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Comment by azinman2 | Hacker News Reader

I can’t tell what their motivation is... it cost a lot of money to file 24k patents to now just give away. Toyota isn’t exactly a charity or an “open source” company.

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My guess is that it's a game theory move.

No one wants to be making electric cars until everyone is making electric cars.

Everyone wants to make electric cars, but no one wants to step out in front.

Now that we're seeing Tesla succeed, I suspect the bit is being flipped, and a lot of companies are trying to convince each other that we should all jump into making electric cars now.

Opening up patent libraries lowers the barriers for others. It's grabbing the hand of the kid next to you before you all jump off the dock together to go swimming. It doesn't fundamentally change the nature of the landscape, but it makes it easier to get started.

In addition - you defacto set the standard, without ever holding a single standardization meeting.

Is there really an example that would prove that this ever happens? Aren't patents usually just clever ways of doing things, not necessarily decisions about the exact dimensions/contacts/voltages/etc. All other manufacturers could easily just take patents and make their own standards based on them?

Aren't patents usually just clever ways of doing things

One would hope, but from reading Groklaw back in the day and HN now, it doesn't seem so.

FireWire failed for its patents from Apple. Intel didn't want to develop around a port with a $1/port royalty.

It took over another decade to move beyond 5V charging.

Intel provided another great example of this recently: Thunderbolt 3 controllers used to cost quite a bit, so they weren't included in lower-cost devices.

They saw that that didn't work out that well for them and made it royalty-free. Now it's basically the new USB standard.

> Now it's basically the new USB standard.

Not even basically. It is USB 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB4

> Everyone wants to make electric cars, but no one wants to step out in front.

Volkswagen has already stepped out in front. VW is investing 80 billion euros in their electric car effort:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-electric-insig...

VW will be the biggest producer of electric cars in a few years.

> a lot of companies are trying to convince each other that we should all jump into making electric cars now

They need to make electric cars now to meet EU and Chinese emissions fleet emissions targets:

http://fortune.com/2018/12/20/volkswagen-electric-cars-emiss...

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/vw-group-more-evs-carbon-...

In the future new car sales of ICE vehicles will be banned and ICE cars will be banned from some cities, in some places as soon as 2030:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-emissions-germany-i...

https://www.thedrive.com/sheetmetal/15825/these-are-the-coun...

http://fortune.com/2017/10/12/paris-combustion-engine-ban/

If car companies want to stay in the car business they will have to produce battery electric cars or hydrogen fuel cell cars or both.

They’re probably making a kind of patent war firewall with this move. I’m not sure how it’d work, legally, but the clause about not paying royalties unless being engaged in lawsuits related to the tech is clearly strategic.

“Toyota plans to make thousands of patents relating to its hybrid technology royalty-free, in a move analysts say will help keep the technology relevant by encouraging competitors to enter the market ”

https://www.ft.com/content/3557f3da-55d7-11e9-91f9-b6515a54c...

Barrier to entry has just been lowered drastically by open sourcing those patents. It's not about charity at all, it's about creating a market. By opening these patents to possible competitors, they are helping other companies enter the EV space. Toyota wants to dominate the EV vertical, but there needs to be more people buying them long-term for them to make a crap-ton of money. This is their way of helping create the market for the future.

I still don't quite see why I as a company would want to help a competitor enter the market on the same playing field as me.

Is it so effective in increasing customer acceptance?

It seems a little strange as well, but maybe it's something like this:

I know I will dominate in an environment where EVs are popular, the only problem is, there isn't enough infrastructure for them to be popular yet. Therefore, I will facilitate an environment where they are popular?

It being a way to make standards is definitely possible. And the cost to using the standards is you can’t patent troll one another like apple/Samsung. It sounds like a kind of patent troll firewall. It’d probably be difficult for a troll to sue them for anything related to these patents.

It's not exactly customer acceptance they're after. Cars are a market where there will always be some kind of competitor. Toyota knows it's one of the few great automakers in the world; they're not sweating that someone might out-Toyota them. But there needs to be advances in technology and manufacturing to lower the cost of EVs, so more people will buy them. Toyota could try to take the brunt of that gamble (assuming they even succeed), or it can open up its tech and let rivals try to build better tech, which they can then reverse-clone, like IBM making a clone of an IBM PC clone. Once the tech is more widespread and cheaper (and other people have paid for this to happen), they can swoop in and reap the benefits of an even larger share of people to whom they can sell cars.

I think the quote from the article is pretty telling:

"If the number of electrified vehicles accelerates significantly in the next ten years, they will become standard, and we hope to play a role in supporting that process."

The real value in the 24,000 patents is not being sued by another company that patented it first.

> I can’t tell what their motivation is...

They're confident of two things: the move will encourage further players in the space, and they'll compete well against those players.

It may force industry standards to organically align with Toyota design direction, allowing for easier compatibility.

Also, if the industry follows your lead, you always stay in front.

Other news sources point out "until 2030"

Most are worthless. Toyota, just like Honda, bet on a short term hybrid horse, great during ~2008 oil price hike and cash for clunkers program, but ultimately a dead end.

At the time there were no battery production capacity for mass market EVs, so they bet on the only horse running the EV race which were small batteries and a gas tank.

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