The technology convergence of electric vehicles: Exploring promising and potential technology convergence relationships and topics

Abstract The invention of electric vehicle can make great contribution to the transition to low-carbon city, because of its lower pollution feature. Electric vehicle has become a popular development trend in the automotive industry. This industry has a high degree of technological dependence. Electric vehicle technologies involve multiple disciplines, and study of the technology convergence among various disciplines can explain the interdisciplinary development in this field. Previous studies lack detailed estimation of promising and potential technology convergence relations as well as the detailed topics in this field. This paper combined qualitative and quantitative methods (e.g., network analysis, link prediction and text mining) and proposed a novel framework to explore promising and potential technology convergence relationships and topics in the field. The results are:(1) Eight promising relationships were found. For instance, the convergence relationship B60K–B60L is a promising example related to the convergence of “dashboards or the mounting of one or more propulsion units and related devices” and “the propulsion, operation monitoring or electric safety in electric vehicles”. (2) The topics of the five most promising ones are mainly about battery arrangement and protection, control systems, framework design, and charging connectors. Battery arrangement and protection are the most noteworthy promising topics. (3) Five potential convergence relationships are detected. For example, the convergence of “propulsion, operation monitoring or electric safety in electric vehicles” and “image data processing or generation” might occur in future innovation. (4) The potential topics might be electric vehicle condition display, compressor or pump electric control. The results could offer a reference to scientists, policy-makers and investors in the electric vehicle field, and the novel framework proposed in this paper could be applied to other technology fields to estimate the trends of technology convergence.