Green innovation patterns in the automotive industry: empirical evidence on the role of systems of innovation and their greening from OECD countries

The aim of the paper is to identify patterns of specialisation in different “green” technologies in the automobile industry. Focusing on the experience of the OECD countries over the last 25+ years, to the paper also analyses the role of systems of innovation in spurring and directing green innovation patterns in automotive sector, in order to test whether the detected trends of green specialisation are driven by ‘economies of specialisation’, ‘economies of scope’ or ‘learning economies’. The study builds upon a panel dataset based on green patent data in OECD countries from 1990 to 2016, which allow to depict green specialisation trends for three automotive technological solutions: green internal combustion engine (“brownish”), hybrid (“greenish”), electric and fuel cell vehicles (“green”). The study reveals that only Japan shows a persistent specialisation in all the three automotive technological solutions. Few countries (Italy, France, USA, Sweden and South Korea) are catching up in some of the three technological domains from 2008 onwards. The majority of the OECD countries display persistent negative levels of specialisation in those technological areas. The econometric analysis, based on a multinomial logistic model, shows that, while SIS, through business-funded R&D in automotive, relates with countries’ positive specialisation in incremental green types of innovation in the automotive sector, GRINS factors, like BEV sales and eco-policies - captured by the Environmental Policy Stringency Index – associates with countries’ specialisation in more radical and cleaner automotive technological solutions