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Toyota Builds a Patent Thicket For Hybrid Cars
Lorien_the_first_one sends along a WSJ piece reporting on how Toyota is hoping to benefit from new Obama Administration regulations for automobiles here in the US. "Since it started developing the gas-electric Prius more than a decade ago, Toyota has kept its attorneys just as busy as its engineers, meticulously filing for patents on more than 2,000 systems and components for its best-selling hybrid. Its third-generation Prius, which hit showrooms in May, accounts for about half of those patents alone. Toyota's goal: to make it difficult for other auto makers to develop their own hybrids without seeking licensing from Toyota, as Ford Motor Co. already did to make its Escape hybrid and Nissan Motor Co. has for its Altima hybrid."
If patents are supposedly to encourage new technological developments, without knowing the details, it sounds like this might actually be a responsible use. After all, it gives Toyota a financial incentive to come up with more efficient cars. And the competition is actually licensing it. Unlike in the farmaceutical industry, where companies patent publicly-funded findings from NIH research so that they can be the only ones profiting from it. Or software, where people patent stuff to be able to sue their competitors out of a product space.
the prius ad's gush about how the '09 model accounts for a thousand patents alone. my '06 prius said the same stuff. these patents are a source of pride for them.
THL phish sticks
Yes, it was Ford, and it was functionally similar enough to HSD that upon close inspection, it might as well have been HSD. They licensed the HSD from Toyota while implementing their own design, the licensing done entirely for legal reasons, while they themselves licensed some of their diesel tech to Toyota in exchange. As the article points out, no money changed hands.
Implementation-wise, what you've got is an independent traction motor and a generator that's slaved to the ICE. The generator's engaged when the battery is at low SOC, which you perceive as the engine then starts struggling to both propel the vehicle and charge the battery at the same time. The generator only acts as a motor in the act of starting the ICE. The independent traction motor handles both propulsion and regenerative braking.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
If you think Japanese companies were the only ones working on hybrids, take a look at this article from June 1994:
Formula Hybrid at Le Mans
The neat idea behind Chrysler's design is that the turbine must be de-coupled from the drive train. The electric engine is the thing that is moving the car. This way the turbine can run at the most efficient RPM.
The fact is that American car companies built cars that could actually make a profit on. Those vehicles were SUV's.
The Atkinson cycle engine technology in the Prius is based on the engine invented by Atkinson to avoid Otto's patents on the internal combustion engine. The idea of the patent is to protect the inventor. A side effect of that is to spur creativity in others to develop alternatives that don't violate the patents. That doesn't mean that no one else can make a hybrid without paying Toyota, it means that they can avoid Toyota's patents by inventing a different hybrid technology. I haven't heard of Honda paying Toyota for the hybrid tech they put in the Civic and other hybrid models.
American researchers in universities did a lot of R&D on hybrids back in the '60s - it's time for the American auto companies to continue that.
BTW - my understanding is that Ford didn't pay for Toyota's technology because it was easier than inventing their own. Rather, they invented their own hybrid tech but it was not sufficiently different from Toyota's in the end and they had to pay as a result.
at least Toyota banks mad cash on their prius in the mean time.
Actually, that's sort of the problem for Toyota. They got hit with a patent judgment over their hybrid vehicles in eastern Texas a couple of years ago. The plaintiff was awarded nearly $100 a vehicle as an on-going royalty (which is about 17% of Toyota's relatively slim profit margin).
So I agree. Kudos to Toyota for playing the game like it should be played. They got hit pretty hard and they needed to fight fire with fire. Good for them.
I'm all for patent reform, but this seems to me to be a classic case of the appropriate use of patents. The parent is just a moron. Toyota put a helluva lot of money and time into its hybrid technology, why shouldn't it reap the benefits of it, whether through the sale of its own hybrids or by licensing the technology?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sure. The question is, why did Toyota invest its profits from the last generation of technology to stay relevant in a changing world, whereas US car companies almost completely failed to do so?
You mean "were." SUV's are getting dumped in fire sales. This resulted in the bankruptcy of GM, which only accelerated the trend. When the world economy starts to recover and oil prices surge again, will the traditionalists finally realize that the 90s are not coming back?
Now there's the GM mindset in a nutshell: "if toy companies haven't already solved the problem, we're sure not going to try!"