Electric Vehicle Flexibility and Smart Charging Patents
Filing is heavily concentrated: the top 5 assignees alone account for 60.2% of all 1,193 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 72.7%. Annual filings rose from 27 in 2017 to a peak of 188 in 2021, then declined to 116 by 2024 — a -38% change over that span. Counts for 2025 and 2026 are not yet comparable: publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent two years will keep rising in the dataset as later publications land.
- 1LG ELECTRONICS INC540
- 2LNVENTUS POWER INC54
- 3HYUNDAI MOTOR CO LTD42
- 4OSHKOSH CORPORATION42
- 5KIA CORPORATION40
See the full electric vehicle flexibility and smart charging analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about this landscape
Who holds the most patents in EV smart charging and grid integration?
Filing in this dataset is highly concentrated: the top five assignees together hold 60.2% of all 1,193 records in scope, and the top ten hold 72.7%. One assignee alone accounts for 540 records, far ahead of the fifth-ranked filer at 40. This means a small number of companies control most of the core claim space, while a long tail of other organisations each hold only a handful of filings.
Is patent filing in EV smart charging still growing?
Filings rose from 27 in 2017 to a peak of 188 in 2021, then fell to 116 by 2024, a -38% change over that three-year span. That looks like a cooling trend, but publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are still incomplete and should not yet be read as continued decline. The more reliable read is that the field grew fast through 2021 and has since settled into a smaller but still active filing pace.
What technology areas dominate EV smart charging patent claims?
Power supply and grid-system claims under IPC class H02J appear in 62.9% of the 1,193 records in scope, making it by far the largest single class. Electric vehicle propulsion (B60L) follows at 24.0%, with communications-related classes such as H04B, H04L and H04W each present in roughly 14-21% of records. Battery and cell technology (H01M) is comparatively minor at 4.4%, indicating that most contested claim territory sits in control, grid interaction and communications rather than in the battery hardware itself.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Electric Vehicle Flexibility and Smart Charging covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.