Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive (HSD) is a great technological achievement that ecologists enjoy all over the world, but is it an original Toyota invention?
Intellectual property is a taboo subject. We know that Microsoft's first operating system was not created by Microsoft, because it is a textbook case. But very few people know that the transmission of the Toyota Prius first generation (1997) was not invented by Toyota, but by the supplier Aisin, of which it is true that Toyota is a shareholder. The current case concerns part of the HSD transmission of the Prius II and Lexus RX400h, which would use a technology patented by a European company, Antonov-Transmission, under patent n ° EP 0414782.