Regional breakdown
The majority of research activity associated with the four technological trends identified as shaping the future of land transportation is concentrated in Asia. Between 2000 and 2023, there have been more than 690,000 patent family publications originating from inventors based in Asia (Figure A8). Europe and Northern America, both with more than 120,000 patent family publications, are other notable research hubs.
The number of patent families originating from other regions, namely Oceania, the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries and the Africa, remains relatively low.
Top inventor locations
At the national level, China and Japan have led global efforts in the research and development of land transport technology. Between the year 2000 and 2023, inventors in China published a total of over 340,000 patent families, while inventors in Japan published almost 225,000 (Figure A9). Consequently, these two countries collectively account for more than 60% of the global total of patent families.
With a total of approximately 117,928 patent family publications between 2000 and 2023, the United States is the third most significant research location, followed by the Republic of Korea in fourth place, with 109,000 patent family publications. Germany is fifth globally, with almost 75,000 patent families published during the same period.
The remaining countries in the top 20 list of inventor locations have published a markedly lower number of patent families since 2000.
Development and patent growth since 2000
Figure A10 is an illustration of the impressive rise of China as a research location in the field of land transport technologies. From only around 100 patent families published in the year 2000, the number of patent families published from China had risen to almost 62,000 in the year 2023.
The Republic of Korea, Japan and the United States all published around 9,000 patent families in land transport technologies in 2023. Germany is ranked fifth with almost 5,700 patent family publications in 2023.
The research activities of the other countries are still much smaller than those of the top 5.
In terms of patent family growth rates, China and India show the most dynamic development among the top 20 research locations both between 2000 and 2019, and 2020 and 2023 (Figure A11). The Republic of Korea, Sweden, Belgium, Italy and Spain have also increased their patent family publications at a dynamic pace in both the time periods analysed. Israel and Austria deserve a mention for their very high growth rates of patent family publications between 2000 and 2019. However, patent family publications have declined in these two countries since 2020. In addition, countries such as the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom (UK), Australia and Japan show a significant decrease in patent family publications over the three years from 2020 to 2023.
Research priorities: top 20 countries
A closer look at the research priorities at country level shows that there are similarities between all countries, but also significant differences. For all the top 20 research locations, Sustainable Propulsion and Communication and Security technologies are the two main research areas (Figure A12 and Table A1). However, the relative importance of these two research areas varies considerably. For example, Israel has a clear focus on the development of Communication and Security technologies in land transport, whereas Austria, Japan and the Republic of Korea have the highest relative share of patent families in Sustainable Propulsion.
Top inventor locations for each technology trend
The differences in research priorities described above are also reflected in the country rankings for the four transport technology trends (Figure A13).
Relative Specification Index
The Relative Specialization Index (RSI) is a metric used to compare a country's (or company's) patenting activity in a specific research field against its overall patenting activity. It shows how much a country specializes in a particular area compared to its overall research profile. A positive RSI indicates that a country is specializing in a particular field more than the global average, while a negative RSI suggests a country is specializing less in a particular field compared to the global average.
The development of RSI values for land transport technologies illustrates that the relevance of land transport technologies as a research focus area has increased in almost all major countries (Figure A14). The RSI also proves the extraordinarily important role of the automobile industry in Germany. Germany reaches a very high RSI index of 0.5 over the last three years, followed by second placed Sweden (RSI of 0.4 in most recent years). Land transport research is also an important research focus in Austria, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States. At the opposite end of the country ranking of the top 20 nations in land transport research is the Russian Federation, whose clearly negative RSI score indicates a low level of specialization.
