Comment by martinpw
13 hours ago
Who owned these key LFP patents? It was not clearly laid out in the article which countries owned them, let alone which companies.
If they were owned by Chinese companies, then is there some faint hope that Western companies can finally start making EVs that are no longer embarrassingly inferior to their Chinese counterparts?
A foundational research team in a Canadian university in Quebec, if I recall correctly. They licenced these patents to the Chinese companies royalty free when used the Chinese domestic market. The Chinese spent the time developing LFP to where it's now a bleeding edge of batteries, while practically no-one else was interested.
In a retaliatory fight over the EVs, in October 2025, the CCP issued a ban on transfer of advanced technology for LFP batteries, and battery manufacturing equipment.