Inventive Activity in the Vehicle Black Box: Implications for Advanced Vehicle Batteries

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box subsystem—the event data recorder (EDR).
The EDR has evolved from a relatively simple device capable of recording only a few seconds of data before and during a collision into a more sophisticated subsystem able to detect and record a wide range of events, including anomalous or critical battery conditions, and to transmit this information to cloud-based data centers. By enabling the transmission of operational data to multiple digital platforms, the EDR supports the continuous monitoring and management of vehicle batteries.
Using data from the USPTO database and the methodology developed by Strumsky and Lobo (2015) and Lobo and Strumsky (2019), we analyze the evolution of technological complexity—measured as the average number of technology classes associated with patents—as well as different forms of novelty in EDR-related inventive activity, including origination, new combinations, recombination, and reuse.
The evidence derived from EDR-related patents reveals several patterns of technological change. First, it reflects the development of vehicles’ proprioceptive (internal) and perceptual (external) systems, particularly in relation to battery monitoring and management (Lipson, 2016). Second, it captures the transition from disconnected to connected batteries (Lara, 2013; Lara, Chávez and Jaimes, 2020). Third, it highlights the shift from closed to open technological systems enabled by telematics, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing (Greengard, 2015). Finally, it illustrates the broader transition from non-learning vehicles to intelligent vehicles that, through advanced sensing technologies, can represent both their internal states and external environments and adapt their behavior accordingly (SAE, 2014).