Intelligent connected vehicles motor into fast lane of patents

China's flair for innovation has led it to the forefront of exciting sphere of development

China is now the world's biggest patent owner and patent application filer in the business of intelligent connected vehicles, or ICVs - underscoring its rapidly accelerating technological capabilities in the cutting-edge field - a key report has found.

The Global Patent Watch on Intelligent Connected Vehicle Technologies, released by the Institute for Global Industry at Tsinghua University, surveyed patent numbers, applicants and characteristics related to the vehicle technologies.

The development of ICVs will be one of the critical paths for the automobile industry, and China has made an excellent start in the race, a Chinese media report cited Li Donghong, deputy director of the Institute for Global Industry at Tsinghua University, as saying.

The report said there have been more than 45,000 ICV technology patent applications around the world to date, including about 32,000 of them filed over the past 10 years.

The number of annual applications has been surging since 2009, with an average growth rate of nearly 20 percent.

Five countries have had their hands in about 92 percent of the world's ICV-related patents over the past decade, and China is taking the lead with its 37 percent share, the institute said.

Japan ranked No 2 with a share of 20 percent, the United States in the third place with 16 percent, and Germany's 12 percent and South Korea's 7 percent followed closely.

In 2015 alone, China's State Intellectual Property Office received 3,166 ICV patent applications, the most among peer countries including the US, Japan and Germany. The lead position was held by Japan before 2012.

However, Li said China still trails developed countries in the hot areas of ICV, especially in research and development of the technologies for driver assistance systems and onboard communications.

China's patent applicants on driver assistant and onboard communications were below the average, while the accumulated 8,764 applicants for autonomous driving contributed 61.8 percent to the world's total patents.

Over the past decade, the report said the country's patent applications were mainly in the fields of driver alert systems and advanced collision avoidance systems.

The two systems are among the hot areas also covering optical observation equipment, unclassified collision avoidance systems, driver assistant collision avoidance systems, navigation, lane-control and remote communications.

Yang Diange, dean of automobile engineering at Tsinghua University, said ICVs will be the way of the future for mobility development.

ICVs will be smart enough to be able to react in time to dynamically changing situations - involving a vehicle autonomously collecting information via its sensors, rapidly processing it and then issuing action instructions.

Furthermore, the vehicles will also connect with each other and with transportation infrastructure to help the car understand traffic conditions and help traffic control.

With the goal of helping the country's industry to get well prepared for the future development, Li suggested that Chinese auto makers "strengthen partnerships with up-stream and downstream companies in the value chain, and work closely with research institutes and universities".

He also believed that international cooperation with global peers and startups will help Chinese carmakers to make progress in innovation and result in improvements in core competences.

haoyan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 10/12/2017 page17)