Electric Actuation of Transport Vehicles: Overview of Technical Characteristics and Propulsion Solutions through a Systematic Patent Analysis

Electric transport vehicles offer sustainable transportation solutions with benefits, such as reduced emissions, noise, and operating costs. This paper draws an overview of the available technical solutions to actuate transport vehicles with electric drives, as depicted by patent literature. A dataset of 1784 patents was created; the documents were selected through a systematic approach, and the patents were then classified according to a number of user-defined categories. The dataset was analyzed by applying two different methods: (i) a quantitative analysis (literature overview), enabling glance evaluations about the defined categories, and (ii) a qualitative analysis (detailed analysis), which focuses on the detection of interesting design features or innovative solutions. The results of this work not only provide an alternative and complementary overview to the analysis of solutions that may emerge from a scientific literature review, but can also offer support in strategic planning to companies wishing to protect their innovations and remain competitive in the evolving market of transport vehicles.