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Comment by amluto | Hacker News Reader

> In the long term however competition between these different standards will cause consolidation and overall technology improvement.

If you think that’s a superior solution, then the regulation should actually support it: require that all EV charging connectors have a free published specification, disallow patents on them, and require that interoperability be permitted without cost or other penalty. (e.g. anyone should be able to implement both ends of the Tesla supercharging protocol such that Tesla’s chargers would charge a competing car at the same prices that they charge Tesla’s; similarly, a competing charger should be able to charge a Tesla.)

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I'm not opposed to this and personally think it's all up for discussion/debate and it should be discussed and debated. I'm excited to see what develops in this space.

One nitpick would be:

> e.g. anyone should be able to implement both ends of the Tesla supercharging protocol such that Tesla’s chargers would charge a competing car at the same prices that they charge Tesla’s; similarly, a competing chargers should be able to charge a Tesla.

I think this sounds good, but one of the details here is ensuring that other manufacturers are able to actually build the products correctly so a supercharger doesn't light a car on fire or something due to faulty equipment. Who is at fault? How is it prevented? What are the legal agreements? Etc.

On the pricing side though I'd have to strongly disagree. Tesla (or whoever) builds the infrastructure so they should be able to charge what they want. It's about the plug and interoperability of that standard, not infringing on the business model which I think goes too far. If they charge too much money, people won't use them and competitors will continue to emerge (I see new charging stations in Meijer parking lots being put next to Tesla infrastructure). There's no reason in my view to mandate pricing here and I think it would set back EV adoption to do so.

I was set to be all libertarian about this, but your suggestion is probably more level headed.

There should be some common ground. Regulations that encourage innovation (perhaps even with timed financial incentives) while also ensuring that the best ideas are eventually freely adoptable across the board.

Seems like, as with most issues, people take one extreme or the other, when a common sense middle ground could be found with proper planning and forethought.

> I was set to be all libertarian about this…

Disallowing patents is the libertarian solution, though it would be up to the customers to demand published specifications and official support for interoperability.

The original intention of patent system was to encourage open publication of inventions. It even still works that way for some verticals. The issue is that it also produced a system that it is profitable to game and thus there are patent attorneys who get by by writing the patent in as vague terms as is possible to pass by patent reviewers, and in these kind of adversarial situations it is quite obvious that the private sector will win over the government bureaucrats.

> The original intention of patent system was to encourage open publication of inventions.

That is how it was sold to the public. Unfortunately the system was never designed with the proper structure and incentives to ensure that patents were only granted when doing so actually resulted in the publication of accurate details about useful inventions which would not have become known to the public anyway well before the patent period expired.

In practice, if you think you can keep something a trade secret for more than 20 years without it being independently reinvented you'll do that and not file for a patent. Patents are thus useful only in those cases where a patent is expected to be worse for the public than a trade secret, as they inhibit independent reinvention and reverse engineering for the duration of the patent.

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