As they lead the push toward autonomous driving and electric mobility, Germany’s automotive industry continues to be a driving force for global R&D spending.

In this year’s ranking of the 500 most research-intensive listed companies published by the auditing firm EY, there were 32 German companies, which together increased their spending on R&D by 5 percent to reach a record EUR 54 billion. Of this, almost half – or EUR 25.5 billion – was spent by the carmakers VW, Daimler and BMW as well as the auto components supplier Continental.

Other R&D powerhouses in Germany on the list were the engineering conglomerate Siemens and the pharmaceutical giant Bayer.