Tesla Motors says: Take our patents, please

The electric car maker says it will give away its patents "in good faith" as an incentive to spur manufacturing in the electric car sector

|
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters/File
Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk talks about Tesla's new battery swapping program in Hawthorne, Calif., June 20, 2013.

Elon Musk has something he wants to give you: his company's patented technology. 

That's right, the chief executive of Tesla Motors, the electric car company, will let competitors use its patents, numbering several hundred, without the fear of triggering a lawsuit. In a blog post Thursday, Mr. Musk notes his reasoning for a decision that would ordinarily leave patent lawyers scratching their heads. 

Namely, that “annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars,” he says in the post. “It is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis." 

Both Tesla's car technology and the technology for its supercharger stations (its chain of charging stations), will be available "in good faith" to competitors.

This decision goes along with the company's stated goal: showing that an electric car can be every bit as utilitarian and cool as a gasoline-fueled car. 

Musk says patents hinder progress and stand in the way of companies developing electric cars. 

"Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport," he says in the post. "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." 

Because so few companies are producing electric cars, Musk is confident that others' use of its technology will not hurt the Palo Alto-based company. In his view, the competition is not other electric car manufacturers, but rather "the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day." 

At major auto manufacturers, the amount of electric cars produced, or cars that burn no hydrocarbons, totals less than one percent. By opening up its patents, Musk hopes to reverse this trend. Granted, he recognizes that things won't change overnight. Rather, the move comes more as a symbolic gesture to begin moving an industry toward a spirit of greater cooperation in an effort to begin producing more zero-emission vehicles. 

"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," Musk says in the post. "We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard."

In a conference call to explain his decision, Musk noted that Tesla will continue to secure patents for its future products so that other companies don't take the idea and patent it themselves, according to Forbes. Still, future patents will also be available for free. 

Musk also noted that his Hawthorne, Calif.-based space technology company SpaceX, for which he also serves as CEO, has "virtually no patents," yet remains competitive, according to the Los Angeles Times

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Tesla Motors says: Take our patents, please
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2014/0612/Tesla-Motors-says-Take-our-patents-please
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe