> Mr. Musk has criticized the new law, and said that federal funding for electric-vehicle charging is unnecessary.
and yet this law is going to incentivize you to actually open up your chargers so that I can charge my Hyundai there. Works for me
and yet this law is going to incentivize you to actually open up your chargers so that I can charge my Hyundai there. Works for me
It’s no surprise that he is resistant.
It needs to happen, though. Like you I’m glad and incentives are being provided.
For many years now Tesla offered other car makers to use Tesla's superchargers as long as they chip in some of the cost of building it.
It was a fair offer that no car maker took.
The Fed offers a fair deal: free money under the condition of chargers being open to all.
Tesla was always willing to open supercharging to others under fair terms so it's incorrect to label Musk as "resistant" to this. If he was "resistant", Tesla wouldn't take the deal.
Because the patent pledge was a bit of a joke. It amounted to "You can use Tesla's patents, as long as you agree not to assert any patent or other IP against any company for making EVs or related equipment."
So you don't just have to let Tesla use your patents in exchange for you using theirs, you have to give them away to every competitor, whether or not those competitors are sharing their own patents. It's not surprising that no one has taken them up on this.
— Siri's response when I asked her "Tell me a joke" last night.
I get why car makers don't want to do charging - it takes capital, it takes away focus and historically it's not what they do.
But customers do not car what's easy of convenient for the business.
Tesla saw the chicken and egg problem and solved. It was risky (especially for a company that, at the time, was loosing money) and costly but they saw the obvious truth: without wide spread, convenient network of chargers people will not buy EV cars.
They also publicly declared that if any other car makers wants access, all they have to do is to chip in some of the cost.
That was more than fair and consistent with their goal of accelerating transition to sustainable energy. They were not hoarding the superchargers, just looking for a fair deal.
No car maker took them up on the offer, despite that being the right thing to do for their customers and to grow EV market overall.
I don't see why competitors should now benefit from the hard work and billions of dollars that Tesla invested into their supercharger network.
The feds are giving companies free money so it's fair that they require open access and it's the deal Tesla always thought would be fair, which is why they took it.
No, Tesla continues their patent licensing deal. If you agree to never sue Tesla or any other company which uses Tesla's IP for infringing on your IP, they'll agree to never sue you for using their IP.
So say GM wants to use the Tesla connector on the Bolt. They have to agree to let Tesla use all of their IP. But not only that, they have to also agree to not sue any other company that also uses Tesla's IP if they infringe on GM's IP.
So say Ford also uses the Tesla connector, and then copies many of GM's designs. GM cannot enforce any of their IP against Ford without being in violation of Tesla's licensing deal, which opens them up to getting sued by Tesla for having the Tesla connector.
This isn't just the car makers though, this is anyone wanting to use Tesla's IP. So say Delta (a manufacturer of EV charging equipment) wants to offer Tesla connectors on their DC fast chargers. They have to follow the same thing, and allow Tesla to then copy any of their IP. But not just Tesla, they have to let Sema also copy any of their IP if Sema also starts to use Tesla connectors.
Tesla's licensing deal was a Trojan horse trying to nullify intellectual property rights in the automotive industry, and pretty much none of the bigger players wanted to give up all their IP.
Both can simultaneously be true. The carmakers have sat on their hands, and Tesla is arguably anti-competitive with it's charging network.
What the government is doing is anti-competitive, not Tesla.
The CCS standardization has been ongoing for over a decade. Even so: if Tesla had fully opened NACS even as late as five years ago there's some chance it could have become the dominant standard in North America. Tesla waiting until late 2022 to submit NACS as a standard isn't consistent with being "wrecked by competitors": it's more like a harmful troll. Now NACS is either going to be another dead legacy standard or (worse) North America will end up with two incompatible zombie standards for a long time, and many people (including Tesla owners like myself) will have to use annoying and unsafe adapters.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...
While they published some schematics on their website for the connector, there's still patents and other proprietary bits to actually communicate and get the charging infrastructure to work. Without that associated IP, the schematics are effectively useless.
This isn't a huge deal for a company like Aptera, they're probably going to use a good bit of Tesla's IP in other situations for their EV and don't have large teams constantly cranking out IP. But companies like Ford, VW, Stallantis, etc., they've got like a combined billion dollars worth of IP they'd be turning over to all their competitors. A big win for Tesla and smaller companies like Aptera, but not necessarily a big win for the legacy companies to essentially write down all that IP value.
If they had just asked for normal kind of licensing, I imagine there probably could have been more support for the connector years ago. But they put it behind the patent pledge to try and eliminate intellectual property rights in the automotive industry assuming it would be a juicy enough carrot for everyone to chase. Turns out, it wasn't.
He is free to repay all the government subsidies and funding he has received if they are unwanted.