Cooperation Modes between Competing Manufacturers in EV Supply Chain with Innovation-Driven Common Supplier

The competition and cooperation between automobile manufacturers and battery enterprises are an important topic concerned by electric vehicle supply chain management. This paper investigates the cooperation modes between competing manufacturers in the EV (electric vehicle) supply chain, under which the common supplier launches the innovation of the key component of EV to meet the demand of two manufacturers. Three cooperation modes between manufacturers, full cooperation, partial cooperation, and noncooperation, are established to depict the pricing decisions by the Stackelberg game. We find out that, when competition degree is small, it is more profitable to choose partial cooperation, while it is more advantageous to choose full cooperation when competition degree is high, and the manufacturer’s basic market demand is relatively small. Therefore, it is always preferred for the common supplier to expect noncooperation between manufacturers. Under the background that basic market demand ratio changes with competition degree between markets, it could be better for the whole supply chain when without cooperation or partial cooperation depended on the supplier power while it could be better for customers when full cooperation or partial cooperation depended on the competition degree between manufacturers.