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# Tesla Releases Patents To Pave Road For Electric Vehicles

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/zhMLtCuP.m3u8" -->
## Video: Tesla Releases Patents To Pave Road For Electric Vehicles

[Watch (HLS stream): Tesla Releases Patents To Pave Road For Electric Vehicles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/zhMLtCuP.m3u8) (2:26)

![Tesla Releases Patents To Pave Road For Electric Vehicles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/zhMLtCuP/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2014-06-13. It sounds like the kind of move that would be just awful for business — opening all your patents, for free, to your competitors. But Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk apparently thinks it might just be crazy enough to work._


---

Jul 27, 2023 4:49 PM UTC

---

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[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

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### Elon Musk Calls Apple A 'Tesla Graveyard'

[Watch: Elon Musk Introduce the New Tesla](/video/4fmG3mnE/)

### Watch: Elon Musk Introduce the New Tesla

[Tesla CEO Elon Musk Creating A Buzz Before Big Reveal](/video/uZMH8kLu/)

### Tesla CEO Elon Musk Creating A Buzz Before Big Reveal

---


## Transcript

It sounds like the kind of move that would be just awful for business. Opening all your patents for free to your competitors. But Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk apparently thinks it might just be crazy enough to work. In a blog post titled, All our Patent Are Belong To You on Thursday, Musk wrote, 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. So essentially, he told anyone looking to copy, replicate or downright rip off Tesla's technology to, well, go for it.

Musk says scrapping the patents is in the spirit of the open- source movement and good for the advancement of electric vehicle technology. But is it good for Tesla's bottom line? New Yorker Editor, Nicholas Thompson tells CBS, it could be. Tesla, in order to survive, in order to succeed, needs people to wanna buy its cars and it needs to be great infrastructure for electric cars. He opens up his patents. Other people make electric cars. Suddenly they're are more charging stations. Suddenly there's more standardization. Similarly a writer for Slate notes, Musk isn't naive and Tesla isn't a charity.

Adding the move might just be brilliant. Brilliant or not, if infrastructure takes off, it might also change the image of electric cars from a niche market to more mainstream. Something Wired says needs to happen for the company to be successful, they need the public to stop thinking of them as electric cars and to start thinking of them simply as cars. The company might already have one partner to share the burden of building that infrastructure. As Businessweek reports, Musk met with BMW this week to talk sharing the cost of building charging stations, which to Musk, is likely a step in the right direction.

He notes in the blog post, though the patents were initially put into place to stop bigger companies from stealing their technology, their event was larger companies invested very little in electric cars. We couldn't have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is, electric car programs, at the major manufacturers are small to non- existent, constituting an average of far less than 1 % of their total vehicle sales. A move like this is extremely uncommon in the automotive world, but not unheard of. Volvo opened up the patent for it's three point seat belt to other automakers. Of course, that was more than 50 years ago.

Tesla currently has about 100 recharging stations around the country. It's model S reportedly has a more than 250 mile range on a single charge. Thanks for watching, I'm Lori Boris.

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