Tripartite dynamic interactions on the scientific knowledge development of ICEV, BEV and HEV technologies

The powertrain technologies of conventional, battery and hybrid vehicles are known by competence-sustaining, -destroying and -expanding innovations, respectively. We aim to study how they influence one another in terms of scientific knowledge growth. Using the Technological Innovation System framework and the Lotka-Volterra model, we argue that a powertrain technology with positive or negative knowledge growth can create positive or negative externalities in the others. The scientific knowledge is measured by extracting 55,529 scientific publications from Scopus over 1985-2016. Results show that they interact with one another mostly in the form of biological relationships of amensalism, commensalism, parasitism and symbiosis.