I wonder how concerned they are about leaking proprietary technology from Chinese employees. Apple constantly struggles with this since the employees are paid little, but the incentive to leak and "share" information is very lucrative.
> China had previously circulated a proposal that would allow electric-car makers into the country without local partners if they were to locate in the so-called free-trade zones. The government set up the country’s first such zone in Shanghai in 2013, and has since approved 10 more around the country.
> Until now, foreign auto makers have built cars in China through joint ventures with local manufacturers. That allows them to avoid the 25% tariff on autos, but also forces them to split profits, and potentially share technology, with the local partner—something that has tripped up Tesla’s previous efforts to expand there.
My reading of this is, Tesla is okay with the tariff sanctions but doesn't want to share tech or profits with local partners. While that doesn't completely remove the potential IP problem, it does mitigate to a certain degree.
Good luck w/that.
One can only assume tesla expects some level of compromised proprietary secrets. Calculated risk on some level. Maye they see this as speeding up the inevitable.
Apparently they figure this risk is outweighed by the benefit of employing a manufacturing powerhouse which surpasses their US productions.
https://www.wired.com/2014/06/tesla-just-gave-all-its-patent...
> Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced today that his company will not "initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology."
The question really is - what defines "good faith" for Musk and Tesla.
Additionally, I am no patent expert but it will be interesting to see licensing terms, if any. Specially after what happened with React and Facebook.
That post suggests no company legal team would allow it. The article thinks Apple might use it, as an example of a user.
I am no expert, so I'll defer to others.
I'd imagine Musk would be wary of this and put the proper controls in place.
Here Tesla is willing to pay '25 percent tariffs' to avoid that, but I highly doubt it will do them any good when it comes to Cherry Model Q/Geely Electric showing up in 12-18 months build using parts interchangeable with Model 3.
Chinese manufacturers are just more blatant in their copying of western designs. Western manufacturers tend to be way subtle about taking and reworking design cues. Though undeniably everyone will assimilate any popular design into their own design language.
Powerful electric motors and big battery == fast and long distance.
All software will be developed in-house and pre-loaded into dash modules.
I wonder what Trump has to say about this move by Elon.
Intel also has an Asian fab in Singapore, I think.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_...
At 65nm, they aren't fabbing CPU there, probably just supporting chips.
Chengdu doesn't have a fab and is hardly in the middle of nowhere. Normal logistic costs.
Dalian is in a highly industrialized liaoning province, again highly populated and lots of resources. Again, normal logistic costs.
If they put it in the middle of gansu or qinghai or maybe Northern Yunnan or southern Sichuan (pretty much the Tibetan plateau), that would be the middle of nowhere.