Toyota Motor led the world’s publicly held global companies in R&D spending last year, followed by General Motors.
Ford are No. 6 on the list, Honda are 16th, and Volkswagen are 19th.
The data appear in the annual Booz & Co. Global Innovation 1,000 analysis. Booz analysed the R&D spending at the world’s top 1,000 publicly held automotive and nonautomotive companies.
Last year’s R&D spending growth in the automotive industry was a striking change from 2006, said Barry Jaruzelski, a partner in Booz, of Florham Park, N.J. In 2006, all industries except automotive increased R&D spending in absolute dollars.
In 2007, “automotive kicked back up and was basically growing at the historical rate again,” said Jaruzelski. “General Motors did a substantial increase in R&D spending year over year.”
Among the findings for 2007 year:
— Toyota spent $8.4 billion on R&D or 3.6% of global sales
— GM spent $8.1 billion or 4.5% of sales
— Several automotive companies appeared to be research-driven. Porsche Automotive Holdings spent 9.8% Delphi Corp. spent 9.0%, Denso spent 7.7% and Valeo spent 7.0%.