Elon Musk, Tesla Motors CEO, took a major step towards expanding worldwide electric car usage by allowing other manufacturers to use Tesla technology. From Tesla: “We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform.”
Further: “At best, the large automakers are producing electric cars with limited range in limited volume. Some produce no zero emission cars at all.” Tesla had previously committed to making their Supercharger charging station technology and usage available to other manufacturers and their customers.
Clearly Musk believes the transition to sustainable clean energy vehicles is not progressing quickly enough. “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.”
Although Musk feels this will make his company stronger it is refreshing to see such a bold move by Tesla when most companies are usually so proprietary. Musk looks at this as a more open source approach to advance the technology of electric vehicles. The next step would be for major manufacturers to take up this unique opportunity to build longer range faster charging electric vehicles.
Resource: Tesla Motors blog – complete article