Abstract
Fossil fuel shortages and global warming have spurred the development of alternative energy initiatives, especially battery electric vehicles have been recognized as one of the most promising solutions. Some Asian countries such as South Korea, China and Taiwan, that have not played important roles of the automobile supply chain, have seen developing battery electric vehicles industry as a potential opportunity to economic growth as well as a tool to solve the mentioned problems above. A “Smart EV Development Strategy and Action Plan” was approved by Taiwan’s Executive Yuan in 2010 and was expected to enhance the capability both the local car makers and parts or module suppliers of the EV industry in Taiwan, and set up several EV pilot projects. However, until the end of 2015, the results of the policies failed to match with the expected target largely. Patent analysis and semi-constructed interviews are conducted in the paper to explore what types of system failures in Taiwan electric vehicle industry through the lens of the sectoral systems of innovation perspective. The SSI includs three important building blocks: knowledge and technology, actors and networks and institutions. This paper finds out that: (1) the number of patents granted by Taiwan organizations in USPTO has increased significantly in the recent years, while compared with the other global manufacturers, especially the battery technology, the growth of the Taiwan organizations is still too low; (2) the weak connections and interactions among Taiwan organizations hinder to the development of their technology capabilities; and (3) unclear policy directions and insufficient policy tools adopted are the main factors to result in system failures, hindering the development of Taiwan BEV industry. Finally, some suggestions are given for policy makers and managers to solve the system failures.