Tesla to share its patents with other car companies

i heard he was considering it, is it a done deal?

 

I do not believe Toyota's patents are free, but they have indicated that they are cheap enough it should be no impediment to any other car company that uses them.

Ford to Use Toyota's Hybrid Technology - New York Times

Mazda Teams with Toyota, not Ford, for Upcoming Hybrid - MSN Autos

 

Have to applaud Musk and Tesla for doing this.

His aims seem to be solely to advance electric car growth.

Roland

 

Somewhere there are patent attorneys doing a slow burn. . . . Wait 'attorneys', they'll screw it up somehow.

Bob Wilson

 

The NYT article is dated(2004) and lacks all the facts. It compares Ford/Toyota patent swap to the Nissan/Toyota licensing agreement. Nissan didn't have its own hybrid system at the time. Ford had developed theirs, but neither they or Toyota wanted to pay the costs or risk the outcome of letting the courts decide if some of Ford's patents infringed on some of Toyota's or not.

Mazda was happy when Ford sold the majority share they had over them. Mazda is still a small car company though, and doesn't have the resources to develop their own hybrid. Since this upcoming hybrid is for the Japanese market only, this might be a compliance move on their part. Until they can do a hybrid of their own. Like Nissan did with hybrid Altima. Mazda already has regenerative braking out. A bigger battery and a motor powerful enough to nudge the car from stop, and they have a mild hybrid.

Back to the OP. Tesla mostly wants to open up their supercharger network to others. The patents will be free, but there will be an access fee for the customers. It also likely lead to more customers for their mega battery factory.

The move could help in the adoption of EVs by the public with more makes and models being available. It isn't a purely selfless move on Tesla's part though.

 

ummm - no. Many forget - Toyota's existing EV, the RAV4-EV is for all intents purposes, a Tesla, because well ... it uses tesla guts. Same motor, only it's tuned down via software. Batteries? It has less. So Toyota's EV is like a mini Tesla. Toyota, intent on shooting itself in the foot, is pouring their resources into lobbying to bring about hydrogen cars - regardless of weather or not (ever) being ready for prime time - due to extreamly high cost/maintenance/infrastructure. Since Toyota already hooked up with Tesla - and since Toyota is killing its EV while it's pretty much still in the womb (refusing to further manufacture at all, much less expand to other states) - you won't see Toyota jumping up & down yelling "yipeee!!" just because Tesla is going open source.

Maybe folks are already forgetting that Toyota is presently running ads condemning the 'flaws' of the plug in vehicle. OK they're supposedly toning it down, but it does show their mind set. Tic's me off. My hope is that other manufacturers will take advantage of free EV tech knowledge and thus flood the market with cheaper and cheaper EV's at a faster pace than they might otherwise get developed . Such an action would further exacerbate costly fuel cell money wasting ventures and hopefully rein Toyota back into reality.
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Autoline Daily speculated Musk is looking for more customers of his proposed battery plant. Making the patents more available might lead to more EVs.

Bob Wilson

 

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

Good for tesla. The move hurt my stock price a little, but not too bad. It should help expand BEVs, which should be good for tesla in the long run.

More EVs from more manufacturers, means more infrastructure and a quicker reduction in battery costs. Better infrastructure and reduced battery costs help transition from the initial adopter phase to the acceptance phase of a technology, which allows for higher volume and a virtuous cycle.

What tesla gives up is margin, without patents to protect, the fat 25% margin on cars might disapear with competition. If it is fast in design, it can hope to still sell at a premium, kind of a bmw strategy for cars. This may work well in the US and Chinese markets which are the biggest in the world. It may also make profits from its supercharger network and gigafactories. Open sourcing the patents does reduce the price anyone would pay to take over tesla.

The Rav4 EV is an odd duck. It was probably developed too fast and had some initial problems, that toyota addressed poorly. This may have been simple incompetence, or part of an internal dislike for a different company developing the drive-train. Lentz said that the purpose of the program was to learn how tesla could develop new cars so much faster than toyota, which explains the rush. The platform was done not because there was a good market for SUV BEVs (IMHO awd phevs are better for the segment - I hope the outlander does well here), but for the sake of nostalgia. Now the newer, longer (can hold more batteries) lexus NX looked to be a better platform, especially as kinks have been worked out with the RAV4 EV. It sounded like toyota wanted to pay tesla less money than they wanted for parts, a classic supplier squeeze, and when that didn't work Toyota increased the anti-ev rhetoric. We should see how well the tuscon fuel cell in 2015, does versus the rav4 ev, versus tesla X 2015.

I doubt it will speed up introductions, but it may do two things:

1) reduce battery costs with gigafactory. Car companies using tesla's patents may want to also use their lower priced batteries. This may get battery costs down to around $150/kwh by 2025. That means a phev with 20kwh of batteries and a small range extending engine, might only have $3000 of batteries in it. A 50Kwh BEV that goes 200 miles would only have $7500 worth of batteries.