Tesla patent open source underlying logic: technical reserves and big cakes

Smart Bud Innovation Research Center/Jiang Wen

On June 12, 2014, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that he would open all Tesla's patented technologies. The article "All Our Patents belongs to You" article declared: "We have opened the spirit of the open source movement and opened Our patent is to promote the advancement of electric vehicle technology. "" If anyone wants to use Tesla's technology out of good faith, Tesla will not initiate a patent infringement lawsuit. " This move has won evaluations and praise for Tesla to win the industry such as "subversion", "unprecedented", "courageous creation", "worthy of respect". It has been eight years since Tesla's announcement of patent open source, so what technology has Tesla's open source in recent years, and why open source and patent open source have on the development of the new energy vehicle industry? This article analyzes the above three issues.

What are the technical layouts of Tesla New Energy Vehicles?

First of all, Tesla patent technology is close to the "life pulse" of electric vehicles. The core of electric vehicle technology lies in the "three electricity" systems, that is, electric drives, batteries and electrical controls. The three -electric system directly affects the final performance of electric vehicle products and is also a key factor for users to consider buying cars. It is seen through the Smart Bud Global Patent Database inquiry that Tesla has more than 3,000 public patent applications in the world. These patents mainly involve electric vehicles such as battery packs, electrical storage systems, capacitors, power devices, motors, operation interfaces and other electric vehicles Technology, we can see that Tesla patent is mainly concentrated in important and even core technical directions in the electric vehicle industry.

Figure 1: The evolution of the Tesla patent application and authorization in the past 20 years (data source: smart bud)

Figure 2 Tesla's main technology composition (data source: smart bud)

Taking the battery management system, autonomous driving technology, and car body structure as an example, Tesla has better technical precipitation in related fields.

1) The core technology in the electronic control system is the electronic control battery management system (BMS), commonly known as a battery nanny or battery steward. Mainly to intelligently manage and maintain each battery unit, prevent the battery from charging and discharge, extend the service life of the battery, and monitor the state of the battery. Tesla has more than 100 core patented technologies in the field of BMS in battery cooling, safety, charge balance, and can realize the consistency management of more than 7,000 batteries.

2) As the world's first car company to achieve mass production of autonomous driving technology, Tesla announced in 2019 that it has developed its own processing unit, called "fully autonomous driving" (FSD), and said that FSD owns than the United States than the United States The better performance of the GPU purchased by Nvidia. In terms of autonomous driving, Tesla's technical precipitation mainly focuses on AI fault, autonomous driving data encryption, and autonomous driving machine learning.

In addition, because electric vehicles are currently using the highest energy density battery about 310W/kg, according to expectations, in the next 2030, the battery energy density will reach 500WH/kg. Therefore Loose a large number of battery packs. A large number of battery packs will bring a lot of problems, such as increasing the weight of the car and the smaller space, which will affect the control, safety, frame design and riding space. Therefore, for the design and manufacturing of electric vehicles, finding the best balance between the number of batteries, cars, and mileages, improves the spatial utilization rate of electric vehicles, improves the driving and ride quality of electric vehicles, is a great challenge. Tesla also has a patent layout in terms of vehicle structure and other vehicle technology.

What is the underlying logic of Tesla patented?

1) The market is still "young", promote the development of the market through patent open source, and increase its popularity at the same time

The proportion of electric vehicles in the entire automotive industry is still very low in the entire automotive industry. In 2013, plug -in cars including hybrid electric vehicles and pure electric vehicles sold in the United States. The total sales volume of American cars is less than 1%, while pure electric vehicles account for only half of them (that is, less than 0.5%). Some information shows that in 2013, the sales volume of global fuel vehicles exceeded 80 million for the first time, and Tesla's "Model S" pure electric vehicle is only 22,300 units. It can be seen that the proportion of electric vehicles in the entire automotive industry is still very low, and it is in the initial stage of industry development. Musk has an accurate understanding of this situation. "The size of electric vehicle projects in large car manufacturers is small, and some even have no such business at all." Therefore, in the early days of the development of the industry, through sharing of its own patented technology, car manufacturers who have not yet mastered key technologies can quickly enter the research and development stage of research and development. At the same time, they may also attract more large manufacturers to accelerate the scale of product development and expand production capacity. Finally, they will "cake cakes" together together Overnight. At the same time, Tesla realizes brand marketing through the "open patent", attracting more funds, outstanding talents, and cutting -edge technologies to Tesla, increasing Tesla's influence, scientific research strength, and capital security.

2) Improve its technical universality through patented open source, so as to occupy an advantage in the future development of the industry

For the starting stage of the electric vehicle industry, the biggest problem is currently that the market standards of various manufacturers are not uniform, especially in terms of battery technology and charging technology. The unified standards make it very difficult to promote electric vehicles without scale advantages. Tesla seems to be disadvantaged to share patents with competitors, but in fact, once competitors adopt their patented technology, it is equivalent to incorporating the "common technology platform" built by Tesla. Adaptability to enable Tesla to continue to maintain existing technological advantages and scale advantages. 3) Avoid patent lawsuits through patent open source

In addition to its own investment in the technological development of Tesla, the former employee has also occupied a considerable proportion. R & D and production of automotive power system assembly and key components (battery packs, motors and drivers). The important issue facing Tesla is how to incorporate the company founded by the former employees into its own camp, or at least in the future, they will not go to competitors? Then, the "open" patent can solve this problem very well: technology developed by companies such as SINOELECTRIC POWERTRAIN can be used by Tesla, and these companies cannot shake Tesla's leading position, thereby realizing the leverage of Tesla's technology development. Hua; and the competitor to Tesla or prosecuted Tesla through a patent, on the one hand, settle down on the "morality", and on the other hand, it is worth mentioning that although Tesla pushed down the patent wall and announced the patent open source, it still In a large number of patents, its counter -energy energy should not be underestimated.

How to promote the development of new energy vehicles after Tesla's patent open source measures?

On the whole, Tesla Kaiyuan initiative has promoted the environment for the development of new energy vehicles. Specifically, Teslador's patent was cited at high frequency and provided research and development ideas for the industry. For example, the patented name is Tunable Frangible Battery Pack System open number with US7923144B2, which provides R & D personnel with patents involving protection. The patent name is Electric Vehicle Communication Interface, and the open -public number of an electric vehicle communication interface patent with US7698078B2 provides R & D personnel to provide the connection between electric vehicles and users, and is cited 179 times.

Figure 3 Tesla High Frequency Cited Patent TOP20 (Data Source: Smart Bud)

Taking SinoElectric PowerTrain as an example, the company's founder Dr. Zhou Peng served as the research and development of the R & D director and chief engineer of the power system in Tesla and chief engineer of the power system before the founding of Sinoelectric PowerTrain. , Is one of the core staff of Tesla's power system. Later, it was founded or used by Tesla's technology. As a wholly -owned subsidiary of China, Huating Power Technology, as a wholly -owned subsidiary of SinoElectric PowerTrain, must also have a certain inheritance relationship with Tesla. Moreover, the patent of Huating Power Technology Company has also been cited by many domestic companies, such as Dongfeng, Ningde Times, Chengdu Yajun New Energy Vehicle, etc. It can be seen that Tesla's technical branch may have entered the domestic electric vehicle field. "The influence of strategy will be long -term.

Figure 4 The evolution of patent applications and authorization volume of Huating Power Technology Company in the past 12 years (data source: smart bud)

Generally speaking, although the industry has various different views on the Tesla's patent incident, especially whether the patent that its open patent can be effectively transplanted and used, today's review of this incident again is undoubtedly accelerating the world's global Catalyst for the development of the electric vehicle industry.

the data shows:

1) Statistics of cumulative patents as of April 29, 2022.

2) Patent statistics at the enterprise level adopt the principle of completely "parallelism". The company's tree function of the smart bud global patent database is used, and all the patents of all the companies controlled by the President of Hui.

3) Smart Bud Global Patent Database continues to dynamically include public patents in 158 countries/regions around the world. Generally speaking, patents can be queried from applying to public, which takes 4 to 18 months, so the data in the past two years is only for reference.

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