STUTTGART (dpa-AFX) - With an even stronger focus on customers such as tradespeople, freight forwarders, or delivery services, the Mercedes-Benz Vans division aims to return to growth following recently declining business figures. "We sharpened the strategy last year and are putting commercial customers even more at the center here," Vans chief Thomas Klein told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur in Stuttgart.
The Vans division achieved a sales record in 2023 with 447,800 units. In 2024 and 2025, sales fell again. In 2025, they stood at 359,136 units. For this year, the Group expects a slight increase again. In the medium term, the division also wants to return to levels it has previously reached, Klein said, without specifying a concrete timeframe.
Commercial customers at the heart of the strategy
According to Klein, commercial customers account for about 80 percent of the business, with well-known vehicles such as the Sprinter or Vito. 20 percent are private customers who, for example, drive the V-Class with up to eight seats or the Marco Polo motorhome variant. Given their importance, however, it is right to give commercial customers even more space.
"We will look after commercial customers even more strongly, even more intensively, and even better than we already do," said Klein, who has headed the division for a year. For example, Mercedes wants to provide more support to commercial customers when switching to e-mobility and, for instance, also offer solutions for charging at the depot.
Electric share at around eight percent
Around eight percent of the vans sold last year were fully electric. This is slightly less than for passenger cars (9.3 percent). Commercial customers have completely different requirement profiles for the type of drive than private customers, Klein said. The Vans division offers both fully electric vehicles and internal combustion engine vehicles, and customers essentially determine the pace of the transformation.
"The figures we delivered last year are, in my view, really good," said Klein. In this context, Klein pointed to an adjusted return on sales that is still in the double digits at 10.2 percent. However, this had stood at 14.6 percent in 2024.
Revenue, however, had fallen by eleven percent in 2025 and the operating result (Ebit) had slumped by more than half. For the Mercedes Group as a whole, profit in 2025 had collapsed by half compared to the already modest previous year.
New vehicle presented
The new electric VLE, which Mercedes presented in Stuttgart on Tuesday evening, is also expected to help polish the business figures in the future. The VLE is the first vehicle based on a newly developed van architecture, according to the press release. The vehicle offers seating for up to eight people. The offering is suitable for families and customers active in their leisure time, but also for exclusive shuttles./rwi/DP/mis
