The Complex Diffusion of Electric Vehicles: A Dominant Design Perspective

The electric vehicle industry is staggering along an arduous path to dominant design and subsequent mass-market reach. We examine technology-specific factors that influence the emergence of a dominant design and posit that the technologies most central to technological and regional innovation are also those furthest away from establishing a dominant design. We find support for our hypothesized model in a panel data analysis of 2958 electric vehicle patents representing the development of 72 technologies over ten years. These technologies are even less likely to have a dominant design when they are complex, i.e., they have many components or interactions. However, for technologies with high innovation performance, the impact of complexity is inverted. Then, technological centrality, i.e., centrality in the technology system, paired with complexity make technologies more likely to converge toward a dominant design. Conversely, technologies with local centrality in a specific region, are more convergent and less complex. These serial interrelations among the antecedents of dominant design provide a more detailed understanding of market-based standardization than previously available. On a practical level, more innovation reduces the barriers generated by complexity. Thus, joint industry-level efforts may be useful to overcome persistent hurdles in the technology life cycle, such as those currently experienced by the electric vehicle industry.

I. Introduction

The diffusion of innovation does not happen overnight. History shows many examples where such a process took even centuries. The case of automotive is here an interesting recent example. Fig. 1 shows the global sales for battery or hybrid vehicles from 2013 to 2022. Starting from a very low level of 2%, it reached its height last year with a market share of 13%. But the question remains: how long will this process take until such vehicles dominate the market? Fig. 1.

Global BEV and PHEV sales (‘000s) [3].