This report created by MarkLines focuses on a number of recent technical topics surrounding the automotive industry and is based on patent information from the “Technology Information Distribution Service - swimy” obtained by the Toyota Technical Development Corporation (TTDC). The two business areas of TTDC are in the fields of intellectual property and measurement control solutions. The intellectual property (IP) side of TTDC is involved in the collection and analysis of information on automotive technology developments globally, and provides services such as consulting for research planning, applying for patents in foreign languages, and technical translation.

  With the growth of electric vehicles, including battery electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles, battery cooling is becoming one of the important issues for the improvement of electric vehicle driving performance. Therefore, we present the trends regarding the technology to cool the batteries used for electric vehicle operation, the issues each company is working on, as well as development items.

  As for the technology for cooling electric vehicle drive batteries, Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota), LG Chem Ltd. (LG Chem), and Denso Corporation (Denso), in that order, have the largest number of patent applications, and the number of Denso’s applications are increasing, but for the other companies the trend of applications is decreasing. Regarding the topics of “Cooling by air conditioning”, “Countermeasures for defects and safety”, and “Assembly of plates” there is a trend toward increasing patent applications; Toyota and Denso have many patent applications on the subject of “Cooling by air conditioning” and LG Chem has many related to “Manufacturing cost reductions”.

Source: Technical information distribution service - swimy　URL：http://www.toyota-td.jp/business/ip/swimy/
This source (TTDC) has extensive content related to automobiles. Graphs can be created for contents of interest with a single click. The database also supports the detailed display and download of intellectual property related information.

TTDC reports:
Technology trends related to automatic adjustment of headlamp directional illumination (Mar. 2020）
Technology trends related to drowsiness detection (Dec. 2019）
Technical Trends of Rearview Mirrors (Sep. 2019）
Electric Motor Technological Trends of Major Automotive Manufacturers (Aug. 2019）
Technical Trends of Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) (Jun. 2019）