the L3000S, from 1938 to 1944.

When production was discontinued, more than 27,700 L3000 type trucks had been built, making it the most produced Mercedes-Benz truck of World War II.

[aurumacadicus]

Hoo boy I must have been holding everything in. I just learned that the Portland Trail Blazers have joined this program called 3's for Trees and every time they score a three-pointer, Daimler Truck North America employees and Friends of Trees will plant 3 trees at the end of the season. So far this season they've earned 276 trees but over the lifetime of the program they've earned 44,670 trees planted.

And now, having learned this, I have burst into tears.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sam Delgado at Vox:

It’s been another big week for the UAW. Over 5,000 auto workers at the Mercedes-Benz assembly plant in Vance, Alabama, have been holding their union election vote with the United Auto Workers (UAW); ballots will be counted when voting closes today.

It’s the UAW’s second election in their campaign to organize non-union auto workers, with a particular focus on the South — a notoriously difficult region for union drives. They won their first election with Volkswagen workers last month in Tennessee with 73 percent of workers voting to form a union. What makes the UAW’s recent success compelling is that they’re finding big wins at a time when union membership rates in America are at an all-time low. But each union drive is a battle: With our current labor laws, unionizing is not an easy process — particularly when workers are up against anti-union political figures and employers, as is the case at the Alabama Mercedes plant. So if the UAW can win another union election in a region that’s struggled to realize worker power, it could mean more than just another notch in their belt. It could offer lessons on how to reinvigorate the American labor movement.

What’s at stake in Vance, Alabama?

Unionizing nearly anywhere in the US will require some sort of uphill battle, but this is especially true for the South. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, most of the South had unionization rates below the national average in 2023. Alabama resides within one of those regions, at a union membership rate of 7.5 percent compared to a national rate of 10 percent. This is the result of historical realities (see: slavery and racist Jim Crow laws) that have shaped today’s legislation: Alabama is one of 26 states that have enacted a “right-to-work” law, which allows workers represented by a union to not pay union fees, thus weakening the financial stability and resources of a union to bargain on behalf of their members.

Prominent political figures in Alabama have been vocal about their opposition to the UAW, too. Gov. Kay Ivey has called the UAW a “looming threat” and signed a bill that would economically disincentivize companies from voluntarily recognizing a union. Workers say Mercedes hasn’t been welcoming to the union, either. In February, the CEO of Mercedes-Benz US International held a mandatory anti-union meeting (he’s changed roles since then). Back in March, the UAW filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Mercedes for “aggressive and illegal union-busting.” And according to a recent report from Bloomberg, the US government voiced concerns to Germany, home of Mercedes-Benz’s headquarters, about the alleged union-busting happening at the Alabama plant.

The combination of weak federal labor laws, a strong anti-union political presence, and a well-resourced employer can be a lethal combination for union drives and labor activity — and have been in Alabama. Recent examples include the narrow loss to unionize Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse, the nearly two-year long Warrior Met Coal strike that ended with no improved contract, and even past failed unionization drives at this Mercedes plant.

[...]

Where’s this momentum coming from — and where is it going?

The UAW is in a strong position after a series of wins. First they won their contract battle with Detroit’s Big Three automakers last year. Then they successfully unionized the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in mid-April (the first time a non-union auto plant in the South was unionized in around 80 years). Later that month, they ratified a contract with Daimler Trucks after threatening to strike, securing a wage raise and annual cost-of-living increases among other benefits. Where are these wins coming from? A big part of the momentum comes from Shawn Fain, the president of the UAW. He’s ambitious and a hard-nosed negotiator, isn’t afraid to break from the traditions of UAW’s past, and perhaps most importantly, is also the first leader of the UAW directly elected by members.

The UAW is leading a unionization drive at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama. Hope it wins. #UAWVance #UAW #1u

[laboulaie]

BAD NEWS BLAIR

She May Be Llanview’s Resident Bad Girl, But ONE LIFE TO LIVE’s Blair Just Wants To Be Loved

In 1991, a conniving woman by the name of Blair Daimler (now Cramer) blew into Llanview. Mia Korf originated the role but when the Amerasian left the show in 1993, blonde-haired, green-eyed Kassie DePaiva took over. “Blair is perfectly dysfunctional,” laughs DePaiva. “She feels everything deeply, whether it’s happiness, anger, lust, jealousy, fear… I love that she’s a bitch with a lot of heart.” Here, in character, DePaiva remembers the ups and (mostly) downs of Blair’s life.

1993

“Viki and Sloan hunted me down because they needed me to verify something for his book on Victor Lord - they wanted to know if Dorian had admitted killing Victor,” recalls DePaiva. “They found me down in Miami with my boys.” Blair had kids? “I was hanging out with some young boy toys,” she laughs.

1994

As soon as Blair returned to Llanview, she began blackmailing Dorian (again) and hitting on Max (again). “I pursued Max in every way I could,” she grins.

Around this time, The Wild Rose Club casino opened, and Max became addicted to gambling. While Cord and Luna tried to break his bad habit, Blair encouraged it. “It was a way for me to spend time with him,” she explains. “Max was addicted to gambling and I was addicted to him.” One night, Luna kicked Max out. Feeling rejected, Max turned to Blair. “We went to Atlantic City and hooked up with RJ, who was a loan shark,” she explains. “Everything tailspinned from there. I became more obsessive and possessive as Max’s gambling addiction became worse.”

After their escapade, Max took his son, Al, to his ranch in Texas and Blair tagged along. But soon after, Luna arrived to patch things up. Cord kidnapped Blair and took her to Asa’s nearby ranch so that his friends could reconcile. With Blair out of the picture, Max, Luna and Al went to the local fair, but Blair escaped from Cord and took off in his truck. “I was driving to the fair to find Max,” explains the actress. “I swerved to miss Al and accidentally hit Luna instead.” Luna was paralyzed and Max broke things off with a distraught Blair.

“I attempted suicide by turning up the gas stove in my apartment,” she explains. Luckily, Cord found her passed out and stood by her while she recovered. “I finally realized that I was addicted to Max and started up a relationship with Cord because he was nice and safe.” Unfortunately, Blair found herself playing second fiddle to Tina and finally got fed up. “Around this time, I ran into Todd at Rodi’s,” she remembers. “Initially, I didn’t know who he was. We commiserated about what losers we were.”

That is, until Blair dropped her purse and spotted the prison I.D. bracelet that Todd was wearing around his ankle. “At that point, I thought, ‘Stay away from me.’” But the two lost souls kept running into one another, and Blair finally realized that Cord was never going to put her first. “On Christmas, I went over to Todd’s and offered myself to him as a Christmas gift,” she chuckles. The couple had sex and it was the beginning of what seemed to be a beautiful relationship.

1995

When Blair figured out that Todd was the heir to the Lord fortune, the money-hungry vixen set out to land him. “I tricked Todd into getting married by faking a pregnancy,” she admits. The couple wed on a beach in Key West.

Several weeks after the nuptials, Tina revealed to Todd that he was her brother and Todd inherited 27.8 million. “After Tina warned Todd that I was a gold digger, he made me take a pregnancy test,” the actress says. “I thought for sure I wasn’t pregnant but I was. It was hilarious!”

Sadly, when Blair was mugged a few weeks later, she lost the baby. “Those were really tough scenes,” DePaiva reveals. “Blair wanted a baby; so did Todd. It was the first thing that she would have had on her own.”

When Max informed Todd that Blair had originally lied about being pregnant, Todd lost it. “He almost raped me,” says DePaiva. Blair stopped Todd by reminding him of his past rape of Marty but the marriage was over. “We had lost the baby and that was a reason for us not to be together.” Todd filed for a divorce.

But Blair soon discovered that she was pregnant - again. “Everybody thought I was lying this time for sure,” laughs DePaiva. “But I really was pregnant. I contemplated not having the baby, until it brought Todd and me back together.” The couple remarried at St. James church. “We were really, really happy,” she smiles. Before they could go on a honeymoon, Todd decided that he wanted to make amends with Marty and flew to Ireland. “It was always about Marty,” DePaiva sighs. “I thought the only reason that Todd loved me was because I looked like her.” In Ireland, Todd was mistaken for Patrick, shot and presumed dead. A bitter Blair blamed Marty for Todd’s “death.”

1996

Luckily, baby Starr filled the void in Blair’s life. After a run-in with Marty, an enraged Blair cut off her hair (because she didn’t want to look like Marty), then went into labor - but gave birth prematurely.

Soon afterward, Blair began chasing Patrick. “Marty took my man away so I wanted to take away hers,” she says. “At first, I just wanted to get back at Marty. Then, I really started to like Patrick.” When Blair finally got the poet to sleep with her, Todd “returned from the dead” and spied their sexual encounter. Figuring that Blair never mourned his death, Todd kidnapped Starr. Eventually, he returned the baby, and Blair and Todd were about to reconcile. But Blair learned that she was pregnant - yet again - this time, with Patrick’s child. “That ruined everything,” the actress groans.

1997

Blair and Todd remained at odds. Though Todd filed for custody of Starr, the judge awarded temporary custody to Blair. Starr became ill with aplastic anemia and was in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. Of course, Starr’s best bone marrow match would have been Blair and Patrick’s unborn child.

“Then we had the car accident,” says DePaiva. On a rainy night, Blair and Patrick were on their way home from the hospital when a sobbing Kelly (who had just been dumped by Joey) ran their car off the road. “I lost the baby and thought I had lost Starr too because of the accident. Those scenes were very difficult because I was pregnant in real life,” she confides. “Looking back, I wish I’d never had to play it.” After the accident, Alex donated bone marrow to save Starr’s life. Meanwhile, Blair was hospitalized.

“I was in a coma and Todd hooked up with Téa to betray me yet again!” she exclaims. “While I was in a coma, he divorced me and took custody of my daughter.” But Blair fought back and after a speedy recovery, vowed to win Starr. Unfortunately, on the night before the custody hearing, something went terribly wrong. “Téa provoked me to the point that I pushed her out a window so I lost custody because of that,” DePaiva says.

1998

Mel and Cassie began looking into the Cramer family’s history of mental illness. DePaiva notes that Blair and her mentally ill mother, Addie, have a very loving relationship. “Starr and Addie are the two people who Blair would do anything for.”

While working to sink her claws into billionaire Ian Armitage - she thought his money would help in her fight to win Starr back - Blair hooked up with Max as part of a plan to double-cross Todd and give Ian control of The Sun. “My relationship with Max since then has continued as a love-hate relationship,” explains DePaiva, adding that she loves working with her real life hubby.

Blair also found herself working with Todd again when he re-hired her as a reporter for The Sun. “I think the Todd/Blair relationship is my favorite storyline because it’s so multifaceted,” she says.

Slowly, Blair and Max started to fall in love again, until she discovered that Max was working for Asa and using her to obtain incriminating information about Todd. Max apologized profusely and even proposed, but Sam entered the picture. “I just want to be loved - but honestly!” DePaiva cries, in character.

Today, Blair is torn between two men: she cares for Sam but is being blackmailed by Max, who knows that Blair knows Todd is faking his alternate personalities. And if the truth comes out about Todd, Starr will lose her father because Todd will be sent to jail. “I think Blair wants to choose the high road, but I don’t think she’ll ever be able to do it,” says DePaiva. “Blair will probably be the ultimate loser and get screwed over like she always does.”

Soap Opera Digest (1998)

[georgegraphys]

Just saw some girly on tiktok saying that with LH leaving, the Mercedes BRAND will suffer and I have to laugh at that. Never in this world will a driver have the same popularity as a brand that big.

Also, not her saying that mercedes thinks they are ferrari? In what world do we compare german and italian manufacturers who have different views and target audience…

0 wheel knowledge, 0 brand knowledge 😂😂

You got to be real dumb or live in a desolate island for you to not know how Mercedes has been popular since the triceratops age. The buses and trucks you see on the road? Mercedes Benz and Daimler Trucks. The car that was issued to the government officials in my country? Mercedes Benz.

And literally... Who was once the technical director of Mercedes Benz and the one who built the 1924 Targa Florio that George drives? Ferdinand Porsche, founder of Porsche AG. He was once in Mercedes or Daimler.

"Mercedes thinks that they are Ferrari" says someone who has never seen/ride a Mercedes or a Ferrari in their life. How the fuck are they the same??? LIKE????? You don't have to buy a Mercedes or a Ferrari to know that they are DIFFERENT and target different segments of rich people. Make it make sense?? You just need both of your EYES open and healthy to see that they are different.. I don't think I need to explain in a long paragraph or make a thesis out of it because it is so obvious... Like what is WRONG with people- Stupidity is a disease nowadays huh? And it's contagious.

But if people are stupid enough, here you go.

See how DIFFERENT it is 😭😭😭 LAWDDDDD

Btw, Mercedes have been racing since 1894. Just because it's not fOrmUlA oNe doesn't mean it is not RACING. Other types of racing exist 😃😃😃 Stop thinking the world of motorsports only revolve around Formula One. That's so cocky