WIPO releases report on transportation technology trends to 2025

WIPO recently released the "WIPO Technology Trends: Future of Transportation 2025". After analyzing more than 1.1 million related patent families, it explored the innovative development trends of future transportation around the two macro trends of sustainability and digitalization, covering the four major areas of land, sea, air and space transportation, and predicting the future transportation landscape from multiple dimensions from the perspectives of technology, market and intellectual property.

Four major technology trends (Technology Clusters)

• Sustainable Propulsion: Focus on alternative energy power systems, such as electric drive, hydrogen fuel cells and sustainable fuels. Promote the decarbonization of transportation and support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• Automation and Circularity: Use smart manufacturing, industrial robots and 3D printing to improve production efficiency and reduce waste; develop recyclable materials and biopolymers to achieve closed-loop resource utilization.
• Communication and Security: Emphasis on supporting autonomous driving, smart transportation systems and dynamic response capabilities through technologies such as 5G, V2X communications, cloud platforms and network security.
• Human-Machine Interface (HMI): Use technologies such as touch, voice recognition, and extended reality to enhance user experience and improve the accessibility and intuitiveness of transportation systems.

Key data highlights

• 2000–2023: 1.1 million patent families related to future transportation. The CAGR is 11%, while traditional transportation technology is only 4%. Sustainable propulsion patents account for 18%, and communications and security patents account for 17%.
• In 2023, the patent growth in the technical theme areas is that in the field of sustainable development technology, the number of patents increased by more than 55,000, in the field of communications and security, the number of patents increased by more than 50,000, in the field of automation and circularity, the number of patents increased by more than 19,000, and the number of patent applications for human-machine interaction HMI increased by more than 9,000.

Geographical distribution of patents and leading countries

• The top five invention regions are:
  • China (430,000+)
  • Japan (240,000+)
  • United States (150,000+)
  • South Korea (130,000+)
  • Germany (80,000+)

Patent distribution by mode of transportation

• Land transportation: 82% of total patents
• Other transportation such as sea transportation, air transportation and space transportation together account for less than 1/3 of land transportation

Policy and market drivers

• The sources of innovation are divided into: Technology Push, such as academic research and cutting-edge patents
• Market Pull, such as consumer demand and regulatory changes

The report emphasizes the need to promote systemic changes, including: policy support and regulatory innovation; inter-enterprise collaboration and infrastructure construction; future-oriented investment decisions and skills transformation

The report points out that intellectual property plays a key role in supporting innovation and change in the transportation sector. Through WIPO's analytical tools and patent data platform, it can help policymakers, businesses and researchers grasp the technological development path of future transportation and achieve a more efficient, green and inclusive global transportation system.