Daimler Annual Report 2011 - Alle jaarverslagen

3 | Management Report | Business and General Conditions
Growing in new markets. Growth in global automotive
demand will mainly take place in the markets outside Europe,
North America and Japan in the coming years. Although we
continue to strengthen our position in these traditional markets,
we also aim to expand in other regions, especially in Brazil,
Russia, India and China, the so-called BRIC countries. In order
to achieve Mercedes-Benz Cars’ sales targets, we are intensifying
our activities above all in China. That is where versions
of the new compact-car series will be produced in the future
and a new engine plant for four-cylinder engines will be opened
in 2013. Daimler Trucks intends to significantly strengthen its
market position in the BRIC countries. In China, we are focusing
on the cooperation with our partner Foton for medium and
heavy trucks. Mercedes-Benz Vans produces the Vito, Viano and
Sprinter for the Chinese market in cooperation with Fujian
Motors. In Brazil, Daimler Trucks will expand its production
capacities and further extend its strong market position with
new truck models. In Russia, the biggest European truck market,
we are continuing our expansion in cooperation with our
partner Kamaz. Mercedes-Benz Vans’ Sprinter will be produced
in Russia under a license agreement with truck manufacturer
GAZ. In India, Daimler Trucks will start production in 2012 of
trucks under the new BharatBenz brand, tailored to the
requirements of the Indian market. Daimler Buses is active in
India with the partner Sutlej in the field of coaches and with
the bus body builder MCV for city buses. Daimler Financial
Services established its own company in India in 2011 to
enable it to support the activities of the automotive divisions
on the spot. We are also expanding our market position in
other new growth markets in addition to the BRIC countries.
Leading with green technologies. As a pioneer of automotive
engineering, our goal is to make the future of mobility safe
and sustainable. Varying mobility requirements call for different
drive solutions. Our portfolio of solutions ranges from the optimization
of internal-combustion engines to hybrid drive and to
locally emission-free driving. Mercedes-Benz Cars aims to
reduce the carbon-dioxide emissions of its new car fleet in the
European Union to an average of 125 grams per kilometer
by 2016. Already today, 75% of our cars consume less than
7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers. Worldwide, we are the first
automobile manufacturer to use lithium-ion batteries in a seriesproduced
car with hybrid drive. And we are the first German
carmaker to develop and produce our own lithium-ion batteries.
In the town of Kamenz in Germany’s federal state of Saxony,
our ultramodern factory for lithium-ion batteries has now started
production and is thus safeguarding high-tech jobs in the
fields of development and manufacturing in Germany. Our fuelcell
vehicles have already clocked up more than 4.5 million
kilometers in customer use – this depth of experience with fuel
cells is unique in the automotive industry. With the F125!
research car, we are already demonstrating today what the
fuel-cell technology of tomorrow will look like.
The new Actros is the most economical truck in its market
segment and Daimler leads the world with buses and trucks
with hybrid drive. And we are the only automobile producer
that already has four electric vehicles in series production. We
also plan to further extend our pioneering role for active and
passive safety with both cars and commercial vehicles. For
example, the new B-Class and the new Actros set the benchmark
in their market segments thanks to numerous innovative
safety systems.
Pioneering with the development of new mobility concepts
and services. More than half of the world’s population
already lives in cities, and this proportion is rising. And customers
are increasingly demanding individual, needs-oriented
and convenient mobility solutions that are easy to use
and accessible online at any time. As a manufacturer, we are
responding to this demand in both the private and the public
sector with mobility concepts such as car2go, CharterWay and
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). The car2go business will be significantly
expanded in the coming years. To facilitate that growth,
we have allocated car2go to Daimler Financial Services in
organizational terms. By the end of the year 2011, more than
60,000 customers in seven cities had already registered and
carried out over a million rentals. With multisystem concepts
such as the “living lab” in Stuttgart, we will test how trans -
port systems can be networked with each other to develop the
best mobility solution from the customer’s perspective. In the
area of innovative services, we offer the new sale&care product
for the new smart fortwo electric drive as of 2012, and we
are creating new brands like “TruckWorks” for truck users and
“My Service” and “mbrace” for car drivers. We are also developing
communication systems such as COMAND Online, which
make cars into mobile communication centers. In this way,
we are working on automotive concepts to shape the future
of mobility while promoting growth in all segments, markets
and businesses.
Ambitious return targets. In addition to our growth targets,
we have we set ourselves a clear return target of 9% on average
for the automotive business, which we intend to achieve
on a sustained basis as of the year 2013. This overall target is
based on return targets for the individual divisions of 10% for
Mercedes-Benz Cars, 8% for Daimler Trucks, 9% for Mercedes-
Benz Vans and 6% for Daimler Buses. Our target for the
Daimler Financial Services division is a return on equity of 17%.
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