ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,661,980, issued on June 23, was assigned to TOYOTA JIDOSHA K.K. (Toyota, Japan).
"Driving apparatus for vehicle" was invented by Atsushi Tabata (Okazaki, Japan), Koichi Okuda (Toyota, Japan), Yohei Habata (Susono, Japan) and Yuuki Makino (Aichi-gun, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A vehicle driving apparatus includes: (a) a power distribution device for distributing a power between a pair of front wheels and a pair of rear wheels; (b) a differential device for distributing the power between right and left wheels that constitute one of the pair of front wheels and the pair of rear wheels; and (c) a propeller shaft for transmitting th...