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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.'"
So I take it they're not going to open their patents on gas pedal design?
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Let the competition flail around with dead-end hydrogen technology while Toyota works on a secret battery electric car?
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This is great. Hydrogen is clearly superior to pure electric in usage, but is tricky to work with currently and patents probably were an encumbering factor for other users...
I predict within five years we'll see a hydrogen Tesla car. Tesla already knows how to build great electric cars, imagine when they are un-emcumbered by tons of batteries...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Nope. Until there is a eco-friendly, sustainable way to generate hydrogen
The move to electric cars is inevitable.
The use of batteries in all those cars is impossible at large scale for all sorts of reasons.
Therefore there will be developed practical means of hydrogen generation - though why you insist on "eco-friendly" is a mystery, it just needs to work.
As for it being "sustainable", that's kind of obviously true if you think about where hydrogen generally comes from... :-)
What is also a larger mystery, is why a company with the resources of Toyota clearly knows hydrogen can and will work, yet you doubt that it can. Do you really think Toyota would have such a big push for this if it were not workable?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not so sure about that. Tesla just announced and upgrade to the Tesla Roadster that gives it a range of 400 miles. That's 643 km for those using metric. That's a pretty good range if you ask me. Sure it won't be for everybody, but there's maybe only 2 or 3 times a year that I'd need to drive a car further than that in a single day. For those situations it might be better to just rent a gas car. Gas is low now, but it has nowhere to go but up over the long term. When the price of gas gets high enough, and electric car technology gets cheap enough, there will be a tipping point where people will choose electric over gas. And electric cars are much lower maintenance than gas cars. That will be a the major advantage.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I'm not so sure about that. Tesla just announced and upgrade to the Tesla Roadster that gives it a range of 400 miles.
The range is fine - because it has a massive battery pack, that even at a Supercharger station takes 15 min per year.
If a tipping point were reached and most people were driving electric cars, you'd be waiting about a day or so for a spot to open at a Supercharger station.
With the dead weight of the battery gone you have all the advantages of an electric car (because it's till electric), now with far lighter body weight meaning better acceleration, or better range...
In the end what probably makes the most sense is a REAL hybrid, that is to say a combo of hydrogen/electric. The electric could charge for a 50 mile range, the hydrogen could kick in for extended trips.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Toyota was making a lot of amazing battery innovations before they apparently hit their head on something and forgot what a crappy idea Hydrogen is.
Or perhaps a giant corporation with lots of money and a huge R&D department might be a bit more aware of what the future roadmap for hydrogen production looks like than you?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How so? In a hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen is not used to power the vehicle directly through internal combustion. It is converted first to electricity
Exactly, hydrogen is all of the benefits of electric cars, without the huge weight of the battery pack, without the long recharge time when you need to refuel on the go, without having to recycle batteries and produce them in huge quantities either.
Due to conservation of energy, hydrogen fuel cells will never be more efficient than "pure electric".
So current cars are about efficiency? Of course not, they are about convenience. That is all you generally need to know to understand the future of, well, anything.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's my understanding that you can't simply just pull a charger handle out once charging has started, It's locked (on the Tesla Model S)
Charging while parking would need some means to secure the charging transaction
You act like that's a huge deal. Just make a locking mechanism. And in the case somebody breaks the lock, the power can be cut until a new payment authorization is made.