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BMW boosts sales outlook for 2011

German luxury automaker BMW raised Tuesday its 2011 outlook and said it now expects to sell significantly more than 1.5 million vehicles for the year.

Published: 15 March 2011 16:05 CET
BMW boosts sales outlook for 2011
Photo: DPA

“Group sales will reach markedly more than 1.5 million autos and increase for all three brands,” chairman Norbert Reithofer said during the company’s annual press conference.

BMW, which also owns the Mini and Rolls-Royce brands, presented most of its 2010 results last week when it said it should sell around 1.5 million vehicles this year, up from 1.46 million last year.

Munich-based BMW also said Tuesday that it wanted to “see its profit increase again this year.”

It posted a net profit of €3.23 billion ($4.48 billion) for 2010, 15 times higher than the level a year earlier. Pre-tax profit should now exceed €4.84 billion, the record level set last year, the company said.

The BMW brand remains the group’s core unit, with sales of 1.22 million autos last year.

Europe was the group’s biggest market, followed by China and the United States. Sales were growing meanwhile in Brazil, India, Russia, South Korea and Turkey, Reithofer said.

AFP/mry

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MUNICH

Four injured as WWII bomb explodes near Munich train station

Four people were injured, one of them seriously, when a World War II bomb exploded at a building site near Munich's main train station on Wednesday, emergency services said.

Published: 1 December 2021 16:41 CET
Smoke rises after the WWII bomb exploded on a building site in Munich.
Smoke rises after the WWII bomb exploded on a building site in Munich. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Privat

Construction workers had been drilling into the ground when the bomb exploded, a spokesman for the fire department said in a statement.

The blast was heard several kilometres away and scattered debris hundreds of metres, according to local media reports.

Images showed a plume of smoke rising directly next to the train tracks.

Bavaria interior minister Joachim Herrmann told Bild that the whole area was being searched.

Deutsche Bahn suspended its services on the affected lines in the afternoon.

Although trains started up again from 3pm, the rail operator said there would still be delays and cancellations to long-distance and local travel in the Munich area until evening. 

According to the fire service, the explosion happened near a bridge that must be passed by all trains travelling to or from the station.

The exact cause of the explosion is unclear, police said. So far, there are no indications of a criminal act.

WWII bombs are common in Germany

Some 75 years after the war, Germany remains littered with unexploded ordnance, often uncovered during construction work.

READ ALSO: What you need to know about WWII bomb disposals in Germany

However, most bombs are defused by experts before they explode.

Last year, seven World War II bombs were found on the future location of Tesla’s first European factory, just outside Berlin.

Sizeable bombs were also defused in Cologne and Dortmund last year.

In 2017, the discovery of a 1.4-tonne bomb in Frankfurt prompted the evacuation of 65,000 people — the largest such operation since the end of the war in Europe in 1945.

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