The automobile industry serves as the primary industry for national development and also enhances manufacturing development strategies. Its source of power comes from the maturity and operational efficiency of the technology innovation network within the industry. Firstly, this paper takes the automobile industry of the Yangtze River Economic Belt as the research object and depicts the topological structure of the 1985–2015 Industry‐University‐Research Cooperation Innovation Network (IURCIN) from the perspective of space‐time evolution. Then, based on the 2015 industrial network characteristic data, the paper analyses the impact of individual network characteristics such as intermediate centrality, structural hole limitation, and cooperation intensity on the innovation performance of the respective network. At the same time, it adds innovation activity, per capita gross regional product (GRP), and research and development (R&D) fund input intensity as control variables in the quantitative analysis. The results show that the centrality and structural hole limitation significantly and positively affect the subject innovation performance. The cooperation intensity and the subject innovation performance have an inverted U‐shaped relationship. The innovation activity has a positive effect on the subject’s innovation performance. Furthermore, per capita GRP and R&D expenditure intensity on the main innovation performance is not significant. Finally, the countermeasures and suggestions are put forward to promote the innovation performance of each subject in the IURCIN.