Key R&D figures

In fiscal year 2022, we filed 5,305 (5,638) patent applications worldwide for employee inventions, the majority of them in Germany. The fact that an ever-increasing share of these patents is for important cutting-edge fields underscores our Company’s innovative power. These fields include driver assistance systems and automation, digitalization, connectivity, as well as alternative drive systems.

The Automotive Division’s total research and development costs in the reporting period amounted to €18.9 (15.6) billion and were 21.3% higher than in the previous year; their percentage of the Automotive Division’s sales revenue – the R&D ratio – was 8.1 (7.6)%. In addition to new models, our activities focused above all on the electrification of our vehicle portfolio, digitalization, new technologies and enhancements of our modular and all-electric toolkits and platforms. The capitalization ratio was 51.4 (50.3)%. Research and development expenditure recognized in profit or loss in accordance with the IFRSs increased to €14.3 (12.8) billion.

As of December 31, 2022, our Research and Development departments – including the equity-accounted Chinese joint ventures – employed 58,912 people (+11.1%) Group-wide, corresponding to 8.7% of the total workforce. The year-on-year increase is partly due to a change in the data collection methodology.