US Patent Issued to SUBARU on June 16 for "Hybrid electric vehicle" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,654,677, issued on June 16, was assigned to SUBARU Corp. (Tokyo).

"Hybrid electric vehicle" was invented by Junji Habu (Tokyo), Tomonori Kashiwadate (Tokyo), Tetsu Matsuzaki (Tokyo) and Takumu Ishida (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A vehicle includes an engine, a starter motor, a torque converter, a lock-up clutch configured to perform lock-up, a traveling motor, and a controller. The controller is configured to perform processing including: switching between an engine traveling mode in which the vehicle travels using the engine and a motor traveling mode in which the vehicle travels using the traveling motor; and prohibiting, in r...