Company: APTV
Filing Date: 2025-02-07
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001521332-25-000010
Chunk: 83

Company: Aptiv PLC
Filing Date: 2025-02-07
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 7
Chunk 83
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, including engineering, was approximately $1.6 billion, $1.8 billion and $1.5 billion for the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023 and 2022, respectively, which includes approximately $535 million, $492 million and $379 million of co-investment by customers and government agencies. Each year we share some engineering expenses with OEMs and government agencies which generally ranges from 25% to 35% of engineering expenses. This level of co-investment supports product development, accelerates the pace of innovation and reduces the risk associated with successful commercialization of technological breakthroughs. We also encourage “open innovation” and collaborate extensively with peers in the industry, government agencies and academic institutions. 

In the past, suppliers often incurred the initial cost of engineering, designing and developing automotive component parts, and recovered their investments over time by including a cost recovery component in the price of each part based on expected volumes. Recently, we and many other suppliers have negotiated for cost recovery payments independent of volumes. This trend reduces our economic risk.

We utilize a Technology Advisory Council, a panel of prominent global technology thought leaders, which helps us anticipate cutting-edge technology trends and guides our product strategies and investments in technology with a focus on developing advanced technologies to drive growth and foster innovation. This independent perspective assists Aptiv in pursuing investments in the right technologies that create the most value for all of its stakeholders. We believe that our engineering and technical expertise, together with our emphasis on continuing research and development, allow us to use the latest technologies, materials and processes to solve problems for our customers and to bring new, innovative products to market. We believe that continued engineering activities are critical to maintaining our pipeline of technologically advanced products. Given our strong financial discipline, we seek to effectively manage fixed costs and efficiently rationalize capital spending by critically evaluating the profit potential of new and existing customer programs, including investment in innovation and technology. We maintain our engineering activities around our focused product portfolio and allocate our capital and resources to those products with distinctive technologies. We expect expenditures for research and development activities, including engineering, net of co-investment, to be approximately $1.1 billion for the year ended December 31, 2025.

We maintain a large portfolio of approximately 11,000 patents and protective rights in the operation of our business as of December 31, 2024. While no individual patent or group of patents, taken alone, is considered material to our business, taken in the aggregate, these patents provide meaningful protection