A long and illustrious series of innovations has kept Bavaria at the forefront of the automotive industry ever since. Today’s Bavarian automobile industry is especially strong in the premium segment, thanks in particular to Audi, which is headquartered in the south central Bavarian city of Ingolstadt, and BMW, whose headquarters are in Munich. These manufacturers are among the most sustainedly successful in the world. The highest levels of quality and performance shown by their automobiles have enabled the manufacturers to overcome the difficult conditions prevailing upon worldwide markets and to register one record after another. This level of quality and performance is a product of the dedication to innovation shown by the manufacturers. This dedication has led to the development and employment of advanced materials, of driver information and assistance systems, and of fuel and emission reduction technologies. Audi and BMW are leaders in all these areas. They are also indisputably the world’s trendsetters in design.

Bavaria’s automobile industry is also a leader in the commercial vehicles sector, thanks to the wide range of high quality and performance trucks and buses manufactured by the Munich-headquartered MAN group. MAN’s worldwide reputation for excellence and innovativeness are enabling it to thrive in a difficult market.

Figures detailing Bavaria’s leading role in Germany’s and the world’s automobile sector: some 25% of the patents applied for in Germany in this sector stem from Bavarian companies and inventors. Precisely 16.3% of the country’s automotive suppliers are based in the state. Nearly two thirds of the sales registered by Bavaria’s automobile industry are achieved abroad. No wonder that “made in Bavaria” is a worldwide synonym for automotive excellence and prestige. Another figure shows the importance of Bavaria’s automotive industry to the state’s manufacturing sector as a whole: some 180,000 people—or 16% of all manufacturing jobs—are engaged in the production of motor vehicles and components in the state. Large those this figure is, it does not include the great number of persons working for associated production and service provision companies.

Viewed by sales, Bavaria’s automobile industry is the most important in the state’s manufacturing sector, accounting for 25% of its total. These figures provide eloquent testimony to the extent and output of the network of suppliers serving the state’s automotive manufacturers. Bavaria’s automotive industry is comprised of 1000 companies, of which 180 are Tier 1 – 4 suppliers.

Four of the world’s “top 100” automobile suppliers are headquartered in Bavaria--Brose, INA, Sachs, Webasto ZF. They are joined by such traditional powers as Dräxlmaier (interiors, electronics), FTE Automotive (braking and coupling systems), Leoni (cables), Rehau (plastics) and Scherdel (shock absorbers).

All of the world’s leading automotive suppliers have set up operations in Bavaria, with their ranks including Arvin Meritor, Bosch, Johnson Controls, Delphi, Denso, Faurecia, Federal Mogul, Magna/Intier, Lear, TRW Automotive and Valeo. Like their domestic counterparts, these companies avail themselves of the special-purpose technologies and products provided by Bavaria’s automotive SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises).

Suppliers providing a complete range of products and technologies

High-performance manufacturers and suppliers providing a complete range of products and technologies—Bavaria’s automotive sector constitutes a powerful source of sales and partnerships.

Bavaria’s automotive suppliers are world leaders in the areas of

• electronics
• industrial and drive train engineering
• software and other areas of IT
• metal processing and light-gauge engineering
• plastics technologies
• textiles and chemical fibers
• ceramics and glass

Bavaria’s universities are troves of knowhow on automotive technological development and project management. It is thus entirely comprehensible why the world’s automotive sector flocks to enter into partnerships of development and application with them, with Bavaria’s universities of applied sciences, and with the large number of research institutes in the state.

BAIKA is Bavaria’s Innovation and Cooperation Innovative for the Automotive Supplier Industry. Its Website has a complete listing of the automotive engineering institutes and departments at Bavaria’s institutions of higher education.

These institutions are powerful sources of technologies—and of highly qualified and motivated personnel. These qualifications and motivation constitute one important explanation why the state’s automotive companies, prime employers of Bavaria’s automotive graduates, are so successful. Another reason is the wide range of providers of vocational and occupational education services in the state.

Creating automobiles and their constituent components is a job whose complexity demands the existence of networks joining sectors and technologies—with these including light-gauge, drive train, mechatronics and on-board electronics ones—into entities of design and development.

The forging of these networks has long been a key objective of Bavaria’s state government, which created BAIKA in 1997. Now comprising 2,000 companies (of which half are from Bavaria) and scientific institutes from 50 countries, this initiative works to establish the partnerships among the players in the automotive supply industry producing innovations. The venues for this ‘match-making’ are congresses, trade meetings and portals. Participants at these dedicated-subject events and on these platforms are manufacturers, suppliers, newcomers and research institutes.

But the Bavarian government hasn’t stopped there. Charged with furthering the forging of networks is the state’s automotive cluster, which was launched in 2006 by the state government. The cluster, in turn, forms part of Bavaria’s Alliance for Innovation.
The cluster’s goal is to intensify and extend the ties among Bavaria’s companies and scientific institutes, so as to locate and tap value-added potentials existing in the state’s regions. It achieves this objective by facilitating projects employing proximities of operation to achieve speeds and flexibility of development and production constituting an edge over worldwide competitors.

Bayern Innovativ GmbH has been charged with the management of the automotive cluster, which has already produced—employing its close working relationship with BAIKA—a range of industry-shaping developments.

The automotive suppliers’ park and automotive engineering center in Upper Franconia
Set to play a key role in Bavaria’s strategy of further developing its automobile industry are this adjoining park and center. They are located in northernmost Bavaria’s Upper Franconia region.

The park provides companies and state research institutes with the proximity requisite to develop, test and produce (on trial and industrial-scale bases) innovative products. The engineering center enables all this to be done with the utmost of cost, time and resource efficiency.

Comprised of the center of automotive engineering and its adjoining suppliers’ park, this complex offers a number of advantages—advanced, user-configurable equipment, a large number of suppliers in the vicinity, and access to high-performance networks—making it the perfect place to set up operations serving markets in Bavaria, in Germany and in Europe.

„Key Technologies in Bavaria“ is a databank providing you with briefings on the state’s automotive companies.