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The story
A thread on 5ch’s “Live Everything G” board asked whether Toyota’s hybrid technology really does outclass every other automaker. It kicked off with a post claiming “Nissan and Honda actually have better technology,” which drew a sharp rebuttal: “Any manufacturer could build Toyota’s hybrid system — Nissan and Honda definitely can’t.” The discussion then split into two camps, both grounded in the fact that Toyota has made its hybrid patents available royalty-free: some argued that if rivals still can’t replicate the system despite having the blueprints, that gap must come down to raw technical skill, while others countered that Nissan’s e-POWER and Honda’s e:HEV simply chose a fundamentally different architecture from Toyota’s in the first place. The thread kept going as posters traded real-world fuel economy stories along the way.
What people said
Apparently any manufacturer could build Toyota's hybrid system.
Nissan and Honda, though? Definitely not.
Well yeah, because they made the patents free to use.
That's because they published it with a "go ahead and use it" attitude.
By "Toyota-style" you mean that outdated hybrid tech?
Those companies can barely even build an engine anymore.
And the Dynamic Force engine sounds just awful.
They're just pouring it down the drain.
Funny then that they get crushed by Mitsubishi in win counts at the Dakar Rally and other cross-country rallies.
It outlived the typical lifespan of a personal car.
Though, well, they did replace it for free.
They fixed it for free and you still don't trust them? That's a crazy high bar.
Managing to break it that fast is honestly a talent.
You must have left it sitting unused for a long time.
Guess you didn't know Toyota opened up its HV patents specifically to bring more allies on board.
They're annoying, they jack up the price, and all I need is adaptive cruise.
Yeah, it sucks that stuff like that just drives the price up for nothing.
An engine's torque comes in pulses from each combustion stroke, while a motor's torque is constant since it runs on electric current.
Syncing up the timing between those two is genuinely brutal.
Toyota solved that with clutch engineering.
Nissan basically said "if we can't pull that off, let's just use the engine purely as a generator and drive with the motor alone!" — and that's e-POWER.
Honestly, Nissan's approach sounds smarter.
Since it became a hit, they're now scrambling to improve it, but fuel economy is one thing they'll never catch Toyota on.
I heard it was actually because Ghosn slashed R&D budgets so brutally that they couldn't afford to fund both HV and EV development like everyone else did — so they had no choice but to go all-in on EV and turn HV into basically a generator-powered EV, which became e-POWER. Is that wrong?
Nissan's e-POWER is based on tech that's actually been around for ages.
What's genuinely impressive about Nissan, though, is that they took the series-hybrid approach and flipped it into something that drives just like an EV despite technically being a hybrid.
There's a theory that once the patents went public, Chinese automakers' performance shot way up because of it.
It lets you control speed with the accelerator almost like driving a manual.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
Since around 2019, Toyota has been rolling out royalty-free access to its hybrid-related patents, and the “patent disclosure” mentioned in the thread refers to this. Nissan’s e-POWER, however, is a series hybrid — the engine only generates electricity while the motor alone drives the wheels — and Honda’s e:HEV likewise emphasizes generation over direct engine drive, both structurally different from Toyota’s THS, which blends engine and motor output through a planetary gear set. In other words, even with the patents public, each manufacturer had already chosen a different architecture from the start, so “can’t copy it” and “chose a different path” aren’t necessarily the same thing. The theory floated in post 88 — that e-POWER came about because Ghosn slashed R&D spending — is pure speculation within the thread, with no supporting evidence given. What stands out about this thread is how technical arguments, gut impressions, and individual fuel-economy anecdotes all blended together as opinion split down the middle.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Live Everything G) thread “I thought Toyota’s hybrid tech was amazing, but turns out it’s not really that special.”
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