Link to My Hybrid Car News Web Page

Thanks for posting TK...

Nice article.


08FEH

A positive review, but looks like that myth of "Toyota Technology" in the FEH will never die, I guess.

Doesn't the FEH have a AISIN cvt and a Panasonic Battery?

If so, perhaps that is confusing the issue some


08FEH

Yes on the eCVT, but the FEH uses Sanyo cells. What's confusing the issue is that after doing their own development and submitting their patents, Ford's attorneys decided that a small number were similar enough to Toyota's that they would pay token licensing fees to avoid any possible infringement lawsuits. Any competent patent attorney will always ask that the engineers submitting the patent do not do any prior art search through the patent office.

I like the look of the new escape much more than the old one and I am glad the new one is a better car.

I heart cheap hybrid cars.

Ah, thanks for the correction DD, I knew it wasn't a Ford product!

08FEH

I read were Ford and Toyota actually swapped liscensing agreements because Toyota had implemented some diesel emissions technology they felt was similar to some Ford patents. The point is....there were no Ford payments for Toyota technology.

Toyota initially worked with Aisin, then dropped Aisin and took development in-house. Lacking a partner but having a partly complete design, Aisin hooked up with Volvo. Ford later bought Volvo and got the project. By the time they finished development, the Prius was on the market. They looked at the Prius, saw similarity and potential for misunderstanding, and approached Toyota. The two companies agreed not to consider each company's design as infringement on the other's.

I've seen both the Toyota PSD and the Ford CVT in model, diagram and cutaway form and there are significant differences. But the general concept is the same, so I can see why the two companies made the agreement. Ford avoided a potential hassle, and Toyota got Ford technology regarding emissions and diesel technology, which they needed badly in Europe.

Bruce Nussbaum with BusinessWeek got an email from Ford regarding some statements he made in '95 about the Ford hybrid design. He vetted the information and printed the Ford email in its entirety as a sort of de facto retraction of his previous comments questioning whether Ford is "innovative" in their hybrid design. The piece is here:

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate...innovat_1.html

I also found this 1995 Bloomberg column informative:

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news...olumnist_levin

Or see this opinion piece, written by Craig Van Batenburg, which (although it may be biased) sums up the situation and sequence of events more accurately than most stories out there in the regular media:

http://www.auto-careers.org/ford_esc...made_by_ai.htm

Ah, thanks for the correction mtberman, I knew it was a Ford product!