Analysis of core and proximal technologies for electric vehicles in China

Having overtaken the United States as the largest vehicle market in 2010, China is expected to continue to achieve substantial growth in the electric vehicles market, in particular supported by a Chinese government announcement about continuing green-car subsidies in 2011 and beyond. The aim of this paper is to examine the technological power of China and scrutinize the intellectual property strategy of foreign companies towards the Chinese market in the electric vehicles industry. Employing EPO World Wide Patent Statistics Database, firstly we can identify not only core technologies but also proximal technologies related to the development of electric equipment or propulsion of electrically-propelled vehicles in terms of the distance between technologies using the patent IPC code´s co-occurrence methodology (citation here). Then we specify the technological power and trends of Chinese companies by use of the Chinese original patent and utility model database. Hence, we explain the landscape and trajectory of foreign companies in this technical area. Finally, some policy implications for Chinese government, and also for foreign countries, will be discussed.