All Our Patent Are Belong To You | Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk

[blkrb0t]

Can Tesla stop being any more awesome?

I’m a fan of this company, and an even bigger fan of Elon Musk.

Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.

At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales.

At best, the large automakers are producing electric cars with limited range in limited volume. Some produce no zero emission cars at all.

Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.

We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform.

Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

[booo]

I am hoping that Maruti/Tata/Mahindra will soon come up with a car with 300+ km range.

[Chaos]

Yep pretty awesome move. Real electric cars like Tesla are the crying need of the hour. At least they are trying to innovate in this space. All other makers have simply made electric cars that are the butt of ridicule. Look at the stupid Reva - the only electric car sold in india. It is nothing more than a glorified auto rickshaw

[Criminal]

^^ Reva is that stupid… when did you last drive it?

correction: Reva isn’t that stupid

[blkrb0t]

@Chaos

Yep pretty awesome move. Real electric cars like Tesla are the crying need of the hour. At least they are trying to innovate in this space. All other makers have simply made electric cars that are the butt of ridicule. Look at the stupid Reva - the only electric car sold in india. It is nothing more than a glorified auto rickshaw

They had planned to update their models with Reva NXR and Reva NXG. The Reva L-ion variant can be modified to at least look something like a hatchback. Mahindra isn’t concentrating much on it I guess.

These are the NXR and NXG (launched as E20):

Even GM had plans to release an all-electric hatchback called e-Spark. They’ve scrapped it now.

Tesla is right when they say that no automobile manufacturer is taking electric cars seriously. Even the top ones are worried about entering the space and putting a dent on their main bottomline. That explains their half-baked attempts.

[eternoMind]

^^ The above models seem to have got the Dilip Chhabria treatment. Never understood his designs!

[6pack]

So if we get funding from some angel investors we can create electric vehicles here using these patents? Damn. Wish I had that kind of money…I would have made electric cycles, cars, buses and trucks too.

[Chaos]

@gauravH

^^ Reva is that stupid… when did you last drive it?

A close friend in offices owns an e2o. Have driven it multiple times. Drives like absolute crap and I am sure Reva still gets around crash testing regulations by classifying it as a quadricycle.

[dafreaking]

Wait…where is the electricity in our country to power these cars?

[blkrb0t]

@Chaos

A close friend in offices owns an e2o. Have driven it multiple times. Drives like absolute crap and I am sure Reva still gets around crash testing regulations by classifying it as a quadricycle.

G-Wiz Electric Car; Crash Test

The UK variant is called G-Wiz. Scary