Bosch increased its research and development expenditure in 2006 to 3.3 billion euros or 7.7 percent of sales. Of this amount, more than 40 percent, or 1.4 billion euros, went into products that help protect the environment and conserve resources.
As a technology company, Bosch uses innovations to respond to major challenges and provides technical answers to ecological questions. With its drive systems for the automobile, which the company optimizes for lower consumption and emissions in both the diesel and gasoline sectors, Bosch generated sales of 11.4 billion euros in 2006, or 42 percent of its business in the entire automotive technology sector. At the same time, Bosch is significantly expanding its business with systems that exploit renewable energies – whether at Bosch Thermotechnology or Bosch Rexroth. In 2006, the sales generated by these systems in the Bosch Group came to just under 500 million euros.
In light of the urgency of climate protection, Bosch is working with automakers across all drive technologies to harness additional fuel-saving potential, and thus to reduce the proportion of carbon-dioxide emissions. Bosch is developing diesel engine management further, which will result in a further reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions of up to 10 percent – and this in an engine that is already economical as it is. For the gasoline engine, developers are using the second generation of gasoline direct injection as a basis for intensive work on downsizing concepts. This means a smaller engine and fewer cylinders, but thanks to turbocharging the same power. The result is a 15 percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions as compared with conventional injection concepts. Bosch is combining the internal combustion engine and the electric motor to create hybrid drive systems. Compared with a classic port injection gasoline engine, a gasoline hybrid reduces carbon-dioxide emissions in urban traffic by 25 percent. The company has already developed a prototype for the diesel hybrid. But in addition to all these technologies, Bosch is also working on a series of technological solutions for lower consumption and lower CO2 emissions – solutions such as thermal and vehicle electrical system management, variable valve control, or super-efficient alternators. Each of these developments can reduce CO2 by between two and four percent. In this way, Bosch can play a major part in tackling the ambitious goal set for the year 2012: that of limiting the carbon-dioxide emissions of the new vehicle fleet in Europe to 130 grams per kilometer.
In the property sector, the backlog of deferred modernization is even greater than it is on the road. More than half of all German boilers are more than ten years old. If the owner of a typical detached house were to exchange such a conventional boiler for a modern condensing boiler, he could reduce his annual CO2 emissions by more than five metric tons. This is a bigger saving than the total saving achieved by applying the tighter EU emission limits, planned for 2012, to eight passenger cars driving 20,000 kilometers a year. When it comes to modernizing heating systems, Bosch promotes not only condensing technology, but also solar and geothermal energy. With systems that utilize renewable energies, the Thermotechnology division will generate sales of 400 million euros in 2007, thus achieving an increase of 100 million euros on 2006. Bosch engineers are also working on further concepts, such as combined heat and power. The goal is a house that is self-sufficient in its energy needs. And sales of transmissions and systems for adjusting the position of rotor blades of wind power plants will rise in 2007 from 120 to 160 million euros. To considerably expand its manufacturing capacities for transmission units, Bosch is also investing around 300 million euros worldwide in this sector over the next few years.
