“Toyota is granting US car maker, Ford a license to use the Japanese company’s patented technology for environmentally friendly hybrid cars for an undisclosed sum.

In a joint statement, the companies said that Ford Motor Co. will be licensed to use Toyota Motor Corps hybrid technology in a system it is developing which is already subject to more than 100 hybrid technology patents.

Referance : About.com

So, what does that say … Ford purchased for an undisclosed sum to utilse Toyota hybrid technology.

Am i wrong … NO !!

Cheers

Jealousy is a curse..hahaha of what exactly??? Boring cars that boring people drive,yawnnnnn

For all those interested in the Prius landspeed records ,yes they bothered,130 MPH in 2 miles………wooooo impressive.Must be some more boring motor spots Toyota are involved in I can google,

So instead of just risk infringing – As Toyota did to the chip designer – Ford did the RIGHT thing and negotiated a patent sharing arangement

“The Escape Hybrid uses technology similar to that used in Toyota’s Prius. Ford engineers realized their technology may conflict with patents held by Toyota, which led to a 2004 patent-sharing accord between the companies, licensing Ford’s use of some of Toyota’s hybrid technology in exchange for Toyota’s use of some of Ford’s diesel and direct-injection engine technology. Both Ford and Toyota state that Ford received no technical assistance from Toyota in developing the hybrid powertrain, but that some hybrid engine technologies developed by Ford independently were found to be similar to technologies previously patented by Toyota”

Noname – were do you think the technology came from for the Ford Hybrid Escape …. Toyota !!

Read : For Ford to enter the hybrid market in a timely manner because they were so far behind, Ford infact purchased Toyota technology. Don’t believe me – research it for your yourself. Even for Nissan to release it’s first Hybrid on the US market – they utilised a dated Toyota electric motor inconjuntion with the 2.5 4 cyl Ultima.

is unbelievebale how little people like yourself truely understand.

People bagging on the Kaizen method as a simple “rip off ideas” is blatantly degrading reputations without KNOWING facts. If you publish them you liable to be sued.

First off, GM found already made the claims that Japanese “copy” things they invent…. but he forgot to mention that Japanese improves on them….

Innovation is important, but Execution is what really matters in the end….

BTW, if you are an engineer you’d know “copying” isnt used at all… the term is “benchmarking”…

Learn it, EVERYONE does it… you dont think European manufacturers or Koreans or Americans do it… How naive and biased can you get?… seriously….

Again everyone does it, I have a mate who works for GM Holden and they had a couple of 350Z torn apart first month it was out in Oz… Toyota had a couple of sedans torn apart for parts benchmarking…. heck I can ring up a mercedes source and pretty much they’d have another manufacturer’s car there torn apart being studies also..

Its just funny seeing some people here call a process in real life engineering as “ripping off”… if you do… then you pretty much calling out on all manufacturers… because when you design parts for cars, you cannot get it approved without having technical reports on current market parts for other cars… its all about beating each other in terms of cost reduction and other manufacturing issues.

I hope other engineers here can actually help me out and support what I say, because some here thinks theres literally “good” and “bad” guys in engineering…. naive consumers… again thank you for your money and thank you for reading the brochure…. but if you plan on accusing companies of “theft” and such then again Your pretty much calling all of them out as they ALL do it… some gets caught some dont…. Toyota gets caught in this one, Its actually a minor issue, Im sure the engineer who didn’t “account” the microchip’s designer would be accounted and reviewed.

How do you know they are not satisfied. Your arguement is floored ha ha flawed once again. You seem to forget that Toyota has recalled over a million vehicles in 3 years. Fact. Also in the US pretty much the entire model range has been recalled on an annual basis. Source automalusa.com/toyota/recall

and why didnt you quote the US figures like you loved to in the past?
well because you are pretty smart in realising that ford are right up there compared to toyota in recent survey results.
wouldnt want to display them would you? smart man

stop “photo shopping” your arguments in pulling this one from here because it sounds good, and that one from there because it sounds good

its like laying claim to a perfect student by taking Bobs great wood work marks and placing it with Bettys great cooking marks along with christophers great physics results, and saying gee we have the best student at this school

Thats pretty easier when you sell less cars than others. Toyota have 5% of the market. April 2008 they sold 8504 against Fords 25,498 and Vauxhalls 26487.
Admittedly the big two are behind on customer service, I personally don’t take a lot to interest in JD’s survey as they gain answers by leading questions. After all a car in a consumers mind becomes unreliable when something menial occurs such as a blown light.