The pioneer electric car company Tesla has relinquished rights to its patents to provide open source backing to the advancement of electric vehicle technology, writes Brian Byrne.
Symbolically, CEO and founder of Tesla Elon Musk yesterday ordered the removal of a wall of patent certificates which adorned the lobby of the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
In a blog comment, Musk says that electric cars still only represent far less than one percent of total vehicle sales globally, and that at best those who are making electric cars are doing so in very limited volumes, and with very small range. Tesla cars typically have ranges close to standard gasoline cars.
"Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately two billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis," Musk writes. "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."
