BYD becomes EV patent king with over 13,000 applications
- More than half of the patents BYD has filed over the last 20 years are related to electric vehicle batteries.
BYD has emerged as the king of patents when it comes to filing patent applications related to electric vehicles. The number of applications the Chinese EV manufacturer has filed over the last 20 years is more than 13,000, which is exponentially higher than the global leader in the electric car market Tesla, which applied for only 863 patents, Nikkei Asia has reported.
The Chinese electric car manufacturer has been reportedly on a patenting spree over the last two decades. BYD has reportedly filed for more than 13,000 patents between 2003 and 2022, which is 16 times higher than what Tesla has filed during the same period. The majority of these patents filed by BYD are to protect its battery technology, claims the report. It further states that more than half of all BYD's patents are related to batteries explaining how, unlike most other electric car manufacturers, the Chinese automaker is able to use battery packs it develops in-house rather than sourcing from third-party suppliers.
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The report claims that BYD's heavy reliance on patents is important as the auto company's proprietary battery technologies can be exposed by disassembling its battery packs. On the other hand, Tesla focuses on reducing the risk of imitation of its battery technology by other auto companies. For this, Tesla only uses the new production technology within its factories.
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One possible reason behind such a lower number of Tesla's patent applications compared to BYD is that the US EV major doesn't want to make its technology public. One downside of filing a patent application is that details will be made public, which increases the risk of being imitated. Another reason behind Tesla's fewer patents is that it is heavily reliant on software and software development that uses a wide range of publicly available information. The report has further revealed that a large number of patents Tesla has filed relate to charging infrastructure and communications between EVs and drivers but not related to battery technology, which is the case for BYD.
