photo by Zhai Lu, from China News

Toyota Motor announced on April 3 that it would grant royalty-free access to around 23,740 patents for electric vehicles such as hybrid vehicles (HV), including core parts like electric motors and power control units.

As the global environmental regulations are becoming stricter, Toyota Motor plans to alter its technological seclusion strategy and encourage other companies to make use of its own technology. Toyota also aims to lower production costs for entirely electric vehicles.

It is reported that Toyota is at the forefront of HV development and sale. Although HV has high fuel efficiency, the vehicle needs fine control, and the development of HV requires superior technical strength.

Apart from HV, electric motors and power control units are also used in EV and FCV. The competitiveness of EV can be increased if there are more components being produced.

However, even if technologies such as HV are opened to other companies, it is still difficult to predict the usage. Toyota announced in January 2015 that it would provide fuel and cell patents to relevant industry companies for free, though there turned out to be only a dozen contracts.

April 4, 2019

Source: China News