Tesla makes patent available for use by all
Well we talked about it just yesterday and it appears that today Tesla Motors has actually taken down its patent certificates from its lobby and will nor prosecute anyone who uses the company’s technology in what they termed ‘good faith’.
In a blog post, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the company felt compelled to create patents due to the concern that big car companies would then copy their technology and use it for their massive manufacturing capabilities, and then with their sales and marketing power overwhelm Tesla. They were wrong, the reality being quite the opposite: electric car programs – or any other program that doesn’t imply the burning of hydrocarbons – at major car manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting on average less than one percent of their total vehicle sales.
According to the CEO, the all-electric company’s true competition isn’t found in the zero emissions vehicles being produced by other manufacturers – for instance the Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, BMW i3 or the Renault Zoe – they are still competing with internal combustion engines.
The technologies that have been unlocked today include Tesla’s lithium-ion battery pack designs as well as standards relating to it 135kW fast charging stations.
There is an estimated a number of two billion cars on the road today and car makers are producing about 100 million new vehicles each year. This means that even if the entire world’s auto production would shift overnight to electric cars, it would require at least twenty years to replace the planet’s fleet with zero-emission vehicles.
By releasing their patents ‘into the wild’ as it were, Tesla hopes to spur both established and upstart car makers alike into action.
As far as the company’s other plans go, everything is still on track, except for the launch of the Model X all-wheel driver SUV which has been delayed until 2015, because the company wants to get the distinctive Falcon wing doors just right.
