Toyota Opens up Hydrogen Fuel Cell Patents [VIDEO]
At the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, Toyota announced that it opens "the door to the hydrogen future" by sharing freely more than 5500 hydrogen fuel cell patents. This patent release announcement is very similar to a suggestion made by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk in June, last year. Nevertheless, it is rather important as by doing this, the Toyota gives pretty much carte blanche to different automakers around the world to build more and more fuel cell cars, which will result in requesting more hydrogen stations.
The list of royalty-free fuel cell patents is comprised of 1,970 patents which have to do with fuel cell stacks, 290 related to high-pressure hydrogen tanks, 3,350 associated with fuel cell system software control and 70 patents that cover hydrogen production and supply.
In relation to this highly important statement, Bob Carter, senior vice president of automotive operations at Toyota in a statement pointed out that; "When good ideas are shared, great things can happen."
Interestingly enough, the announcement was made after the introduction of the new Toyota Mirai which receives an estimated range of about 300 miles from its hydrogen tanks. In addition to this, hydrogen tanks takes around five minutes to be refilled, which is something similar to gasoline-fueled vehicles. Finally, the hydrogen-powered car by Toyota went on sale in Japan in December and will go on sale in the US and Europe and in late 2015.
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Source: Toyota
Video Source: Toyota via Youtube