Toyota to allow royalty-free use of all its 5,680 fuel-cell patents

Toyota yesterday said at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, that it had released all its 5,680 fuel-cell technology patents to encourage other automakers to develop their own fuel cell vehicles.

The move comes after electric car maker Tesla opened up its patents for electricity-powered vehicles with lithium ion batteries in "good faith" in June 2014 (See: Tesla Motors to give away its patents).

Toyota said it was allowing every interested party to make royalty-free use of its thousands of patents related to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles from 2015 through 2020, which it expects to be the critical market introduction period.

The patents include 3,350 licenses for fuel cell system control technology, 1,970 for fuel cell stacks and 290 for high-pressure oxygen tanks.

The company is making available approximately 70 patents related to the construction and operation of hydrogen-refilling stations to encourage the installation of infrastructure needed to support the expansion of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

"At Toyota, we believe that when good ideas are shared, great things can happen," said Toyota vice president of automotive operations Bob Carter in a statement. "The first generation hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, launched between 2015 and 2020, will be critical, requiring a concerted effort and unconventional collaboration between automakers, government regulators, academia, and energy providers."

"By eliminating traditional corporate boundaries, we can speed the development of new technologies and move into the future of mobility more quickly, effectively, and economically," Carter added.

Charismatic futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku expounded on the benefits of a so-called hydrogen society that Toyota hoped to spur with its Mirai fuel-cell vehicle, to go on sale later this year popsci.com,  the web edition of Popular Science reported.

''Historians have a word for it, when the old world order begins to break apart, when nations begin to collapse and there's a new world order emerging,'' Kaku told the riveted audience. ''Historians say that we are 'present at the creation.' And that's where we are today: present at the creation of a new age, the new age of hydrogen.''

''We believe the next five years is critical,'' Carter said in an impromptu interview following the press conference, popsci.com reported. ''So we're offering all of our 20 years of development to our competition. We think it's the right thing to do.''

With Toyota technology, its competitors would gain instant access tp innovations over which Toyota engineers spent hours in the harsh northern climates of Canada, figuring out how to get its hydrogen fuel cell to operate in sub-freezing temperatures.

But the access to the precious patents would  come with riders attached.

''There will be an application process to ensure what the technology will be used for, and then a royalty-free license will be issued that will get us through this initial introductory phase,'' Carter said.