Technological trajectories in the automotive industry: are hydrogen technologies still a possibility?

• We develop a methodology for the cross analysis of patents and their citations.
• We analyze 20 years of hydrogen-related inventions for automotive applications.
• Sectoral inventions are not declining despite the lack of a clear market pull.
• Fuel cells and storage technologies are pulled by the success of electric drives.
• Other automotive-specific technologies will be latent option without policy support.

The integration of hydrogen technologies in the automotive industry as an option to cope with environmental issues has typically attracted significant attention among politicians, academics, and the media. After the recent “hydrogen hype” this interest in hydrogen technologies highlights the need to fully understand to what extent this sector is being pushed by new inventions. This paper presents a worldwide patent analysis of hydrogen technologies in the automotive sector. The study has been performed using a novel methodology by assessing trends of patents between 1990 and 2010 and their citations. As a result, we emphasize that the interest in hydrogen technologies has not declined over time and is mainly focusing on a small number of niches, although competing alternatives, such as electric vehicles, capture greater interest. Moreover, citation trends provide further insight into the development prospects of fuel cell and storage technologies as a point of convergence of multi-sectorial investments and, consequently, of potential R&D strategies in the automotive sector.