Does Porsche’s patent layout move forward as it enters the two wheeled electric vehicle market?

With the trend of developing new energy vehicles, Porsche, the aristocrat in the automotive industry, is no exception. In 2019, it entered the pure electric vehicle market and successively launched the Taycan, Macan, and Cayenne. What people may not expect is that Porsche has also entered another inconspicuous field – the “electric two wheeler” field.
Porsche purchased a 10% stake in Croatian electric bicycle brand Greyp as early as 2018 and acquired a major stake in Greyp at the end of 2021. At the beginning of this year, Porsche completed the acquisition of a 20% stake in German electric bicycle manufacturer Fazua, and recently announced that it will fully acquire Fazua. From this, it can be seen that Porsche has been laying out two wheeled electric vehicles since 2018.
In 2021, Porsche launched its first electric bicycle products to the market: eBike Sport (starting price of approximately 71000 yuan) and eBike Cross (starting price of approximately 57000 yuan). But according to the official website of Porsche China, it has not yet entered China.

Porsche eBike Sport, source: Porsche official website

So the question is, has such a big brand made progress in patent layout when entering the two wheeled electric vehicle market?

(1) What is the patent layout of the acquired Greyp company?

By searching, it can be found that Greyp has 2 series of 4 exterior designs, which are located in EM and US layouts respectively. Excluding undisclosed data factors, the number of patent layouts is still relatively small, and there are no institutional invention or utility model patents.

(Source: www.patentcloud.com; 20220617 Search)

(2) What is the patent layout of the acquired Fazua company?

After searching, Fazua has published 37 patents and laid out 13 regions, including Germany, Europe WIPO、 Canada, the United States, Australia, Denmark, Spain, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Portugal, as shown in the following figure.

(Source: www.patentcloud.com; 20220617 Search)

From the technical context shown in the figure below, Fazua’s patents do not involve exterior design and have some technical content. For example, most of the patents involved are institutional invention designs, and their international classification numbers are specifically distributed in the bicycle category of B62M, B62J, B62K, and B60B. From the authorization situation, 16 items have been authorized. From the perspective of regional layout, it is worth noting that the publicly available data does not cover China, and perhaps China is not yet Porsche’s target market.

(3) What is Porsche’s patent layout in the field of two wheelers?

As of June 20, 2022, Porsche has a global layout of over 28000 units, as shown in the following figure. The top four layout regions are Germany, the United States, China, and Japan.

(Source: www.patentcloud.com; 20220620 Search)

In the United States, which is highly valued in the industry, Porsche Company did not find any US patent data in the international classification codes B62M, B62J, and B62K related to the field of two wheelers. There are 13 authorized patents related to wheels in the international classification code B60B, and it is preliminarily judged that these patents are not directly related to electric two wheelers.

(Source: www.patentcloud.com; 20220620 Search)

In summary, based on publicly available data, no direct patent data for Porsche’s layout of electric two wheelers has been retrieved. Instead, Porsche indirectly holds a small number of electric two wheeler patents through the acquisition of two electric bicycle companies, which is a patent intensive industry. It can be seen that although luxury brands are considered wealthy, they have extraordinary abilities in product development, brand building, and other aspects. However, there may also be mistakes in patent layout and patent navigation.