Abstract: To explore the influential factors in promoting firms to develop clean technology, this paper tries to analyze the impacts of policy incentives and knowledge accumulation on the biased new energy automotive technology innovation by using the patent application data of China’s auto industry during 2001-2013. The results show that: (1) the market cultivation policy for clean products and the environmental governance policy have generated positive effects on the innovation of both traditional technology and clean technology, but the government’s R&D subsidy policy for automotive technology has no significant effect; (2) the policy incentives have not resulted in the substitution effects of clean technology for the traditional technology, the environmental governance policy has produced more influence on the clean technology innovation, while the policy effect of the biased clean technology on the auto industry remains to be seen; (3) technology innovation has significant characteristics of path dependence, the external technology has positive knowledge spillover effects on the internal technology innovation, and the two kinds of internal technologies have significant interactive effects, in which the traditional technology has spillover effects on the clean technology while the clean technology has inhibitory effects on the traditional technology.

Key words: policy incentives; clean technology; technology innovation