Elon Musk Gives Tesla’s Patents to Open Source Movement

In an exciting development for electric cars, Elon Musk, the C.E.O. of Tesla Motors, has announced on the company’s blog that he’s making all of Telsa’s patents public in the spirit of innovation. 

Musk writes:     

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. 

His other motivation is climate change:     

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. 

For more, head to his announcement.  Last fall, Musk visited our studio and did an interview series for our exclusive workshop Big Think Edge. To learn from his insights on how to disrupt an industry sign up for a free 14-day trial to Edge. 

Musk is betting on the open source movement to innovate electric vehicles, and he’s also a big believer in solar energy. Here’s his interview with Big Think on why solar energy is essential to the future of electric vehicles.