Tesla just gave away all its patents

[mooncliff]

Here come the electric cars.

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/tesla-j...o-competitors/

Battery capacity will double or triple in the next few years. There will be more and more electric, self-driving, share cars. Even a few of them will regularise traffic flow at the speed limit. No more speeding tickets, accident rate drops, insurance rates drop.

[LazyBoy]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced today that his company will not “initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.” In plain English, that means that if other car companies want to produce electric cars, they can use Tesla’s technology to do it, and, in turn, advance Musk’s sustainability vision.

Well, you couldn't risk your business on a promise in an online magazine. If he's serious he'll have to what? Give them to a non-profit?

[mooncliff]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

This is a common thing done with patents. You simply contact their patent department and get specific documents executed. No one uses a magazine.
He could also stop paying annuities on the patents and they would all expire in a year.

[DSpencer]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

Here come the electric cars.

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/tesla-j...o-competitors/

Battery capacity will double or triple in the next few years. There will be more and more electric, self-driving, share cars. Even a few of them will regularise traffic flow at the speed limit. No more speeding tickets, accident rate drops, insurance rates drop.

Whoa, easy on the technotopia kool-aid! What makes you think battery capacity will double or triple in a few years? What makes you think a few cars driving the speed limit will "regularise traffic flow"?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

Battery capacity will double or triple in the next few years.

I recall EJs post about the differences between physics and chemistry.

And how Moore's Law doesn't exist in chemistry(battery storage).

There was also recent discussion(I think around Zero Motorcycles) about recent significant increases in battery storage capacity, but a highly likely future of diminishing returns in terms of battery storage capacity improvements.

[mooncliff]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

Improved batteries are already in the pipe. They google cars are already running in California, obey the speed limit, and force everyone to drive the speed limit. When even 1% of cars are like this, that will completely change traffic. When car navigation systems were adopted in Japan 20 years ago, traffic congestion immediately dropped 20%. This is not kool-aid.

[GRG55]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

Improved batteries are already in the pipe. They google cars are already running in California, obey the speed limit, and force everyone to drive the speed limit. When even 1% of cars are like this, that will completely change traffic. When car navigation systems were adopted in Japan 20 years ago, traffic congestion immediately dropped 20%. This is not kool-aid.

The Americans are NOT at all like the Japanese.

The last time anyone tried to get them to "drive the speed limit" was when their government introduced the double-nickel speed limit...sometimes described as "the dumbest law since Prohibition"...and no more successful in its intended outcome.

In many parts of Texas one is hard pressed to find a speed limit sign without bullet holes. In California I fully expect pilotless Google cars to suffer the same fate...

[mooncliff]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

The Americans are NOT at all like the Japanese.

The last time anyone tried to get them to "drive the speed limit" was when their government introduced the double-nickel speed limit...sometimes described as "the dumbest law since Prohibition"...and no more successful in its intended outcome.

In many parts of Texas one is hard pressed to find a speed limit sign without bullet holes. In California I fully expect pilotless Google cars to suffer the same fate...

The driverless cars are constantly recording everything that is going on around them, including if they are shot at.
What the hell kind of world do you live in? You think that behavior is normal?

[jmdpet]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

One thing I didn't realize about the Google Car is that it doesn't sense its environment entirely on-the-fly. The tests that have been done around Google HQ are with a car that has been pre-loaded with a VERY detailed map of the (static elements in the) world it is going to encounter. Certainly not an insurmountable problem to solve for mainstream adoption but "it is work" as guy in charge of the driverless program says.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...s-work/370871/

But the "map" goes beyond what any of us know as a map. "Really, [our maps] are any geographic information that we can tell the car in advance to make its job easier," explained Andrew Chatham, the Google self-driving car team's mapping lead.

"We tell it how high the traffic signals are off the ground, the exact position of the curbs, so the car knows where not to drive," he said. "We'd also include information that you can't even see like implied speed limits."

Google has created a virtual world out of the streets their engineers have driven. They pre-load the data for the route into the car's memory before it sets off, so that as it drives, the software knows what to expect.

"Rather than having to figure out what the world looks like and what it means from scratch every time we turn on the software, we tell it what the world is expected to look like when it is empty," Chatham continued. "And then the job of the software is to figure out how the world is different from that expectation. This makes the problem a lot simpler."

[lektrode]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

One thing I didn't realize about the Google Car is that it doesn't sense its environment entirely on-the-fly. The tests that have been done around Google HQ are with a car that has been pre-loaded with a VERY detailed map of the (static elements in the) world it is going to encounter......

and THEN theres the not quite static 'elements'...
that likely wouldnt appreciate all this tech stuff being in their way....
;)

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

But the "map" goes beyond what any of us know as a map. "Really, [our maps] are any geographic information that we can tell the car in advance to make its job easier," explained Andrew Chatham, the Google self-driving car team's mapping lead.

I have often wondered how much work that "mapping" would entail.

As a poster on a local thread here said yesterday,

"It's a shame that most businesses shown on google maps are about 5KM off the mark."

Although Google has done much more extensive mapping in Chiang Mai than around towns and cities I visit in the US (at least in terms of "street views"), I have noticed reliability decline in the last two years. More than a few times when someone has been trying to give me directions to a place, they've said, "Don't use Google Maps. They're way off."

[photon555]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

and THEN theres the not quite static 'elements'...
that likely wouldnt appreciate all this tech stuff being in their way....
;)

I'm pretty sure I don't want to see the offspring of that union.

[GRG55]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

The driverless cars are constantly recording everything that is going on around them, including if they are shot at.
What the hell kind of world do you live in? You think that behavior is normal?

My point was that what passes for "normal" behaviour in Japan, isn't "normal" in much of the USA (or Canada). The idea of a society that places high value on conformity is an anathema among large numbers of the citizens of this continent...

[lektrode]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

My point was that what passes for "normal" behaviour in Japan, isn't "normal" in much of the USA (or Canada). The idea of a society that places high value on conformity is an anathema among large numbers of the citizens of this continent...

exactly.
otherwise we'd all be 'on the bus'
the herd instinct aside tho...

[lektrode]

Re: Tesla just gave away all its patents

I'm pretty sure I don't want to see the offspring of that union.

nyuk nyuk nyuk...
ayuh - altho that wasnt quite the image i was after, was in a rush and couldnt find anything better
but methinks this is more like what GRG was alluding to earlier: