Tesla Releases All 200 Of Their Patents To The Mass-Market! Will This Change Everything? Elon Musk started to make his fortune in the late 90′s after selling a software company he co-developed to Compaq. He also founded X, which merged with a Paypal-owned company and ended up selling for $1.5 billion in 2002. That same year, Musk co-founded a company called SpaceX, a company that manufactures innovative space launch vehicles with the intent of drastically lessening the costs of space exploration. Fast forward to today and Musk is at the forefront of a major automobile revolution with his company Tesla Motors, a manufacturer of advanced electric cars. The Electric Car Renaissance Electric cars aren’t a new concept by any means, in fact, the first electric car was produced in the 1880′s, before gas-powered vehicles came into popularity. Once the internal combustion engine exploded worldwide, electric cars were silenced commercially until their renaissance in 2008, with the advancement of battery and power management technologies. What makes Tesla cars unique has to do with their ‘Super’ charging stations. Tesla drivers pay more up front in order to have access to Supercharger stations free of charge. Recently, Musk dropped a major bombshell on the Tesla website, revealing that not only are the patents to the Supercharger stations now open, but that all patents obtained by Tesla are now free, all 200 of them. “When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them,” Musk wrote. “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.” A Bold Move For The Greater Good Musk lamented at the fact that many automakers are doing the bare minimum in terms of developing environmentally-responsible vehicles, and that’s likely because they’re being forced into it with progressively heightened regulations. He expressed that he didn’t want Superchargers to become a “walled garden” that could only be used for Teslas, and this opportunity might encourage others to join in, since they would be taking on less risk as the technology has already been proven to work. Having a unified recharge system for electric vehicles could very well make a lot of sense, as traditional automobiles don’t have separate gas stations for GM, Ford and Chrysler. There are currently 94 Supercharger stations across North America, 20 in Europe, and 3 in Asia, though they are hoping to grow that number considerably. Supercharger locations are typically given rent-free and some are powered by solar panels, which makes it easier to provide this service free of charge. Musk would require other companies to abide by this free for life policy if they were to use the technology. In 2013, Tesla Motors sold 22,500 vehicles and expects that number to grow to 35,000 this year. He attributes part of this success to the convenience of Supercharger stations as well as innovative batteries which allow for a longer range. The Tesla Model S has an MSRP from $69,900, though they hope to have a vehicle in the $35,000 range within the next few years. “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,” Musk concluded. This is pretty big news; the implications of Musk’s revelation could change the automobile industry forever. With the Tesla patents now available to the mass markets, we could soon be seeing a positive and aggressive push in the manufacturing of electric vehicles.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 04:40:40 +0000
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