Tesla Motors Opens Patent Portfolio to Public

Raine-Tesla-smallThe post is reprinted with permission from the International Energy Alliance. The author of this post, Guo Cao, came to the U.S. through the International Study Abroad program offered through Hunter Programs Education Services. She has excelled in her studies over the past five years in the U.S. and has participated in numerous outside activities, including many through the International Energy Alliance where she has been a contributing member for several years. She is waiting to hear back from colleges to which she applied.

In Tesla Motors’ open letter released June 12, 2014, CEO Elon Musk announced that the company has removed the many patents owned by the company, releasing them “in the spirit of open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology”.  The purpose of this, according to Musk, is to allow other manufacturers to use Tesla’s expertise in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of the electric vehicle technology. “Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor,” Musk said, “but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers.”

Tesla previously sought to obtain patents for its technology in order to prevent other automobile companies – with massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power – from competing directly and potentially overwhelming Tesla Motors. However, Musk said that these fears proved to be unfounded, and “car manufacturers do not have the effort in the production of electric vehicles (zero emissions vehicle that contains all), and in fact, sold all over the world for a year vehicles, only less than 1% of the proportion of zero-emission vehicles.”

Whether Tesla Motor s simply wants to release the technology in good faith, or it is the desire of Tesla Motors to lead the electric vehicle market, after all of the patents disclosure, there will be an unprecedented rapid development of electric vehicles. If there is an explosive growth of production and capacity in the electric vehicle market, the price of electric cars will drop, making them more affordable to all.

Having more electric cars on the road in the place of gas-powered cars will really help the environment making the world a better place. It doesn’t matter what Tesla Motors’ intentions really were by releasing their electric car technology, open sourcing this technology will help the environment and hopefully make dramatic changes to the car industry in the coming years.

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