Be the best "inventor" in the car industry and count Tesla's various patented technologies

At the beginning of 2019, Musk said on his personal social media that Tesla would open all electric vehicle patents without reservation to support the development of the electric vehicle industry. The "sharing" advocated by this leader in the new energy vehicle industry naturally won the applause of car companies. Of course, Iron Man did not break his promise, and he moved faster and faster on the road of patent research and development, constantly innovating around electric vehicles. Today, we will count down for you what are the important patent technologies of Tesla in the past year.

[ ·1· Main R&D direction: autonomous driving & power batteries ]

After deciding to open up patent sharing, Tesla did not "keep quiet" and occasionally announced its latest patented technologies, which made competitors feel that Musk was indeed open. Therefore, we also selected the top ten important technical patents of Tesla from June 2018 to June 2019 for electric hackers to review and interpret one by one.

According to the table, among Tesla's top ten patent technologies in the past year, patents related to autonomous driving and power batteries accounted for 60% of the total, and the release time was almost around the past six months. It can be seen that Tesla's current research and development focus is still around these two major areas. In addition, Tesla has also launched corresponding patents in terms of vehicle internal and external configuration, lighting, safety technology, etc.

[ ·2· What is conventional autonomous driving? Have you ever seen a car that detects a fault and drives itself back to a repair center? ]

Tesla's self-driving open day in April showed that Musk was so excited that he praised his company's software, hardware and chips, and he was eager to see driverless Teslas everywhere. Judging from the release of Tesla's self-driving patents, this confidence is not unfounded.

① Emergency signal processing of autonomous driving system to improve the safety of autonomous driving

In June 2019, Tesla announced a patent for "Emergency Signal Processing for Autopilot Systems", which describes two methods of transmitting emergency information from vehicle sensors to autonomous driving software in order to improve Autopilot's response capabilities in emergency situations, thereby improving the safety of the vehicle in autonomous driving mode.

② After the vehicle is self-inspected, you can drive to the service center by yourself. Isn’t that amazing?

In January 2019, Tesla said that the patent could detect the vehicle before it breaks down, and if the car is self-driving, it could be instructed to drive itself to a repair service center for repair. The patent Tesla applied for aims to find a way to detect the "usage cycle" of certain parts of the car so that potential failures can be detected before they occur.

③ Avoid signal interference, GPS positioning is more accurate

In December 2018, Tesla released software that allows vehicles to send signals and positioning data to each other, making the vehicles function very similar to GPS satellites on the earth. It can provide positioning information to other vehicles on the road and share their raw GNSS data, effectively avoiding the impact of external factors on GPS reception accuracy. It will be used in autonomous driving vehicles in the future.

The hacker said: Tesla's progress in autonomous driving functions is obvious to all, and in the process of selling the whole vehicle, Autopilot is classified as a paid area, which has been recognized by car owners. Obviously, Tesla's commercial operation of autonomous driving has made a good start. However, this leading new energy company has always been unable to retain talents, from Jim Keller, vice president of autonomous driving, to Doug Field, chief engineer, to Zeljko Popovic, head of the autonomous driving team who left in the past two days, they have all entered the arms of competitors. For Tesla, which is preparing to put 1 million autonomous taxis on the road next year, it still needs to think clearly whether it is the one who gets the talent or the one who brags that wins the world.

[ ·3· Power batteries: faster, longer-lasting and safer ]

Of course, in addition to Musk's passion for autonomous driving, Tesla, which has become famous for its electric cars , will not forget what it is best at - electric cars. When it comes to electric cars, consumers are most concerned about batteries. Battery life, battery safety, battery cost, etc. Tesla is also seriously competing with batteries.

① Long life, fast charging and cheap, please buy a dozen of these batteries

In February 2019, Tesla said that the patent for the new battery chemistry uses only two additives, and the new dual-additive mixture can be used with lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt battery chemicals, which will play a role in electric vehicles or grid energy storage. Compared with other systems that rely on more additives, this design reduces battery costs. In addition, the dual-additive electrolyte system can also provide batteries with faster charging speeds and longer life.

② A battery management system should have a function that does not affect the whole battery if a part of the battery is damaged.

In January 2019, Tesla released a patent for a redundant battery management system that can provide redundant communication paths and achieve dynamic redundancy within the battery management system, thereby improving the reliability of the new generation of battery packs. The multi-channel architecture ensures that subsystem functional failures (false data) will not affect the normal operation of auxiliary subsystems in other channels.

③ Isolate the battery cells to prevent fire, and don’t let spontaneous combustion happen again

In August 2018, Tesla applied for a new battery system patent, which creates a connection layer in the middle of each row of battery cells. When the faulty cell releases heat and generates pressure, the area will automatically rupture to achieve the effect of isolation. In this way, when a single cell or a single group of cells catches fire, it can prevent the speed of its spread throughout the battery pack, thereby improving the safety of the entire battery pack.

Hacker said: Tesla electric vehicles' range and charging speed have always been set as a benchmark by electric vehicle owners, which is inseparable from the technical accumulation of Tesla's R&D team. Based on these three patents, we can see that Tesla no longer uses range as a marketing selling point, but is more concerned about the service life and safety of power batteries. However, the continuous spontaneous combustion of vehicles has also made Tesla unable to speak out. Only Musk came out to curse and mention the spontaneous combustion rate of fuel vehicles to vent his dissatisfaction. Of course, the Tesla team has not given up the pace of power battery research and development.

[ ·4· Airbags, headlights, air conditioning, from configuration to safety, a variety of research and development has been going on steadily]

Now that we have discussed the main and mainstream technologies, let's talk about Tesla's "unconventional" patented technologies. No matter how far electric cars can travel or how advanced their technology is, they are still for the benefit of mankind, so the various patented research and developments are still a necessary means for Tesla to impress consumers.

① Humanized skylight: control light during the day and lighting at night

In May 2019, Tesla announced a patent for a sunroof (the technology was submitted as early as June 2017). The sunroof is a multi-layer structure with an electrically controllable coloring layer and a transparent lighting layer between two transparent layers. During the day, users can adjust the light inside the car through the electrically controlled coloring system, and at night, users can control the lighting through the LED lighting layer to maintain the ideal amount of light inside the car.

② Deploy airbags based on occupant weight, a boon for children’s safety

In January 2019, Tesla announced a patent for a sensor for a vehicle occupant classification system and method. In simple terms, the system can detect occupants through sensors on the seats, and then classify the occupants according to their weight, thereby changing the way the airbags are deployed. This patent is more conducive to protecting the safety of children and people of smaller stature.

③ Automatic activation of turn signal technology

In September 2018, Tesla's patent for automatically activating turn signals was published. This technology uses the current AutoPilot autonomous driving system to allow the vehicle to automatically detect when the driver should activate the turn signal. If the driver forgets to activate it, the system will automatically activate the turn signal. According to the patent information, this technology is not applied to the autonomous driving system, but is used for daily driving.

④ HVAC air conditioning system, a powerful "vacuum cleaner"

In June 2018, Tesla's air conditioning patent was announced, which includes the deflector mechanism assembly of the air conditioning outlet. In addition to the unique air outlet deflector mechanism, the air conditioning filter that can remove 99.97% of fine particles and air pollutants is also a major attraction. However, this guy, which is 10 times larger than the ordinary car air conditioning filter, will not be installed on the Model 3.

The hacker said: Tesla's series of patents can be said to take care of the occupants in the car in all aspects, providing the most ideal driving experience in the car, and such thoughtfulness is deeply loved by car owners. Of course, many domestic car companies also have similar patents, but they just talk about "emotion and technology" every day to promote them, but they have not even achieved the ability of mass production and delivery, which is not wasting time, but consumers' patience.