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Comment by qwertox | Hacker News Reader

> saying that public disclosure of the information could cause competitive harm.

Remember what Musk said many years ago, something along the lines of that he wants to get the global EV movement started, and that for this to happen he'd gladly let anyone use his patents without retaliating?

Now he doesn't even want data which might save lives to get out into the public.

> June 12, 2014

> 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.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160722033909/https://www.tesla...

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That was always intended to be a reciprocal agreement, similar to the ones used in the software industry to defend against patent trolls. Tesla has a history of being very concerned about that type of behavior and its impact on their business.

I disagree with Tesla about this case at the moment, but the issues are very different.

> That was always intended to be... [something else entirely]

That's not what he said, anyone can invent excuses after the fact but that doesn't change the facts.

Musk simply pulled the "Don't be evil" trick, in so many words. Oops, sorry, not being evil helps the competition - which has also been slapped with 150% tariff, just in case.

It is exactly what they said at the time: "Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology."

They offered this statement along with a "good faith" patent pledge that required reciprocity.

Just like the annual "robotaxis this year", nothing has changed. lol

Even the patent thing was just a scam. You're free to use Tesla's patents as long as you promise to not sue them for violating any of your patents. It wasn't some altruistic thing

I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a "scam" but there were definitely reasons that other automakers didn't take them up on the offer. IMHO if someone like Ford or Toyota had taken them up on the offer they could be miles ahead of the competition today and not lagging behind the Chinese competitors. While there were strings attached there were also a lot of good ideas in those patents that would have boosted development and deployment timelines.

Worse than that [1].

> asserted, helped others assert or had a financial stake in any assertion of (i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla

You had to agree to let Tesla use any of your patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and all other forms of intellectual property. In return Tesla lets you use just their patents.

Yes, it is actually explicitly that blatantly unfair.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-resources#patent-pled...

My impression is that Tesla's are (were) status symbols people bought to flaunt their wealth [1].

Perhaps Musk's persona has kind of killed that though. Or at least he causes one to weigh the status aspect of the car against the politics they increasingly represent.

[1] The thing I've alsways disliked most about Tesla actually — not a car "for the people" — way too rarefied, elite.

Personally I think the strategy of starting with luxury cars and getting cheaper was a good one. The bigger profit margin of luxury cars could be fed back into R&D to make cheaper electric cars viable.

Of course, that's the ideal situation. Tesla in 2025 is very different from what they were talking about in 2014.

Yes, but Tesla has made several weird strategic errors IMO. The first one I remember reacting to where the falcon doors on the model X. They had issues which delayed the launch, and I remember thinking it was strange to put those kind of specialty doors on a SUV instead of focusing on delivering a functional car as quick and easy as possible. The next was of course the massive focus on self driving, and then the cyber truck. The company has had the same CEO during all of these decisions.

But what do I know, I assume their self driving AI hype is what drives their hugely inflated stock price, so it has made a lot of people very rich, which is a goal in itself. It's hard to point at the richest man in the world and say he made strategic errors.

> It's hard to point at the richest man in the world and say he made strategic errors.

It should be done carefully, but it should be done.

More than one company has been imploded by a leader who's been successful in the past and no longer has anyone to tell them "No."

Honestly, the best thing for Tesla would be to evict Musk as a leader, install someone who can focus on excellent delivery (like SpaceX), and create a separate R&D org for Musk to lead.

> install someone who can focus on excellent delivery (like SpaceX)

You know, I’ve thought about this too. What makes us think he hasn’t done this already? He could have an org structure where someone else is in charge of everything and still be this “veto guy”.

Personally, I don’t think he’s very excited about electric cars anymore. Tesla has mostly achieved what it set out to do. Electric cars are undeniably mainstream now. His next passion is possibly Optimus (which would also help with Tesla manufacturing and Mars settlement) and AI (same - would help with everything, make Optimus smarter). Maybe the only thing he might still be excited about, related to cars, is the self-driving taxi service. That could become a highly profitable business with a massive entry barrier for anyone that wants to compete with them. I believe in this thesis even more after the success of Starlink.

As for competition - Waymo had been too cautious and slow in its rollout to a fault. Much like Google’s AI policy before ChatGPT. Tesla can still beat them to a punch. Being a fully vertically integrated car company, they can churn out robo-taxis faster than anyone else.

> As for competition - Waymo had been too cautious and slow in its rollout to a fault. Much like Google’s AI policy before ChatGPT. Tesla can still beat them to a punch. Being a fully vertically integrated car company, they can churn out robo-taxis faster than anyone else.

Only if they're actually better, because Waymo is currently 5.5-6.5 years* ahead of where Tesla wants to be with this month's launch.

Also, BYD has their own one; don't rule them out as a viable competitor fo anything Tesla does: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/02/12/byd-gods-eye-more-advan...

* depending on how the safety drivers part goes

> Personally, I don’t think he’s very excited about electric cars anymore.

I agree with this. I'd also think that Tesla's board has got to be concerned about his generally erratic behavior. I know that CEOs and high-profile engineers can be pretty erratic ("DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!") but the drug use and constant tabloid exposure can't be worth whatever actual talent he's bringing to the table anymore...right?

> As for competition - Waymo had been too cautious and slow in its rollout to a fault.

Questionable.

> Tesla can still beat them to a punch.

Tesla has released nothing but a kind of nice driver assist.

The claim about robo-taxi are literally just claims. I believe it when I see it.

Her name is Gwynne Shotwell. Ironically, an amazing name for a rocket company executive.

> and create a separate R&D org for Musk to lead.

He already has Neuralink - he should put his efforts into that; perhaps as a test subject.

> Honestly, the best thing for Tesla would be to evict Musk as a leader, install someone who can focus on excellent delivery (like SpaceX), and create a separate R&D org for Musk to lead.

I suspect it's too late for that.

Musk, like Jobs before him, has a reality distortion bubble; this is how the Tesla P/E ratio is now… 189.49? Huh, it went up since I last checked.

Anyway, point is that number would be 30 even in an agressive growth scenario (which no longer seems plausible given their shinies are now being done better by others), and BMW's P/E is 7.41.

If Tesla stock price reduced to realistic (i.e. not Musk-boosted) levels, that's a factor reduction of 189.49/7.41 ~= 25.6, which reduces them to about 13 USD.

I've heard Musk has a lot of loans with Tesla stock as collateral, where margin calls will trigger sales if the price goes under about $240.

I have no idea what happens when you mix that combination of margin call, price shock, corporate debt, etc.

> I have no idea what happens when you mix that combination of margin call, price shock, corporate debt, etc.

Pump, pump, pump. BS announcements and promises. Whatever shit he has to spew to keep the stock up.

> the best thing for Tesla would be to evict Musk as a leader, install someone who can focus on excellent delivery

Great for Tesla as a company. Terrible for its shareholders. It's not an exaggeration to say that Musk's value add at Tesla--today--isn't building cars, but hyping the stock. (That wasn't always true. And I wouldn't say the same about SpaceX or Neuralink.)

Yeah, that's just how developing new technologies works. Home PCs, VCRs, CD players, cell phones: every one was hundreds or thousands of dollars at first, a plaything for wealthy people. Then as volume increased, prices came down to where most people could afford them and they became mass-market consumer items.

It doesn't always work out. Sometimes another technology or a competitor gets over that hump first, and the other (LaserDisc, Betamax) never gets the volume it takes to become an affordable commodity. And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with which one was better. But that's the path to selling a new tech to the masses: sell with a high price tag to the wealthy first.

It’s a shame they chose to seriously pursue the ridiculous cybertruck and vapourware rather than cheaper cars.

A pickup truck wasn't a bad idea but they should have made a normal looking one.

No, a regular pickup truck would make boatloads of money. Instead they made a rusty tin can that chops off fingers and falls apart.

Meanwhile their competitors are moving downmarket and releasing cheaper cars

> [1] The thing I've alsways disliked most about Tesla actually — not a car "for the people" — way too rarefied, elite.

This seems a little crazy. They started with the fastest one, but it was still much cheaper than equivalents, and model 3s and model ys have been selling like hot cakes. These are cars for the people.

People in the Bay Area perhaps.

In the UK you can get a wide range of used Tesla Model 3's for £10k-£20k that are only 2-4 years old.

This makes them pretty affordable for people on average income, especially given the lack of fuel expenses and road tax.

Looks like the average selling price of new cars in the UK is around 45K pounds, and there are several new Tesla cars that come below that.

"In California, the Tesla Model 3 Is Now Cheaper Than a Toyota Camry"

https://www.cnet.com/home/electric-vehicles/tesla-model-3-ch...

The average selling price for a new car in the U.S. was around $47K, both the Model 3 and some models of the Y come below that.

>> Article updated on June 10, 2023 at 5:00 AM PDT

>> Now that the Tesla Model 3 is eligible for the full $7,500 [US federal] electric vehicle tax credit

>> The Model 3 is eligible for the full $7,500 [California tax credit], bringing the total amount of federal and state tax credits to $15,000.

So the cheapest Model 3 (as of 2023) was $14,000 more expensive than the cheapest Camry, but offset by tax policy.

That's still a massive achievement.

Yes and no. BEVs are fundamentally simpler than ICE, so one would expect them to be cheaper... after manufacturing was scaled.

Tesla's biggest achievement on the pricing front was creating a viable scaling pathway.

Although it's debatable that BYD wouldn't have done it absent Tesla, because of Chinese market incentives.

Their biggest achievement is showing electric cars work and people will pay for them, and building a charging network that works really well, and neither with any useful prior art to rely on. Even if they go under tomorrow, every electric car is their legacy.

It's overattributing to imagine electric cars wouldn't have become popular absent Tesla.

Climate change would have still been discussed. The Paris Agreement would have still happened. China would have looked at its lack of long term oil reserves and pushed to shift away from non-essential consumption.

There are too many incentives to develop a mass market model, so if not Tesla then someone else.

The Model Y was the best-selling car in America for quite some time.

This is true but I’ve wondered how much of the dynamic is because Tesla offers a limited number of models.

As others have said, Tesla is a status symbol. Meaning people often want one just because it’s a Tesla. For someone who is set on a Tesla, they have five options. By contrast, someone set on a Toyota has 20 or so. Meaning, if I want a Tesla there’s a reasonably high probability my choice will be a Model Y because I don’t have many options. 66% of Teslas sold are Model Y while only 15% of Toyotas sold are Camrys.

>[1] The thing I've alsways disliked most about Tesla actually — not a car "for the people" — way too rarefied, elite.

Not generally a fan of Teslas but this just rings hollow. You can get Model 3's and Model Y's for under $40k which is much less than the average cost of a new car in the US. (~$49k in 2025). I would consider a car priced below the average well within the reach of "the people". Even a top specced Model S is no where near what actually rarefied elites could drive. A Base 911 Carerra is ~$130k, a 911 Turbo S is $230k. A New Ferrari 296 is over $400k and you can't buy one even if you wanted to.

Would this hold for median car prices?

Doesn't seem to be much data but considering the best selling cars last year were the Chevy Silverado, Ford F-Series Trucks, Toyota Rav4 and Tesla Model Y which start at ~$37k and $38k, $29k, and $37k respectively I'd say the conclusion is still sound.

From my understanding this couldn't be further from the truth.

Elon knew that EV's weren't sexy, so he decided to risk it and build a fast and ultimately expensive EV to begin with, to show people that they were worth buying and fast.

Only now through the model Y and the model 3 are we now seeing more consumer friendly models, which is what Elon always wanted from the start.

Here in Australia you can buy a model 3 for around the same price as our most sold car.

> not a car "for the people" — way too rarefied, elite.

Based on what? They are at or below the avg car price. They are literally definitionally avg.

In fact, the Model 3 was one the cheapest electric cars at the time.

And still today Model Y isn't all the expensive. And its the most sold car in the world. How can the most sold car in the world be considered elite?

The model Y was the best selling car in the world last year: https://www.statista.com/statistics/239229/most-sold-car-mod...

That's a lot of flaunters.

Is that a meaningful comparison if the biggest car manufacturers have their sales split across a dozen models for each Tesla model?

I think it is, a car manufacturer having multiple models doesn't take away from any particular model.

It absolutely does take away from other models. Most automotive brands have a 50-60% loyalty rate and all sorts of general brand appeal/features that span models. Someone who wants an HR-V but can't get one is massively more likely to buy a Civic or CR-V than the average person. If the Model 3 didn't exist, most of those buyers would get a Y because they want the software, the supercharging, the range, the brand name, etc.

Having a large lineup is good for customer satisfaction and for attracting customers on the fence, but it definitely hurts you on this one very specific, mostly meaningless metric.

I generally agree with you.

I do think regardless that even if you do have a smaller line up of cars, it is still an impressive metric that it is the most sold car in the world. That does mean that whilst Tesla has a smaller line up, that they hit the mark with meeting what people are looking for.

It is still a very in demand car for a reason and quite honestly I almost don't believe the metric.

Whilst I agree having a larger line up of cars would dilute your model sales, it is still impressive. Afterall, people wouldn't buy that model nor Tesla if they didn't like their cars.

I agree that if they did this by brand, Tesla would be much further down the list.

Can we expand the sources for that? I ask because I want to know if this source is the same company that had dealerships "selling" thousands of cars over a single weekend right before a tax incentive disappeared. It could very well be true, but there's also reasons it might not be.

Anecdotally, Model Ys are EVERYWHERE in Massachusetts. I would guesstimate 1 out of every 10 cars in this state is a Model Y.

Only because their competitors divide up their model lines.

The combined sales of Toyota's sedan models dwarfs Tesla's sales.

They've never been that. Their goal has always been to be the highest volume car manufacturer in the world, not some weird status symbol.

The Model Y being the best selling car in the world for 2 years in a row is a part of that.

There's nothing rarefied at all about it.

They are symbols. Far more carbon would be saved if people instead bought solar panels for thier houses and drove a smaller IC car rather than an EV tank. But you cannot flaunt solar panels like you can a fancy car.

Even better if people bought ebikes. It is galling that rich people get a $7500 credit to buy a $50-100k luxury bauble, while there are no incentives for ebikes.

My biggest reservation about e-bikes is that if you ride it regularly for your transportation, it WILL get stolen, it's only a matter of time. I have a hard time putting thousands of dollars into a bike knowing I'm likely to lose that investment.

Buy a lock. You should usually be spending 10-20% of the value of the vehicle on locks. I bought two locks (a chain lock and a D lock) totaling $150 for my $750 electric scooter that I just got. They came with a $4000 warranty for vehicles stolen while locked.

Around here, having a lock doesn't guarantee anything. Bike thieves think nothing of cutting the lock with a cordless angle grinder in broad daylight. Or they'll super glue the locks and come back at night. Nice bike, junk bike, it doesn't really matter. Even being in a locked building.

It guarantees you won't "lose that investment". Whether or not it is stolen is a different matter. Also there are angle grinder resistant locks. Check out videos of people testing them out and buy ones that they fail to cut, if your primary concern is not having it stolen (rather than losing your investment). Good ones seem to be around $300.

> Also there are angle grinder resistant locks.

Angle grinder wins against any lock. Maybe you're not the easiest bike to steal by having your very expensive lock, but in certain areas (NYC being a big one) that basically doesn't matter. And insurance claims from the bike locks still suck, since you have to deal a lost bike and an insurance claim every time that happens...

Are you speaking from experience? "NYC" is a very large and heterogenous area.

Yes. My time spent in Manhattan made it clear you basically never leave a bike locked up there. There’s a reason why Kryptonite will only warranty its most expensive lock (and none of the cheaper ones) in Manhattan. The other boroughs they warranty cheaper locks, but not in Manhattan.

An e-bike is one of the few places where DRM is actually attractive. I don't know the state of DRM on batteries, but I would feel significantly more confident parking an e-bike if I could remove the battery, and know that a replacement battery had to be paired with the frame/motor from a reputable dealer. Listing a bike as stolen would prevent this. I know that DRM can be cracked, but this would help a lot. note: I don't currently own an e-bike.

Note how infrequently iPhones are stolen since apple got serious about preventing it.

I have a theory that removing the battery and locking it well is enough. I'm testing that theory by storing my electric scooter with a quick release battery (Hiboy x300) with a D lock and a chain in the same bike room my roommate has their bike stolen out of (they only had a cable lock).

I have an old rusty e-bike that I use for transportation and cost £200. It doesn't seem to get stolen although I leave it on the street. I do remove the battery which would cost £200 new on it's own so the batteryless bike is not of much value to thieves. Especially as it has a wacky diy paint job too.

It works pretty well although there is some maintenance cost when bits pack up. It's quite easy to find similar on facebook market.

Buy a mid-drive, you're not immune, but thieves are drawn to hub-drive fat-tire ebikes because they are obviously ebikes. Mid-drives look much more like regular old bikes.

Residential rooftop solar panels are an inefficient use of money. They're very expensive and most people don't get battery storage. Going all-electric (vehicles and heat pumps) and getting your utility to install solar and wind is much more effective. Or switching to a utility that has green options, in places where such an choice exists.

And the choice isn't "smaller ICE car" and "EV tank". There are many EV hatchbacks, sedans, and compact cars available, arguably more models than ICE vehicles in North America. Most ICE drivers are the ones who buy tanks anyway.

EVs are huge compared to ICE cars anywhere but North America.

Not necessarily so in the UK. We have small EVs too, eg the Mini. The Renault 5 seems popular https://www.whatcar.com/renault/5/hatchback/review/n27187

Teslas are all tanks, the cybertruck being the king of road tanks.

The Ford F Series is the bestselling vehicle in the US (and has been for 4 decades). The F150 is taller and longer than a Cybertruck and only slightly less wide. The F250 is bigger in every aspect, including being up to three and a half feet longer, over a foot wider, and almost a foot taller.

Sedans are tanks?

Electrical vehicles are heavier so I think they are judging them all as 'tanks'. While ignoring that all vehicles, electrical or not have been trending heavier for their size over time anyway.

> While ignoring that all vehicles, electrical or not have been trending heavier for their size over time anyway

Yeah this is what bothers me about all the EV haters.

"But but what about the tire dust"

"But but what about the battery fires"

blah blah. It's like a pathological hatred of anything anyone else might do that you think maybe makes them "better" than you in some way.

The environmental aspect I rarely hear discussed is how much carbon would be saved by maintaining your existing vehicle instead. The existing car is already a sunk carbon cost and manufacturing is a huge emitter. It’s more nuanced of course, but it seems to me that it’s always been a status play falsely veiled as a virtuous environmental decision. We humans are great at rationalizing our emotional decisions.

For the rich people who can even consider a tesla, there are no old cars. The average tesla owner would not be seen in any car more than a decade old. They lease. Older/used cars are someone elses domain. This is a shame because cars today can easily last 25+ years. If manufactuers wanted to, they could even biuld them to last much longer. But the new car market is dominated by people who lease and dump cars, not people who keep them around once the shine is gone.

I've heard that argument long ago pushed by totally-not-oil-industry-marketers. If I recall correctly math worked out as 'pays for itself in three to five years'. If you are of the practice of getting a new car every two years it wouldn't help, but if you are doing so already just keeping your cars until they die/it becomes more expensive to repair would be the easy environmental improvement that would also save money.

Yep, at least using numbers from an LLM, the break even emission standpoint seems to be about 3-4 years.

For people who use leases to get a new car (average lease is 36 months) they’d be doing more harm to the environment, but for people who hold onto their cars longer, they’d be reducing CO2e.

Those are just rough generalizations, and of course it depends on driving distance, grid emissions, etc. For example, if you get your electricity primarily from coal, the break even is closer to 12 years. But as others have said, the EV market tends towards the type of people who don’t hold on to cars very long.

>expensive to repair would be the easy environmental improvement that would also save money.

This line of thinking seems to miss the financial reality of the vast majority of Americans. Most people aren’t choosing between an $1800 repair vs a $50k new EV for environmental reasons, it’s because they can only afford one of those options.

Its an optimization problem, the embodied energy of the new car vs how much you save driving it, as it's more fuel efficent than the old one. But in most cases you would need to drive the new car for decades before you break even.

It’s much less than decades. Unless you only drive once a week to the corner store.

It really depends on the grid emissions. If you’re charging your EV in Vermont (mostly hydro grid) vs West Virginia (mostly coal fuel), it can be orders of magnitude different.

I think your impression is mostly speaking about you.

While this article seems to be trying to imply Musk made this decision himselves it seems like the request actually came from the legal team at Telsa. Obviously Musk is still the CEO though and should overrule the decision for the reason you note, but should probably just note that this isn't necessarily a decision coming directly from Musk. Almost any company is likely to do the same thing given their incentives. The reason Musk's stance on patents was rare was because it's arguably a pretty bad business decision.

The whole problem with EV transitioning is that the charging requires you to build out infrastructure. By making their standards open they made the infrastructure investment shared. This was a high confidence basis for build-out. Now third parties like ABB produce chargers and sell them to third parties like gas stations. It's a perfectly rational business decision coming from a strategic position of "large greenfield investment and ongoing maintenance required". Obviously things evolve, but Tesla is certainly not in a worse position for the charging infrastructure (the main enabler of their products) due to the open patents decision at present.

Question to anyone, how does autonomy align with Tesla's goal to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport? How are autonomous vehicles more "sustainable"?

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