good news groin!
Electric car company Tesla can now once again sell cars direct to consumers in New Jersey (via Engadget), after a ban earlier this year based on an old (and mostly irrelevant in this case) law enabled Governor Chris Christie to bow to pressure from local auto dealers to get sales of Elon Musk’s magical future cars put on hold.
A new bill passed by the New Jersey Assembly Consumer Affairs Committee unanimously allows Tesla to start selling cars through its two existing dealers in New Jersey, and gives them permission to open up to two more. The bill applies to all zero-emission vehicle makers, giving them the right to open up to four showrooms in New Jersey.
New Jersey had become the third state to ban the direct-sales model, following Arizona and Texas. The ban prompted Tesla to respond with an angry blog post accusing Christie of expediting the process and ignoring a previous promise to settle the matter through due process in the legislature. Tesla CEO Elon Musk later took to his blog to officially oppose the ban and discuss the company’s possible legal options in having the ban overturned.
The bill is good news, but that four-dealership limit might be the next part up for scrutiny or opposition, especially if Tesla or other zero emission vehicles become more affordable and/or more popular with consumers than they are now.
http://techcrunch.co.....ps=gravity
agreed, this story just came out as well
Tesla boss Elon Musk has given the strongest hint yet that the firm is considering "freeing" its patents to help speed up electric car development.
When asked by the BBC's Theo Leggett if he was considering giving technology away, Mr Musk said "you're on the right track".
Mr Musk said he hoped to break down technological barriers to help speed up electric car adoption.
The firm will deliver the first five of its Model S cars to the UK on Saturday.
Mr Musk told the BBC: "We don't want to cut a path through the jungle and then lay a bunch of landmines behind us."
looks like it is done, awesome
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. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.
When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.
At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales.
At best, the large automakers are producing electric cars with limited range in limited volume. Some produce no zero emission cars at all.
Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.
We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform.
Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.
19 Feb ’12
KVR said
agreed, if others start utilizing their tech, it should work out well for tesla as the supplier of the batteries, I saw a report yesterday where BMW is talking with tesla over it, to rich for my blood, but it's a step
But the reality is that if Tesla opened up their patents, then the chinese will just start making the batteries and selling them for $5. If the stuff actually catches on, there will probably be very little benefit to them in the long run.
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