Research & Development
Synergies from which everyone benefits
The mission statement for our research and development is clearly defined: clean, safe, comfortable and affordable mobility – for everyone and everywhere – from wind power to marine systems, from construction machinery to commercial vehicles to passenger cars.
The key to our success is the broadest product and technology portfolio on the market and the ability to integrate products into our customers’ system landscapes and vehicle environments. But above all, our expertise in technology transfer:
We develop technologies and platforms once and deploy them across different segments. We are able to carry out this transfer because no other supplier covers as many mobility areas as ZF.
Vehicle Segments
The ability to transfer technology across vehicle segments brings us three key advantages:
We already use this principle in chassis technologies, for example in the electronically controlled OptiRide ECAS air suspension, in electrification and in the cameras for automated driving. But we also draw on the knowledge and expertise of our engineers across many different segments in basic technologies such as noise reduction - from car drives to wind turbine transmissions. Our goal is to further expand these advantages from the synergies of our technology platforms in the coming years. To this end, we are also working on new models of collaboration between the divisions.
Figures
Spending on R&D at a Consistently High Level
In the fiscal year 2023, ZF invested €3.5 billion (2022: €3.4 billion) in research and development. This corresponds to a sales share of 7.6% (2022: 7.8%).Patent Applications
In the year under review, a total of 3,431 invention disclosures (2022: 2,812) were filed by the Group. The filings led to 2,081 (2022: 2,066) new patent applications.
Driving Innovations
Our Technology Fields
ZF serves its customers in three segments: passenger cars, commercial vehicles and industrial technology. With products and services, we cover both the original equipment and the aftermarket. For our further development, we focus our strategy on our 4+1 technology fields: electrification, vehicle motion control, automation, integrated safety and digital networking. We continue to develop our offering across these technology fields and connect them with each other using integrated solutions.
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Annual Report 2023
ZF is advancing the transformation by picking up the pace and honing the focus. The increasing presence in global growth markets, investments in high yield products and technologies as well as a more efficient organizational structure are top priorities on the agenda. Details on this as well as on all key facts and figures on the 2023 annual accounts you can download here.
