Abstract: As the problem of global warming, energy shortage and environment pollution became serious, low-carbon vehicle technology innovation won great attention worldwide. This paper chose the global top 100 patent application leading group of low-carbon vehicle technology innovation as the research object. Based on the patent data mining, 1992-2011 global collaborative innovation network for low-carbon vehicle technology was built, and the characteristic and evolutionary path of global collaborative innovation network for low-carbon vehicle technology was analyzed. The results show that the actors’ connections in the innovation network are not tight, and information transmission speed is slow；Network evolution path presents the trend of gradually increased intensity and increasingly prominent core organization.

Key words:  low-carbon vehicle technology, collaborative innovation network, social network analysis, network characteristics, evolutionary path