Car companies "not rare" Tesla FSD patents?
Written by Aki
Editor|Yu Jie
Produced by|Automobile Sankei
A few days ago, the China Corporate Legal Affairs Research Institute of Legal Daily released the "2022 New Generation Automobile Patent Development Report", concluding that the number of new generation automobile patent layouts in the world is the largest in the mainland.
Because it won the first place in the number of patents authorized and the number of disclosures, Great Wall also made a wave of publicity.
Although Great Wall's report on BYD's use of atmospheric pressure fuel tanks also involved some technical patent-related issues, on the whole, whether it is patents or public patents, it seems that it does not inspire the adrenaline of too many car companies
Not to mention the Great Wall, Tesla's public patent is the same situation.
More than a week ago, Musk released the wind and said that he was willing to open the FSD technology to other car companies. The first reaction of most people in the industry is: this is Musk bringing goods for his own FSD. There are also OEMs who believe that
Tesla shares the underlying software at most, and what car companies really want Tesla will not give.
"It's impossible to be completely open source. Don't forget, because of the source code problem, Tesla sued a former Tesla employee who joined Xpeng for stealing trade secrets. The OEM personnel said.
A developer of an autonomous driving company said: "Maybe you can learn some new ideas and methods, but the fully automatic L4 level driving has different needs and barriers." If Tesla only opens up the underlying software, or makes it open source like Apollo, it won't do much for us. ”
Chinese car companies have long been accustomed to the so-called public technology "not cold".
In 2021, BYD released the exclusive platform for pure electric - e-platform 3.0, and claimed to be open to the industry. But so far, only Toyota has adopted the technology of the BYD E3.0 platform.
In 2023, BYD disclosed the control strategy and patent results of PHEV core technology, but it is also not valued by car companies.
"The principle and strategy of hybrid are very different, for a car company, buying a benchmark car can sort out his principle and strategy, which is not difficult." A chief engineer of a car company said.
NO.1
[Fake open source, real advertising?] ]
When it comes to patent sharing, Musk has always been generous (at least verbally). He once said:
"Tesla's goal is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy, so if we create a patent portfolio that prevents other companies from producing electric vehicles, it won't be in line with our mission." So we made all patents public to help other people and anyone who wanted to build an electric car. ”
Musk believes that the real competitive advantage in technology is more important than the speed of innovation, not the holding back of other companies.
"If you have a higher innovation rate, you don't have to worry about protecting intellectual property because other companies will only copy what you did many years ago."
At the end of 2014, Tesla opened up the vehicle's application programming interface (API) to support third-party developers to interact more deeply with Tesla. At that time, some people rated Tesla as the world's most open and inclusive electric car company.
Since its establishment, Tesla has disclosed 387 patented technologies, mainly including electronic control technology, battery management technology, electric drive system technology and high-voltage electrical technology.
However, digging into the details, it seems that Musk is not as generous as he says. When using Tesla patents, there are several issues to be clarified:
First of all, it is necessary to prove to Tesla that the use is in good faith, and whether it is in good faith or not, Tesla has the final say.
Second, the commercial rights to some of the patents do not belong to Tesla, because Tesla has sold some patents in exchange for loans. In addition, some patents are not exclusive to Tesla, but are cited together with other companies such as Toyota, Honda, and Volkswagen.
In addition, the technical routes chosen for some patented technologies are outdated, including motor types, rotor working methods, etc., and even Tesla no longer chooses these technologies.
In addition, another thing that deters collaborators is that once Tesla's patent is used, it is assumed that Tesla can use your patent for free.
In short, the main thing is a twist and turn in the road.
Source: Tesla's official website
Zhang Xiang, an automotive analyst, believes that Tesla's patent sharing is essentially a public relations act. Through patent sharing, consumers can believe that this company's technology research and development capabilities are strong. But in practice, there are not many cases.
Of course, this is certainly not because Chinese car companies are not interested in Tesla's technology, after all, learning Tesla is already a compulsory course for domestic traditional car companies.
Take electrical and electronic architecture, for example. Tesla Model 3 has opened a major change in the electronic and electrical architecture, with the emergence of a central computing prototype + position domain, shortening the wiring harness of the whole vehicle by 50%.
In addition to Tesla, the electronic and electrical architecture of most car companies is still in the early stage of functional domain controllers, that is, some functions are concentrated in functional domain controllers, but there are still more distributed modules, that is, "distributed ECU+ domain controllers" transition scheme.
Xpeng Motors is ahead of Tesla in learning from electronic and electrical architecture, and this proximity also makes Xpeng's advantages more prominent.
From G3, P7 and P5, iterating to G9's X-EEA3.0 electronic and electrical architecture, Xpeng has entered the centralized electronic and electrical architecture. With a first-generation architecture, equipped with higher computing power SOC chips and higher computing power utilization, Xpeng G9 may become the first mass-produced car to support XPILOT 4.0 intelligent assistant driving system.
"Therefore, Chinese car companies are not rare Tesla's technology. If FSD were completely open source, I'm sure many businesses would still covet it. Zhang Xiang said.
NO.2
[Is technology sharing a false proposition?] ]
For example, in the first half of 2022, Dongfeng Group ranked first among its own brands with 3,295 public patents, and the number of patents published by FAW Group, Changan Automobile, Great Wall Motor and other car companies also exceeded 2,000.
In addition to public patents, in recent years, as the road to electric intelligence has become clearer, car companies and some intelligent suppliers have also played the slogan of "platform sharing".
For example, in the years when the vehicle-machine interconnection platform was just on fire, from Ali SAIC's zebra system
lucky
to BYD's DiLink smart ecosystem, each claims to share the same platform with competitors; The pure electric vehicle platform is also similar, from Geely's PMA to BYD's e-platform, and then to the planned opening of the Volkswagen Group's MEB platform, as if everyone has moved from the lockdown era to the open era.
But slogans only stay at the level of slogans. Even if it was once captured
Dongfeng Citroen
、
Skoda
and other external companies, Zebra.ai, in the end, also opened high and low, almost disappeared.
Why are car companies reluctant to accept other technologies?
Zhang Xiang said: "Generally, few companies take the initiative to apply for his patent from other companies, because this will make the public feel that the company itself lacks innovation." ”
In addition, few car companies are willing to share their own information to "pave the way" for others.
Take Tesla's FSD, for example, licensing FSD functions will make Tesla "more powerful." After authorization, it also means that FSD can contact and cooperate with overseas car companies faster, Tesla automatic driving will expand at a "viral" replication rate, almost all car companies are conducting road experiments for FSD, and the increase in exponential experimental data has greatly accelerated the realization of FSD full autonomous driving.
In addition, Zhang Xiang believes that accepting other people's patents is difficult to maintain later risks.
"It's possible that Tesla will announce that a patent is not shared in a few years. Suppose one day Tesla has a corporate crisis, and in order to crack down on competitors, he may close this sharing window.
From the point of view of operational feasibility, sharing technology also has multiple obstacles.
An engineer at Changan Automobile said that even if he got BYD's hybrid technology, it would not be of much use.
"It's not that BYD's technology has no value, but each engine, motor is different, and other people's principles and strategies cannot be completely borrowed, and they need to be re-matched and tuned according to their own powertrain."
Especially in the current wave of technological revolution in the automotive industry, cooperation with strong suppliers such as Huawei is ridiculed as losing your soul, not to mention directly taking other people's disclosed technology for your own use, isn't it really behind others? Therefore, when the financial situation and ability are acceptable, car companies will probably hold on to the last dignity.
NO.3
[Write at the end]
In the pharmaceutical industry, open patents are a common occurrence both inside and outside the industry. Because once other companies obtain the right to generate, the price of drugs can be greatly reduced, and the accessibility of drugs to patients can also be improved.
However, in the automotive industry, "shared patents" are still far from true sharing.
At the 2017 Shanghai Auto Show, Baidu announced that its Apollo plans to open up driverless capabilities to partners for free. At that time, authoritative media judged that Baidu's move would make tens of billions of dollars of R&D investment of other unmanned teams around the world "lost". But it turns out that not many people are in care.
Of course, whether or not cares is also related to the advancement of technology. The FSD patent announced by Tesla this time belongs to its core technology, and it is a benchmark technology that is being studied by global car companies, so it is unlikely that car companies do not care at all.
And to be fair, Tesla's open source initiatives over the years have promoted the overall environment for the development of new energy vehicles. Some of its patents are frequently cited, which also provides research and development ideas for the development of the electric vehicle industry.
Although there are still many question marks about whether these patents can be effectively transplanted and used, they do act as a catalyst.
So in the end, I can only appeal to Ma classmates, our patent open source can be a little more generous.