In a company blog post hot off the, uh, keyboard, Tesla's futurist CEO Elon Musk has announced that patents "serve merely to stifle progress" and that the company is taking down the wall of patents decorating its lobby. After the company's finished remodeling, it will do away with patents entirely. Tesla's technology will be everyone's technology. Rainbows and sunshine will illuminate the land, and everyone can get down to the business of tackling our carbon-reduced future.
This isn't a joke—Tesla Motors will cease filing patents. Done. Kaput. If you think this opens up Tesla to having its tech hijacked by other automakers which ultimately will prove the brand's demise, worry not, Musk's got it covered. In explaining both that very possibility while referring to Tesla's initial embrace of patents, Musk writes, "we couldn't have been more wrong . . . electric-car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn't burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent."
So Tesla hopes to do the industry a favor and give away its technology to create "a common, rapidly evolving technology platform." The announcement isn't short on Silicon Valley self-righteousness, either; Musk adds: "it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis." Moving past the haughty subtext that Tesla would have solved transportation forever if it weren't for its lack of control over the world's near-100-million-unit annual car production, the company's position is nonetheless groundbreaking.
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Going patent-free shows Tesla is supremely confident in its brand power and its ability to withstand a possible flood of similar product using its own tech from other companies. We can see how the company feels this way—in spite of the brand's junk credit rating, Wall Street croons over the company and a Morgan Stanley analyst has made rosy predictions about its future. Elon Musk comes right out in his announcement and says that "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." Tesla's banking on a brain rush to its Palo Alto headquarters on a wave of techy warm fuzzies.
The whole concept is nothing if not bold, and it's clear Tesla Motors will continue to do different better than anyone else.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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