Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the patents for his company’s electric vehicle technology “belong to you” and in an attempt to accelerate the adoption of zero-emission vehicles “Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.”
In a blog post, Musk says Tesla’s original concern was that the big car companies would copy the technology and then use their size to push Tesla out of the market.
“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,” Musk writes. “At best, the large automakers are producing electric cars with limited range in limited volume. Some produce no zero emission cars at all.”
Musk says Tesla can’t produce enough EVs to “address the carbon crisis,” adding: “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.”
The 2013 Tesla S P85 tops the Automobile Association of America’s 2014 Green Guide, published earlier this month.
