Daimler AG makes about 30% of total sales through the commercial vehicle business, which consists of the three divisions of Daimler Trucks, Mercedes-Benz Vans and Daimler Buses.

 Compared to 2009 when sales volume drastically declined due to the financial crunch, the 2010 sales of Daimler Trucks were up by 37% to 355K units. Mercedes-Benz Vans and Daimler Buses had an increase in sales by 35.4% and 20.4%, respectively. In sales of the January - June period of 2011, the truck and the van divisions had growth by 17.1% and 15.0%, but the bus division had dropped by 4.8%.

 Daimler received orders for 240K trucks in the first half of 2011, which was the best record since the peak year of 2006. The German company expects that 2011 full-year sales will exceed those of the previous year. Daimler sees that sales of vans will increase but those of buses will stay flat.

 The medium- and heavy-duty truck markets in Western Europe and North America started on a recovery trend. Daimler plans to hire 2,300 new workers to meet the expansion of production in Germany and the US. To catch up with expanding demand in the emerging markets, Daimler will build new plants in India and China, and expand production capacity in Brazil.

 Launch of new models in 2011 include the Mercedes-Benz Citaro, a city bus, and the Actros, its first Euro6 compliant heavy-duty truck. As for electric vehicles, the medium hybrid truck Atego has been available since September 2010. In addition, the Vito E-CELL, the first electric van of Mercedes-Benz, is in the limited-production phase. It has undergone test drives on roads for demonstration experiments.