Massive investments in the future of mobility

The automotive industry is currently in the midst of the largest transformation in its history since the development of the internal combustion engine. It can already be seen that the EU limit of 95 g of CO₂ per km, which manufacturers must achieve on average for their new passenger car fleets in 2021, cannot be achieved with conventional drives alone, despite the increasing efficiency of vehicle engines. This applies even more to the 2025 targets, where a further 15% reduction compared with 2021 is required, and to 2030, when 37.5% less compared to 2021 must be achieved. Germany's long-term climate target was tightened again in May and now envisages climate neutrality by 2045, five years ahead of the EU. Achieving such ambitious targets will require heavy investment on the part of the automotive industry. Over the next five years alone, the member manufacturers and suppliers of the VDA will invest 150 billion euros in future technologies. Much of this investment will go into electromobility, as it enables CO₂-neutral transport when using renewable electricity. The high efficiency of the electric motor makes this powertrain a core technology for achieving climate targets. High expenditure on R&D will be incurred in the area of battery technology in particular, and companies will need to invest heavily in digitization and new powertrains.

Looking at Germany as an R&D location, 2019 reveals that the automotive industry was able to increase its spending by a further 4% to a total of 28.2 billion euros (source: Stifterverband). Of this, 60% is accounted for by automotive manufacturers and 40% by the supplier industry. Corresponding to 37% of the entire R&D investments among the German economy (excluding the state and academia), the automotive industry is by far the industrial sector with the highest R&D expenditure. The next largest sectors put together, namely electronics, mechanical engineering, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals, only invest a slightly higher amount. The importance of manufacturers and suppliers is also manifested in the number of jobs: With 139,300 employees, 29% of all R&D staff in Germany are active in the automotive industry. No other industry has nearly as many highly qualified employees working in innovation. At the same time, the number of employees in R&D departments grew much faster than employment as a whole: Since 2010, almost four out of ten jobs created in the German automotive industry were in R&D – amounting to more than 51,000 additional jobs. In the context of the international division of labor in the industry, this development once again underscores the high status of innovation and technology in Germany as an automotive location.