Automotive Electronics Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- 60.9% of all 1,816 records sit with just five assignees, so a new filer is negotiating around a small, dense cluster of prior art rather than a diffuse field.
- Filings grew 86% from 139 in 2021 to 259 in 2024, the last year the dataset treats as complete before publication lag understates 2025-2026.
- Control and propulsion outrank connectivity B60W hybrid/joint vehicle control (17.5%) and B60L electric propulsion (15.7%) both sit ahead of G06F data processing (14.5%) and the wireless classes.
Filing growth compares 2021 (139 records) with 2024 (259) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 1,816 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
The search combines automotive electronics and vehicle electronic systems with operational signals — vehicle speed, traction torque, battery state, charging systems, road environment sensing and crash safety — to isolate records where electronics are tied to a real vehicle control function rather than a generic in-cabin gadget. The corpus spans 1,816 published records filed or published between 2015 and the 2026-08-31 cut-off, ranked here by patent family rather than raw document count so continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction copies do not inflate any single assignee’s position.
Coverage concentrates in the United States receiving office, with Europe, WIPO's PCT route, India and Germany filling out the rest of the picture — consistent with a field where US OEMs and their Tier 1 suppliers file first and extend selectively.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,816 records: how filing volume moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Growth phase, not a plateau
Filings rose from 55 in 2017 to a peak of 259 in 2024, including the +86% jump from 139 (2021) to 259 (2024). 2025 and 2026 show lower counts only because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months — those years are still filling in, not declining.
Control and propulsion lead connectivity
B60W (hybrid/joint vehicle control) and B60L (electric vehicle propulsion) each cover a larger share of the 1,816 records than any single connectivity or data-processing class, though G06F, H04W and H04L together show the field is now inseparable from software and networking claims. Shares add to more than 100% because a record can carry several IPC classes.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,816 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Automotive Electronics Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about automotive electronics patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a recent filing
In-vehicle electronic system and data transmission method based on SOME/IP communication protocol
Discloses an in-vehicle electronic system in which a first electronic control unit acts as a server providing two services of different priority, and a second control unit acts as a client requesting or subscribing to them; when the client's requests for the higher- and lower-priority services collide, the system resolves the conflict by priority.Filed by Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn), published 2026-06-04 — illustrates how SOME/IP-based service prioritization inside the vehicle network is now a live claim target.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6028537A | Vehicle communication and remote control system | 1,578 |
| 2 | US6405132B1 | Accident avoidance system | 1,259 |
| 3 | US7553173B2 | Vehicle connector lockout apparatus and method of using same | 1,137 |
| 4 | US7202776B2 | Method and system for detecting objects external to a vehicle | 778 |
| 5 | US7085637B2 | Method and system for controlling a vehicle | 764 |
| 6 | US6370475B1 | Accident avoidance system | 733 |
| 7 | US6526352B1 | Method and arrangement for mapping a road | 701 |
| 8 | US20020198632A1 | Method and arrangement for communicating between vehicles | 657 |
| 9 | US20200294401A1 | A Method and Apparatus for Collecting and Using Sensor Data from a Vehicle | 615 |
| 10 | US20100201189A1 | Wireless power transfer for vehicles | 601 |
Citation counts favor older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate them — read this as a map of influential prior art, not of current commercial priority.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the trend, the citation table and the assignee concentration.
The top of the field is narrow
Five assignees hold 1,106 of the 1,816 records in scope. A new entrant is not up against a diffuse field of small filers — it is up against a small cluster of large, overlapping portfolios, several of which share co-assignee relationships.
The field is still accelerating
259 filings in 2024 is the peak so far, up from 139 in 2021. Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, the lower 2025-2026 counts understate real activity rather than showing a slowdown.
Old foundational patents still anchor the field
The most-cited records — covering vehicle communication, accident avoidance and object detection — date from well before the 2015-2026 filing window but remain the reference points examiners and drafters cite against. High citation counts here signal influence, not current relevance.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to automotive electronics patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
The assignee landscape
The ranking covers 100 companies returned by the data endpoint — not a top-50 or top-100 cut, just the full list the search returns — and it is heavily front-loaded: the leader alone holds 516 records, fifth place holds 69, and tenth place holds 24.
One filer dominates the ranking
The top assignee's family count is more than seven times the fifth-place count of 69, and recent-year momentum data shows several Toyota-affiliated entities filing zero or near-zero in the latest year after having built large historical portfolios — a pattern of past accumulation rather than current sprinting.
Ten names cover most of the field
1,281 of the 1,816 records in scope sit with the top ten assignees. Beyond that point the ranking thins quickly, consistent with a field where major OEMs and a handful of Tier 1 suppliers set the claim boundaries.
Filing partnerships are narrow and specific
The strongest co-assignee link, between two Toyota-affiliated entities, appears 53 times — far ahead of the next pairs. Co-filing here looks like intra-group structuring more than open industry collaboration.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Toyota Motor North America Inc. | 1 | -96% |
| Toyota Connected North America Inc. | 1 | -86% |
| Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Toyota Jidosha KK (Toyota Motor Corporation) | 0 | -100% |
| Volvo Car Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Sony Group Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Kautex Textron GmbH & Co. KG | 0 | — |
| Honda Motor Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The dataset points to a field still growing at the top but with narrow, checkable claim gaps beneath the leaders.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the leader cluster
With 60.9% of records held by five assignees, any new filing should be screened against that cluster's claims before looking at the long tail.
Screen assignees in EurekaTrack the SOME/IP and service-priority branch
The most recent representative filing sits on in-vehicle service prioritization — a branch worth watching as connectivity and control claims converge.
Explore recent filings in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
One assignee leads the ranked list with 516 of the 1,816 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 69. The top five assignees combined hold 60.9% of all records, so filing activity is concentrated rather than evenly spread. That said, the ranking covers 100 companies total, and beyond the top ten the field thins into a long tail of smaller filers.
Yes, through the last year the data treats as complete: filings rose from 139 in 2021 to a peak of 259 in 2024, an 86% increase. The 2025 and 2026 figures in the raw trend look lower, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, not a real slowdown. Any growth assessment should anchor on 2024, not on the most recent partial years.
Hybrid and joint vehicle control (IPC class B60W) covers 17.5% of the 1,816 records, the largest single share, followed by electric vehicle propulsion (B60L) at 15.7%. Digital data processing (G06F) and the wireless and digital-transmission classes (H04W, H04L) each sit above 11%, showing that software and connectivity claims are now tightly interwoven with core vehicle control. These shares add to more than 100% because most records carry multiple IPC classes.
The dense core sits in hybrid/joint control, EV propulsion and general data processing, but adjacent branches carry lighter claim density in this dataset — service-priority arbitration in in-vehicle networks (as in the SOME/IP protocol filing), cross-domain handoff between battery-state monitoring and charging systems, and fusion logic linking road-environment sensing directly to traction torque control. These are narrower, more specific claim targets than the crowded core classes.
Citation counts in this dataset favor older records simply because they have had more time to accumulate references — the most-cited record here, covering vehicle communication and remote control, dates from well before the 2015-2026 filing window. High citation counts are a useful signal of a patent's historical influence on subsequent filings, but they should not be read as a measure of which technologies matter most today. For current relevance, filing-year trends and recent-year momentum by assignee are more informative.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.