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Street scooter in front of a delivery base in Rostock (archive image)
Photo: Bernd Wüstneck / dpa
Deutsche Post DHL has said goodbye to the production of electric vehicles.
The Bonn-based company announced that it had sold the production rights for the so-called Streetscooter to the Luxembourg company consortium Odin Automotive.
The buyer will continue to build the Stromer.
Information on the purchase price was not given.
The Streetscooter subsidiaries in Japan and Switzerland also change hands.
A Streetscooter subsidiary with 300 employees will remain with the yellow giant.
The Aachener Streetscooter GmbH is supposed to act as a supplier for Odin - this involves, for example, vehicle parts and batteries that are still in stock anyway.
In addition, the Post subsidiary continues to take care of the maintenance work and the upkeep of the Group's own fleet of electric transporters.
The Post currently has around 17,000 street scooters in use in Germany, and the electric fleet is to be expanded to 21,500.
The production required for this is now to be carried out by Odin.
Swiss Post will have a ten percent stake in the Luxembourg company.
In 2014, the Bonn-based group bought the start-up Streetscooter, founded by Aachen professors, and initially duped the automotive industry with the yellow electric cars from in-house production. According to Swiss Post, due to the lack of a suitable electrical product on the van market, it was forced to take responsibility for the business itself.
The initial PR coup turned into an expensive affair. It is true that the Stromer contributed to the fact that the CO₂ balance of the logistics giant could be significantly improved. But there were hardly any noteworthy sales successes to external customers. In 2019, the Post announced the sale of 500 street scooters to a Japanese logistics company, but that remained the only major order. Most of the street scooters stayed in their own ranks. Changes in management fizzled out, expansion plans in China and the USA came to nothing.
Just a few years after the purchase, Swiss Post was open to selling a street scooter.
But no one wanted to find a buyer.
Almost two years ago, CEO Appel announced the cessation of production - the stocks should still be processed, then it should be over.
The company wanted to concentrate on its core competence - logistics - again.
Depreciation of more than 300 million euros
The new rate resulted in a heavy special depreciation of 318 million euros in the financial year.
This is the end of the Swiss Post's prestigious but costly excursion into the vehicle manufacturing industry.
The buyer, in turn, still has big plans: In a press release from Odin, Streetscooter is said to be the first takeover "in a series of transactions to be completed over the coming year."
The company wants to become "a new global market leader" in the manufacture and sale of electric light commercial vehicles.
At the head of Odin is the manager Stefan Krause, who was previously CFO at BMW and Deutsche Bank.
He described the Streetscooter takeover as a "major milestone" for Odin Automotive.
dab / dpa-AFX
