Far East ahead

In a recent commentary, journalist Christoph Behrens of German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung warns the German car industry to oversleep change to alternative drive technologies. He relies on Grünecker´s-Car-Patent-Index to illustrate that the domestic car industry lags behind in this sector: "Currently, most patent applications for alternative drive technologies are from the Far East, reveals the Munich based Grünecker firm." The author concludes that the domestic car industry is threatened to lose importance. "In China, even small manufacturers of electric cars (...) leave behind Western companies", writes Behrens.