Call it generosity or what, but Tesla may be uncovering soon its treasure trove of engineering secrets to other car manufacturing companies by freeing up its patents to help improve the electric car industry and to boost the drive for adoption of electric cars.
Tesla CEO and Chairman Elon Musk hinted this during the annual shareholder meeting of Tesla on June 3 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
"We're trying to figure out how to accelerate the advent of electric cars and to the degree that we create technological barriers for them, it's not going to happen," says Musk. "We don't want to cut a path through the jungle and then lay a bunch of landmines behind us."
He discloses the company was toying with the idea of “doing something fairly significant on this front which would be kind of controversial with respect to Tesla's patents." He similarly confirms to BBC that the company was pondering on giving away Tesla’s production secrets.
“…you’re on the right track,” Musk replies to BBC’s inquiry on the talked-about giveaway.
Tesla’s electric sports cars called Model S finally came in the United Kingdom on Saturday. Research says Model S is approximately about £70,000 or $90,000 and has a mileage of 300 miles or 480 kilometers on a single charge.
In 2013, Tesla was able to sell 22,500 vehicles. It is expecting to sell around 35,000 this year.
Tesla’s electric cars, however, came under fire — literally and figuratively — late last year following a highway incident wherein one Model S hit the road at great speed and smacked a big metal object. The incident caused a considerable damage to the sports vehicle and brought fire to the front battery module. The owner was unharmed and the fire didn’t enter the passenger’s area. The fire was contained by the fire department.
“For consumers concerned about fire risk, there should be absolutely zero doubt that it is safer to power a car with a battery than a large tank of highly flammable liquid,” Musk reassures the public in a blog post.
Regardless of the incident last year, research also says Tesla’s share price rose by over 112 percent in 2013.
Tesla has been consistent in its goal to make electric cars much better than petrol cars. Unfortunately, adoption in the market for such car engineering remains slow, other reports say. This is speculated to be the reason why Tesla is thinking of sharing its technology in electric car production to other manufacturers.
