BMW Group to invest over €30 billion on future-oriented technologies up to 2025
The BMW Group is embracing the transformation of the automotive industry with great confidence and investing heavily in research and development with a view to shaping the mobility of the future for the benefit of its customers.
“New technologies are key to the future of mobility. Up to 2025, we intend to invest more than €30 billion ($33 billion) in research and development to underscore our position as an innovation leader. This also expresses our confidence for the future business development,” said Oliver Zipse, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG. “The ability to integrate diverse technologies to form a complete system is vitally important. Those companies capable of developing and combining hardware and software in equal measure will shape the future of the automobile. In this respect, we are quite clearly in the fast lane.”
In future, the BMW Group is also benefiting from strategic decisions taken at an early stage that have given it a definite competitive edge during this crucial phase of change for the entire sector. “We took decisive steps in the relevant strategic fields at the right time and are now intent on leveraging our competitive advantage to set ourselves apart from the industry trend,” Zipse continued.
The BMW Group set about achieving the new CO2 targets at an early stage, an important aspect of which was the decision to systematically electrify the model range. With its Performance > NEXT programme launched in 2017, further moves were made to achieve greater efficiency and a stronger operating performance. Moreover, over the past eight years, some 46,000 employees have received training in the field of electric mobility.
In view of the growing importance of software know-how, the BMW Group founded the Critical Techworks IT joint venture in 2018 in order to secure the relevant expertise and skills. The BMW Group itself is one of the largest IT employers in Germany with 5,300 employees having been trained in the field of data analytics.
Access to the raw materials needed to produce electric mobility has also been strategically secured. Since the beginning of the current year, the BMW Group has been procuring the required cobalt and lithium directly and passing those resources on to the suppliers involved in manufacturing battery cells.
At the same time, the BMW Group remains convinced of the importance of focusing systematically on customer needs and therefore on the innovations required to meet those needs. With this point in mind, efforts to broaden expertise in future fields of technology continue to be scaled up.
Research and development expenses for the year 2019 in accordance with IFRS totalled €5,952 million ($6,547 million), significantly up on the previous year (2018: € 5,320 million ($5,852 million); +11.9%).
BMW Group to invest over €30 billion on future-oriented technologies up to 2025
Modified on Wednesday 18th March 2020
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BMW Group to invest over €30 billion on future-oriented technologies up to 2025