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Stuttgart (dpa) - The truck and bus business should bring in significantly more money for Daimler this year.
Money that the truck division of the Stuttgart-based group needs above all to advance the development of new technologies, as CEO Martin Daum emphasized.
There are two strategic goals to be achieved: “On the one hand, we want to fully exploit our earnings potential,” he emphasized, and announced a six to seven percent return on sales for 2021 - after two percent last year.
"On the other hand, we want to shape the transformation of our industry from the top," said Daum.
Today's standard business, which currently accounts for 90 percent of sales and 100 percent of profits, will no longer be the mainstay of sales in ten years, Daum predicted.
Accordingly, it is important to focus on hydrogen or battery-electric vehicles, but also to further develop autonomous driving.
"We want to pay for it on our own and still remain an attractive company," said Daum.
That is why we must continue to work on efficiency and cut costs - especially in Europe.
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Daimler intends to spin off Truck AG this year and bring it to the stock exchange in order to make it faster and more agile.
At the same time, it should be able to concentrate more on the development of the technologies that are important for the commercial vehicle sector.
The series start of the eActros, an electrically powered truck for heavy distribution traffic, is planned for the current year.
An electric truck for the long haul will come later.
For the further development of fuel cell drives, Daimler has teamed up with Volvo, for autonomous driving with the Google sister company Waymo - parallel to a separate project with the US robotics company Torc.
Daum wants to save the money used for this elsewhere, for example with medium-heavy engines, which are more of a secondary business and are no longer to be developed and built by the US engine manufacturer Cummins - albeit at the Daimler site in Mannheim.
Daum emphasized again that the gradual move away from the combustion engine will cost jobs is inevitable.
However, he did not want to commit to specific numbers and periods.
Daimler Truck currently has around 100,000 employees worldwide.
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Based on a noticeable increase in demand in the meantime, Daimler assumes that it will be able to significantly increase sales and revenue this year.
"In the second half of 2020, our business picked up again significantly, and we will maintain this momentum in the current year," said Daum.
In the Corona year 2020, the group had sold 378,500 trucks and buses, a good quarter less than in the previous year.
Sales fell by 22 percent to 34.7 billion euros, and adjusted operating profit by as much as 75 percent to 678 million euros.
Without the adjustment, in which certain special effects are eliminated, it was 525 million euros - a decrease of 80 percent.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210225-99-591728 / 3
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