News Tesla Motors goes "open source"

[Ripley]

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

June 12, 2014
All Our Patent Are Belong To You
By Elon Musk, CEO

Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. 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. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.

At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales.

At best, the large automakers are producing electric cars with limited range in limited volume. Some produce no zero emission cars at all.

Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. 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.

 

[Urwumpe]

With just one tiny detail: Not all patents.

Also - small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars is pretty amusing, since Tesla isn't really a volume product. It is not like Tesla invented the all-electric car, there are places in the world where all-electric variants of cars are used for decades now in very tiny numbers. What we have now is simply making the electric car islands bigger and touch each other, so that electric cars can travel longer distances by moving from island to island.

 

[RisingFury]

In other news:

Tesla's open-source move was criticized today by Mr. Urwumpe, the CEO of the company. According to a company spokesman, Mr. Urwumpe believes the move is too small to inspire any progress. The spokesman also added that Mr. Urwumpe went along with the company because of a lost bet.

:lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

In other news:



:lol:

Understand this as a big friendly

It's really more show than substance. The patents will not be placed under any known open-source license, its just a declaration of "we will not use our patents against you, if you don't use your patents against us. And we will register more patents of course, before you do it - even if we officially dislike them."

Usually, such declarations are documented with a treaty between two or more sides, Tesla does not do such a thing with other car companies. You have to trust their word.

Also, I also think that patents hinder progress - but for getting rid of patents, you have to replace them by another sheet of paper with hard legal words, so nobody can suddenly make you pay for your idea, that you made open-source.

 

[RisingFury]

Tesla is now on public record of at least willing to do such a deal. Maybe this move itself will spark other companies to take them on on such a deal.

A company is sharing their technology with others. At worst, nothing can happen. At best, it sparks more competition. I don't see anything bad in it.

Progress takes time and small steps. This could be just one small step.

 

[Urwumpe]

Tesla is now on public record of at least willing to do such a deal. Maybe this move itself will spark other companies to take them on on such a deal.

A company is sharing their technology with others. At worst, nothing can happen. At best, it sparks more competition. I don't see anything bad in it.

Progress takes time and small steps. This could be just one small step.

We currently have a few bad examples there, especially in the 3D printer industry. Where developments of open-source projects have been patented. You sure understand in that context, why the German technology community is not so impressed right now with a statement we have heard before.

 

[Face]

We currently have a few bad examples there, especially in the 3D printer industry. Where developments of open-source projects have been patented.

Somebody may come up with a GPL equivalent for non-software projects, but then the corporate world will certainly again try to do the "GPL is evil virus" inception trick. "Look, you can't possibly attach that battery to this lamp, because the license would require all Edison inventions to be open-sourced, too, and this will collapse the market and bring apocalypse upon us!"

 

[Urwumpe]

Somebody may come up with a GPL equivalent for non-software projects, but then the corporate world will certainly again try to do the "GPL is evil virus" inception trick. "Look, you can't possibly attach that battery to this lamp, because the license would require all Edison inventions to be open-sourced, too, and this will collapse the market and bring apocalypse upon us!"

We have actually quite a few great working open-hardware projects... but all with problems in Germany because of German law working with open-source software but needing further discussions about open-source hardware (because German patent law always assumed for years, that software can't be sold without its hardware).

 

[PhantomCruiser]

I'd take a serious look at an all-electric car if I had better access to charging stations. If a Tesla gets to a price point lower than, mmmm, say $30K I can put it on the "take a look at it" list.

But the Top Gear dudes did a BMW M3 vs Toyota Prius competition, and on their track the BMW got better mileage. Clarkson summed it up pretty well, where you don't necessarily have to change you car, but change your driving style.

 

[Matias Saibene]

So: patents will not be free, but only Tesla Motors will not denounce those who steal them. Should we trust his words?.

The words are carried by the wind, it is said in my country.

I hope that with this policy of business they can carry 100,000 people to Mars, as promised Elon:facepalm:.

 

[OrbitalConfusion]

Even with the fine print, this is a good thing in my opinion. Hopefully we can figure out this battery problem and find a more efficient means to store energy. If memory serves me, 20% of the energy stored in a common battery is lost. I see people playing with capacitors like its a holy grail of some sort. If you look on youtube, a man took his car battery out and put in capacitors and uses them. It just seems to easy to be true.

Oooof back o topic, sorry. With the patents, what did "we" really gain in a nutshell?

 

[Artlav]

If memory serves me, 20% of the energy stored in a common battery is lost.

With lead batteries, maybe.
With LI-ion it's close to 99% efficiency.
The problem is in the energy density itself - amount of electricity the battery can hold, and that is simply too low to be practical so far, with gasoline being orders of magnitude more energy-dense.

Cost is also an issue.
If cost of the battery was less than the cost of the car, it could have been practical for commuter vehicles, but so far they are just too expensive.

Another problem is - the battery only last so many charge cycles before wearing out, typically 3 years.
With battery being over 50% of the vehicle cost, the car is as good as totalled once the battery go.

I see people playing with capacitors like its a holy grail of some sort. If you look on youtube, a man took his car battery out and put in capacitors and uses them. It just seems to easy to be true.

Supercapacitors are interesting.

-Infinite charge-discharge cycles, so the car would never get totalled due to battery wearing out.
-Charges at any current, so you don't have to wait hours at the charging/fuelling station.
-No volatile, expensive or explosive chemicals - if you puncture one, it would leak stinky non-corrosive electrolyte (li-ion battery would go BOOM after bursting in flames).
-Can take almost any abuse - short one out, and the short melts (short li-ion, and it would go BOOM in flames).

I have a bunch of them linked up to a solar panel - http://orbides.1gb.ru/img/sc-1.jpg
Two parallel blocks of 8 in series - http://orbides.1gb.ru/img/sc-2.jpg
25F total, at 18V.
They power a phone charging socket (charges for 6 minutes at 5V, 500mA when the sun is down).
They also power a couple of 1W LEDs, for quick light when i need to write an idea down at night - http://orbides.1gb.ru/img/sc-3.jpg
The LEDs run for quite a while, tens of minutes on full charge.
They are driven with CC drivers, so no gradual dimming into nothingness, they die quite fast into darkness.

I also dealt with bigger stuff - http://orbides.1gb.ru/img/sc-4.jpg , with AAs for comparison.
11 of 350F ones in series, 32F at 27V.
Two of these can power a gauss cannon that shoot a bolt through 0.5cm of plywood. For about 50 shots.
200A currents straight out of the energy storage, no extra capacitors needed.

And the largest ones i have - http://orbides.1gb.ru/img/sc-5.jpg
6S2P battery of 3000F ones, 1000F at 15.6V total.
$10 each, if you get a good deal, $60 at digikey.
These are used in regenerative braking systems of electric trains and cars.
Can provide 400A continuously, or 4000A for 5 seconds.
Not sure how long it can power an LED, but if you put a crowbar across it, the crowbar is going to LOSE.

Like i said, supercapacitors are interesting.

However, there is one major disadvantage:
-The energy they store is small.
One tenth of a car battery per same size.
Not practical.
The biggest ones above each have as much energy in them as one AA battery.
Pathetic.

It would be the perfect battery, but only if they solve the capacity issues.
There are some nice work with graphene in this area (bringing capacity on par with li-ion), but it appears to be confined to the labs so far.

 

[RisingFury]

Supercapacitors are interesting.

-Infinite charge-discharge cycles, so the car would never get totalled due to battery wearing out.
-Charges at any current, so you don't have to wait hours at the charging/fuelling station.
-No volatile, expensive or explosive chemicals - if you puncture one, it would leak stinky non-corrosive electrolyte (li-ion battery would go BOOM after bursting in flames).
-Can take almost any abuse - short one out, and the short melts (short li-ion, and it would go BOOM in flames).

ANY system that stores vast quantities of energy is inherently dangerous. A flywheel can be just as destructive as a tank of gas. It's the same with a superconducting coil that has tens of thousands of amps running through it or a super-capacitor, charged to a high voltage.

I agree that they show promise and potential and would like to see the technology develop, but it's crazy to downplay the danger.

 

[Keatah]

It is important to keep in mind that electric motors are 90% (or more) efficient. Whereas ICE is 65% at the very best, in controlled lab conditions, at steady RPM and load. In the real world it comes out to be about 30-35% efficient.

Lithium cells, kilo-for-kilo, store about 1-4% of that of petrol. SuperCapacitors even less.

It is of my opinion that the only thing limiting electric cars (and their development) is politics and big money.. not batteries. Batteries have been steadily improving over time, and what is available today is only going to get better in the future.

The wife's Tesa P85 is really great, and we use it every opportunity. The Mercedes she got a few years back sees much less use.

 

[Artlav]

ANY system that stores vast quantities of energy is inherently dangerous.

Naturally.
But the difference between li-ion and supercaps is like between nitroglycerine and gasoline - both store energy and can release it catastrophically, but former is much more unstable than the latter.

but it's crazy to downplay the danger.

I don't say they are absolutely safe, but that they are quite a bit safer than li-ion, being chemically stable and containing nothing flammable or corrosive.

It is of my opinion that the only thing limiting electric cars (and their development) is politics and big money.. not batteries.

Not quite.
The battery technology to make the electric cars really practical does not exist yet.
They do get better every year, in the same fashion as computers improve by Moore's law, but they are not good enough yet.

 

[Proximus]

Electricity has always been notoriously difficult to store. Battery technology cannot seem to keep up with the ever progressing electronics it's attached to.
Perhaps Tesla is aware of this and is looking to other technologies for powering their vehicles?

I've always liked the concept of hydrogen fuel cells personally.

 

[RisingFury]

I've always liked the concept of hydrogen fuel cells personally.

Hydrogen is not a source of energy, it's a storage of energy. You can't mine hydrogen. You either produce it from water or from hydrocarbons, which doesn't solve our current problems.

 

[Quick_Nick]

Hydrogen is not a source of energy, it's a storage of energy. You can't mine hydrogen. You either produce it from water or from hydrocarbons, which doesn't solve our current problems.

This thread seems to be focused on storage. It seems most relevant to me.
You can use wind power in producing the hydrogen if you like.

 

[Proximus]

Exactly, hydrogen is just the medium for transporting energy from a source to it's load, and can be accomplisehed as quickly as filling an ICE's fuel tank.

How that energy is harnessed like solar or power station etc, is not the point. The point is it can be charging at home while you are driving around. When you start to run out of hydrogen, you just pop home and fill the tank again and in a few minutes your on your way again.
It's quicker and has a much larger range than battery power IMO.

Down side is the precious metal catalysts :facepalm:
It's possible I'm talking nonsense of course but I can't see any other big show stoppers with this technology?

 

[thepenguin]

And so the electric car dies. With thunderous applause.

Nobody is ever going to develop the market unless there is money in it, and patents mean money.