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> You'd be right to say that patents limited LFP in the West, but generally Japanese/Korean firms seemed relatively uninterested in the tech. Because of the pa

• sudosysgen 5y ago
  Eh, not really. It's complicated. For example, one of the major IP holders for LiFePO4 batteries is Hydro-Québec, which actually had it's own EV program in the 90s, but for political reasons mostly it was dropped (can't have a public company compete against the private sector without businesses getting unhappy). So there was actually interest to mass manufacture these batteries, and just like China it was by state companies, it's just that we shied away from that economic model. Meanwhile private companies had a choice, either they would go with Li-ion which was also patent encumbered but was very mature, or LiFePO4 which was patent encumbered and very immature, so private industry largely went with Li-ion, with the exception of A123, but even without paying any royalties (they sold them without paying royalties for a fair while) they are 10x more expensive than the Chinese ones.