Patent

As it tries to recover from the "Dieselgate" scandal, Volkswagen has gotten more serious about electric cars. At the recent 2016 Paris Motor Show, it unveiled the I.D. compact electric-car concept, and promised a future production model based on it. Now, it appears the ID could be the first of...

Ford Motor Company announced this morning that it would open its portfolio of patents related to electrified vehicles--meaning both hybrids and electric cars--to competitive automakers. The Dearborn, Michigan, company says its goal is to "accelerate industry-wide research and development of...

Audi buys fuel-cell patents and plans to share them with other VW Group brands.

Toyota announced today that it would make more than 5,600 patents on fuel-cell technologies available for use, free of royalty payments, to a wide array of companies in the transportation sector. Those patents include many granted for innovations that led to the production version of the Japanese...

Last month, electric car maker Tesla Motors took the unusual step of opening up its patents to other automakers. Automakers usually guard their patents very closely, ensuring them as much competitive advantage as they can get away with before someone builds something better. Open Tesla's patents...

This past week–almost exactly 500 days after Tesla Motors announced the first six stations in its Supercharger network–a father-daughter team in a Tesla Model S electric car became the first to cross the country by Supercharger alone. MORE: Elon Musk Talks Tesla Model X Details, Model S...

Unless your name is Brinks, you rarely hear the words "armor" and "car" mentioned in the same sentence. But two recent widely-publicized fires in the Tesla Model S electric car have put the spotlight on how its battery pack is protected from severe impacts underneath the car. MORE: Tesla Fires...

Most advocates and industry analysts expect lithium-ion batteries to dominate electric-car energy storage for the rest of this decade. But is Silicon Valley startup carmaker Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] planning to add a new type of battery to increase the range of its electric cars? The high-end 2013...

The 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid is one of the more eagerly awaited green cars coming this year. With fuel economy projected at up to 48 mpg city, it improves considerably on the well-regarded current Ford Fusion Hybrid, which is rated by the EPA at 41 mpg city, 36 mpg highway, for a combined overall...

Here’s an interesting question for you: which automakers are currently leading when it comes to electric and hybrid car development? Like us, you might have the inclination to chose Toyota or perhaps Nissan. After all, the Renault-Nissan alliance has already spent over $5.6 Billion on...