A very warm welcome to our Sustainability Update 2026. I am very happy to be joined by our investors here at the Center of Excellence in Sindelfingen, and also by a big crowd online. Welcome to you all. My name is Christina Schenck. I head up Investor Relations, Marketing, Digital, and Communications. I am very pleased to have the board members with us today. We would like to use the next 90 minutes to take you through our sustainable business strategy, bring that to life, tell you where our priorities are, and how we make measurable progress. For that, we have Ola, we have Olaf, we have Jörg, and Michael for the presentations. Of course, we have time for your Q&A.
You guys have time to raise your hand here in the room, of course. For those of you joining us online, if you would like to start adding your questions, please feel free to do that during the presentations. You see the live stream window, and underneath, there is a field for your questions. With this, I am happy to hand over to Ola.
Thank you, Christina, and a very warm welcome to Sindelfingen today for our 2026 Sustainability Update. We are combining this this year with the overall sustainability dialogue that has a long and very good tradition at Mercedes-Benz, where we exchange thoughts with thought leaders and different stakeholders in this topic from around the world, and it has already been a very positive and lively debate this morning. Now we would like to give you an update on where does Mercedes-Benz stand, what is the next step, what are we doing, and what is our thinking. It feels like we are on a journey that, as defined in these sustainability terms, we have been now working and crafting for more than the last 10 years. Everybody knows that is watching the industry, knows that the industry is going through a fundamental transformation. What is driving the transformation?
It is primarily technology. And it is two technological trends that is changing the whole face of the industry. On the one hand, it is the path towards zero emission, and on the other hand, it is digitalization and the intelligence revolution that we are experiencing through AI, not just in our products, but also in the whole enterprise and how we are working. We are investing billions every year into this transformation to put Mercedes in a position to maintain its lead as one of the most technologically pioneering companies in this industry today, and to shoulder the legacy of our founding fathers as the inventors of the automobile. We are in the middle of this transformation. It is not a transformation that happens in a short period of time. It is several decades, but we can see that the transformation is picking up speed.
Right now, 2025, 2026, and 2027, we are introducing into the market more than 40 new models. It is the biggest product launch offensive that we have had in the history of this company. Virtually the complete lineup of the Mercedes portfolio in terms of battery electric vehicles, but also plug-in hybrids and electrified ICE cars are being overturned in these four years, in these three years. We are not stopping there. We are already preparing for what is going to be the next technology offensive after this. While we are doing this, you might ask yourself the question, so how is it going? What is the reaction in the market to these new products? You can see here alone that our battery electric vehicle sales have exploded in the calendar year of 2026.
When we launched the first car in this new generation, the new CLA, in the late summer, early fall of last year, and pretty much won every award that you can possibly win with a vehicle, and we could see the order entry of that first car, it was clear to us we are onto something. Now that we have five, six, seven, eight models in the market, and in Europe in particular, the availability of these cars as we are ramping up production is becoming broader, that demand is accelerating.
As a small anecdote, yesterday I did a market visit in my home country, Sweden, and when you come and you meet with the team on location, you usually ask a couple of questions, and the two most simple question is, "How is it going?" Second is, "What do you want?" The person who runs our operations in Sweden and Denmark says, "It is going great. The new electric cars are taking off." As a matter of fact, in the month of October, the order entry of overall sales in Sweden, yes, small market, but indicative, is 70%. Even I was surprised at how high that was. He goes, "What do I want?
I want a bigger allocation." Since I have two of my board colleagues with me here today who are responsible for procurement and production, a clear message to you, at least more cars to Sweden, and Sweden is certainly not going to be alone. We have reached a point now where demand for the battery electric vehicles, it is accelerating, and that the new products and the substance of those products, they have absolutely hit the spot. If you look at them from a sustainability point of view, I am looking here at the brand new electric C-Class, which is the sibling car to the brand new electric GLC, and you do a calculation, like a life cycle calculation over a certain number of kilometers of what the CO2 footprint is of that car vis-à-vis its high-tech electrified ICE sibling car.
It is not surprising that that carbon footprint is much, much lower. It is an all-in view, I think we are going to discuss that further in this presentation, and some of my colleagues will take that into more detail. Here you have the supply chain, you have the production of the car itself, but most importantly, you have the car in its use phase, and whatever the mix is of the energy that provides the electricity for that car. If your ultimate goal is to go zero emission and net carbon neutral, there is no two ways about it, electrification is the main path, and we are dedicated to that main path.
As we had said six or seven years ago, by the end of this decade, Mercedes-Benz will be in a position, in terms of its product lineup from top to bottom, to serve any relevant market segment and model for us fully electric. If a market is far progressed, like Sweden is becoming, we are ready to deliver. The economics of this is, of course, crucially important too. Financial strength equals innovation strength. Yes, we are a financially strong company. We have an extraordinarily strong balance sheet. We are entering into this next phase of the transformation from a position of technological and financial strength. Everybody that watches the auto industry knows that the auto industry is also a high-pressure industry.
The macro environment, as we sometimes call it, I think has not been more complex or more challenged, at least in the 30-plus years that I have been in the business. We have to be mindful that our sustainable business model needs to be an equally profitable business model. The number one thing, next to building cars that people want and love, as we can see that the new cars are really hitting that nerve, is to reduce the cost structure. With this new generation of electric cars, we have significantly lowered the cost structure, in this case, of the most expensive part, the battery. We are not yet at the point where the variable cost of an electric car with equivalent performance, so to speak, mirrors that of what we are used to or were used to from the combustion world.
It is also true that in the market, pricing between ICE and BEVs have more or less leveled out, maybe with some differences here and there. It is still our task over the next years to keep on working on primarily the variable cost structure, but not only the variable cost structure, to make sure that the whole business system is in balance. We have decided to be bold and not wait for it, because the foundation of a successful car company starts with building something that your customers actually want. Lead with the product, then make sure that you put all the pieces of the puzzle for the business system into place for a profitable growth future. A lot of discussion about adoption, I have just used this slide to illustrate the three biggest automotive markets in the world.
If you take all the markets that Mercedes-Benz serve, I think we are in around 150 different markets across the world. If you zoom in on any one of those markets, even inside Europe, it is of course not one market in Europe, it is EU 27, plus it is U.K. on a different story, or an example like Norway and so on. What you find out is that the path towards zero emission is not a straight line. It is a very heterogeneous picture, you have to make sure that you adopt to those consumer preferences and those market conditions in a smart way, and you can deal as an incumbent car company with the complexity. Here, you just see these three things. China is leading the way on the path towards xEV.
I say consciously xEV, because as you can see from the graph, there is a very, very big segment that are different types of plug-in hybrids as well, or range extenders, combination between electric drive and combustion drive. Europe, and it feels like this year is a breakthrough year in Europe, is really starting to take off, so it is kind of number 2. The United States made one policy change where they eliminated the taxpayer-financed incentives that had a dampening effect on the market. Even if it looks lowish here, our view, the mid to long-term view of the U.S. market, is that the electric share is going to significantly increase due to the merits of the product, and in many cases also superiority of the product. If you put every other meaningful market on this chart, Japan, Korea, Australia, what have you will see versions of this.
What is the message? The message is, the trajectory is a path towards zero emission, but i t is not a straight line, and it is going to continue to be a heterogeneous landscape for quite some time to come. Policy also drives or influences what this adoption rate will look like. The policymakers around the world in these different economic regions have chosen different plays how to do this. I have also the role at the moment to be the president of the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, ACEA. So I get ample opportunity to talk to policymakers in Brussels, but also around the world about this path. We have a relatively simple but powerful message to the policymakers in this final phase of discussing what the changes of those European policies should be. We do not need to talk about the destination.
As I have said already several times in this presentation, the destination is zero emission. We need to use the right method. The previous method, in our humble opinion, was right thought, wrong method. We need to switch to a market-based method that takes into account what the consumer thinks, that builds on investments into enabling factors such as infrastructure, and uses incentives as opposed to deterministic approach where only one stakeholder, the producer, is supposed to move the whole system under the threat of draconian penalties. We do not believe that that is the smartest way to reach the goal, and it could even have unintended consequences of putting a damper on the market, which then destroys economic value and actually delays decarbonization through customers sticking with their current product if the time is not right for them to switch at the policy-chosen moment.
For the foreseeable future, if you are an established manufacturer in these heterogeneous 150 markets, it is still in all of the above. Electric vehicles, high-tech electrified ICE, plug-in hybrids, whatever fits that market. Mercedes is in a good position here as well. The car on the left is the new C-Class with an Euro 7-ready electrified high-tech ICE powertrain. I think we are the first manufacturer that have literally taken our complete ICE portfolio from four-cylinder all the way up to eight-cylinder in an AMG into an Euro 7-ready position, next-gen technology electrified. We have that flexibility inside the Mercedes portfolio, and virtually every plant can build both. Now to the commitment, Ambition 2039. We have decided to take it now into more granularity, and I think Olaf, you will probably speak about this as well, to have measurable, tangible targets.
The ambition per se, net carbon neutrality, zero emission, that macro ambition has not changed. But we have decided to put concrete numbers into this milestone here at the end of the next decade. The things that we can control ourselves, you can be not only ambitious, but you can be also clearer. Scope 1, Scope 2, our own production. I think Michael is going to talk about that. And you can have a high level of certainty that you are going to meet these targets. There are some targets that you have to have the ambition, you have to drive the market, but you are still depending on market conditions. On the 80% vehicle use phase, we still say, "As market conditions allow," but we want to be a force that drives those market conditions.
And of course, we will continue to look at the whole thing from cradle to grave, from supply chain all the way to the use phase. We believe that this is the best business strategy, and that is what our ambition is all about. We are the original inventors of the automobile. We are celebrating 140 years this year, so it is a big anniversary for us. But we are not looking back at those 140 years. We are looking at what is going to happen in the next years or even in the next 140 years. And we are absolutely convinced that our business strategy needs to be a sustainable business strategy. Again, you have to be agile. Yes, there will be ups and downs. Yes, you are going to have to adopt here and there some of the decisions that you made.
But you keep your eye on the price, and you build your whole business system towards a sustainable business system over time. And with that, I will hand over to Olaf Schick. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ola. Welcome from my side. It is a great day so far, a day where we combine the sustainability dialogue and the ESG Capital Market Day. I think it is beneficial for both communities. As already made clear at Mercedes-Benz, sustainability is not a separate agenda. It is a driver of customer value, competitive differentiation in the market, and resilience of our operations. Sustainability performance is one of the conditions for long-term success. We are in a highly dynamic environment, we all know that. Tariffs, price pressure, weaker markets, and intense competition, especially in and also from China. On top, higher costs for energy, materials, and regulation. The fair question is, does sustainability still have a place? Our answer is yes, of course, but it must go hand in hand with competitiveness. I would call it competitive sustainability. Maybe shortly, how do we organize ourselves?
We have established a dedicated sustainability management system to manage sustainability matters effectively. Business allocation plan, you see that on the left, ensures integration in each spot area. You will hear that later also from Jörg and Michael. I am the sustainability coordinator. The role includes the overall internal steering of sustainability. I chair the group sustainability committee. We meet once per quarter, and we bring together all divisions and all relevant functions. The group sustainability committee facilitates alignment, decision-making on key sustainability matters, and the sustainability management system, which you see on the right, ensures consistency and effective steering across the group. Consistent processes, transparent steering, and systematic monitoring of sustainability activities. The ESG space is very much regulated. We know that in the EU, but also globally. To manage this increasing complexity, we use now AI as enabler, from screening, implication analysis, risk mitigation, implementation, to reporting.
That means for us, less manual efforts, faster analysis, more focus on the issues that really matter. Not replacing, of course, expert judgment. It is the combination of AI speed and scalability, and then with the experts' knowledge. And we have great experts, many of them, for the people who are here, you can meet them. So the result is for us, earlier insights, faster decisions, and more efficient guidance for our organization. We are sharpening our sustainability strategy. We have revised our approach. I would summarize it as we simplify, we focus, we innovate, and we deliver.
So we want to reduce complexity, and that means we need to start with our sustainable business strategy. We have now four pillars tied closer to our products. First pillar is decarbonization. That is the main lever of our new and resharpened Ambition 2039. You just saw it. Ola introduced it. The supply chain, production, and then the use phase.
Circularity, using fewer resources, second use, and extension and resilience. And you will hear also later in Jörg's presentation, and things we already talked about this day, concrete partnerships bringing that to the next level. And then safety. We also talked today already in the sustainability dialogue about safety, how important it is for the world. Safe products that customers trust. This covers traffic safety and digital trust, right? We cannot consider that separate anymore. It includes cybersecurity. And then people, and that means our own workforce and people in the value chains. Let us look at it a bit deeper. To move from commitment to action, and I believe that is very important in these times when we consider sustainability. I believe that is also the motto at the COP that starts this week in Antalya, in Turkey, right? From consensus to concrete action, that is what we are doing.
We have reworked our KPIs that are now more product-specific with clear ownership and measurable results. You only see the headlines here. We have now, let us take the example, green production. In Michael Schiebe's area, wastewater management, there is a KPI, and then we have a target for 2026, 2027, for 2030 and beyond. We meet once per quarter. Coming Monday is the next meeting. Then we reviewed the owners of that KPI. We come together, we discuss, are we on track? What do we need to do to achieve our results? It is not only in that discussion about sustainability, it is also always about pricing and the cost of achieving that and neutral business cases. Let us take a closer look at safety, part of our DNA for decades. The vehicles are becoming more software-defined, connected, and AI-enabled.
As I said, physical and digital safety can no longer be considered separately. AI will contribute to a safer, more intelligent, and more sustainable mobility, but only if people can trust. We are using AI along the value chain to become faster, leaner, with higher value. At the same time, we reaffirm our AI principles. We apply governance by design in a risk-oriented approach. Our principles provide the foundation for how we develop, deploy, and govern AI. Responsible use, explainability, protection of privacy, and then very important, safety and reliability. Let us be clear, the biggest risk would be not to use AI and to lose competitiveness, right? We want to push innovation, but at the same time, have guardrails and transparency on what is going on. That brings me to data.
That is one example where safety, data, and trust come together are our driver assistant systems. Our ambition is to make mobility safer for everybody on the road, but that means we need real-world traffic situation and from every road user. That means we are using real-world video, image, sensor data from our customer fleet to further develop our systems. This helps us to capture less common situations, temporary bike lanes, road maintenance, or recognize all types of road users, like, for example, e-scooters. Our approach considers data protection and at the same time is pragmatic. Our responsibility for people starts much earlier. It actually starts where raw materials for our cars are mined. Responsible and resilient supply chains from the mine to the Mercedes-Benz. Greatest risks are far beyond our direct suppliers.
They are in the mining regions of critical raw materials, whether it is lithium, whether it is graphite, whether it is cobalt, or mica, or aluminum, or steel. Our toolset that we typically have is, you have your direct suppliers, we have contractual safeguards, training audits, but we go further. We are on the ground with partners in individual regions, with partners who know the communities. We heard that earlier today from the CEO of Hydro, what we do together in Brazil.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo is another example, because that is an area known for cobalt mining, and we are supporting local initiatives. We are providing children with education and school transport. We help support their families and their livelihoods, and that cooperation we have in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we agreed this summer to extend this cooperation until 2029. We are very much committed to fight child labor.
Our methodology, we have identified 24 critical raw materials associated with increased high human risks and environmental risks. Our goal, assess all 24 raw materials by 2028 and define appropriate measures to address risks we identify. We are making good progress. You see the number, 72% of them have already been assessed, up from 65% last year, and we will achieve by 2028, 100%. Transparency is key. That brings me to the raw material report. We disclosed that report with the launch of the new all-electric GLA, end of July. It is an interactive format, with the raw materials that I mentioned in selected components. You can basically, please try it out online. You can click on the raw material. It shows you then visually in the car where we use these materials.
It gives you information on where we source, where does refining take place, what is the human rights risk associated with it, what do we do to mitigate or maybe replace the raw material. I believe we are really benchmark here. To summarize, our revised sustainability strategy is streamlined, focused, closer to the product. You saw the Ambition 2039. We now quantify our CO2 reduction path. We focus on execution and clear proof points. We balance sustainability with profitability. We engage with different stakeholders, like today. I in particular also want to thank our employees for their strong commitment, for their innovations, but also for their team spirit. Sustainability is also real hard work to deliver results. Talking about team spirit, Jörg, over to you.
Thank you, Olaf. Also very warm welcome from my side to everybody at the screens and also everybody who is here today in the room. We follow the value chain now. I am a little bit squeezed in now between production, Michael will come later, and compliance and strategy in terms of sustainability. I want to talk about R&D, and I want to talk about partners, and I want to talk about purchasing, which is extremely important. As Olaf said, this is a very important year for us, 140 years of innovation, which means also that we invented the car 140 years ago with the first patent of the Motorwagen. Innovation was and is still, and is driving us also in the future at Mercedes-Benz.
It is really, really good to see that in the last couple of years, we also use all our innovation spirit, all our ideas, all our creativities of our teams globally for the topic of sustainability, for working on decarbonization, and for reducing CO2 emissions. One of the best examples is what we presented to you, to the world, to the public almost one year ago, 12 months ago, one of our innovation projects, we call it Tomorrow XX. We had EQXX, working on efficiency, GT XX, working on electromobility and performance. This doesn't look like a car, but it is a car. It is a way to show that we can basically develop at Mercedes-Benz a car which can be completely recycled at the end.
The engineering teams, the R&D teams had more than 40 ideas for new technology concepts and component concepts, which are based on a 100% recycling philosophy. This really made us proud in terms of engineering teams, innovations, but also the partners involved, because you can only master these challenges of sustainability with good partnerships in the supply base, especially in the supply base. Let me give you some examples. One of the examples is on aluminum. We call it BIONICAST. What is it? It is an aluminum structure which is designed according to nature. Pretty easy. With that, you can create a design which saves 25% of the weight compared to a normal design philosophy. Another topic is LABFIBER. It is a high-performance material.
You can compare it to originally leather, and we can basically provide it to our customers with extremely high tensile strength, and obviously also then focusing on sustainability. Then at the end, urban mining. With urban mining, we have a concept which we are entering in the VLE, and this is plastics completely made from recycled material. The nice thing is, we are using that already. We are using each and every of these examples already. For example, BIONICAST in the EQS, the leather alternative very soon in the AMG, and the cladding already in the VLE. This is very important because on the one hand, you can talk about ideas, but you have to transfer that into reality, and that is what we are seeing here as well. Why I like this Ambition 2039 approach so much? Because it is all about numbers.
For me, it is always 90, 80, and 70. 90% reduction in the own production. Michael will talk about that later. 80% reduction in the vehicle use phase. I come to that later. 70% overall across all relevant value chains. Obviously, the use phase is always dependent on market conditions. Also, I talk about this also later. But what is really important is, we have a saying, "What gets measured gets done." If you have numbers and if you transfer a vision into a mission, then you really can see progress. All the teams are really working on progress, tangible progress that you see really what is going on in terms of CO2 reduction. Let us talk about supply chain. In the world of physical AI, there is finally also physics. That means hardware. The car still is produced by parts and components.
One of the most important topics for this beautiful car here, the electric C-Class, if you want to drive in that, you have to have a car body, and the car body consists out of aluminum and steel. This is one of the hardest things to deal with in terms of decarbonization and reduction of CO2 emissions. On the aluminum side, we all know that you can produce aluminum with a lot of electricity. That is the way how we produce aluminum for decades. There we are working on, together with Hydro, on how we can reduce the CO2 emissions on that as well. Then obviously also steel. But high-voltage battery cells, we cut emissions by around 40%, and this means saving about 3.1 tons of CO2 per battery. This is just one example which we put into that.
We are going step by step in an improvement of CO2 emissions and decarbonization. This is our example in our cooperation with Hydro Aluminium. Today's carbon footprint is 4.0 kilograms CO2 emissions per kilogram. We are working together with Hydro on reducing that fundamentally. By the way, the 4.0 is already much lower than the average, which is around 14-16 per kilogram CO2. We are working with them, and we want to be in 2027 with a concept which we called Hydro CIRCAL below 2.0 kilograms. This is just an example where we really are working on reducing CO2 emissions. Another topic which is even more, I would say, exciting but also challenging is working on steel, working on CO2 reductions in producing steel. And we have agreed and implemented a partnership with two companies which are experts in this field.
On the one side, Anglo American, as a Sishen Mine in northern South Africa, and HyIron. What we are doing there, normally you need fire, thermal energy for producing steel. What we are doing here, we use hydrogen for the reduction of iron ore, and then basically what you create is water and iron. And this is other than what you are normally doing in a thermal process where you create through the reduction process iron and CO2. Pretty simple on the one hand, but pretty sophisticated from a technical standpoint, and this gives us hope and perspective for the future. And we already produced one demonstrator, and we proved that this is really working for our EQS. Just another example how we are working on implementing real tangible progress here. Another one is battery materials and battery cell chemistry.
You all know the traditional way of producing battery cells is with either NMC or LFP, either lithium iron phosphate or lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide. What we are trying to do is, we are trying to find a solution for our own battery cell chemistry, and we are working on LMO, NMC mixtures on the one hand, and then in the future, really working on something which is completely cobalt-free. We call it LNMO, lithium nickel manganese oxide. And obviously working also on the KPIs in terms of volumetric energy density, which is improving by this approach and balancing KPIs on the one hand, performance KPIs, and costs. Let's talk about the vehicle use phase. For the vehicle use phase, you need good cars, great cars, the world's most desirable cars. One of these is right here in the room.
It is a new electric C-Class with more than 760 km of range, 330 kW of charging power. This is all you need to enjoy electromobility in everyday life. And we talked about this market condition on the 80% just before. Well, it is our own destiny and obligation. This market condition means, well, we have to create, develop, produce, and sell products which are really, really convincing each and every customer on the one hand. On the other hand, we are obviously also dependent on charging infrastructure, but obviously also on the political and regulatory framework. But first of all, we have to create products which are really convincing the customers, and this is just one of it. And this continues with the GLC, electric GLC. The original start of our product launch program was the CLA, and the numbers prove it.
Our global BEV sales grew by 61% year-over-year in Q3, and the sales in Europe grew by 78%. This is convincing because these products are great, and the feedback we get from vehicle test prizes are unbelievable. GLC was named German Premium Car of the Year. The CLA was named European Car of the Year, all in 2026. So big confidence. We just also had a world premiere for the performance segment, the electric performance segment. Also in this segment, we are proving that electromobility creates customer benefits with a high-performance round cell battery, liquid cooled, and AFM, axial flux motor, which is an invention in itself with a lot of innovation in it. It is basically on us.
Our way to create at the end progress and sustainability is first of all, create desirable electric cars, what we are doing right now, but also work on new materials and technologies with lower CO2 footprint. At the end also, it is not only about us, it is about teams, especially teams on the supplier side. These have to be strong partnerships which accelerate transformation. That is it. Thank you very much. Now over to Michael, and you start with a video.
At Mercedes-Benz, we have one clear goal, to build the world's most desirable cars. But what we build is only half of the story. How we build them matters too. We are focused on reducing CO2 emissions and using resources more efficiently. Our approach to sustainability follows three clear principles. We avoid before we reduce, we invest where it pays off, and we scale what works. It delivers lower energy use, lower water consumption, lower cost. Approximately 570 GWh energy saved across our plants in the past two years. Double-digit millions of euros saved. Kecskemét Paint Shop, improved energy efficiency and fully electrified versus previous technology. Because creating more value with fewer resources is good for the environment and good for business.
Thank you, Jörg. Ladies and gentlemen, at Mercedes-Benz Operations, we build the world's most desirable cars, and we do it while cutting emissions and using resources more efficiently. Today, I want to show you how we are doing this in an increasingly challenging and geopolitical environment. Our approach combines actually emissions reductions and resource efficiency with clear economic benefits. That is why we set ourselves a clear ambition, and we announced that last year. By 2030, our aim is to reduce the share of water and waste costs in overall production cost by 25%. However, recent developments in the energy markets have made achieving it extremely challenging. Geopolitical crisis heavily and heavily affected energy prices. But that does not mean that we are reducing our efforts. No. Instead, we are intensifying them.
To achieve our 25% reduction ambition, we are combining efficiency measures with long-term energy agreements to protect our market volatility. Let's drill down a bit further into the details here. Every unit of energy that we save, of course, lowers our cost base, and every cubic meter of water that we reduce reduces our dependence on external resources. Every gram of waste we avoid, of course, improves our efficiency as well. That's how resource efficiency makes our production network more resilient and more competitive. This is our understanding at Mercedes-Benz. Progress in this area means more today, because the environment in which we operate today is significantly challenging. Cost pressure is high, competitive is tougher in all regions in the world, and geopolitical conflicts hit our energy markets, our supply chains, and our transport routes heavily.
In this environment, geopolitical circumstances force us to make disciplined capital investments. It's very, very important and more important than ever. At the same time, Ola just introduced it, we have started the biggest product and technology launch program in the history of Mercedes-Benz passenger cars. That takes clear priorities also on our end and across our production network. At Mercedes-Benz Operations, we do three things. First, we launch new products. This is important. This is our role within Mercedes-Benz. We increase our efficiency, and we transform our plants. Let me take you today through these areas: energy, logistics, production, and resources. Let's start with energy. The best megawatt hour is, of course, the one that we never need. We recover heat, and we monitor energy consumption very closely nowadays.
Smart control systems here help us to operate our equipment more efficiently. We are doing that on an everyday basis in every detail. With these measures over the past two years, to just give you an indication, we achieved total energy savings of approximately 570 GWh across our production plants. That is roughly the equivalent of the electricity consumption of circa 190,000 households. It has saved us double-digit millions of euros . Reducing energy consumption is only part of the picture, because we are also expanding renewable energy generation in our plants. Here, one very positive example is our production plant and our site in Kecskemét, Hungary. Between 2022 and 2026, we have invested EUR 1 billion in expanding this production site, and we built our own solar power system in Kecskemét, photovoltaic on factory roofs and a solar power park.
Together, those facilities will cover around 25% of the plant's annual energy demand. This energy generation on site not only brings down our costs, but at the same time, it reduces our dependence on the external energy supplies, which is of higher importance nowadays. Alongside solar, and I briefly want to touch base on wind power as well, we are expanding our use of wind power. Our two previously announced projects in Germany are already well advanced. Jörg announced this project. The first one is the wind farm we are developing with our partner, UKA, at our test track in Papenburg. By mid-2027, 20 wind turbines will produce a combined energy of 140 MW of electricity. Our power purchase agreement will cover around 20% of our annual electricity used in our German locations.
In addition to that, we have a second project. The second project is a long-term agreement with more than 140 MW from the Windanker offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea. From 2027, this could cover another 30% of the demand of our production and admin sites in Germany. Together, both of these sites and projects could cover almost 50% of our annual electricity consumption in Germany. These long-term agreements also give us more stable prices. They help us to reduce our exposure to volatile energy markets, and of course, they strengthen our resilience against rising energy prices. This makes it easier to plan ahead, of course, all our production sites and our entire production network. This is really important. Coming to our Ambition 2039.
By 2039, we aim to reduce our CO2 emissions from our production by 90%, and we aim to raise, in parallel, our share of renewable energy to 90%. This is very, very important. The bigger challenge still is heat, because heat is not so easy to replace. Most of our CO2 emissions at our production plants actually come from using natural gas to produce heat. For certain very specialized production process, alternatives to natural gas are not yet available at the scale we would need them. This is why we therefore expect a small amount of our heat still to, and also in the future, to come from natural gas, even in 2039. We need to be clear about that, I think, what we can achieve, and of course, still also where our limits are.
To reduce gas consumption further, we focus on solutions that work technically and make, of course, economically sense as well. With our new paint shops that we are just implementing in our production facilities, for example, in Kecskemét, also here in Sindelfingen, we are taking a significant step forward in decarbonizing our production processes and our production sites. With our both new paint shops, actually, because they will be fully electrified, eliminating the need for process gas and, of course, enabling our CO2-free operations. This is a big step forward in production at Mercedes-Benz Operations. At the same time, of course, state-of-the-art equipment significantly improves, of course, our energy efficiency, leading to reduced energy consumptions. The paint shops are so important in our production processes, but they are the main lever when it comes to energy reduction in our production sites all around the world.
Now, let's come to logistics. Here, we aim to reduce our CO2 by 45% until 2039, compared with 2019. As mentioned earlier in the presentations, geopolitical conflicts are disrupting our transport routes all around the world. In logistic, this means less reliability, we have additional routes that we need to take, and longer detours. That makes it very challenging at the moment, but we have a team that is very passionate about it, to work around it, and to find solutions every day. Low-emissions fuels and technologies, unfortunately, at the moment, are not yet available at the scale and coverage as we need them, but still, scaling these solutions remain very, very important to us. What are we doing? We avoid unnecessary transport routes wherever it is possible, and one way of doing this is, of course, with regional production.
We are now pursuing a local-for-local approach, where we look into every detail, where is the demand for what cars, and then we are adjusting our production network accordingly, if it is possible. At the same time, we are doing everything that AI supports us, because AI will play a significant role, and does already, in optimizing everything we do in logistics. Optimizing our transport routes, also optimizing the freight and the amount of freight we are shipping from location A to location B. Here, we are taking the next steps in reducing transportation as much as possible. Finally, I would like to cover production and resources. New products always give us the opportunity and the chance to build efficiency in a new production site from the start.
Last year, the CLA took center stage, I think, in our Sustainability Update, and since then, many more products have followed. There is the S-Class, the C-Class, the AMG GT 4-Door Coupé, and the AMG GT SUV, and the GLA, not to forget. With every new model that we are launching in one of our production plants all around the world, we aim to make production more efficient. That work starts long before we are introducing those cars into our production plants. In Bremen, in Sindelfingen, and in Rastatt, we are using virtual commissioning to plan and test our production process well before we start the processes of physical production. This helps us to make production more flexible, and of course, all the processes that we run every day, and believe me, it's millions of processes, more efficient.
We are also reducing the energy, actually, that we need to build a car. Take the production of our electric GLC, which Jörg touched base on, in Bremen, for example. Because we have been able to cut production cost or the energy cost that we use for every GLC by 5% compared to its predecessor. How did we do that? First step was we used very modern and efficient robots in our production facility. Secondly, we optimized our ventilation system. We implemented heat recovery in our production in Bremen. We are not just reducing the energy consumption, this is just one step. In Sindelfingen, we have also reduced our waste for disposal per car by 8%. What does that mean? From 250 grams per car to 230 grams per car. That's 20 grams less per car.
You might think this is peanuts, because it's a low number, and quite literally, it's about a handful of them, but multiply those 20 grams by around 220,000 cars a year in Sindelfingen, and that's more than 4 tons of waste avoided every year. Here, the high number of production, of course, multiplies every little piece that we save per car. These savings come from incremental practical improvements in our production processes, developed by the teams all around the world to become better and better every single day. Now, let's turn to one of our most precious resources, which is water. We are also reducing our fresh water use in every production site all around the world. We clean and treat water so it can actually be reused more often in our production processes.
In Sindelfingen, here in our production site, we already have the capacity to treat up to 350,000 cubic meters of water per year. In Untertürkheim, where we have our biggest powertrain plant, we are planning the capacity for another 500,000 cubic meters of water per year. We are doing this systematically. We are developing a water strategy for each plant. For example, in Bremen, we are developing a concept actually to reduce water in the future also multiple times. What is our aim? Our aim is actually that from 2030, we want to treat 1 million cubic meters of water every year. Once all those projects are operational, we expect to save, and here money also comes into play, 1 million cubic meters of water, and that would be actually roughly enough to fill 400 Olympic swimming pools.
It is a lot of water, and this will make our water supply more secure. As I said before, it will help us to reduce our annual cost by more than EUR 2 million per year. Here, it really pays off also financially for us as a company, and this is why we are doing it. To sum it up, I think this is very important. There are three key principles that guide us every day. My production team is very passionate about being more efficient and being more environmental friendly. We avoid before we reduce, we invest where it really pays off, and we scale what works. This is why we are doing different pilots all around the world, and our next follow is actually all around the world in our plants.
We are developing an energy storage concept to complement our overall approach to energy supply. This is very important to us because it will help us in the future to stabilize our grid, and of course, it will help again to increase the resilience of our production plants all around the world. Our goal is clear. We want to build cars more efficiently, and that means with less resources. Our teams work towards that every day in our plants all around the world. Sustainability is not just a separate agenda. I think this is really important. It is part of how we run operations and how we invest, where we determine where we to invest, and how we strengthen, of course, our resilience and our competitiveness. Because using energy and resources more efficiently can reduce environmental impacts, and here again, cost. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Michael. Thank you very much, colleagues, for the insightful presentations. I think what becomes very clear is how we combine innovation on the one hand with sustainability and turn that into business impact. Very impressive. Thank you for that. We will now move on to the Q&A session. I would like to ask the board members back on stage. Just a little reminder for everyone online, feel free to submit your questions if you have not had the chance. Under your live stream window, you will find a field where you can enter your question. Do not forget to enter your names and the name of your institution. For those of you in the room, of course, I will start with the room, please just feel free to raise your hand.
We will have the microphone coming to you. Please also, if you can introduce yourself, that would be appreciated. With that, the floor is open for your questions. Would you like to start?
Hi there. Paul Brigham from Northern Trust Asset Management. Thank you much for a very interesting session and a great day so far. Just on the driver safety enhancement with AI, really interesting to hear about the potential gains there, but you said it was going to be predicated on that trust element. How are you building trust with drivers, with customers in this area?
I could talk hours about that because we just had a pretty interesting event here in Sindelfingen, just on the other side of the plant, where we had a live crash test with journalists looking at not inside the car, well, not inside the car, but outside, really looking at what's going on. It was a T-bone crash where we showed that crash safety with better electric cars is really one topic which we are working on, but it's also one topic where we can rely on a sophisticated investigation development progress to really make it safe. In general, since the end of the '60s, 1969, we investigated more than 6,000 crash traffic incidents in the whole world, U.S., Europe, China, India, to create input for the next level of traffic safety, on the one hand.
We are executing hundreds of crash before we bring one of the new cars, new vehicles in our big product launch program on the street, and we're using more and more digitalization. One of the innovations that we showed also at this event is ambient intelligence rescue. You're using the sensors in the car, which you're also having for autonomous driving, come to that in a second a nd transfer data to the rescue teams which are in the approaching process to the incidents. They can basically prepare themselves for what they expect or have to expect on the scene.
Most importantly, we are working on preventing incidents, accidents, or traffic incidents. One of the big levers for that is autonomous driving. So, the Level 2++ software stack, together with our cars, together with our MB.OS, which we already produced in China, which we already introduced in China, which we already introduced in the U.S., which we are introducing now end of the year and beginning of next year in Europe. We are convinced, and there was also a statement from a professor from the TU Darmstadt, Technical University of Darmstadt, this will improve traffic safety dramatically. That's also a reason why we're working on that.
If I may add one topic, we are also working with United Nations on MobileKids Initiative. That means we also want to support the vulnerable groups. School kids, for example, in India, we train them. It's about education. It's about maybe with local communities finding solutions around the school, how to cross the street in a safer way. We still have in India per year over 170,000 deaths because of traffic accidents. That's something where we work with local communities to support children.
Because you also mentioned the consumer interaction with those technologies that are very, very sophisticated. We are the original inventors of driving assistance systems in the first place. The idea back then, decades ago, was, what if you get into a situation where you lose control for whatever reason? Can you use technology, almost like a little angel in the background, to help negotiate that situation to avoid the crash or mitigate it? Now, in the era of AI, the car becomes intelligent and can make decisions on its own. Here, I think it's very, very important, our approach. If you're talking about the Level 2++ system, the driver is still in control and is also legally responsible. If you go to Level 3, where we're now working on the next gen, around the corner, Jörg-
Yes
no pressure.
Okay.
Where in some circumstances, it is the computer that takes over, and in those driving situations, it is the computer that drives, and it is also responsible legally for what is going on. All the way to Level 4, which we are also working on. It is key to make sure that the driver knows what the car can do and cannot do. That communication with the driver and actually what is on the label is absolutely key. Then to do it in an intuitive way, if you drive a Level 2++ system, I do not know if you have had the privilege of doing it, just the idea of cooperative steering, it is so genius. It is so obvious, it is not even funny.
I think we are the first and probably still the only that have done it, that if you actually go in in a Level 2++, and you intervene, you take over, even though the computer is just driving, the computer feels and knows that. Then you can just seamlessly give back again. It is things like that that make the difference. That is the Mercedes way.
Justin?
Justin Bazalgette from EOS at Federated Hermes. Maybe building on the product safety question, could you maybe comment also about what Mercedes is doing regarding cybersecurity, which is a big concern in terms of, we have seen it affect other companies, particularly in the U.K. There was Land Rover, Jaguar affected, and we have seen a lot of the supermarkets affected by attacks from cybersecurity. Maybe you could also talk about that in terms of product safety. The other question I would like to ask is around what Mercedes is doing to help build that consumer demand, and how much are consumers asking for some of these sort of more sustainable and the sort of reduced carbon components that you are putting in the cars? Is that yet being something that consumers really value sufficiently, and how is Mercedes increasing that as a sort of expectation for consumers?
Maybe just one general statement, then I pass on to you, Jörg. It goes without saying for a sophisticated product like a car, a moving object that weighs 2 tons, cybersecurity is of paramount importance, and a field that we have been investing into extensively for many, many, many years. I think it is also known that it is not an area where you, in the public domain, put out your blueprint and say, "Hello, everybody. This is how we are doing it." There is an element of keeping your cards very close to your chest. It is a very high priority with us. In terms of certification, Jörg, were we the first ones that got the cybersecurity or-
Yes. That's true. We were the first OEM who achieved the UN regulations on the cybersecurity, talking exactly how Ola just mentioned. You do not like to communicate too much about it, that you were the first one, because obviously then you might create also a lot of creativity in this.
Yeah, unnecessary attention.
Unnecessary attention and creativity, what might go on. This is one of the most important topics for us. We have teams around the world in the most sophisticated places and locations which you can imagine, where we are exposed to everything what's going on, but also to generate creativity in IT on the system side. It is not only car IT, it is also production and enterprise IT. Also there we are very much focused on protection and security. I have to say, with everything we are seeing right now on the car side, but also on the enterprise side, there are obviously a lot of attacks coming, but we always were able to, compared to other companies, I would say, also on the supplier side, which is also a topic, we were able to be safe and manage it.
With regard to consumer preferences, if we would do a market research, why do you buy this car? We do that all the time, obviously. What do consumers say? Do they say, "I bought this car because Mercedes has been a visionary, and together with Hydro, they have developed high-strength, high-protective aluminum parts with 70% less carbon footprint." You would not find that on the list. They will say, "It looks great. The performance is fantastic. You get good space. Oh, wow, look at that digital offering. The leather feels real, and by the way, it feels qualitative, tight, and it rides and drives really great, and it is a Mercedes. Thank you very much." That is what they will say.
Then you can say, why do you do this then? Because if you then go from the first love into lifelong love, the substance of the engineering, of which this is one part, a brand that you can trust, that is part of that story. It is, and I think that has come across quite clearly today, that the sustainable business strategy is a path towards decarbonization. If that is your business goal, you have to approach it in a holistic way. You have to do it with the supply chain as well. On our business journey, it is the right direction, and we think that ultimately then also builds trust and reflects positively on the brand.
It is maybe one of those mosaics in an overall brand value, but you are not going to find a customer that buys the CO2-reduced aluminum as a top purchasing criteria at this stage.
Maybe just a follow-up.
Hold it close.
Maybe a follow-up. I think that sort of drives the question around the cost competitiveness. It is not that you are able to sell the car to add additional value through sustainable components, but it does then mean that having a margin or a price which is very similar between the combustion engine, perhaps the lower-cost manufacturing options, and the sort of more sustainable electric vehicles becomes a critical decision about how you move forward in a sort of financially sustainable way as well as a sort of planetary sustainable way. You mentioned that a little bit in your discussion at the beginning of the day, Ola. I would be interested if you would just expand a little bit more on the strategy that you were talking about in terms of the pricing between the electric and the non-electric vehicles.
It is a balancing act to put together a car like that. Thousands and thousands of components, performance criteria that you define what makes a Mercedes-Benz a Mercedes-Benz. How do you make a real recipe that meets the standard of our brand? It is thousands of micro-decisions, and it is to find the right compromise at every point in time. You will not make every single one. I think Michael said it in his presentation. Does he do every single humanly possible thing to reduce whatever water waste? No, I am sure there are more things that you can do, but he does the right things, the highest return on investment things. Every gram of that car is weighed, every material decision, every production process for the material decision, it is carefully weighed.
At the same time, even though you are in this crossover period now where the financial margins are also challenged by the fact that the variable cost is higher than what we had previously, it is not the only thing that is going on, as you very well know, in terms of the macro environment. There is still such a thing as the technological trajectory, and you cannot veer off of that trajectory. You need to be, in our view, for a company and a brand like Mercedes, on the frontier of the trajectory. We try to drive that. We think it is part of our role in the auto industry. We think it is part of the brand promise. We think it is also what consumers buy into. But we make hundreds, if not thousands, of carefully weighed micro-decisions.
It will take some years to get to a cost point where you find an equilibrium that is equivalent to the one that we had. But let us not look back. We are not going to go backwards. The car industry, society, whatever, is not going to go back to where we were. There is only the future, and we got to figure out that equation.
Let me add one point and one topic. Sometimes you might be able to combine sustainability efforts, especially in the supply chain, with supply chain resilience. Then it pays off, for sure.
Ingo?
Ingo Speich from Deka Investment. I have got a question regarding the U.S. We see an ESG, or anti-ESG movement in the U.S. currently, and it is a big question for us how Mercedes is tackling the issue. Because on the one hand, you have to fill U.S. criteria. On the other hand, we have Europe with a totally different view on ESG and DEI, climate, and so on. How is it possible, if you have people on the ground, sales, production in the U.S., and have the European business to fulfill all the criteria? Maybe a quick follow-up question on this one. How do you see the midterms? Does it really has an impact on Mercedes?
I think, Ingo, if you look below the surface of what is really going on, what I call the trajectory, the technological trajectory, I am not so sure that there is a big difference in the trajectory in the United States vis-à-vis Europe or China or any other place for that matter. This technological frontier, if you will, is moving in the same direction everywhere. My short answer could be, actually, it does not affect us at all. When it was front-page news, spotlighted, and perhaps with a lot of reporting burdening, we still were moving in that direction. Now, some of that is being peeled away, or there has been a backswing, as you mentioned, towards it. But the technological trajectory does not really change. We have not made any bigger changes to our operations or anything like that. We keep on going.
Yeah.
Reporting burden, I have to say, we were never big supporters of a lot of reporting burden, to be honest, because it does not add any value.
I mean, of course, if you look at regulation, U.S. versus China, not so much versus Europe, U.S. Connected Vehicle Security Act.
That's a different matter.
It's a different matter. There, of course, you have tensions, and we carefully approach that.
Yeah. We haven't changed the way we operate a lot, yeah. That's why, if you have political changes in economic regions, regardless of the world, of course, you speak to policymakers, and you look at what they're doing, but you don't make a major strategy shift on your own business, to be honest.
Now, let me add a practical example from the production point of view. If we develop a new technology, let's take our new generation paint shop here in Sindelfingen. Our teams invest a lot of time and effort in defining everything, standardizing everything. It doesn't make sense to then develop something new, for example, for our production site in Tuscaloosa. We standardize, we invest into the next generation, and then we scale it all over the world in our production sites. Not maybe one-to-one the same facilities or maybe the same machinery, but we try to standardize. With every new investment, we're actually doing it for two reasons, to become more efficient and to save costs.
We see that the newest and latest technologies in, I would say, most of the time also come with energy savings, and that's why we are doing it. There's a standardization all over the world.
On that note, an interesting fact. The previous administration put in a lot of incentives through the IRA in terms of also modernizing the manufacturing base towards future sustainable technologies. The current administration has kept those. It's an interesting fact, isn't it?
Mark Lavoie, over to you.
Thank you. Mark Lavoie, ODDO BHF. Thank you very much for the presentations today. We talked a lot about the environmental pillar and specifically climate change mitigation. I had a question on climate change adaptation and specifically on water after the summer that we lived, especially in Central Europe, for instance. I wanted to know if you identified specific zones that are under high water stress and what you were doing when it comes to, well, the mitigation of these climate change physical risks. Maybe second question, which is pretty much related, if you identified other climate change risks, physical risks, and what you were doing on this specifically. Thank you.
Of course, we are observing and monitoring all our production sites all around the world. Let me give you a very, let's say, tangible example. This year in summer, we had a water shortage due to the heat in Hungary. The government approached us to reduce our energy consumption because they had to scale back their nuclear power plant. Here, actually, we were very grateful that we have invested so much money and so much effort in our solar power facilities in Hungary, because it enabled us to still continue our production. This is why we observe the whole ecosystem. We monitor. At the moment, we have no direct impact from water shortages somewhere, but I think, since the savings, also the cost savings that we see if we reuse water multiple times, this is of highest priority.
As I said in my presentation, we are scaling up the capacity through all around our production sites in the world. Here we become more independent with every investment that we do. So far, no direct impact, but it is on our agenda, and I would say rather on the top 10 priorities, than in the lower 10.
Make no mistake for transportation, and resilience and diversity of transportation for our friends across town that make the world's best trucks and buses. The individual truck or bus as a road transportation of goods and people, it is not only very much alive, it is more alive than ever. There are even if you now read studies and what some countries are saying that have been affected by drone wars, some people are saying rail can be interrupted by drone very easily. Many thousands of individually moving vehicles, more difficult so. There is even other dimension of resilience that have come in through the very difficult conflicts that are going on in the world right now.
Just to add on that, obviously we are also working with our supply base, because what we are doing in our production network, we explain what could go on, could go wrong, together with our explain to our suppliers and then make our supply chain more resilient. Because the supply chain is much more complex than our production network.
Okay, I will move on to one question online, and I come back to the room. Michele Prisco from Alecta had a question. "As Mercedes-Benz implements its updated climate pathway, what does the board see as the most important measure for maintaining the pace of decarbonization while responding to changing customer demand and market conditions?
If I had one wish, we know relatively clear what our task is, is to make sure that we drive this market through fantastic products and technology. I think we have a really clear mind on that. We do not need to be additionally motivated. If I would add one wish to policymakers is, as you look at the whole system, use a market-based approach with investments into enabling factors like infrastructure and incentivization. That is the policymaking method that works the best to drive this. Back to my comments on the current discussion in the EU for the next generation of legislation.
I also would have a wish. We need clean and affordable energy, actually, to drive this transformation.
Very clear. Then we have time for one more question in the room. I think I saw your hand up a few times, so feel free.
Hi. Sining Zhang from Ofi Invest Asset Management. Maybe I can complete the question over there. For the 2039 CO2 target, it is minus 80% for the use phase, if the market conditions allow it. What I said earlier that Mercedes wants to drive into these market conditions, want to be a force. At the same time, Mercedes is supporting for more flexibility from the EU regulation. It might seem a little bit counterintuitive, but how this position is actually really helping the market to go to allow you to the minus 80%.
I will try to explain it in a nutshell, even though we can have a two-hour conversation about it. If you take the EU27 as an example, and a policymaker decides and picks a date, in this case, the date is the 1st of January of 2035, for 100% of the market. Every single buying intent on that date only has one buying choice, effectively, and it is an electric car. Let us assume for a second that not 100% of the buying intent is covered by circumstances, infrastructure, et cetera, that would lead to a purchase on that date of an electric car. What happens? Because it is not market-driven.
It is the state telling the consumer, "This is your only choice from that point forward." What then is bound to happen, and there are many regulatory examples of this in different businesses, for the consumer that is on that day not in a position where that is the best choice for him or her, that consumer sticks at that point in time. Let us assume for a second, and it is difficult to know. Standard & Poor's produced a report earlier this year that made an estimation that in 2035, the natural demand for fully battery electric vehicles, in this case, everything else would be banned. Every hybrid version, everything would be banned. Let us say that it is the two-thirds that they say, or let us be more optimistic.
Let's say that it's 80% of the buying intent is covered through great products, the least of our worries, but then every other enabling condition. On that day, the market drops 20%. Then it takes a while for the market to come back into an equilibrium. The area under that curve, vis-à-vis a situation where the market stays on the same level, is an enormous economic destruction. An enormous economic destruction, because the revenue pool of the whole industry first collapses and then rebuilds. A company like Mercedes-Benz can probably deal with that. It would not be a great situation. We can probably deal with it. But many of the family-owned mid-sized smaller suppliers in Europe, which is the fabric of the auto industry in Europe, they are desperately aware of this and feel the existential threat of that. Now comes the worst bit of all.
With a noble thought and the wrong method, you actually make decarbonization worse. Because the big carbon footprint in the auto industry are the 250 million vehicles in the car park, not the 13 million vehicles new registrations. Of course, over time, it replaces. If you get consumers, a part of the consumers to stick, they keep their old car. In that scenario, you have destroyed your economy, your financial ability to invest into the future that you need, and you have, not unlikely, for a period of time, actually made your carbon footprint worse. Why is that the better policy? Isn't it odd that China, which is the farthest ahead, is doing the exact opposite and using a market-based approach while investing money into enabling conditions, and even going beyond that, supporting the companies that are doing it? That's the difference.
That is why the debate is not about the destination, and it never has been, even though some headlines suggest that. It is only about the method. That's why I stick with my one wish.
Thank you, Ola. Thank you, everyone. This brings us to the close of our Q&A session and also to the end of our Sustainability Update 2026. Thank you all for coming. Thank you all for joining us online. Thanks for your questions. Thanks for all of your answers. The replay, and also the presentations will be made available to you. If you have any further questions, you know where to find the investor relations team. With that, I wish you all a great rest of the day. Thank you so much for engaging with us, and we look forward to seeing you again. Thank you.