We started planning this event a couple of months ago. We started debating where should it take place. We thought about Germany. That is a place where we can showcase our heritage, our great history, our big turnaround potential. We thought, maybe not Germany. We are a global company. We want to show something else. The next idea we had was Brazil, where we have a very interesting region, a lot of growth, a lot of potential. We have a great turnaround story to talk about. We thought, probably most of you guys do not want to travel that far, so that was off the list. Finally, Cleveland, North Carolina. Perfect. We have a fantastic market here. We have strong years. We probably see a great pre-buy effect. 2025, 2026, it is going to be amazing. Perfect fit. Decision was made.
The months passed, and it's a little bit crazy, actually, to reflect on what happened in the last months. Obviously now, a lot more doubt about the economy, a lot more doubt about any kind of pre-buy, a lot more doubt in general in the world about the economy and where it's moving. I have to say, despite that, I'm very happy that we picked this location because today we're not here to talk about what's happening in the short term, but we're here to showcase our road to 2030. On that road, North America remains a cornerstone of our global success. Welcome to our Cleveland manufacturing plant, where we build our flagship products in North America, the Freightliner Cascadia and the Western Star X-Series. Welcome to our Daimler Truck Capital Market Day.
The title of today's Capital Market Day is Stronger 2030 because that's exactly what we want to talk about. At Daimler Truck, we are really proud to work for all who keep the world moving, and we want to achieve nothing less than to build the best truck and bus company in the world. I want to start by saying how proud I am to have a great team here with me, with Karl, Achim, Eva, John, Andreas, Jürgen. Really, really great team. They're all great leaders, very different backgrounds, different strengths, different experiences. It's really cool to see how we come together as one team, all very motivated to take this company to the next level. I said in the beginning we want to build the best truck and bus company. What does that mean? It means number one in customer satisfaction.
We want to be the partner of choice. We want to help our customers beyond the trucks. If they wake up in the middle of the night and they have a problem with their business, we want them to call us because they know that we can help them solve it. It also means being the number one truck and bus employer. We attract the best talent. We have the most engaged employees that are empowered, accountable, and able to perform every day. It means being number one in market share in our key markets. I think with these industry-leading trucks and buses and services, we can offer the best total cost of ownership. Our target can be nothing less than to be the market leader in the most attractive markets and segments.
When we achieve all of these targets, I'm sure that we will not just be the best truck and bus company for our customers and for our employees, but also for our shareholders. When I was in the process and when I decided to take on the role to be the CEO of this company, I did it because I'm convinced that we have everything in place to make it happen. For sure, we have some hard work to do over the next years, but let me assure you that this team is up for it, and I don't see any reasons why we will not succeed. Today, we want to give you an update on our road to 2030 regarding strategy, regarding execution, and of course, our financial targets. I will start with an overview.
Eva will take over and present how the strategy is driving value. Achim will do a deep dive on Mercedes-Benz Trucks, John, Daimler Truck North America, and Andreas on technology transformation. I'll do a wrap-up, and after that, for sure, some time for questions. Let me start by looking a little bit at the environment in which we operate. As I mentioned in the beginning, right now, the markets are very uncertain and volatile, but in the longer term, there is a clear positive trend. The global economy will continue to grow, and in response, the need for transportation will also continue to grow. This means that commercial vehicles remain a very attractive, growing industry, and we as Daimler Truck are very well positioned.
We have top three positions for both trucks and buses in all decisive segments and markets in the Americas, in Europe, in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia, and we have still even more potential for growth. Actually, I think it is more or less impossible to go anywhere in the world without running into one of our vehicles. I think that is really, really cool. Our strength is not just in our products. It is also in our brands. Whether it is Mercedes-Benz, Western Star, Freightliner, Fuso, Rizon, BharatBenz, etc., or Thomas Built Buses, each brand serves a unique purpose and a specific customer base. Let me add some few more strengths that we can build on on the journey to become the best truck and bus company. In 2024, we sold 460,000 units worldwide, which gives us industry-leading scale.
Scale is important, especially in the ongoing transformation of the industry where we need to develop a lot of different technologies in parallel. Another strength is our balance sheet. When we became independently listed a couple of years back, we had a strong balance sheet. Today, our financial strength is even greater with a net industrial liquidity of EUR 8 billion. That is important because it gives us freedom to move. We have an amazing global team. Our people take pride in going to work every day, wherever in the world that might be, doing their best for this company and for our customers. I'm pretty sure that our team of more than 100,000 people of 130 nationalities worldwide is the best one in the industry. Coming back, I mentioned we have some great products.
Just since our last Capital Market Day in 2023, we have launched a number of new flagship products and service initiatives that will help drive our success going forward, and some of them are highlighted here on the slide. In December, we went into production with our Mercedes-Benz Actros L with our new Pro cabin, which improves aerodynamics and reduces fuel consumption by up to 3%. With our Mercedes-Benz eActros 600, we have reached a big milestone in battery electric truck. It's our first true long-haul electric truck, and we're getting really good feedback from the customers. As an example, we had an order from Amazon for 202 vehicles, and we see now that also smaller customers start to show interest in e-mobility in the European part of the business.
Our Freightliner Cascadia was launched almost two decades ago, and with over 1 million units sold, it's currently the most driven Class 8 truck in North America. With our fifth generation, we're setting new standards, adding additional safety features, and even greater efficiency. A final highlight in just two days, actually, I'll go directly from here to there, we're going to celebrate the opening of our new Global Parts Center in Germany. With this new Global Parts Center, we can quickly and efficiently supply spare parts to Mercedes-Benz Trucks customers in over 170 countries. I'm actually really excited about this one because we started it already a few years back, and it is one of the key initiatives to drive our mid to long-term service growth. Now turning to performance, and we see that we have also achieved a lot in this regard in the past years.
Growing services has been a strategic priority, and we have grown our service business by 24% since 2019. We've also delivered two critical turnaround stories. Daimler Buses grew its adjusted EBIT by more than 50%. In our Latin America business, we have achieved a similarly strong performance, which Achim will tell you more about later. Next, on our track record, our cash conversion and cash generation have been consistent and reliable. In 2024, we generated EUR 3.2 billion of free cash flow, and a total since 2023 is EUR 6 billion. Through our dividend policy and our share buyback program, we have returned EUR 5 billion to our shareholders in the last two years. Our progress is also reflected in our profit margin. We have clearly improved our performance in the last couple of years.
In 2023, we had very strong market conditions across all the regions, and we achieved a 10% return on sales. In 2024, markets were a little bit more mixed, and return on sales was lower, but we still reached our promised target level. We are proud of the progress we've made, but we're not yet delivering to our full potential across all our segments. Daimler Truck North America has maintained and even improved a very high level of performance. In Daimler Buses, we have achieved a fantastic turnaround. In Mercedes-Benz Trucks, we have improved significantly as well.
We saw that in more mixed markets, as last year, we still need to do more, which is why we have now launched Cost Down Europe, the most ambitious restructuring program in the history of our company, as well as a very good strategic plan, which obviously goes beyond cost savings and which Achim will be presenting later. This was a quick recap of what we've achieved. I want to spend the rest of my presentation on the future. How we move forward and how we will build an even stronger company. Key for our road ahead is our new corporate strategy. We have five strategic pillars, which are: one, unlock potential through growth, scale, and efficiency.
This is about leveraging our scale and platforms across the world, but it's also about growth, about strengthening our positions and entering and growing in new markets and segments. The second one evolves into a customer-centric solutions powerhouse. I mentioned we have grown our services in recent years, but this strategic initiative is about breaking the curve, growing even faster, both in traditional parts and services as well as in new areas. Number three. Transform at the speed of a right. This is about mastering the trade-off between zero emission and investing into diesel and to be sure that we have the best products for both. It is about investing the right amount with the right partners into our next generation vehicle software as well as autonomous driving. Number four. Build a lean and effective operating model. It's about right sizing.
It's about implementing lean methods and setting a new operating model. Number five, foster performance culture. This is the one pillar of our strategy that's crucial for all the other pillars. To make our strategy work and to take Daimler Truck to the next level, we need to take our culture to the next level as well. Now I will go through each of these strategic pillars and give you a few deep dives. Headlines, or go a little bit beyond the headlines and show you some of the initiatives. Starting with our first pillar of unlocking potential through growth, scale, and efficiency. Last month, we made a big strategic move in this regard when we concluded the definitive agreements to integrate Mitsubishi Fuso and Hino Motors, which is today a subsidiary of Toyota. This strategic step makes sense.
Because at Daimler Truck, most of our other brands are specializing in heavy duty, while Fuso is specialized in light duty. We have seen that our potential to leverage scale has been limited. The combination of Fuso and Hino will create a Japanese global company with over 40,000 employees and the right potential for synergies and scale to be successful. At the same time, the integration of Fuso and Hino will also benefit Daimler Truck. First of all, we plan to hold a 25% stake in this new company that we believe will be a very exciting one. We also expect a cash inflow of somewhere between EUR 1.5 billion-EUR 2 billion from this transaction. We continue to collaborate with the new company to share technology and investments. Another initiative within our first strategic pillar is to drive growth in attractive profit pools.
I brought four examples of growth opportunities that we have launched. Number one is zero-emission vehicles, where we aim to deliver 25,000 or more units per year in Europe by 2030. We have the right product portfolio, and we feel confident we have leading technology in e-mobility. Second is India, where we have established a strong position, but we can grow both within India to be even bigger and also through export. Third, our vocational business in North America. Since the launch of our all-new Western Star X-Series in 2020, we have already achieved a lot, but we believe we can do even more. We aim to increase our vocational volumes by over 60% until 2030. Fourth, defense. It is one of our hidden gems. It is a high-margin business with very long contracts, and we have developed a clear strategy to more than double our revenue.
We have and will continue to strengthen our product portfolio on the defense side. This is very often a tender-driven business. We have increased our capacities, and we see already now that that starts to pay off. Another part of our growth strategy is the autonomous business. Our focus here is on long haul in North America. This is a much larger addressable market than, for instance, ports or mining. The US is the perfect place for pioneering this technology because here trucks travel about twice as far per day as in Europe. The driver salaries are higher, and we have a very good forward-looking regulation. When you want to do autonomous trucking, you need two different things. You need hardware, and you need software.
In Daimler Truck North America, we are developing the hardware, which is needed for autonomous trucking, a vehicle platform with redundant systems for braking and steering and so on. If there is a problem with any of the primary systems, the backup systems are kicking in, and the driver, or there is no driver, the truck can still be controlled safely. Also, for our subsidiary Torque, DTNA supplies the compute and the sensors for the autonomy. When we start to scale, these trucks will run off our factory line, already prepared for autonomous driving with everything factory fitted, which gives us lower cost and better reliability. In Torque, we are developing the software for autonomous trucks. Virtual driver that will steer the truck instead of the real driver.
We plan to offer it as a software as a service, which could open up for us a very profitable recurring revenue stream. I think we have a really unique setup for this business. Developing the software in Torque, a standalone software company which is agile, which moves fast, and which attracts the right talent. We combine it with the weight and reach of Daimler Truck North America to leverage the best redundant platform and, also important, with already an established dealer network to support this new business. We are convinced that autonomous trucking is a great business case. Our customers should be able to reduce their total cost of ownership by 15%-20%, which is huge. For us, we see a revenue opportunity of EUR 3 billion by 2030. Moving now to the second pillar, creating a solutions powerhouse. In 2024.
We generated over EUR 8 billion in our industrial services revenues. This is already good, but we believe we have much more potential, so we are investing for growth. One example is the expansion of our own retail network in Europe. Today, we have a relatively low penetration of own retail, and we also have many locations that are not truck dedicated 100%. We are investing an additional EUR 250 million to expand our footprint and to increase truck dedication. Our third pillar, transforming at the speed of right. When you look at investing into new technologies, you have actually two risks. You have a risk of overinvesting and a risk of underinvesting.
Overinvesting would have been, as an example, if we had gone completely all in on battery electric some years ago, if we would have built our own cell factory, or as some people were saying, and doing, buying our own mine. If we would have done that, we would have been in serious trouble today. At the same time, you have the risk of underinvesting. For instance, if we already some years ago would have stopped investing into diesel, we would also be in real trouble today. We really need to balance these two risks. We do that with a modular, flexible technology strategy where we work also a lot with partners to share, invest, and to take down risk. An example is our joint venture with Volvo on fuel cell, Cellcentric, and we work with Cummins and Deutz on diesel engines.
Not to forget, with over 200,000 engines produced annually, we are the heavy-duty diesel engine champion. All of this enables us to transform at the speed of right to drive the technological transformation of our industry and to really make sure we match the speed which we are working at with the speed of the picking up of the customer demand. Pillar four, establishing a lean and effective operating model. Historically, Daimler Truck has not always delivered on the structural cost improvements we were aiming for. As CEO, this will be one of my key priorities going forward. Cost Down Europe plays a key role in establishing our lean and effective operating model. By 2030 at latest, this program will deliver more than EUR 1 billion in cost savings. It covers fixed and variable costs.
It includes headcount reductions and a shift of roles and functions to best cost countries. We are better positioned than ever before to execute this. I think the most important difference compared to the past is the agreement we have reached with the German Works Council. This really puts us in a position to execute what is needed to achieve these cost reduction targets. What will we do? We will make our operations more effective, more resilient. We are optimizing our indirect functions, and we are reducing our labor costs. Just to give you two concrete examples of things we have agreed on, we have linked the bonus payment of our employees in Germany to the performance of Mercedes-Benz Trucks in Europe instead of the global performance of Daimler Truck, as it has been in the past.
Which means at the current Mercedes-Benz Trucks performance levels, the new payout would be significantly lower. This team has a very good and very high incentive to make this business more successful. Second example, we have increased the maximum quota for temporary workers to 18% in all our German locations. We have also increased the duration of having temporary contracts. This helps us because we have much more flexibility to handle the demand cycles than we would have had historically. Now, the final pillar of our strategy, the pillar on culture. As I said before, this one is absolutely crucial for the other strategic pillars. What is it all about? At Daimler Truck, we are proud of our strong foundation, our brands, our footprint, and, as I said in the beginning, our exceptional people.
In order to stay ahead, we also need to evolve how we work. We are building a high-performance culture. To be clear, this is not a side project. It is a core part of how we will deliver success. We are driving this culture development with very concrete measures like pay-for-performance, reviewing our level system. In addition to this strategic pillar, we are establishing three fundamental principles across our entire organization: simpler, faster, stronger. Simpler, faster, stronger. These principles define how we want to work every day in every team at every level. Simpler means that we focus on what truly matters, what drives value, either for us as a company or for our customers. We are sharpening our priorities, asking ourselves, "Am what I'm doing right now adding value?
If not, maybe I shouldn't be doing it, or I should be doing it in a different way. Faster means accelerating decision-making and execution, empowering teams, reducing unnecessary alignment loops and meetings, and pushing decisions out into the organization. Stronger means building resilience, building accountability, raising the bar on performance, encouraging ownership, and fostering a mindset of continuous improvement. These principles matter a lot to me personally and also to the rest of the board of management. We will make sure that we make these principles really come to life in all of Daimler Truck because with this mindset, we will make the difference going forward. This will help us turn our strategy into results. Which brings me to my next slide. We are putting a clear focus on execution. I think that we started strong.
I had very clear priorities for my first weeks and months as CEO, and we consistently worked on them. I think we can already now tick off quite a few important boxes. I started with a very clear 100-day plan, connecting with customers, regions that I had not worked with before, media, and of course, many of you. We have also selected Achim as a great successor as the new CEO of Mercedes-Benz Trucks. We implemented the new setup of Mercedes-Benz Trucks and merged it with our businesses in India and China. We reached an agreement on our Cost Down Europe program. We successfully negotiated the integration of Fuso and Hino. As mentioned, in just a few days, we are opening our new global parts center.
We are in full execution mode, and we will keep the momentum high on the topics we talked about today, like operationalizing our strategy to become simpler, faster, stronger, executing on Cost Down Europe, where we expect to realize the first tangible financial impact already in 2026. It goes on. Of course, I really look forward to ticking off the last box in the bottom right on achieving industry-leading margins. Here is my final slide. In concluding, I just want to boil it down to two numbers. Everything I touched on in the last minutes, all our strengths, all these initiatives result in these new financial targets for the group for 2030. We aim for a return on sales of 12% or more in our industrial business. We target a compound annual growth rate of 3%-5%.
I think these figures clearly show how serious we are about taking Daimler Truck to the next level. We are in full swing already. We have a comprehensive strategy in place. We are executing it very consistently. We are touching culture, we are touching efficiency, we are touching technology, and a lot more. Together with our teams, we want to make Daimler Truck stronger in every region and in every segment. We want to build nothing less than the best truck and bus company for our customers, for our employees, and for our shareholders. With this, I hand over to Eva for financial insights.
Thank you, Karin. Hello, everyone. It is really great to be here with you all today. As you have just heard, we are operating in a world that is anything but predictable. Geopolitical tensions, including the latest developments in the Middle East, continue to add pressure.
Across our markets, conditions remain volatile. North America is no exception. As you are all aware, the order environment in North America is, in fact, still very challenging. Back in the first quarter, we said we needed to see a pickup in orders to stay on track with our guidance. That has not happened yet. Each and every week remains critical. As we work through these short-term challenges, and we will, we are here today to talk about where we are going in the long term and how we are going to get there. This moment in time is about more than reacting to the market. It is about how we are evolving our strategy to drive value and how we are setting ourselves up for a performance revolution as we look toward 2030. Let's dive in.
Our strategy is one of ongoing refinement, as Karin said during her speech, with an extreme focus on execution and financial performance. To achieve this, we have four priorities. Fix the core. This is all about empowering our teams to improve what we do, how we do it, and where we do it. This is our main focus. Therefore, we will put a lot of attention on this topic today. Delivering resilient growth. That is growing where it creates value and resilience. We're doing this by increasing our service business with recurring revenue, continuing to drive growth in the zero-emission vehicle segment, and further building on our successful vocational products. Another lever is our laser focus on our capital allocation to ensure efficient use of our capital employed in the business.
Last, but just as important, we remain focused on continuing to reward shareholders through both our dividend policy and our share buyback program. Looking back, Daimler Truck has a lot to celebrate from a financial performance perspective. Despite unprecedented global volatility, the COVID pandemic, and a conflict in Europe, we have delivered 3% organic growth per annum in our industrial business. Additionally, we have increased the adjusted EBIT for our industrial business by +70% since 2019 and expanded our profitability to 8.9% to a level consistent with our objectives. Cash generation has been a key priority, with EUR 6 billion of free cash flow generated in 2023 and 2024 alone. We have rewarded our shareholders with EUR 5 billion of payout, returning more than 15% of average market capitalization via buyback and dividend in the last two years. I hope you agree that this is a significant return.
However, we also need to be realistic and honest. While Mercedes-Benz Trucks achieved more than 10% adjusted return on sales in 2023, it has become clear that recent performance in a weaker market has fallen short of where we needed. As Karin has already highlighted, the entire management team is pulling all possible levers to further improve the resilience and performance of Mercedes-Benz Trucks and our group as a whole. Our clear answer to close the gap between achievement and potential for Mercedes-Benz Trucks is Cost Down Europe. Cost Down Europe is a holistic program, meaning that we are addressing all aspects of Mercedes-Benz Trucks' cost position. This covers all elements of the value chain, from development to purchasing and manufacturing down to sales and all headquarters functions. We can clearly identify over EUR 1 billion in cost potential, which translates to about 150 basis points of margin upside by 2030.
These saving potentials are going to be achieved by the following components. More than EUR 400 million from material cost, more than EUR 200 million from operations, and about EUR 100 million each from R&D, sales, headquarters, and G&A functions, as well as IT run costs. The targeted cost savings measures are expected to involve a headcount reduction of approximately 5,000 employees in Germany, which represents about one-third of the total planned savings of more than EUR 1 billion. In addition, we substantially increase our flexibility with regards to temporary workers. Hopefully, you can all understand the significance of this, difficult as it may be. Some of these effects will take time to realize. For example, materials and operation savings will depend on product cycles. First impacts will begin to come through as early as 2026, with a low triple-digit million euros impact. We have offered aggressive targets in Europe before.
Some of you might be asking, what is different this time? First. This is our most holistic efficiency program ever, meaning that we are not just focusing on a single area at a time. Second, we are including indirect and direct functions for the first time. Third, as Karin explained, we have reached full agreement with the Works Council, which includes key levers to enable stronger execution, such as the planned headcount reduction in Germany. We are going to get this right, and we will provide you with an annual update. Across all cost buckets, we have looked at relevant industry benchmark data in conjunction with independent consultants to derive our targets for 2030. These benchmarks highlight clear opportunities for Mercedes-Benz Trucks to improve, including annual material cost efficiencies and expanding both production and R&D activities in best-cost countries.
Let's focus on 60% of the cost opportunity, which is in material costs and operations. We plan to save 8% in material cost based on our annual purchasing volume in 2030 versus our baseline in 2024. In fact, year over year in 2024, our material costs were only stable, while industry benchmarks indicate year-over-year improvements. For operations, we identified tangible opportunities to reduce production costs by 7%. By relocating over 20% of our production volume to a best-cost country, we anticipate reducing costs by approximately EUR 3,000 per truck. We will not achieve all of this in year one, but we will ramp up over time and be fully at cruise speed by 2030 to deliver more than EUR 400 million of savings in material and more than EUR 200 million in operations. Achim will give you more details on how we plan to achieve these targets.
Turning to the next three buckets of cost savings, here we are targeting EUR 300 million by 2030. Again, this is derived through our benchmarking process. For R&D, we target EUR 100 million of savings. Two examples of how we can achieve these targets are. Increasing the percentage of R&D headcount in best-cost countries to about 40% and outsourcing of R&D activities to suppliers. Both will result in a leaner and more flexible R&D setup in Germany. For sales, we will reduce overall headcount by around 15%, which, combined with a few other measures, results in around EUR 100 million in savings. This means, for instance, that we are streamlining our central sales functions and are implementing lean setups for our local market functions. For IT, we aim to reduce our yearly run costs by EUR 100 million.
Examples of savings include sundowning legacy applications, reducing complexity in the application landscape, and consolidating vendors to achieve scale. Furthermore, we are implementing a cost program for G&A functions in our headquarters to generate savings of EUR 100 million. The defined measures are expected to result in a headcount reduction of approximately 20% in Germany by 2030. To realize these savings, we will implement four key measures. Right-sizing our resources and setting a clear focus on our core business. Outsourcing transactional activities, for example, certain accounting and controlling functions. Optimizing team and leadership structures for greater efficiency. Last but not least, we will eliminate functions related to Trucks Asia. The transformation of our businesses in Latin America and at Daimler Buses serve as concrete examples of successful restructurings. Achim, now responsible for Mercedes-Benz Trucks, will share his experience on how he delivered in Latin America.
At Daimler Buses, the leadership team has made substantial progress in improving performance since 2019. The following main levers were introduced successfully as part of the transformation program. Implementation of margin-based sales steering and additional pricing discipline. Exiting unprofitable markets, sale of non-core shareholdings, and simplifying the global chassis portfolio as part of active portfolio management. A significant reduction of our German-centric operations footprint to one that is far more focused on best-cost countries and taking advantage of the extension of our production facilities in France, Turkey, and Czech Republic for complete buses. One key supporting factor was the recovery of the coach market after COVID-19, which had come close to a standstill in 2021. We also delivered strong growth in our parts and service business, increasing revenue by 24%.
Starting from a low base, we increased zero-emission vehicle sales in the city bus segment by a factor of nine, and this growth continues at attractive margins. The segment has significantly improved its profitability and resilience, driven by a reduced SG&A ratio, stable gross margins, and a break-even volume that is now 30% lower. A second element. A key element of our fixing the core initiative is the strategic solution to our Trucks Asia business. The definitive agreement on the integration of Fuso and Hino was reached last month. A culmination of tremendous effort by all involved and a fantastic outcome for all parties. Following the integration, Daimler Truck will be even more focused on the heavy-duty truck segment, with an expected 70% heavy-duty group sales share in 2030.
The pro forma impact by 2030 represents a 50 basis point improvement in adjusted return on sales and a 300 basis point improvement in return on capital employed. We expect to receive between EUR 1.5 billion and EUR 2 billion in cash from this transaction, while retaining a 25% stake in the new company. This is clearly a very positive outcome that reinforces our robust capital allocation framework. Until the deal closes, which we expect to happen in April 2026, Trucks Asia will be treated as a discontinued operation. After that, the new company will be consolidated at equity. Let's now turn to our growth initiative, key levers that will shape Daimler Truck's trajectory through 2030. We see multiple tangible revenue growth opportunities ahead. First.
Zero-emission vehicles will be a major growth engine, particularly for Mercedes-Benz Trucks, where the significantly higher average selling price compared to diesel vehicles creates a strong lift in value. Second, we are positioned to significantly expand our heavy vocational market share in the U.S. and Canada, a segment characterized by premium pricing and robust aftermarket part sales. Third, India represents a strategic long-term opportunity. There, we are leveraging domestic volume to build a foundation for profitable export growth. While still early, a potential EU-India trade agreement could accelerate this opportunity for us. For defense, we aim to double our revenues, capitalizing on the high-margin, long-life-cycle nature of this business, including services and support. Taken together and excluding Asia, we're targeting an organic annual growth rate of around 3%-5% in industrial business revenue by 2030. Most importantly, our strategy is rooted in disciplined, organic execution.
Unlike in the past, our financial performance is less reliant on top-line expansion. We are focused on margin quality, operational excellence, and capital efficiency. Overall, we are pleased with our growth outlook. We like our margin resilience even more. One of the key drivers of this resilience is growing our service business, typically higher margin, higher return, recurring revenues, all built on trust, loyalty, and convenience. Today, we are just closing our service revenues for the first time, both on the industrial business level as well as for Mercedes-Benz Trucks and Trucks North America. Each segment has its own strategic initiatives to drive further growth, and we see multiple opportunities to further build on our solid results today. Overall, we expect to significantly increase service revenues with a higher compound annual growth rate than our new vehicle sales.
In the long run, our growing service revenue will be a key driver of profitability and a vital source of stability across market cycles. As you will hear in more detail later from John, the heavy vocational segment remains a significant opportunity. This is a great incremental growth segment for Daimler Truck, as we are under-penetrated at a 24% market share. The DT&A team relaunched the category in 2020 with the Western Star X-Series. We have seen a nice increase in market share as a result. We have a compelling product offering, and our customers love it. The market is less volatile compared to the on-highway segment, with higher average selling prices, higher part sales, and long-term relationships. Another pillar of our resilient growth story is our financial services business. It now holds a portfolio exceeding EUR 30 billion and is a key enabler for the industrial business.
The business is adequately funded with a robust capital structure. Our priority is to cover our cost of capital through cycle and to bring our return on equity above the 15% mark. Furthermore, we do not anticipate any further equity injections will be required. While we are working on lifting our financial services performance to the next level, we have two core priorities. First, we intend for all of our financial services growth to be self-funded. To do this, we are prioritizing growth of our combined service offerings, for example, through the recent integration of the Chataway business into financial services, the launch of the unified payment solution DTPay, and bundled retail insurance products. Second, while our operating ratio is already at a benchmark level, we continue to drive operational excellence, achieving an attractive cost-income ratio through transformational activities such as our North America Business Hub and Service Center.
Given the current volatility in global markets shaped by geopolitical and economic uncertainty, our focus on resilience is more important than ever. To address this, we have comprehensively upgraded our risk management capabilities, leveraging process automation and AI-driven analytics, real-time monitoring, and deeper strategic integration. All in all, we expect that the combination of fixing the core and executing our resilient growth strategies will deliver more than a 310 basis point improvement in adjusted return on sales by 2030. As I have shown, half of the overall margin increase is attributable to cost efficiency programs delivering more than 150 basis points. These efficiency measures mainly cover cost down Europe, as well as additional cost measures in Trucks North America. The pro forma benefit of the Fuso and Hino merger contributes another 50 basis points.
When we look at the full picture, over 200 of the 310 basis points in margin improvement are driven by structural efficiencies, not by growth or market tailwinds. Additionally, we are pushing forward on the service opportunity, which is expected to deliver a meaningful benefit of around 50 basis points. Finally, as you have heard, we continue to pursue several promising growth opportunities. These are expected to positively impact volume, price, and mix, adding at least another 60 basis points to our margin. To be frank, the 600 basis points are landing at the lower end of our planning range, reflecting built-in contingencies. This is yet another example of our careful conservative planning and a departure from past practices. Sum it all up, we are on track to achieve an adjusted return on sales of more than 12% by 2030.
Bringing all these value drivers together, today, we are increasing our long-term return on sales targets for the industrial business. We are giving an upper and lower range in our targets to reflect how we should perform in realistic through-cycle economic conditions. For 2030, we target an adjusted return on sales between 9%-13%, an upgrade of 200 basis points compared to our CMD in 2023. For Mercedes-Benz Trucks, it might appear that we are keeping our adjusted return on sales target unchanged at 8%-12%. However, it is important to keep in mind that previous targets for 2030 were based on the old structure, excluding India. With India now included and having a slightly dilutive impact, the 8%-12% range actually reflects a more ambitious target under the new setup.
For Trucks North America, we are raising our target to a new range of 10%-14%. For Daimler Buses, we have narrowed and raised the target range to 7%-11%. On capital efficiency, we are now targeting a return on capital employed for the industrial business of between 40% and 50% by 2030. This significant improvement is clearly driven by our enhanced profitability and represents a mid-single-digit increase at the midpoint of the range compared to our CMD 2023 targets. One of the drivers of our attractive return on capital employed is the relatively low level of capital expenditures required to maintain and grow our business. Nevertheless, we are approaching a peak in our absolute level of capital expenditure in 2026.
This investment is essential to support the implementation of our strategy, transforming our product portfolio and production sites, as well as expanding on our own retail footprint across Europe. Thereafter, we anticipate a gradual decline in absolute capital expenditure levels. This will support stronger cash conversion and contribute to further improvements in our return on capital employed. By 2030, we also expect a noticeable reduction in our CapEx to sales ratio for property, plant, and equipment compared to 2024, demonstrating our commitment to capital discipline while continuing to invest strategically. Referring back to the topic on my previous slide, the elevated levels of transformational investment have led us to apply a higher-than-usual R&D capitalization rate. The capitalization rate peaked in 2024, and we expect it to decline steadily going forward as we gradually reduce our spending on zero-emission vehicle development.
We are taking this approach to give you greater margin visibility and to reduce our overall risk profile, ensuring transparency and stability as we move forward. Looking ahead, we plan to achieve a significantly lower target range of 5%-10% for the capitalization rate between 2026 and 2030. In addition, we are further de-risking the balance sheet by adjusting existing book values. This will result in a non-recurring adjustable non-cash item in Q2 2025, expected to be in the low triple-digit million range. Just as the group has demonstrated over the last five years, we will continue to consistently convert our profits into cash. Our adjusted cash conversion rate is expected to remain solid at around 0.9%-1% by 2030. As a result, we expect free cash flow to increase by approximately 50% compared to 2024 levels.
We are reaffirming our minimum net liquidity target of approximately EUR 6 billion. The EUR 6 billion threshold is sufficient to maintain our single-A credit rating, which underpins the commercial competitiveness of our financial services business. As CFO, one of my top priorities is to ensure that every euro we allocate is working to create long-term value for our shareholders. That means maintaining a disciplined capital allocation policy and a strong, robust balance sheet that supports the company's sustainable growth. We remain committed to investing in our core business, prioritizing opportunities that drive profitable growth, enhance operational efficiency, and strengthen long-term resilience. With regard to M&A, we remain disciplined, executing only on value-creating opportunities that align with and reinforce our strategic pillars. Any investment must deliver an internal rate of return that exceeds our risk-adjusted cost of capital hurdle rates.
In addition, we target M&A activities that are accretive to both our operating margins and earnings per share. We believe the Fuso and Hino transaction clearly demonstrates our disciplined execution of this strategy. Finally, we remain strongly committed to consistent shareholder returns. Our dividend policy remains unchanged at a payout ratio of 40%-60%. Just to remind you, this approach implies a higher payout ratio in weaker years to ensure a more stable dividend. For 2024, our dividend stood at EUR 1.90 per share, representing a 51% payout ratio. In addition, we are now almost completed with our inaugural EUR 2 billion share buyback program. Today, we announce a new EUR 2 billion program set to begin in the second half of 2025 and to be completed within two years.
We firmly believe this combination of stable dividends and consistent share buyback programs not only rewards all our shareholders but also strengthens our earnings per share. Bringing everything together, what I have shown you today is a stronger, more focused financial framework that is built around our four key drivers of value. We are shifting our focus toward relative metrics, revenue growth, cash conversion, and profitability, and we are simplifying our guidance to reflect that shift starting in 2026. Looking ahead to 2030, we are targeting an adjusted return on sales of 9%-13% for our industrial business, supported by over EUR 1 billion in cost reductions at Mercedes-Benz Trucks in Europe. We are also aiming for 3%-5% organic revenue growth per year and a return on capital employed between 40%-50%. All while maintaining our strong track record of cash generation.
Importantly, we remain committed to rewarding our shareholders through our 40%-60% payout ratio and a new EUR 2 billion share buyback program. Although the market remains uncertain in the short term, we understand the challenges we face. We have evolved our strategy to revolutionize how Daimler Truck performs and how we drive value for you all. Thank you all again. With that, I will hand over to Achim.
Thank you, Eva, and hello everyone. At Mercedes-Benz Trucks, our focus is to turn potential into profit. The way I see it, our potential has never been bigger. Unlike in the past, we are now a truly global segment. We are building a stronger future with two strong brands, Mercedes-Benz Trucks and BharatBenz. Therefore, our global reach is greater than ever. We are using this opportunity to restructure our organization.
To leverage talent, scale, and efficiency, and to grow in promising markets and product segments. Let me be clear. I'm confident that we can and that we will reach our targets. Why? For more than 20 years, my journey with Daimler Truck has included many international assignments. From managing global corporations and industrialization projects at Mercedes-Benz Trucks to sales and customer services, Daimler Trucks Asia to my previous role as the CEO of Mercedes-Benz to Brazil, running our Latin American business. No matter the role or the region, my core convictions were always the same. Customer focus. Trust, entrepreneurship, and performance. Most recently, I led the team in Latin America to a strong turnaround. I see this turnaround strategy as a blueprint for Mercedes-Benz Trucks, and you will see many similarities between the two strategies today. What did we do in Latin America?
Overall, we focused on four main topics. We implemented a high-performance culture with focus on execution, speed, and continuous improvement. We listened to our customers and improved products and services. We improved customer uptime by focusing on parts and services, and at the same time, reduced product complexity and optimized pricing in the market. Finally, we set a clear focus on cost reduction on all cost categories. Yes, this was difficult, but absolutely necessary. Just to mention a few examples, we negotiated with strong unions, we closed the site, we outsourced certain functions and components. Overall, I'm really proud of the outstanding job the team has made. I'm also very proud of the results we have achieved in Latin America. We achieved our return on sales targets ahead of plan. We improved our resilience with break-even volume almost 50% lower than when we started.
To me, Latin America is proof of what we will achieve at Mercedes-Benz Trucks overall as well. Let me be clear. No matter the region, it ultimately comes down to one thing. We must deliver for our customers. They come first every single day. Our one global team enriches us with their diverse talent and ideas. At the same time, they are the ones being closest to our customers, understanding their local needs. Our industry-leading products and services keep their businesses running. All of this is delivered under two strong brands, Mercedes-Benz Trucks and BharatBenz. Yes, customer focus was not always our main focus, but when Karin led the team, it became part of our DNA. It will only get stronger because this matches with everything I have been standing for throughout my career.
We want to be the best partner for our customers by listening, by delivering what they need, and by being easy to do business with. As the CEO of Mercedes-Benz Trucks, I have deep respect for our legacy and a strong belief in our even brighter future. Let's take a quick look back and then look forward. First, let me briefly explain how to read this slide. The white bars show Mercedes-Benz Trucks' results under the old segmentation. The gray bars show our results with India and China included. In 2023, we proved that we can achieve strong profitability. Unfortunately, 2024 clearly also shows that we need to become more resilient and that our actions so far have not been enough. Cost on Europe is the right path to achieving the resilience we need.
In addition to the negotiated framework, it's a comprehensive plan to unlock our full potential. That means reaching our profitability targets in all market environments. What is important? Cost on Europe is not our entire strategy, but it is an essential part of it. However, as I said, at the very heart of our strategy are our customers. Since our last capital market day, our customers have told us in surveys that we are continuously improving. I'm really proud of the high ratings we recently received for our vehicle reliability and quality. They have also told us that we're reaching top levels in several areas of the after-sales business. Of course, happy customers are great. What I really like about this, we are receiving the best customer feedbacks in the areas we have been investing in. For example, product quality and after-sales.
Looking at product launches, on the battery side, we have earned a 200-unit order from Amazon for our flagship, the eActros 600. In terms of diesel, our Actros L with the Pro cabin gets great customer feedback when it comes to fuel efficiency and driver comfort. However, we are also experiencing right now some production ramp-up and supplier challenges in quarter two with the Pro cabin, but are still confident that we will reach our full-year expectation. Let's look ahead now and see what our new Mercedes-Benz Trucks blueprint looks like. We are entering into a new era to turn potential into profit. Therefore, we have laid a strong foundation with three strategic levers. We will restructure our organization to improve efficiency and to reduce complexity, relying on cost on Europe as our guide.
We will leverage the talent, the scale, and resources of our global organization to deliver the products and services our customers need. Our R&D operations teams are ready to design, build, and to deliver products smarter than we have ever before. We will grow in areas such as zero-emission vehicle business in Europe, the defense sector, as well as in our parts and services business. Our customers need to turn every kilometer on the road into profit. They trust us with their business. When we deliver what we promise, we are on the way to turning our potential into profit. We are fully committed as one global team. Success starts with great people. A global performance culture. With a global mindset driven to deliver. All around the globe. Our leadership approach is clear. We are obsessed with our customers. We collaborate across teams.
We focus on trust and accountability. We are performance-oriented. With the best global footprint, we can leverage how the team is working together. We are one global team. In this video, you already get an idea regarding a key difference for Mercedes-Benz Trucks in 2025. We have added India and China to our business. This forms one truly global segment anchored by two strong brands, Mercedes-Benz Trucks and BharatBenz. Just looking at India alone, the potential from this change is huge. Daimler India Commercial Vehicles has been in business for only 13 years. In that short period of time, the team produced more than 250,000 trucks and buses that are sold within India and exported to more than 60 countries. Additionally, the commercial vehicle market in India is projecting further growth.
However, we are also not underestimating the fierce price competition that makes profitability growth in India a challenge. Quite the opposite, we will take advantage and gain valuable learnings from this competition, making us even stronger as one global team. We will tackle the improved cost positions that we can source from India globally as we stronger focus on increasing our Indian activities. We will invest in the right export strategy and tap into best cost opportunities. Now, let me also tell you more about our three strategic levers. Starting with the first one, restructure. This brings me to cost on Europe. Karin and Eva already mentioned the negotiations with our works council in Germany. The three months of negotiations were intense but productive. In the end, we received a result and an agreement that we are satisfied with.
We all recognize the delivery in more than EUR 1 billion in cost savings until 2030 is crucial to our success and ultimately to our ability to reinvest into the future of our business and our people. Eva already shared an overview on cost on Europe. Because Mercedes-Benz Trucks has such an important role in implementing the measures, I would like to share more details in four areas: sales, R&D, operations, and material costs. In sales, we are finalizing a large-scale restructuring of our central sales functions, streamlining roles and processes. Furthermore, we are implementing lean truck operation centers in our markets. This will reduce operational complexity and bring us closer to our customers. We will utilize best cost country sources to support our global sales operations. For research and development, we remain committed to product innovations and investments.
Even more so, we are pushing for greater efficiency and effectiveness from our R&D resources. Here is where the new global structure really kicks in. Designing with global collaboration reduces complexity where we do not need it. This will free up resources to deliver what the market and our customers need. Additionally, to meet our R&D efficiency benchmark target, we will further shift R&D activities to best cost countries. As I mentioned earlier, I am proud of our customer-reported quality scores. It goes without saying that these measures will not compromise quality. Instead, we see the opportunity to deliver quality while also creating cost savings of up to EUR 50 million. The other EUR 50 million in savings come from reduced product complexity and the new global modular system. You will hear more about those topics later as they play into so many aspects of our business. Now, let's look at operations.
For our German operations footprint, we have four key priorities to deliver on. First, we will implement the world-class manufacturing or WCM standard. This will help us to achieve a 7% reduction in production cost. The good news here is we do not begin from zero. Two years ago, we started implementing WCM at our largest plant in Germany. First, we focused on areas with the biggest short-term impact. In some cases, we already see twice the efficiency compared to when we started. Now, we are scaling WCM to other areas within the work plant and to our other sites around the globe. Second, we plan to move 20% of our European production volume to a best cost location. We are focusing on activities with low automation, which could reduce manufacturing cost of the shifted volume per heavy-duty truck by around EUR 3,000.
Yes, the German production footprint has made us strong over decades, and we are proud of the history that we are building on. At the same time, we are facing a different situation today, and we must make adaptations. Third, we will focus on our core business by reducing vertical integration in areas that are dilutive to our margin. Our primary focus here is on powertrain components. Fourth, we have standardized and increased our resource flexibility across all our German sites. This includes a higher quota for temporary workers, which can now be up to 18%. It also includes the ability to balance capacity between production lines as well as across sites. Coming to the biggest contributor for cost on Europe: material cost reduction with savings potential of more than EUR 400 million by 2030.
To be clear, material cost is an area we should always be working on, and we have in the past. However, in recent years, we focused more on our resources and transforming our product portfolio towards zero-emission vehicles. Unfortunately, the results show that today our material cost efficiency is below where it was prior to 2020. We need to get back to it, but we can't just reuse our 2019 blueprint to reach our benchmark level. We have to do it differently. We have to do it better. The potential is enormous. In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa alone, we spend a single-digit billion EUR amount annually on direct materials to supply our customers with trucks. We have identified three levers for optimization. First, our biggest potential is driving commercial excellence with our suppliers. We are collaborating with suppliers earlier in the product development process.
This can boost idea generation and facilitate more off-the-shelf components usage. We are focused on cost-effective supplier partnerships with shared cost targets. We will better leverage our global procurement network as we see tremendous potential with India's existing best cost country supplier base. The second lever is driving technical efficiency. Here, we focus on cost-oriented product design along our entire value chain, both for new components in future products, but also optimizing existing components. Beyond that, we will focus on reassessing product specification with the goal of optimizing material usage. The third lever is complexity reduction. This is essential and very important to achieve our EUR 400 million material cost reduction target. We will reduce complexity by cutting variation on component level by up to 30%. On system level, including, for example, our electronic architecture, by up to 40%.
I will go more in detail in terms of complexity reduction on the next slide. Let me be clear. We will remain unwavering in our execution on material cost. We will reach our ambitious 8% reduction by doing, not by doing business as usual. We are bold, and we will do what needs to be done. We are already working on it with high focus. Now, moving from the first strategic lever to the second one, leverage. We are committed to building a powerhouse product portfolio because our customers depend on it. Delivering even more competitive products will require a new approach. We will develop a one modular system, leveraging the global strengths and cost advantages of our new one global team. Leveraging our one global team will mean strengthening our product portfolio while reducing complexity.
Under the new structure, we have the unique opportunity to do this with two brands while providing the right level of differentiation in terms of price points and customer needs. It is important to emphasize that this strategy is not Europe-driven only. In India, as a new region, we will leverage R&D, the manufacturing footprint, as well as logistics and supply chain components for scale and cost efficiency. While the major impact of a modular system will take shape in a few years, we are also creating short-term impact. One concrete example here. Although our new segment only formed earlier this year, we have already decided to develop a medium-duty cap with a single team in India. Previously, this cap would have been developed separately in Germany, Brazil, and India. In the future, we will also produce that cap in two plants only instead of three.
This is one example of our new speed of execution. We identify and immediately act on opportunities coming from our new global scope. Personally, I can't wait to share more examples like this. Now, coming to our third strategic lever, grow. Thereby coming to an outstanding truck that will help us grow. It feels more like you're driving a car. It's very light. Very easy to drive. Very safe. The way it performs, the way it brakes. This cargo. Feel good. And the seamless power that you just, it just goes. It's effortless. Totally effortless. This is the future, isn't it? It's effortless. It's the future. That touches. I talked about happy customers before, and it's really great to see all the positive feedback we got on our eActros 600.
In terms of growth opportunities in Europe, trucks like this play a major role because Europe remains committed to zero-emission transport, and we at Mercedes-Benz Trucks are ready to lead the transformation. The European zero-emission vehicle market is projected to be over 40% of all truck sales by 2030. Zero-emission vehicle sales also unlock an ecosystem of e-mobility and service opportunities. By far, the largest growth segment is long-haul trucking, which is also the biggest impact on CO2. This is the segment we are best positioned to lead. With our battery electric flagship truck that you just saw in the video, we have the benchmark e-truck in series production. The eActros 600 has won the International Truck of the Year 2025 and is purpose-built to deliver profitable TCO for our customers.
Now we are taking the next step, expanding the eActros 600 lineup with additional wheelbases, battery pack options, and cab variants to better serve our customers. The new eActros 400 will be based on the eActros 600 technology. We will also serve construction customers with the eActros 400. Besides the zero-emission vehicle market, we are also targeting growth in another product segment where we see significant potential. That is defense. We want to double our defense-based revenue latest by 2030. We have a long history and experience in the defense sector and are well positioned in many markets. For example, we have had a strong presence in Algeria. For over 10 years, we are supplying Arocs and Zetros with an average sales volume of about 1,000 units annually. In the Baltic countries, our Unimog is the preferred choice.
In Chile, we have recently won a tender supplying Arocs and Zetros with further potential over the next years. Most recently, we delivered our over 700 Zetros to Ukraine. We received the awarding of a tender by the German Federal Armed Forces. We are prepared to deliver whatever is needed. Of course, our products come with comprehensive service offerings. The defense business is characterized by long-term contracts with parts and services through a cycle of over 20 to 30 years, resulting in recurring revenues well into the future. In Europe, defense alone. Budget is increasing by more than 50% by 2027 compared to 2022. In recent years, yeah, we did not actively participate in tenders, but this is changing now. In fact, we have already started to reinvest in our defense product offering and to optimize our tender activities.
Our main focus is on common platforms and solutions. One example is our new Zetros 8x8 as a portfolio extension. Moreover, we are expanding our global service network and enhancing full service offerings such as refurbishment options. As we can rely on our global sales network with local expertise and offset structures, we are well positioned for all upcoming tenders. Last but not least, and especially in the defense sector, partnerships are key to our success. One of the most recent big wins was based on a partnership, the Canadian Logistics Modernization Program tender. This was one of the largest NATO tenders in recent years, with a total project volume of CAD 1.8 billion. We are participating in that with our Zetros chassis and after-sales services.
An extension of the frame contract is already under discussion with the Canadian Ministry of Defense, intending to procure another high three-digit number of Zetros. Speaking of partnerships, we are using the Canadian tender as a blueprint. We have now signed a memorandum of understanding together with General Dynamics Land Systems for a joint partnership on defense tenders in many more countries. Two more examples are our recently announced strategic partnerships. First, ARX Robotics, a leading German company in unmanned autonomous vehicle technology. Here, we will integrate robotics and AI technologies into our vehicle platform. Second, we will do joint military vehicle development, production, sales, and services with Arquus, a French-German partnership. As you can see, we are already executing our strategy. The third area where we aim to grow is our services business. I want to highlight three potential focus areas. Expanding and improving our retail network.
Growing our classic parts business. Delivering on e-mobility solutions. In terms of retail, we need more truck dedication locations instead of mixed locations that service both passenger cars and commercial vehicles. We will achieve this by first growing our own retail network and second, improving the truck dedication by our dealers in the markets. By 2030, we will grow our own retail footprint by over 60%. Coming to our parts business. Delivering parts quickly to customers is a win-win. We keep our customers up and running while also growing our after-sales business. To do so, we are shifting from a previously more passenger car-focused setup to a truly truck-dedicated model. Since 2022, we have opened 16 new after-sales facilities, all 100% truck dedicated. Most importantly, our new global parts center in Halberstadt in Germany will officially open on Thursday this week.
All in all, we extended our shipping times, we improved our dealer-to-dealer transactions for urgent parts, and we have direct deliveries to customers with on-fleet workshops. Since 2022, we have consistently improved our parts availability, increased our daily pick-full fulfillment, and reduced our parts backorder. Looking at our e-mobility solutions, with our Truck Charge brand, we offer a holistic customer service solution. We are currently running over 300 e-consulting projects, providing customers with tailored charging contracts and clear cost analysis. We want to build the largest semi-public charging network in Europe on this brand. We already have more than 10 pilot dealers and customers ready to go. Our e-mobility services also include payment solutions, our Fleetboard charge management, and charging stations at our retail sites. All these services help us to be the best partner for our customers.
Now I talked a lot about our plans on how we want to turn potential into profit at Mercedes-Benz Trucks. Essentially, we have three main steps: restructure, leverage, and grow. What is the foundation to realize all of this? At the beginning of my speech, I talked about my career over the past 20 plus years. There is one thing that connects all of my global assignments across the Daimler Truck universe, and that is my strong conviction that people make the difference. As discussed, it also was the foundation for our turnaround in Latin America. The key is high-performance culture. With a relentless focus on the customer, I even like to call it customer obsession, with fast execution and excellent quality based on trust and accountability.
With a mindset that reflects Mercedes-Benz Trucks now, a truly global one team, and with a conviction to become better and better every day. Let me summarize the key aspects that you should take with you from my presentation. First, restructure. With our cost-down Europe program, we have the right levers in place to structurally transform our business. To drive higher profitability and to build long-term resilience. Second, leverage. We are unlocking the full potential of our global scale and capabilities more than ever before. Third, grow. We are laser-focused on capturing high-value growth in services, zero-emission vehicles, and defense. We will deliver on all of this to reach 12% return on sales, powered by the global collaboration and exceptional team that is fully committed. Execution is what matters, and we are in full motion. We are not just planning the future; we are building it.
Now we take a 15-minute break, and when we return, John will be back on stage with Daimler Trucks North America.
Please return to your seats and silence all mobile devices. Our program is about to resume.
Thank you. Welcome back from the break, everyone. I hope everyone's enjoying your time here in North Carolina. I know Cleveland's a bit of a hike from Charlotte, but as Karin said earlier, it's a great opportunity to showcase the Mercedes-Benz Tour Rider coming and going. Till is here, the head of our bus division. I'm sure he would love to brag about the features and benefits if you only should ask him.
No doubt you saw many of our other great products on the road during the drive. If you did not, then please keep your eye out on the way back. I think you will be surprised by the high % of penetration on the roads. This plant has been such a critical part of DTNA and Daimler Truck's success over the past year that we wanted you to get a chance to see where it all happens. With over 2,000 employees and nearly 40 years in operation, Cleveland is our largest plant in the U.S., as Karin said, and it is responsible for manufacturing some of our top-selling products.
We've got a little bit more presentation for you this morning before we give our investors here a chance for Q&A, and I hope you all join us after the events today to drive some of these exceptional vehicles that we manufacture here in the States. At Daimler Truck North America, we're operating from a position of strength, continuing with a clear, proven strategy, a disciplined focus, and a deep commitment of continuing to deliver long-term value to our customers and to our shareholders. In this time of rapid change and uncertainty, we remain grounded in what we can control, scaling strategically, sustaining our market lead, and streamlining our operations to further increase efficiency and profitability. Today, I'll walk you through how we're executing that strategy and how every move we make is designed to strengthen market leadership and drive sustainable, profitable growth.
Now, since our last capital market day in Boston, DTNA has continued to demonstrate a strong and consistent year-over-year performance with a proven track record of meeting and exceeding our financial goals. If you look back at our guidance ranges from capital market day in 2023, you can see that we were able to meet our 2025 ambition well ahead of schedule. On top of that, as I'm sure you know, we achieved a 14.4% ROS in Q1 of this year, and our compound annual growth rate in North America has been 5.6% from 2022 to 2024. Now, one of the key drivers of this success has been our focus on value-based pricing and an enhanced mix. By aligning pricing strategies with the value we deliver to dealers and customers, as well as improving operational efficiency, we've been able to grow profitably even with slightly lower sales.
This has been achieved in close collaboration with our dealer network and customers, ensuring that our offerings are not only competitive but also aligned with the best possible pricing for total cost of ownership. A standout example of this strategic alignment can be seen through our vocational Western Star X-Series products that you continue to hear about. Since their launch in 2020, we've seen very consistent incremental growth on top of our dominant on-highway business. By strengthening our position in the vocational segment, we've broadened our market reach and created new revenue streams while reinforcing our leadership across the larger commercial vehicle landscape. Of course, the past few years have brought significant supply chain challenges as well. Between COVID, semiconductor shortage, global conflict, and overall economic uncertainty, the resilience of companies across nearly all industries has been tested to the extreme.
At DTNA, we did not just react; we adapted, we transformed, we enhanced the agility of our production network, improved cross-functional coordination, and built overall stronger, more responsive internal systems and processes. As a result, we are now more nimble, more efficient, and better positioned to navigate future volatility. Our resilience is also the result of deliberate, proactive measures to increase operational efficiency and make it part of our culture to continually streamline our organization. These measures that we have put in place during solid market conditions now will help us to navigate the market decline we are facing in 2025 and even generate attractive returns through this period. Our ability to deliver profitable growth, even through inconsistent and challenging environments, speaks to the strength of our strategy and the discipline of our execution.
For that reason, we continue to be a core profit engine for Daimler Truck Group, just as we were when we last all met. The North American segment is not just performing well. We have built a foundation for long-term strength and value creation. In today's unpredictable environment, resilience is more than a strength, though; it is an advantage. We understand the best way to prepare for the unexpected is to be operating at absolute peak performance in every aspect within our control. We are no stranger to these sorts of market conditions. We have faced them before, and we have weathered them very successfully, often coming out the other side stronger than when we went in. Freightliner, for example, has been around for over 80 years, and Thomas Built Buses for nearly 110 years. In that time, we have experienced at least 14 major market downturns, including several global recessions and financial crises.
It is no accident that we're still here in our strongest overall market position to date. We know how to right-size our investments to create the products our customers demand, how to effectively manage capacity, and how to streamline our operations. Throughout the presentation today, you'll hear me talk about our strategy from the perspective of how we plan to scale, sustain, and streamline our business in North America. We scale it with purpose, investing in capabilities that allow us to flex with demand and seize growth opportunities without compromising efficiency. At the same time, we sustain what works, reinforcing the core processes, partnerships, and technologies that consistently deliver value. This balanced approach enables us to navigate uncertainty with confidence, maintain strong performance, and remain agile in the face of change.
Simultaneously, we are fully integrated with the global vision for Daimler Truck, as Karin outlined earlier today, driving results as its largest segment. Every initiative we pursue is aligned with the broader Daimler Truck Group strategy, and every action we take is designed to drive value. We are accelerating heavy vocational growth, building on the momentum of our Western Star X-Series, and scaling our presence in that high-potential segment. This is a key lever for both revenue and margin expansion. At the same time, we are working to optimize product complexity, streamline our offerings to reduce cost, improve speed to market, and enhance quality. It is about doing more with less and doing it smarter. Our service revenue growth remains a top priority as well, scaling parts and digital services to build a more resilient recurring revenue base that supports long-term profitability and customer loyalty.
We're also enabling flexible production for both internal combustion and zero-emission vehicles, ensuring that we can meet customer demand across technologies without compromising efficiency. This flexibility is critical as the market transitions at different speeds. Internally, we're continuing to strengthen our continuous improvement culture. It's embedded in how we operate, driving accountability, innovation, and operational excellence across every function. We're also maintaining a sharp focus on fixed costs. By managing our cost base with discipline, we're building resilience and protecting margins in both stable and volatile environments. Finally, we're guided by a simple but very powerful principle: Mission first. People always. Our people are the engine behind our performance, and we're investing in a culture that empowers them to lead, adapt, and deliver. Together, these initiatives form a cohesive focus strategy, one that's already delivering results and positioning us for continued success.
We're not just aligned with the group's vision; we're helping to lead it forward. Now, as the anchor of our scaling strategy, our vocational business is one of the most exciting growth opportunities within Daimler Truck North America and one that we continue to develop through both our Freightliner and Western Star brands. There are some key benefits to this focus on vocational growth. The vocational market tends to be less volatile year over year than the on-highway market. They tend to have a higher spec count and revenue per unit based on how they're equipped to work. These products tend to have higher average parts sales in aftermarket due to the often extreme working conditions, duty cycles, and sensitivity to downtime. Finally, vocational customers tend to be more fiercely brand loyal, forging stronger long-term relationships with dealers and OEMs.
Now, we already hold a very strong position in medium-duty and mid-range vehicles, with a growing position in heavy vocational. With the Freightliner M2 and SD, we've gained a leading position due to their value proposition and highly customizable offerings, one that we will defend at 42% market share. Now, with the Western Star X-Series, we're able to take the heavy-duty vocational market by storm with a clear path to continue to grow it to over 35% by 2030. As Ava mentioned earlier, the X-Series trucks are engineered for durability, performance, and, most importantly, for our customers, customization. This makes them ideal for industries like construction, logging, and as vocational tractors. Simply put, we have the right products for any job our customers need to get done. The world's best product does not matter in the long run if it's not backed up by superior customer experience.
From speccing and ordering to delivery, service, and support, our dealer network is fully engaged, and we're constantly investing in tools and training to ensure that every touchpoint reinforces the Western Star brand proposition. We've also made substantial strides to improve the flexibility of our supply chain and manufacturing operations to support us in scaling the vocational business quickly. Last year in North America, for example, we experienced a pretty dramatic shift, almost overnight, in market demand from conventional on-highway vehicles to vocational platforms. Thanks to that flexibility, we were able to completely invert our model mix here at Cleveland in an incredibly short time to secure a larger piece of that vocational market.
This ability to shift gears so quickly gave us the edge to seize several opportunities for customer conquest, bringing new fleets into the Western Star family and laying the groundwork for long-term partnerships like this one here.
Good morning. I'm Wayne Jones, President of Cass Jones Ready Mix in Weatherford, Texas. The first time we were around the 47X was in Detroit. We actually went up there to the factory, and we spent some time walking around it, and it was just incredible. They had a 49X and a 47X, a couple of different applications. We were with another brand for a long time, and to put this truck next to that one, it was no competition. This truck just looks better. Today, there's a huge focus on driver retention.
If you do not have a nice truck that is friendly for drivers to use, easy to maintain, easy to keep clean, something they are proud of, then you are going to be in trouble. When our drivers got in this truck for the first time, it helped us close the deal, if you will. The visibility sitting in that driver's seat, the ease of getting in and out of the truck, the transmission, the DT12 transmission, and the ease of use, it was a little intimidating at first, but once our guys started using that, they are never going back to the competition.
How about that? The quintessential vocational Texan, Cass Jones. As you can see, this was not a one-hit wonder. Our approach to scale the heavy vocational business is in place. The momentum is building, and the opportunity is clear. We have got a phenomenal lineup with the X-Series.
We know it, the market knows it, and so do our customers. There is more than just great products under the hood of our scaling approach. At Daimler Truck North America, service is a cornerstone of our long-term value creation strategy. As the market evolves and our customers face increasing pressure to reduce downtime, manage risk, and operate more efficiently, our ability to deliver tailored service solutions becomes a key differentiator while also expanding our own recurring revenue base. Looking towards 2030, we are setting an ambitious but achievable goal to increase our service revenue with strong double-digit growth compared to 2024. This slide outlines how we will achieve that. Not through reliance on any single area, but through meaningful contributions across all areas of the business. Including our Daimler Truck Financial Services organization, which is not included in the chart, but they are a strong enabler of our industrial business nonetheless.
It's a broad-based strategy designed to increase lifetime customer value by meeting real operational needs. These efforts are grounded in customer feedback, with each category playing a distinct role in how we deliver value. Parts remains the foundation of our service business, expanding our portfolio and improving availability and customer uptime. Over the past few years, we've grown our all-makes parts business and expanded our sales channels, including our accelerator e-commerce platform, which, despite its fairly recent 2020 launch, is already on track to achieving $1 billion in parts sales annually. We continue to strengthen this foundation with programs that support uptime and customer confidence throughout the ownership cycle. Our service products include extended warranty offerings and second life coverages. We've recently launched a collaboration between Daimler Truck Financial Services and Geico, allowing customers to bundle insurance plans.
This gives fleets greater cost predictability and flexibility of coverage at a crucial time when no one wants to be surprised by unexpected costs. Digital services is an increasingly vital area of differentiation as well. While we scale back on outdated and legacy IT solutions, we're sharpening our focus on proprietary value-creating offerings like over-the-air updates, software-based services, and safety solutions. We are also expanding scalable platforms like data as a service, turning vehicle data into actionable operational insights. Although internal combustion remains the preference in North America, we will continue to offer zero-emission ecosystem-related services focused on charging infrastructure. Altogether, these offerings form a highly scalable, customer-centered strategy to drive long-term value, helping our customers operate more effectively while positioning DTNA for leadership and resilience in the rapidly evolving services space.
At the same time that we're scaling up our vocational and service offerings, we're also focused on sustaining the areas where we already have a clear market advantage in North America. In 2023, we put a spotlight on our zero-emission vehicle portfolio, highlighting four different models to cover the range of customer applications. We'll continue to support and sustain our customers who have invested in these products for their businesses. With market maturity for zero-emission vehicles losing momentum in North America, we've reshaped our capital allocation strategy to refocus on further developing our internal combustion technology. This is a great example of how DTNA moves at the speed of right. Where it makes sense, when it makes sense, and always in alignment with customer readiness, infrastructure maturity, and regulatory timelines.
This dual-path strategy allows us to serve the full spectrum of customer use cases, whether they're early adopters of electric or operating in segments where diesel remains the most viable solution today, which is still the vast majority of applications in North America. For that reason, our diesel engine strategy remains a top priority for sustaining our market lead. Our fully integrated powertrain, combining Detroit engine and transmission, continues to deliver exceptional value with over 90% captive engine penetration in our on-highway products and over 1.2 million engines built in North America alone. Within the X-Series, the DT12 has grown to 25% of the volume in these units. Not only have we increased growth into new segments, we've also increased our vertical integration with technology that is still considered very new for that market.
Furthermore, our integrated powertrain fully unlocks industry-leading Detroit Assurance safety features, which is a major source of value for our customers. Introduced in 2015, these advanced features lead to more uptime, greater driver retention, reduced insurance claims, and better safety for all of us on the road. This has been a significant capital market driver for us and will continue to drive value for DTNA in the future. Thanks to our advanced powertrain and vehicle technologies, our current trucks produce 1/60th the nitrogen oxides than those built before the 1990s and emit 20% less carbon dioxide than the pre-2017 standard. Altogether, our engine strategy results in a regional and global portfolio that is flexible, aligned with real customer demand, and provides a clear advantage that we can defend and sustain throughout the market cycles.
Now, as one of the pioneers in commercial diesel engine development, Daimler Truck has shaped the evolution of internal combustion technology for industrial and on-highway use around the world. For nearly 90 years, the Detroit brand has stood for power, reliability, and innovation. For almost 20 years, the heavy-duty engine platform has been the cornerstone of our global engine strategy, developing consistent performance and efficiency across markets. Today, Detroit is the market share lead in 13-liter and larger engines, and we're in contention for the number two spot in the heavy-duty vocational segment. An impressive leap from where we had been for a long time. This momentum is no accident. It is the result of sustained focus on engineering excellence, customer value, and strategic investment. Now we're giving you, our top investors, an exclusive first look at what's next. The 2027 Detroit engine portfolio.
This lineup is engineered to meet compliance with the 2027 emission standard using advanced combustion and aftertreatment strategies that use known technology and builds on a proven platform. For example, the base of the aftertreatment remains the same, while new components are based on proven technology while maintaining Detroit's hallmark durability. It also delivers continuous fuel economy improvements to help offset impacts from meeting stringent emission requirements. It leverages our proven global platform, ensuring scalable, cost-effective manufacturing with the quality and reliability that fleets have come to expect from Detroit. This platform reflects everything we've learned from decades of leadership and everything we're building toward. It's a powerful statement of our sustained commitment to internal combustion excellence, even as we continue to develop zero-emission technologies at the global scale. The 2027 Detroit engine portfolio is more than a product. It's a strategic advantage that we'll continue to defend.
Today, you're among the first to see what's coming. One of our key products powered by Detroit is the Freightliner Cascadia. The Cascadia has long sustained its place as the benchmark product in the on-highway segment. With the launch of the fifth generation, we've built on that legacy with even greater ambition. Today, Cascadia stands as the undisputed market leader, commanding a 45% share of the on-highway market and 60% share with the largest fleets like Penske, Ryder, NFI, Schneider, JB Hunt, just to name a very few. It's a reflection of customer trust, product excellence, and a focus on delivering what fleets need most. The fifth generation is the result of deep customer insight, advanced engineering, and a clear understanding of what drives value on the road.
Every design decision, every system upgrade, and every performance enhancement is aimed at helping our customers run smarter, safer, and more cost-effectively. Safety remains a top priority, with 85% of Cascadia's specced with Detroit Assurance. The fifth generation Cascadia features the latest in active safety technologies, including Active Brake Assist 6. It builds on our leadership in collision mitigation, lane keeping, and driver assistance systems. On the efficiency side, we continue to push boundaries with aerodynamic refinements that deliver fuel savings and directly translate into profitability for our customers. Speaking of profitability, the fifth generation is designed to maximize uptime and minimize total cost of ownership. From predictive maintenance capabilities to enhanced connectivity and over-the-air updates, we are giving fleets the tools to stay ahead of issues and to keep trucks on the road where they belong.
It's not just the next step for our portfolio. It's the new standard for our customers. We've got a strong momentum rolling with this product already, and we're confident in our ability to sustain our lead in the space. One of the key enablers to our scale and sustain approach is our continued focus on streamlining operations. At DTNA, operational excellence isn't just our goal. It's in our DNA. It's how we run our business every day with a focus on simplicity, agility, and performance. It's how we continue to deliver strong results in a dynamic and competitive environment. We've already made meaningful progress. Through stringent fixed-cost discipline, we achieved EUR 185 million in savings, reinforced our commitment to lean, efficient operations. Our focus on efficiency has also brought Daimler Truck's specialty vehicles back to double-digit profitability, a clear sign of our ability to turn strategy into performance.
This evolutionary transformation has been supported by our dealer partners, who've invested over $2 billion in new factories and upgrades over the past four to five years, bringing us up to over 600 outlets. Looking ahead, we're focused on restoring manufacturing efficiency per truck to pre-COVID levels, a critical step in protecting margins and improving competitiveness. We're targeting a reduction in non-value-added complexity while increasing automation to boost consistency, speed, and quality across our operations. We have identified other avenues for efficiency with the Gentech AI for warranty analytics, allowing us to predict issues earlier, reduce claims, and feed actionable insights back into product development. All of this supports our ambition to deliver a plus 50 basis points improvement in return on sales with these operational excellence measures alone, based on our 2024 baseline.
This is how we earn excellence every day: by staying disciplined, staying focused, and continuously streamlining how we operate. As you've seen throughout today's presentation, Daimler Truck North America is building on our solid foundation and aiming for even more success and strength in the years and decades ahead. We have a clear focus on what is within our control so that we minimize the impact from the industry's cyclical nature and remain nimble for the evolving landscape. This is how we move from strength to strength by executing with discipline, adapting with agility, and a relentless focus on excellence. With purpose in our heart and ambition in our stride, we're delivering results today and building momentum for tomorrow. Our ambition to grow our return on sales from 12.9% to over 14% by 2030 is aggressive, but we're confident that it's achievable.
No matter the market conditions, we will continue to be top performers in the industry. From product innovation and service growth to operational efficiency and financial performance, creating lasting value for our customers, our people, and our investors. Thank you all again for joining us here today in Cleveland. I'm now glad to hand it over to my fellow board member, Andreas Gorbach, Head of Truck Technology. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, John. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome also from my side. I have the opportunity today to give you a little bit of an update as for our technology strategy. You will see, compared to what we said two years ago, we made quite some adaptations in terms of implementation speed of the technology strategy. You will also see that we keep to the core of the strategy and that we deliver what we promised.
Let me start with a slide that some of you might have already seen, which is important for the beginning. Because before we talk about technology strategy, it's always important to understand what we mean with technology in a truck. Technology in a truck obviously has many purposes, but two of them are decisive. Technology in a truck always needs to create customer value. It must create customer value, and that means to maximize the value of the asset called truck in their books. To do so, we don't build to build. We build to solve. Be it in the vocational truck in the U.S., the city bus in São Paulo, the mining truck in Indonesia, the distribution truck in India, or the long-distance truck in Europe. If our customers win, we win.
The second purpose of technology in a truck is to create scale. Scale for the company, be it in our global vehicle portfolio or be it with partners. At the end of the day, we aim to achieve both. Value creation for our customers and global scale for us. This combination ultimately obviously transforms into shareholder value. There are two technology clusters that best fit to these attributes. First, the power to drive a truck, the propulsion system, and second, the intelligence to drive a truck. Everything related to software and electronics in a truck. Both technologies, both clusters provide the highest differentiation in customer hands and the biggest scale opportunity for us. Both have a direct impact on every puzzle piece of the total cost of ownership equation and thus on the business case for our customers.
Both can be developed once and then deployed many times in all products and brands of Daimler Truck and beyond. These two technology clusters are undergoing a huge transformation fueled by the big megatrends of decarbonization and digitalization. This transformation by itself is most likely the biggest challenge this industry has ever seen. What makes it more challenging is the fact that this transformation speed is largely determined by our ecosystem, and this is thus highly uncertain and very dynamic. External factors are having a major impact. Even with the best products, for example, our eActros 600, the best battery electric truck, our customers will only buy a relevant number of it.
If the economics are at least on par with diesel and if the required charging infrastructure is in place. For the same reason, customer demand can change overnight as soon as these enabling conditions are in place. This development is hard to anticipate as these external factors strongly depend on political will. As a matter of fact, we've seen quite some changes, quite some unpredictable dynamics in energy prices, subsidies, regulations, just to name a few. We see them diverging more and more between our core markets. How to best deal with this uncertainty? As you have seen, and Karin mentioned it, we have dedicated one pillar of our strategy at Daimler Truck to answer this question. We call it transform at the speed of right. It basically means working out the optimum between two factors.
First, being able to scale up fast with differentiating technologies. Second, and at the same time, mitigating the risk of over-investing too early before the market is ready. Or put simply, transforming at the speed of right is about managing the fine line between being too fast and too slow. For us, this essentially means we hold on to what we stated at the last capital market day two years ago. We set up a flexible modular tech strategy. This includes three main strategic levers. First, we are going step by step in terms of investment and ramping up our technologies. For example, our electric trucks still share a big portion of components with our diesel trucks and can be built on the same lines in our plants.
We balance make or buy decisions pragmatically and move from upscale Pascal technology to truly truckified zero-emission platforms in line with the market uptake. Second, we are reducing risk, increasing scale, and sharing investment with strong partners. We are doing so, as you know, for all our technology clusters. As for diesel, we are sticking to our strategic decision to disinvest on the medium-duty side by leveraging, for example, our partnership with Cummins. We are also holding on to our partnership with Deutz because that helps us, that enables us to scale well beyond our core truck business. As for battery production, we have started our JV Amplified Cell Technology together with Cummins, Accelera by Cummins, Paccar, and Eve. On the hydrogen side, and you are well aware of this, we have our joint venture with Volvo, Cellcentric.
Where we are making great progress and have started pilot production of fuel cell systems. Most recently, we have expanded this great partnership with Volvo to the software side. Our new joint venture, Coretura, is now up and running. You see, we are teaming up with industry and technology leaders, and we set new standards, create benchmark technology, and reach a new level of efficiency and scale. This brings me to the third lever. Global scale has always been part of our DNA at Daimler Truck. We develop once and then deploy many times. All of our platforms are based on a commonality concept, scaling in our trucks across brands and regions, and even with partners beyond Daimler Truck. Today we have one heavy-duty diesel platform, and we have one electronic architecture for all Daimler Truck brands worldwide.
We aim for the same approach for both battery and hydrogen. Once, and that's important, once the market uptake accelerates and thus global volumes justify the invest. As I said, this was our statement in 2023, and these three levers have since then been the foundation of our tech strategy. They support us in transforming at the speed of right. The right products developed the right way and released at the right time. That means being flexible to make strategic adaptations, and that's exactly what we are doing right now. The speed of right is changing for some of the tech clusters. The important message here is. John, you actually alluded to it already, the momentum is changing, especially in the U.S.
We see a momentum increase, a momentum increase for diesel, and we see a momentum decrease for zero emission, especially in the U.S. Equally important, though, is the message in the middle of this slide. The speed of right in terms of our software activities, as well as for our propulsion strategy in Europe and other markets around the world, largely remains unchanged. What are the implications? This is our tech strategy at a glance. As for diesel, we are focusing on the most profitable heavy-duty segment, staying compliant with upcoming regulations, and serving our customers with a highly competitive product. Diesel. On the battery side, we started with a fast-to-market approach with intended low volume, basically upscaling Pascal technology. Now with the eActros 600, we made a first big step into truckification, ready for high-volume production, while the battery pack still remains a buy solution.
Now, as soon as global volumes ramp up, we are flexible. We are flexible for further buy or build decisions. Battery. Third pillar. We are complementing battery electric trucks with hydrogen power trucks. As we are sticking to our well-known dual strategy, not only because the technology is complementary, they complement each other perfectly in terms of customer use cases. Not only because of this, but also because it is the economic optimum for decarbonization, which might not be intuitive. Decarbonization is overall faster and less capital-intense with battery and hydrogen. For example, when you look at building up the infrastructure, or when you look at building a battery cell factory versus a fuel cell factory. Yes, yes, there might still be a risk that no infrastructure for hydrogen power trucks will develop. This is still a risk. As it also depends on the political will to get it going.
However, the opportunity to create value for customers and shareholders with these trucks is incomparably bigger than the risk for now. For now, Europe still has the chance to maintain technology leadership in this area. Cellcentric, the JV, has the potential to become the most competitive truck fuel cell player in the world. It needs decisive political action to catalyze the initial phase along the value chain. Otherwise, we might have to buy the technology from China in the future, like we do with battery cells, solar, and many other technologies today. China is investing heavy in hydrogen. Pillar number four. In terms of software, we are following two main streams. First, we are increasingly decoupling hardware from software, allowing us to create high-performance yet non-differentiating architectures that can be shared with other truck OEMs for larger scale.
By doing so, and second, we are more and more providing customer value with higher speed and lower cost. Of software-only solutions. Now, let's add a little bit more color to each platform and start with the one that laid the foundation of this company for the last 100 years, and that's diesel. Our heavy-duty diesel platform delivers a scale that is unmatched. And Karin, you mentioned a number. It's unmatched in the entire commercial vehicle industry. We produce about 200,000 heavy-duty engines per year. And our latest forecast projects that this volume stays constant well beyond 2030. The main reason is that the global diesel ramp-down is not in sight as of today. And we are ready to meet this development with the next evolution.
The first start of production of this evolution is already planned for next year, and it will provide our customers with yet another efficiency push. We are already thinking beyond that. Reacting to the increasing diesel momentum, we will ensure the long-term competitiveness well beyond 2030. Mastering the speed of right in terms of diesel means leveraging global scale even more than ever before, and thereby largely benefiting from existing assets. Now, obviously, these adaptations also have an impact on our battery strategy. When we look at Europe, we have the benchmark battery electric truck in series production, our eActros 600. Our strategic focus right now is to further expand our e-truck portfolio on the foundation of the eActros 600. The first step, this means that we will offer more vehicle variants with additional wheelbases and battery packs and so on this year.
Especially due to the current ZEV deceleration in the U.S., global volumes do not justify a purpose-built global platform. That includes a deeper vertical integration. This is why we ramped down our captive battery pack activities, and we stick to buy solutions for the time being. However, as I said, as soon as global volumes justify, as soon as the global ZEV market uptake is there, we aim to be ready with our captive platform again. Closely connected to this development is obviously our second strategic adaptation as we align operations of our battery cell JV Amplified Cell Technologies, strongly depending on the market outlook in the U.S. Now, coming to the second ZEV technology, hydrogen. The first-generation fuel cell systems by Cellcentric are currently in customer hands. We have trucks on the road.
We learn a lot from these tests and transfer all learnings directly into the development of the next-generation fuel cell, which is already in full swing. This second generation shows best-in-class test results in terms of efficiency, durability, and cost. Cellcentric still has the ingredients to become the most competitive truck fuel cell player in the world. However, I already mentioned the enabling factors, the enabling conditions that are necessary for zero-emission trucking. The progress in terms of public charging infrastructure is way too slow. The progress in terms of hydrogen refilling stations is even slower. Therefore, our customers will not be able to operate hydrogen trucks in large numbers in the next couple of years, which is why we decelerate the large-scale fuel cell industrialization and shift it to the early 2030s.
Thus, we will utilize Gen 1 and early Gen 2 technology for small volume during this decade. We maintain the ability to bring more vehicles on the road in sync with the infrastructure ramp-up, while mass production invests are further stretched. Obviously, we are focusing on Europe first. At the same time, searching for additional partners and customers for Cellcentric to further consolidate the supply landscape remains a strategic imperative. We are optimistic that we will have some news here soon. Now, I'd like to close this chapter of my presentation with our software activities. The most important message here is the software-defined truck is not some theoretical concept far in the future anymore. In fact, we are already implementing big steps to go from concept to reality. The foundation is our propulsion and brand-agnostic software and electronic platform for the intelligent.
Efficient operation of all our vehicles worldwide. Put simply, it's about a number of computers steering and controlling different systems and components in the truck. The rollout of our latest evolution already started last year. It significantly increases computing power and bandwidth in the truck, being the key enabler for all new functionalities like next-level safety systems, new HMI, speech control, full integration, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and so on. Certainly, this evolution will also make our trucks ready for even bigger leaps like next-level connectivity, cybersecurity, the next generation of zero-emission trucks, and last but not least, ready for autonomous trucking. Still, this increase in intelligence remains mostly dependent on a rather decentralized architecture with many controllers that speak different languages and thus run on different operating systems. To really leverage the full power of software, we have to redefine this architecture.
This will be no longer an evolution. It's going to be a revolution. As I mentioned before, to master this revolution, we are teaming up with Volvo. Since the beginning of June, our JV Coretura has been up and running. We've made a conscious decision to start small with about 50 employees. Then, depending on the topic, depending on the matter, we will either build on existing market standards or develop commercial vehicle-specific solutions. Same as with Cellcentric, Coretura also welcomes additional partners and customers. In this joint venture, we will combine the deep understanding of the trucking business with strong know-how in software and electronics. Essentially, we are writing the code for the future of trucking. Our common goal is to establish a new industry standard, a software-defined vehicle, a software-defined vehicle platform, and with it, a dedicated operating system for commercial vehicles.
This will enable us, our customers, and basically all developers out there to deploy differentiating software features onto our trucks just by using standardized APIs. These software-only features allow us to do three things. First, to develop more and more complex functionalities with the development speed and cost of software without touching the hardware and to a large extent without involving any suppliers. Second, to continuously improve the existing customer fleet with regular updates, the way it works today with our smartphones. Third, to optimize TCO, to optimize total cost of ownership for our customers with more uptime and higher asset value over time. Our pipeline for software-only features is already filling up. Now, to put a little bit more color on that one, I would like to share our vision of the software-defined truck. In the end, it might look a little bit different.
It might not look exactly like this, but we will see more and more pieces of this puzzle evolving over the next decade. Welcome to the future of trucking.
Imagine, imagine a truck that's more than a truck, that extends your senses. That protects you. And others. By seeing threats you can't. Imagine a truck that files your paperwork and plans your day ahead, reserves a parking spot and an electric charging station. Organizes a warm shower. Pre-orders your favorite food. Imagine a truck that takes you home. Even when you are not. Imagine a truck that is not only your best driver, but also your best business partner. Analyzing billions of data points. Helping you to make your business more successful. Imagine a truck that gets better every day, every hour, every second. Defined by software tailor-made with apps. From us and from you.
Welcome to a future we can all look forward to. Welcome to the future of trucking.
Yeah, and with that, I'd like to conclude my part of the presentation today. To summarize again, with regard to the two defining megatrends, decarbonization and digitalization, we are transforming at the speed of right. Holding on to our three strategic levers of flexible investments, strong partnerships, as well as global scale and commonality, we are ensuring longer competitiveness of our heavy-duty diesel platform. At the same time, we are adjusting to our ZEV activities, to the market demand for battery electric and hydrogen power trucks. We remain laser-focused, laser-focused on developing and delivering the software-defined truck of the future. Thank you very much. Back to you, Karin.
It's great. You all look very awake and attentive. That already makes me happy.
I know it's been a lot of information and a lot of presentations here on stage. I will try to keep my wrap-up simple, fast, and hopefully also very strong. I guess two main takeaways. The first one is. At Time to Truck, we will put an even stronger focus on execution. We will make sure that our corporate strategy, the what, is very closely linked with our segment strategies and plans, and of course, with our financial plan. It all has to fit together, and it will enable us to closely monitor the progress on how we're doing. Also, we're putting a lot of focus on the how. To make sure that we execute on the strategy, that we make it a success. We will make Time to Truck simple, we will make it faster, and we will make it stronger.
We are going to focus on execution, execution, execution. The second takeaway is this. We have put a strong strategic and financial framework in place. I think this slide is providing a good overview. In case you lost focus for just one or two minutes, you have it all here. We have defined the right strategic pillars. Within these pillars, we are working on a great number of strategic initiatives. We have defined the right financial ambitions to achieve, benchmark profitability. Of course, we will let you, our shareholders, participate in this with an attractive dividend and a continued share buyback. I want to return to where I started. At Time to Truck, we are proud to work for all who keep the world moving. We have a clear ambition.
We want to build the best truck and bus company in the world for our customers, for our employees, and for you, our shareholders and partners. If you remember one thing, then that's it. That's my commitment. It is shared by all my colleagues in the Board of Management. We will execute together as one strong team. I am convinced we have what it takes to be successful.
Thank you very much, all. You are now waiting for Q&A. We just need one or two minutes to rearrange the stage, and then we will get going. Please give us this short moment. For those joining online only, you can send your messages directly via email to ir@time-truck.com, ir@time-truck.com. We will get started in one or two minutes once the stage is ready. Thank you. It is excellent. Thank you very much. We are now ready for the Q&A.
Again, for those following online, please feel free to send your questions via email to ir@time-truck.com. For all here at our Cleveland plant, you will now have the chance to ask your questions. To do so, please just raise your hand, and I will then call you one at a time. Before we start, as always, just two practical points. Please introduce yourself with your name and the name of the organization you are representing. As a matter of fairness, please really limit the questions to two maximum. One additional comment. This Q&A session is meant for analysts and investors, media and bankers. We will have separate sessions later this afternoon. With this, I would say, first question to you, Nicolai.
Yeah, thank you. It's Nicolai from Deutsche Bank. First of all, thank you for hosting this event. Two questions. First, on the cost on Europe.
As you have mentioned, we have seen many initiatives in the past years. While they have been improving profitability, maybe they have been lacking the last margin profitability we hoped for. My question is, where do you see the biggest challenge in executing these new initiatives? Where do you think that the program will clash with reality? I will go to the second one. There could be a lot of moving parts next year on the cash position with the inflows from Trucks Asia, but also outflows for structuring and peak CapEx. Net net, it still seems that the net cash will increase next year. Do you consider something like a special dividend post the Trucks Asia sell-down?
Thanks, Nicolai. Perhaps cost on Europe, Achim, and then on the cash, Eva.
Thank you, Nicolai, for the question.
As explained during the speeches, it's a huge program with cost reductions targeted by 2030 of more than EUR 1 billion. If we focus at the big buckets, obviously an essential contribution is to come from material cost with the EUR 400 million. Here, the focus is on enabling the groundwork, so reducing complexity, working on the processes. Get going. As you could have seen, the materialization of the first impacts will start paying off in 2026. Material costs really need to change the way we are doing things, reduce complexity, and move forward. Secondly, it's a scope in the program that we did not have yet in past programs. We focus on the indirect. We focus on the direct workforce. We focus on the footprint. A lot of relocation activities need to take place when we talk about best cost country sourcing.
That needs to be well prepared and executed. Obviously, also where we talk about changing footprint topics, we need to prepare this transition. Overall, we have a very encompassing program in place that enables us to materialize the cost savings, with necessary strong focus on being prepared, executing, and delivering. I believe we have a really good framework in place for that and obviously are fully committed to deliver. Yes, thank you.
Thank you, Nicolai, for your question on the cash inflows. You have captured it correctly that there are a couple of components that contribute to our cash generation next year, obviously the inflow from the Fuso Hino transaction. I just want to emphasize that the $1.5 billion-$2 billion number, it is not everything at closing that is going to come in.
There will also be a sell-down period that gets us to the 25% shareholding that we are targeting. There will also be a component that will be substantial at closing within that amount. Of course, there will be outflows for severance payments. We will book the first part, which is the largest part of the provision in quarter two, which is a low to mid-triple digit million amount. The cash outflows there will be over the next couple of years and also some further additions to the severance provision because we are not able to book everything already now in quarter two. Another component that you have to consider is obviously the current market weakness in North America. There is a lot of uncertainty, as Karin and I have also emphasized in our speeches.
We're building in some contingencies into our model for that. I think with the $2 billion share buyback over the next two years that we have just launched, which is already the second one in the short history that we have as a listed company, we've demonstrated how important shareholder returns are for us. I can ensure you that this will continue to be a priority for us. Let us close the Fuso Hino transaction, and then we will for sure look at the best way to deploy the cash.
Next one would be Daniela.
Thank you so much, Daniela from Goldman Sachs. I have two questions as well. I'll do the same thing. I'll ask them the two in a row.
First, just to, if you could deep dive a little bit further on the service, it's the 50 basis points of the bridge. Is that net of the investments that you have to do? How different are the initiatives now versus the ones you targeted at IPO? Yeah. The second one, just relating to defense, I think it is the first time we see you repeating a lot the defense as an opportunity. Do you see that as only organic or would inorganic be something you'd consider there as well? Yeah, service perhaps on the bridge, Eva, and then Achim for defense. Yeah, I mean, the first part of your question, Daniela, is simple. The 50 basis points, that's a net number after investments.
Maybe John and Achim, you can explain a bit what the initiatives are that are maybe also different than what you've been driving before.
Yeah. To add on the service growth, as you've seen in the presentation, we strong focus on the on retail acceleration. In the past, we are focusing on four to six additional outlets per year. We are increasing the ramp-up of new activities and outlet locations up to 10 per year going forward. We put a very strong focus on, together with our dealer network in the countries, specifically in Europe, to focus and to move towards truck dedication. We have a few blueprints in the markets like Spain, where we see that the truck dedicated outlets are significantly increasing in profitability on the truck business.
This is something we are going to reinforce also in other countries where we're still historically strong with the setup of mixed locations. That is one, obviously, growth dimension we are following on. Accelerated also now the service growth coming from the defense business. Here we see, due to the long-term contracts, strong potential to contribute to the service profitability. We are obviously also looking very strong in the topics of zero-emission vehicles and the e-mobility services around the e-mobility ecosystem, where we are working on setting up certain structures, setting up e-consulting for the battery electric operation of our vehicles. With that, John, please hand over to you.
Yeah. For us, I mean, there's a lot of things. Fundamentally, first and foremost, we've talked a lot about vocational, so there's a big opportunity there. Vocational trucks, as we continue to grow that.
Market share, they are high consumers of parts due to the nature of their business. Obviously, we have even penetration opportunities there on the powertrain side. That is one. I am just trying to be a little bit different from his because there is a lot of overlap, and I do not want to repeat. On a connectivity services standpoint, there are opportunities there to basically take data and sell it back to customers in ways that help them run their businesses better. Maybe those would be a couple that I would highlight as being a little bit different. Parts-only stores. Also, just trying to get a little bit more of the third and fourth owner. We tend to be very good with first and second owners coming into dealerships where we are the retail point of sale.
We have opportunities to get deeper into that third, fourth owner, into those parts revenue streams as well. Coming to your second question, Daniela, on the defense section. This is an essential growth field looking forward. As Karin mentioned, we see it as a hidden gem. Yes, we are doubling revenue latest by 2030. This will bring us in the ballpark of revenues of around EUR 1 billion. That is obviously not a significant share yet. Together with the defense team, we are looking on organic growth in terms of growing businesses. We also look for potential unorganic opportunities, however, acknowledging that we are in the middle of a quite focused military season. We are looking left and right, but on the unorganic one, nothing to share as of the moment.
Thank you. Next questions for Klas, please. Thank you, Klas at Citi.
Thank you for the presentation. A lot of good initiatives. I also want to zoom in on service. It looks like, if I back out currency, that service growth since 2019 has been growing at around a mid-single digit CAGR for the group. If I eyeball, and this is obviously, I know I'm looking at that slide, but if I look at going from $8.4 billion, it looks like over $10 billion, maybe $11 billion of service sales. That would be a similar CAGR to 2030. Obviously, a 5% CAGR would be at a higher end of the group range, so that explains some of the accretion. What I'm trying to get to is that it's not higher service growth, and it doesn't look like the service margin is improving a lot, or am I wrong? I'm trying to understand that better. Thank you.
I could say, Eva.
Yeah. What you have to understand when it comes to the service growth, also the service share, obviously, that we're targeting. Because when I said that we overall intend to grow stronger than our average new vehicle sales CAGR, that means that in North America, we see that a bit more strongly than we see that in Mercedes-Benz Trucks. Because in Mercedes-Benz Trucks, we have a separate effect within that, which is the zero-emission vehicle sales, which come at a higher level of revenues per truck. And that is an effect that with the service that comes a bit afterwards. It has an impact on share, which is why looking at 2030 now, the service share for Mercedes-Benz Trucks is more on a more stable level because of that inflated level of new vehicle zero-emission sales, while it is growing stronger in North America.
That is the technicalities within that that is important to understand. Does that answer your question?
Yeah. I try to make this into a positive and try to look, I know we guide to 2030, but if there is also a margin story on service, I mean, you want to increase the level of captive dealers, etc., right? And spare parts availability, you are launching the new spare parts side. Like to 2030, that accretion is not that much. That means that beyond 2030, after the cost down, the margin should improve even more.
Yeah. For sure there will be more potential because especially when you look at the own retail opportunity within Europe that Achim has mentioned, when we look at what the potential is to increase that further, we will not have achieved the end target of own retail locations by 2030.
That will continue, and that will continue to add value, and that will continue to increase service revenues and margins for sure.
Yeah. My second question and final is on market shares. I think, Karin, you said in the beginning of your presentation that you're aiming for a number one market share in key markets. If you look at the European market share today, that's quite a big climb given where we are at the moment. Obviously, when you get spare parts availability, the trucks come back on the road quicker, the customer-centric organization is being implemented. I can see why this would happen. Is that also a 2030 ambition on getting to a leading position in Europe on the market share? It's quite a big climb. I just want to understand the timing. Thank you.
Perhaps I'm on market share.
Thank you, Klas, for the question. If you look at the recent development in Europe, we see that our strategy to focus on profitability rather than market share is paying off. We had great achievements during the last years. If we look at the development throughout 2024 and the recent development, we also figure that our very good pricing position has brought a deterioration on market share where we are fighting back. We have already last year initiated several activities on the product side. For instance, bringing the new Pro cab in to improve efficiency. We have brought new transmissions to our vehicles that improve driver comfort and available fuel consumption. We are running a dual cab strategy now, basically to offer our customers a broader portfolio.
What we see when we look at the month-to-date performance from one month to the other throughout 2025, we see month-by-month increase in the market share. We are coming back in terms of performance. Obviously, we are very closely monitoring the situation in the European markets because we also see a scattered picture in terms of market structures and market developments. Overall, we still focus strongly on profitability over market share. You are fully right. It is about finding the sweet spot to make sure that we have sufficient vehicle stock in the market for the after-sales network as well.
Thank you. The next question is one right here. Yes.
Thank you. Akshat from JPMorgan . I have a couple of questions, please. The first one on your margin targets by 2030 for the key divisions, North America and Mercedes-Benz Trucks.
Thank you for the presentation on the cost down Europe and the service potential that we just discussed. When I think about the 2030 targets, you still have a 200 basis point margin difference between the two divisions. Can you just explain the key factors that still explain that margin differential between the two businesses, and how can you close that into the long term? The second question is on truck pricing and the market discipline in the next cycle. What makes you confident on holding on to the pricing gains that you've had in the business following the pandemic, given that competitive pressures might be increasing in North America as well as Europe? When we think about your customers, they are running all-time low margins since the GFC. What makes you confident on truck pricing into the next cycle, please? Thank you.
Yeah, I think on the margin difference, perhaps Eva, and then on the pricing, John and Achim from North America and Europe.
Yes. On the margin, what you can see in North America is that we are already operating at a very high margin level, also considering the overall profit pool of the market. We are also comparing very well there against our peers. We have also demonstrated, as you could see now in quarter one with a lower volume, that we are extremely resilient already in how we ramp down and also our ability to ramp up the business if market demands and how we also adjust to different scenarios, as we have demonstrated last year with the vocational growth and the on-highway weakness.
In Mercedes-Benz Trucks, we will make a giant leap in getting our cost structure to the level where we need it to be to be on benchmark level, and that will happen by 2030. That is where we will get the EUR 1 billion cost improvement, translating to about then 150 basis points on group level in return on sales expansion. What we will not have fully closed when it comes to benchmark level is what I just explained to Klas, and that is the service opportunity. Because it is just physically not possible to add, let's say, 100 own retail locations in five years, not only because the CapEx spending would be massive, but also we would be really reaching the limits of what our organization can do when it comes to running these in the best possible manner.
We need to gradually, as Achim has said, increase the truck dedication, building up new own retail locations, while at the same time enabling and strengthening our dealer network to then maximize that potential out of the service opportunity. When you would look at benchmark levels of service revenues and profitabilities, 2030 is not the end point there in Europe.
Yeah. Pricing. Yes. Pricing, North America. Yeah. Pricing, it's an interesting phenomenon. We're in a cyclical industry in North America, and I know probably globally too, but I know North America best, obviously. Definitely a cyclical industry where the troughs and the peaks have been somewhat attenuated, I would say, in recent years due to the EPA emissions regulations having become less of a factor. Now we find ourselves in one of those transitions from.
Where we had a lot of pricing power to now the customer has pricing power because we have capacity, our competitors do, and everybody's very reluctant to give up on that capacity. That is a transitory thing. That will happen for a while and things settle out, then capacity adjusts and pricing recovers, and obviously nobody's happy with having to deeply discount. While it is true now, I certainly would not expect it to remain true for a long period of time, certainly not until 2030. Obviously our challenge is to get back on the right side of that equation as quickly as possible.
To add from the Mercedes-Benz Trucks side, with focus on Europe, we see, as mentioned earlier, a bit scattered picture in terms of the pricing developments.
If we look at the current price points in the markets, we are still in the European markets leading brand or among the leading brands regarding pricing position. That translates at the moment that we are still in 25. Above average pricing levels, as for instance in 2023. We are strongly focusing on maintaining this pricing position, but obviously have a strong focus in markets where we see increased price activities of our competitors. On the one hand side we counter steer with selective measures, but focus strongly on the product offering. If we look at other parts of the world, looking at our Latin American business, specifically in Brazil, we still see that we have a good pricing position in the market compared to our competition. That basically looking forward, we watch and observe the activities in Europe of our competitors.
If we look at the order situation, we still see that orders in 2025 compared to 2024 are going strong. We see a lighter dip beginning mid of May in the European market. Overall, we do not see any significant price deteriorations to our ambition.
Perhaps I squeeze in one online question from Shaqeal A. Kirunda from Morgan Stanley. His question is, the 2030 revenue CAGR target is a step down from the previous target from the last CME. It seems the new target excludes autonomous revenues and assumes weaker CETV truck demand in the US, but not in Europe. Why is autonomous excluded now? How confident are you that your European CETV demand will grow given current infrastructure challenges? For you, Karin.
Yep. I think one important thing in this strategy is that we really focus on.
Not growth for the sake of growth, but really on profitable growth. I think one example of that is the deconsolidation of the Trucks Asia business, and that in itself actually brings down our revenue. It brings us to a different starting point. The second, why is autonomous? Why is autonomous on top? Yeah. Autonomous we see as an on-top opportunity. Obviously, to develop an autonomous truck is not like developing a diesel engine that we've done many times. I would say the team is very well on track. They're delivering on the milestones that we have set up. For sure, there is more risk in that kind of investment than it is when we develop a new engine or a new cab. I think it makes a lot of sense to have it on top.
Also because we want the 99.whatever% of the organization really focusing on making sure we're delivering the core. I think it makes a lot of sense to put that separately. The infrastructure, yes. I mean, infrastructure is, I don't know if I can take it. You can relax. Infrastructure is one of the challenges to speed up the uptake of zero-emission trucks in Europe. We have always said, and we continue to say, you need the trucks. You need to have TCO parity, and you need to have infrastructure. We have the trucks. We have shown that it's in series production. We start to see the uptake from the customers.
We actually also start to see that in many markets, the total cost of ownership starts to make sense, especially in the markets that have already made a differentiation on the road toll, like Germany, like Denmark, and a couple of others. That differentiation can make a difference, especially for customers who drive longer distances. The big challenge is the infrastructure, which is why I'm a lot in Brussels these days and trying to push and to create awareness that that has to speed up.
The second question is, how concerned are you by the prospect of Chinese OEMs coming to Europe? What does Daimler Truck do to protect itself against new entrants and ensure it will not face the same pressures as some of the passenger car OEMs? Achim on Europe, that's for you.
Yeah, thank you. Very good question as well.
What is obviously essential? We constantly move and monitor the competitive development, also including our Chinese competitors. If we look at Europe, one of the main pillars that we are driving forward to be competitive is, on the one hand side, focusing on the cost side. Here with Coston Europe, we are focusing on improving our cost position, including obviously also the variable cost part of our vehicle, as you've seen earlier. Additionally, yes, we have still a strong brand and a very strong network, especially in Europe, that gives us a very solid footprint. We also offer a variety of services to our customers that, on the one hand side, create a stronger level of customer retention and adherence to our brand. These are great ingredients to be prepared for the competition.
However, we also have to acknowledge, and we are strongly focusing on that we cannot get slowly and losing grip in terms of bringing innovation on the product side and on the service side to be prepared for a potential entrance of the Chinese competition in the European market.
Thank you, Achim. I would continue here.
Thank you. Alex Jones, Bank of America. First, Karin, I think you talked about a performance culture and a realignment of pay and a review of the management levels as part of that. Can you give us a bit more detail about what you've already done on those two and what you're planning to do in 2025 and 2026? Second, to follow up on autonomous. One of your peers has given a decent amount of data or some data publicly about their progress and different milestones.
Can you share something on what milestones you've already hit and what we should sort of look at you to check whether you're making the right amount of progress on talk towards launching in 2027? Thank you.
Great. In terms of culture, I think we have done. I mean, I think it's something that's not, you don't work with culture and then all of a sudden you start. I think that's a journey that we've seen over the years, but where we are definitely putting extra emphasis in the last, let's say, 8, 10 months. I think a couple of things that we already did, we did a number of leadership changes. Some of them are here on stage, but for sure also if you would go down a little bit further into the organization, we have taken some tough decisions.
It is not always about that someone's doing a bad job, but more about that at a certain point in time, you need maybe a different kind of skill or leadership than was needed in the past. I think those are moves we might have hesitated to do in the past where we are now much more decisively addressing. About the remuneration system, I think it makes a lot of sense when you have a new strategy to make sure that the remuneration is connected to it and that you are remunerated based on how you deliver on that strategy. I think it is very good timing to do that kind of calibration now. We want to make sure we connect it to individual performance and of course also that we are driving value for the company. That is like a journey we are starting now with the.
Aim to have something in the AGM next year, which will hopefully be then approved and we can start rolling out.
I think, Alex, your second was some progress on autonomous. What did we achieve so far compared to competitors who disclose some metrics?
Yes. That is also for me.
That is also for you.
I mean, one of the big milestones that we achieved was last year when we were driver out on closed course. Honestly, it was not so much that we can show that the truck can drive driver out, but what was really significant on that occasion was that we did the whole release process as in our production environment and how we want to do the release process going forward. I think that was a significant milestone. Another one is that we have.
Already defined and we're using our production intent hardware when it comes to compute and sensors. Because one part is to develop the software, that's challenging enough, but I think the big challenge and where we have really focused a lot is to be able to bring that into the truck without adding like a three-ton box of compute. Sorry, I'm not the software person, but to make it small enough that it fits on the truck. Of course, also to make sure we have the hardware we need, the LiDAR, radar, and cameras, and to preparing that for production. I think we are making steady progress. I've been personally investing a lot of time into following the development because it is one of our big strategic bets. So far, the team has been delivering on agreed milestones. I think we're.
Positive about where we are and we see huge opportunity, as I said in the presentation.
We go over here. David.
Hi, David Raso from Evercore ISI. How the 2027 EPA standard plays out, how does that impact what products you introduce and how would that impact your view of your profitability in North America from here to 2030? Thank you.
Yeah, that is a question that I think is in everyone's minds right now, including mine. Still waiting for a lot of clarity from what it means. We have had a lot of, I mean, the big beautiful bill is not about emissions, really. I mean, there are some aspects to it, but really it is more EPA and CARB mandates that have yet to be defined. We know directionally where the EPA wants to go. They have asked for our input.
We've given it to them, but they've yet to make a decision. Clearly there's one person who makes most of the decisions in the government these days. We have to wait and see how that shakes out. It's not going to change anything dramatically. One thing we do have to state, there's no dial on a truck that you just switch to 35 or 50 or 75 or 200 milligrams of NOx. There is work involved. Unless they leave it exactly where it is today, there is work, testing, et cetera, potentially even some minor hardware changes to be able to accommodate that. We're actively hoping and waiting and pressing for more clarity, but at this point in time, it's been more about headlines and less about specifics.
As that comes clear, obviously we're going to jump on it right away, especially if it results in a change. That then drives pricing potentially because if there is cost associated, we look for recovery on that. We still have to wait and see. We're hoping by September to have clarity on that.
Thank you. One more online question from Anthony Dick, Odo BHF. Two questions actually for you, Eva. Minimum industrial net liquidity increased from €4 billion-€6 billion outlined during the last plan to €6 billion. Why is this?
It's not really an increase per se because what we've always been saying is that between €4 billion-€6 billion, but we don't really want it to be much below the €6 billion, only temporarily.
What we're actually doing now is we're going to make it simpler and we're just going to say around 6 because that is the net industrial liquidity requirement that we also derive from the rating upgrade that we received last year to a single A credit rating. It's as simple as that. Just a clarification. Somewhat related questions. Your net liquidity is still well above the EUR 6 billion target. Will this extra cash allow you to buy back DTG shares that might be sold by Mercedes? Generally, I think, as I've said before now, multiple times today, shareholder returns are important to us. We're demonstrating that with the current share buyback program, which is already the second one we're doing.
Obviously, what Mercedes-Benz Group does is up to them, not to us, but we do generally have the ability to react given our liquidity position.
Here is one more question.
Thank you. Hemal Bhundia from UBS. John, just on the North American vocational market share targets, how are you thinking about the annual market share improvements to achieve that 35% market target? Also, as you said, this market is quite sticky, which works for you in retaining customers, but I imagine vice versa is challenging when trying to acquire market share. Are vocational customers more receptive now, and are there any particular brands that you are going after?
Yeah, so I think one thing we got super lucky on with the launch of the X-Series is that the launch was flawless.
Like we've had launches in the past where there's little hiccups that may cause customers to pause and wait till all the bugs are worked out before they buy. This time, the X-Series was perfect. As a result, people who got them early really liked them and really started talking them up. We got into the situation with the constrained capacity that we had in the market. There were people who might otherwise buy a competitor truck that they couldn't get because they were auctioning off their build slots or whatever. We were able to put some of those trucks into those accounts. They found in very real terms how well they worked for them. We were able to shortcut some of those traditional.
The old way of, or let's say even the current way a lot of times with vocational customers is you have to go to them and convince them. They've had a Kenworth repeatable in their fleet for 50 years and they're not interested in anything else. You have to maybe put a few in, seed them in, and then after two years, three years of running them, then they say, "Oh yeah, these aren't so bad. Now I'll take five." Three years later, "I'll take 10." I mean, it's a very long drawn-out process due to that loyalty. We have been able to shortcut that. Again, I think now they're out in the field heavily. People see them out running around. They know it's viable and a lot of respect, a lot of articles written and things like that. In many ways, we were.
Kind of victims of luck, but also of our own success with a great launch. That is why I am pretty optimistic that we can continue to grow. Again, our competitors are super tough in that space. It is not just a walk in the park. It is a lot of fundamental blocking and tackling. In many ways, this process I described earlier of really selling and getting trucks in people's hands and letting them see, having ride-and-drives like some of you will see today, those are really critical. We will continue to work that, but we feel because of the input that we have received from customers about the product that it is very competitive and we should be able to continue to slowly grow that.
I see one more here. Over to you.
Thanks. Can I thank? It is Michael Aspinall from Jefferies here.
I think it'd be remiss if we didn't ask for your updated thoughts on kind of what's happening with the 232 investigation and how you're thinking about setting North American targets or setting a strategy for the next five years in the context of potentially some change.
Yeah, so that won the award for most asked question last night, by the way, for me. 232 is one of those things that, like emissions and other things, there's still a lot of clarity that needs to be provided from the government. They had a comment period that was open where I'd say most, from what we understand, most parts of our industry pushed in comments saying, "Hey, this is a bad idea. Ultimately, it's inflationary for the industry and therefore not a good thing." We do know that at least one competitor was saying the opposite.
There is always going to be differences of opinion when you think that it benefits you, but the vast bulk of the industry feel that it would not be a good thing. That is the input that they have received. Now, again, there is one person ultimately who is probably going to rule on that and ultimately even not just yes or no, but how much within if yes. We still have to wait and see what is going to happen there. Certainly, if something dramatic happens, we have the ability to flex our production from Mexico to here without too much difficulty, especially in non-peak markets like we are in right now. Not so much of a problem. The other aspect is still the supply chain, right?
The Mexican-produced parts that ultimately everybody who builds in the US, whether it's us or our competitors, are still a pretty high percentage of Mexican-built parts and assemblies. Ultimately, it would impact everybody and ultimately be inflationary, we think, if that comes to pass. Certainly, once it becomes clear, just like with emissions, like once it's clear, then we're on it and we've game planned different scenarios, but it's still not clear. I can't wait till it is, by the way.
I have one more, two more questions from Miguel Nabeiro Ensinas Serra Borrega from BNP Paribas Exane. Two for Achim on the revenue growth drivers. CETIV, how does the 25,000 unit target in Europe compare to previous targets? How much will CETIV represent as a percentage of total? Second, on defense, how much does this represent today?
Okay, thank you, Miguel, for the question.
As you've seen in today's presentation, we are targeting in Europe for more than 25,000 ZTV sales until 2030. That accounts for above 40%. Looking back in the past, how does it relate? In the past, we were talking about up to 60%, which translates in an absolute higher number than today. It was in the ballpark of around 40,000 units. Relating to what Andreas said, this reflects our discussion. Transformation at the speed of right. Yes, we have the products in place. You have seen we are well prepared in the most essential segments in Europe with the eActros 600, with the eActros 400. We also see, as Karin just mentioned earlier, that the infrastructure and the cost parity that is impacting the TCO is limiting the progress in terms of absolute volume increase. We are very confident that the above 40% will materialize.
On the second question, Miguel. Repeating what I mentioned initially, it's a hidden gem. We believe that the revenue in the defense business will grow up to the ballpark of EUR 1 billion under 2030, which is double as much as where we are standing today.
One more from Miguel for you, Eva, on capital allocation. If free cash flow is set to increase 1.5x from 3 billion and dividend payments total 1.5 billion plus 1.1 billion buyback per year, net cash is set to increase. If you only need a minimum of EUR 6 billion industrial net cash, why not increase the share buyback at this point in time?
Thank you for the question, Miguel. I mean, the share buyback that we've announced is 2 billion two years, as I've also explained before.
We've built in some contingencies there also for the recent market weakness that we see in North America and also for the Fuso-Hino transaction that is yet to close. Please give us the time to close it. At the appropriate time, we can talk about that. Rest assured that cash returns are a priority for us, to shareholders.
Last question online from Harry Martin at Bernstein. ZEV trucks. It seems like you are still assuming ZEV truck prices at $250,000 plus per truck. Is there really a market for 25,000 units per year at this price premium to a diesel truck?
Yeah, obviously, we derive the price point from the TCO advantage that we are materializing from our customers or for our customers. Yes, we believe the price point and the significant higher price point for the ZEV trucks is still feasible.
We also do simulations, obviously, how sensitivity in terms of price differentiation would materialize. Overall, strong focus on margin stability in terms of relative performance. We believe with the price point and the TCO advantage that the pricing on the ZTV side that we are targeting is still realistic and feasible.
Thank you, Achim. This was the last question for today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your questions. Thank you for answering all of this so far. At this point in time, I would also like to thank all of the virtual participants for attending today's Capital Market Day at your mobile devices or computers. As always, should you have any further questions, our IR team remains at your full disposal. The full replay of the presentation will be available on the website soon. We will turn off the live stream now.
Thank you.