Figure 3.1-2: Annual Number of EV-related and All United States Patents Granted from 1980 to 1998. Indexed to 1980.
Our patent search was conservative and we undoubtedly under-counted EV-related patents, as we counted only those patents which mention electric vehicles in their texts. That is, there may be any number of inventions that could be and have been applied to EVs, that did not mention this application in the patent itself. For example, we did not include many battery patents. The reason is that many battery patents do not limit the use of the battery to electric vehicles. Many materials related patents, especially those having to do with developing lightweight vehicle frames and bodies are not included here. Certainly though, such advances are important to, if not specific to, EVs. We do not report here on such broadly applied patents because it is beyond the scope of the present study. Further, the data presented here in are for US patents only and do not account for Japanese or European patents.
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