It turned out that battery-related patents take up a lot of Tesla’s patent portfolio.

According to the IPNomics's report, "Tesla, is it a bubble? 2015 edition", out of 203 patents Tesla has registered since 2008, 135 are related to batteries. More specifically, 50 are for overheating prevention, 33 for charging, and 28 for battery packs. Only 33 patents are about general vehicles and motor control systems.

In self-citations that Tesla cares much about, because it shows how much R&D investment has been made, Tesla's overheating prevention, battery packs and charging patents were cited 18, 17, and 10 times, respectively. Especially, Tesla saw its overheating prevention and charging technologies be intensely self-cited last year.


Overheating prevention is an essential field to secure battery stability. Therefore, the registered Tesla patents are seen as building the leading-edge portfolio in both quantity and quality. With this technology, Tesla was able to manufacture Model S, which is a medium-and large-sized electric sedan.


However, the number of self-citations about general vehicles, user interfaces, design, etc., were 9, 3, and 1, respectively, which is less than the number of cases related to batteries.


Among Tesla’s patents, the battery field was cited most by other relevant companies. Among 61 patents cited for the three years from 2012 to 2014, overheating prevention was cited the most with 13, followed by battery packs with 8, charging with 5, general batteries with 5, and power inverters with 1.

Among the cited vehicle patents, general vehicle patents were most cited with 16, followed by motor control with 9, and user interfaces with 4.