The Innovation Effect of Intelligent Connected Vehicle Policies in China

“Intelligence” and “networking” have become the inevitable trends in the global automobile industry; the intelligent connected vehicle industry has developed rapidly. Existing studies on innovative technology policies of the automobile industry mainly focus on new energy vehicles and seldom analyze or evaluate the industrial policies of intelligent connected vehicles. In this paper, we compared the intelligent connected vehicle policies of the U.S., the EU, Japan and China and sorted out, classified and explored the local industrial policies of intelligent connected vehicles issued by major cities in China since 2016. We then evaluate the innovation performance of local industrial policies for intelligent connected vehicles using the multiperiod difference-in-differences (DID) method. The results show that local intelligent connected vehicle policies in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou can significantly promote industrial innovation. Moreover, these cities choose more environment-oriented industrial policies represented by target planning and legal regulation, making the industrial layout more comprehensive and industrial development more systematic. We further provide a reference and policy suggestions for other cities to formulate local industrial policies in the initial stage of the intelligent connected vehicle industry.