Waymo Surges Ahead in Automated-Driving Patents

Waymo LLC has jumped to the top of a patent-based index of competitiveness in autonomous-driving technology, according to The Nikkei.

The Tokyo-based newspaper’s index considers the number of patents granted but weights their relative importance. Thus rankings are heavily influenced by how strongly a company’s applications are challenged by competitors and how frequently its active patents are cited by patent examiners.

Waymo surged to first place from fifth last year, nearly tripling its index score to 2,815. The gain pushed previous leader Toyota Motor Corp. to second position with a score of 2,243. Those two companies are followed, respectively, by General Motors, Ford and Nissan.

The other top-10 companies are Bosch, Magna Electronics, Denso, Honda and HERE Global. The highest-scoring Chinese company is DiDi Chuxing at 90th, followed by Baidu at 114th.

Waymo has fewer than half the number of “valid” patents in the field than Toyota does (318 compared with 682), but they are cited nearly twice as often as Toyota’s, according to the newspaper. It says Waymo earned almost half its points—nearly seven times as many as Toyota—on patents involving artificial intelligence and the ability to analyze mapping and positioning data.

By country, the U.S. outranked Japan with 25% more points, even though it had 15% fewer patents.

The Nikkei’s scoring system produces surprising rankings for carmakers. Audi, for example, is credited with only 82 patents but ranks 11th, ahead of Jaguar Land Rover (17th), Volkswagen (18th), Volvo (20th), Subaru (21st), BMW (29th), Hyundai (35th) and Daimler (50th).