Toyota US '089 patent on hybrid vehicle

The first claim:

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A hybrid vehicle, comprising: an internal combustion engine including an in-cylinder injection valve that directly injects fuel into a combustion chamber, and a port injection valve that injects the fuel into an intake port that communicates with the combustion chamber; an electric motor; a power transmission mechanism that couples a drive shaft of the hybrid vehicle with the internal combustion engine so that torque can be transmitted therebetween, and couples the drive shaft with the electric motor so that torque can be transmitted therebetween; a driving force control unit that performs (i) normal operation to control output torque of the internal combustion engine and output torque of the electric motor so as to apply torque required to be applied to the drive shaft, which is determined according to an amount of accelerator operation by a user, to the drive shaft, and performs (ii) engine intermittent operation to stop operation of the internal combustion engine and control the output torque of the electric motor so that the required torque is applied to the drive shaft when determining that a given condition for stopping operation of the internal combustion engine is satisfied, and start the internal combustion engine when determining that a given condition for starting the internal combustion engine is satisfied; and an abnormality determining unit that makes an in-cylinder injection valve abnormality determination as to whether an abnormality occurs to the in-cylinder injection valve while causing a total amount of fuel included in an air-fuel mixture supplied to the internal combustion engine to be injected from the in-cylinder injection valve, and makes a port injection valve abnormality determination as to whether an abnormality occurs to the port injection valve while causing the total amount of fuel included in the air-fuel mixture to be injected from the port injection valve, wherein: the driving force control unit includes an intermittent operation inhibiting unit that inhibits execution of the engine intermittent operation and keeps operating the internal combustion engine when a given condition for inhibiting execution of the engine intermittent operation is satisfied, and an operation executing unit that operates the internal combustion engine so that a load of the internal combustion engine falls within a predetermined range, when at least one of the in-cylinder injection valve abnormality determination and the port injection valve abnormality determination has not been made, during a period in which execution of the engine intermittent operation is inhibited whereby the internal combustion engine is kept operating; and the abnormality determining unit makes the in-cylinder injection valve abnormality determination and the port injection valve abnormality determination, when the load of the internal combustion engine falls within the predetermined range.
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