Analysis of Technical Trend of Electric Agricultural Field Machinery

As basic research to develop HEV and EV agricultural field machinery, the present study analyzes the technical trend of electric agricultural field machinery through product analysis, paper analysis, and patent analysis concerning HEV and EV in the automobile, construction machinery, and agricultural machinery sectors. For product analysis, the homepages of companies in these sectors were consulted to analyze the number of products of each company. For paper analysis, key words related to HEV and EV were selected, a search formula was drawn up, and articles search sites were consulted. And for patent analysis too, key words were selected and then a search formula was drawn up to examine published patent applications or registered patent applications, and trends were analyzed by structure, country, and year. The number of HEV and EV products were 17 in the automobile area, 8 in construction machinery, and 4 in agricultural machinery. Notably, in the agricultural machinery area, all HEV and EV products were from advanced companies overseas. In terms of papers, papers published in the past 5 years were searched and 33,195 papers were from the automobile area, 3,806 were from construction machinery, and 2,687, the fewest papers, were from the agricultural machinery area. A search of patents in the electric drive technology area in Korea, USA, and Japan, and Europe showed 1,927 valid patents, with 1,120 in Japan, 497 in USA, 193 in Korea, and 117 in Europe. Analysis of the trend of research on electric agricultural field machinery by product, paper, and patent shows the development of HEV and EV technology in Korea is insufficient compared to USA, Japan, and Europe, which means rapid technological development is needed.