German automotive industry invests more than €250bn in R&D worldwide by 2027

From 2023 to 2027, the manufacturers and suppliers of the German automotive industry will invest more than €250bn in research and development worldwide. The focus of the R&D investments is on the transformation, in particular electromobility - including battery technology, autonomous driving and digitization. This means that automobile manufacturers and automotive suppliers with German headquarters are investing more than €50bn a year in research and development worldwide during this period. The German automotive industry will thus continue to increase its high R&D investments: For the period from 2022 to 2026, the VDA had previously assumed that the German automotive industry would invest around €220bn in R&D worldwide, i.e. annually for this period more than €44bn. In addition to the R&D investments from 2023 to 2027, another €130bn will be spent by the German automotive industry worldwide, among other things, for the construction of new factories and the conversion of plants and their equipment.

"The huge investments made by the German automotive industry show the determination of our industry to turn the transformation into an international success story. The German automotive industry supports the climate goals and wants to make climate-neutral mobility a reality as quickly as possible. We are drivers of transformation," says Hildegard Müller, President of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA).

"The investments are also an expression of our will to remain internationally competitive. The German automotive industry wants to continue to build the most climate-friendly, safest, most efficient and most advanced cars in the world in the future," Müller continued.

Prominent role in R&D
VDA evaluations of "The 2022 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard"* published by the EU Commission also prove the prominent global role of the German automotive industry in the field of research and development.

In 2021, global research and development investments by German automotive companies amounted to €45.2bn, an increase of 6% compared to the previous year. This means that Germany continues to be the international leader in global investments in automotive research and development, ahead of Japan, the USA and China. From an international perspective, German automotive companies account for 33% of global R&D investments in the automotive industry. In other words: every third euro invested in research and development by the automotive industry worldwide came from German automotive companies in 2021.

At EU level, investments by German manufacturers and suppliers even accounted for 76% of R&D investments made by European automotive companies worldwide in 2021.

The role of the automotive industry in the area of research and development is also a prominent one within the German economy: almost half of all investments made by German companies worldwide in research and development in 2021 came from the automotive industry.

*The current report edition "The 2022 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard" and the associated data set were evaluated. The 2021 figures are the most recent currently available.