Toyota Opens Patents On Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology

An anonymous reader writes that Toyota will share almost 6,000 hydrogen fuel cell patents. "Hoping to speed development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, Toyota said Monday that it would offer thousands of patents on related technologies to rival automakers, for free. The announcement, made at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, echoes a similar move by electric car maker Tesla in 2014, when Chief Executive Elon Musk made Tesla patents available to all, hoping to spur innovation in the electric vehicle world (and, perhaps, to draw publicity.) Toyota has similar goals for the fuel-cell car market. 'At Toyota, we believe that when good ideas are shared, great things can happen,' Bob Carter, senior vice president at Toyota, said before the announcement. 'The first generation hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, launched between 2015 and 2020, will be critical, requiring a concerted effort and unconventional collaboration.'"

Comments

Probably neccecary

[DarkOx]

echoes a similar move by electric car maker Tesla in 2014, when Chief Executive Elon Musk made Tesla patents available to all, hoping to spur innovation in the electric vehicle world (and, perhaps, to draw publicity.) Toyota has similar goals for the fuel-cell car market. 'At Toyota, we believe that when good ideas are shared, great things can happen,'

While I think its good of them to do this I am not so sure Toyota or Tesla really have many options. They want to sell a product, cars, that depend on certain infrastructure namely filling/charging stations. Unless they want to be forever in the business of operating those themselves they have to make it attractive for others to do so.

First they can't really expect people to pay to a risk investing in supporting their product, so extracting fees from would be station operators would only make it less like anyone will step forward. Which in turn makes it less likely they can sell cars to the public.

At the same time they really need their competitors to embrace 'their' technology as a kind of standard, for pretty much the same reasons. If they want the infrastructure to spring up there needs to be a critical mass of vehicles out there to make money supporting. If they want to sell vehicles beyond the boutique space Tesla currently operates in they need the infrastructure built out.

Drug dealer business model

[mspohr]

The fine print on this announcement is that the patents are not really free. You have to apply and be accepted to the program (serious contenders need not apply?) and the royalty-free license period only goes to 2020. This is just enough time to develop and start producing something and then you can get hit with big royalty payments.
This is sucker bait.

No, not practically, no.

[SuperKendall]

Because we can't extend the capacity of charger stations beyond what we have now ?

Filling up a car now takes about a minute. A Supercharger station filling up in about 15 (or longer) means you have to have 15 times the number of "pumps", more if the charging time really takes longer OR if more cars have less range.

Do you really think cities can hold 15 times the number of gas stations we have currently?

There is some reduction from people who can charge at home, but not really much because of the number of people in apartments or just traveling long distances.

What none of you seem to be thinking of is what happens when ALL CARS AND TRUCKS are electric, which I consider inevitable. You all seem to be planning for a world where only the rich drive electric cars which makes for a huge reduction in the requirements around power distribution.

Re:Charging time still issue

[CastrTroy]

But if 99% of your trips don't require an engine, then why tote it around on a daily basis. Maybe a trailer with a gas generator would be a better idea. For long trips, bring the trailer/generator and you have extended range. For the in-city commutes which constitute the vast majority of your trips you don't have to carry around the heavy gas engine. If this was the case, the battery pack could be much smaller, maybe only enough for 200 miles, because that's all that's needed for in-city driving. Currently the battery is a little oversized because it needs to be able to go quite far, because there is no other option for powering it. Maybe you only go on 1 or 2 such long trips a year and you could just rent the trailer/generator.