Level 4 / Level 5 Autonomous Vehicles Landscape Report & Analysis

2021 has brought with it a wave of Autonomous Vehicle announcements. Between Honda launching the world’s first Level 3 AV Vehicle to the public, or Tesla’s literal doubling down on their Full Self-Driving beta testing program, it’s no secret that the AV market is poised to grow quickly. Given the depth of R&D expenditure and sector value, Autonomous Vehicles is an area we follow closely. And, while there are a plethora of reports from top firms about the rapidly changing autonomous driving sector from a Company and business perspective (e.g., most recently estimating a market worth approximately $1.6T by 2025), there is much less information available in a consumable manner about the landscape of intellectual property (patents) that result from L4/L5 Autonomous Vehicle R&D and that will play an important role in the space in the future.

The team at Tech+IP recently tackled this problem – and the free report we produced is available for Download Here.

To compile the patent landscape of ~16,000 patents, we created a methodology for identifying and classifying Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous patents that map to industry-standard definitions (the widely adopted Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) taxonomy). The taxonomy we developed is set forth in-depth in the paper and is being offered – without pride of authorship – for comment and improvement. We believe it is critical for our work to be open, transparent, and reproducible by others; not only so it can be improved and refined, but also because the R&D and patent landscape is moving so quickly that it should be run quarterly (like Company financial reports) to provide a better picture.

To add value to the patent community interested in L4/L5 autonomous vehicles, we then filtered and analyzed results along a number of parameters such as patent family, geography, and other factors. Our hope is that by bridging the gap between the technical, patent, and business sectors, a unique set of data and analysis will begin to emerge. As we indicated, comments (especially constructive criticism) is welcomed and we will look to move forward the continual improvement process.

Access the Full L4/L5 Autonomous Vehicles Report Here.

We’d love to chance to continue the conversation and hear your opinions and feedback about our framework.