The Bosch Group said on Thursday it remains on course for the growth target it set itself for this year.
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In a statement prepared for the IAA Commercial Vehicle Show in Hannover, Bosch said it expects sales for 2006 to rise by some 5% to about EUR43.5bn.
Of this total, some EUR27bn will be accounted for by automotive technology, its largest sector, which will record an increase in sales of between 3% and 4% this year.
According to Bernd Bohr, the board of management member responsible for the group’s automotive business, the automotive technology sector is developing differently in the various regions of the world. The dynamic developments in Asia, he said, cannot compensate for the structural problems in the North American vehicle industry. However, this applies above all to the car industry.
“Our commercial vehicles business is booming worldwide,” Bohr noted.
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By GlobalDataFrom technology for vans, trucks, and buses, Bosch will generate sales of EUR6.2bn this year, up 7% on 2005.
The currently strong business activity in the commercial vehicles segment was not the only reason Bohr gave for this. More importantly, he said, the industry has to face ever more stringent ecological demands worldwide, and Bosch has the economically convincing answers to these demands.
Added Bohr: “The question is one of finding the point where environmental protection and profitability intersect.”
For Bohr, one successful example is Bosch’s Denoxtronic – an Adblue metering system that is installed in conjunction with a nitrogen-oxide catalyst. Using this, commercial vehicles can comply now with the EU’s Euro 5 emissions standard, which comes into force in 2008. In Germany, this will have a positive effect on expressway tolls – trucks that meet the stringent new standard will pay two cents less per kilometre travelled. In the case of a vehicle that drives 100,000 kilometres (60,000 miles) on the expressway every year, the maximum saving will be EUR2,000 per vehicle.
At the same time, Denoxtronic helps to reduce fuel consumption by as much as 5%. This means a further saving of roughly EUR2,300 per year per vehicle.
“Economic arguments for environmental protection such as these can hardly be beaten,” Bohr said. Sales of Denoxtronic are increasing accordingly – from 100,000 units this year to 300,000 next year.
Bosch is also working on optimising high-pressure fuel injection to reduce consumption and emissions further. Here, both Bosch and its commercial vehicle manufacturer customers are focusing more than ever on common-rail systems. Here too, Bohr said, sales are showing an upward trend – from 950,000 systems in 2006 to 1.7m in 2009.
Bosch is currently dealing with 45 common-rail projects at its new engineering centre in Wuxi, China for Asian commercial vehicle-making customers. Of these projects, five are already in series production and, by 2008, nearly all will be on the market.
Bohr also highlighted the development of hybrid systems and new starters and alternators. He also gave examples from two Bosch subsidiaries: fleet management by Blaupunkt and cooler drives by Bosch Rexroth.
In terms of safety, Bosch has developed a software function for the electronic stability program that detects the load status of vans, and thus significantly reduces the risk of rollover. This contributes to the system’s market success: this year, every fourth new light commercial vehicle leaving the production lines worldwide has ESP and, by 2010, this will increase to every second vehicle.
This year, the automotive technology business sector is spending some EUR2.6bn on research and development, said Bohr. By the end of the year, it will employ roughly 160,000 people. Of these, 19,600 will work in R&D.
