Elon Musk just open-sourced all of Tesla's patents.
Ballsy move. I wonder if there are motives other than altruism.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
I heard that he was doing something like this. Might be a smart business move too - open source can bring dividends particularly where you are trying to break a market. Definitely ballsy though - good on them.
Mercedes has done similar with a lot of its safety patents over the years. I'd be curious to know the details of the license, It could serve to make Tesla an authority in the electric vehicle industry. For instance, if any vehicle uses a Tesla patent it may need to disclose to the end user some that it is a derivative work -- that's how the GPL works. So if Ford or Toyota uses a patent from Tesla it may have to in effect promote the Tesla brand.
Someone on Reddit commented that Tesla's battery technology has a big first-mover advantage. They might have better economies of scale, and hope to sell a lot of batteries to competitors.
Musk plays the chess game 5 or 6 moves out, and I wouldn't bet against him.
Quote from: Travoli on June 12, 2014, 05:50:42 PM
I wonder if there are motives other than altruism.
First off, I think it's awesome and when I heard this on the radio in the car I decided to officially consider Musk a hero. Whether it's altruism or not, I think it's visionary or at least, as you said, ballsy. In the era of patent trolls, it's just so cool to see someone do this.
To answer your question, though, I think there are a couple of motives that might not be pure altruism.
1. Right now one of the big obstacles to adoption of electric cars is charging infrastructure. I think this is a case where "competition" is going to be good for Tesla. If Tesla can keep their shit together and create "wow" electric cars, then there's huge advantage to them to getting Chevy to create electric cars for the masses that create a charging infrastructure. How many BMWs would they sell if there were no Ford Fusions to support the petroleum distribution infrastructure?
2. He claims he doesn't want to deal with the lawsuits.
3. If it's a GPL-style license (I haven't looked into it), it means that by definition any innovation that is based on these patents is also open source, so that means Tesla has effectively outsourced R&D and testing for their patents.
I haven't looked into it, but those are three things that pop to mind right away.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/15/tesla-s-radical-patent-move-is-a-plot-to-take-over-the-road.html
"Tesla's Radical Patent Move is a Plot to Take Over the Road"
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And so Tesla is a niche product; it makes about 35,000 vehicles per year. And as a result, it's more expensive and less profitable than Musk would like to be. In manufacturing, whether you are making cars or candy, scale and volume drive down cost. The more production rises, the better deal a manufacturer gets on raw materials and components. McDonald's pays far less per pound of potato than a mom-and-pop diner. The higher the volume at a factory, the more productive it is, which lowers costs. The more Model T's Henry Ford pushed through his ever-more efficient River Rouge plant in the 1920s, the more the price of a Model T came down.
Right now, none of these dynamics is taking place in the electric vehicle space. Teslas are expensive in large part because the batteries that power them—produced in small lots by a single supplier—are very expensive. Electric charging stations are nowhere near as ubiquitous as gas stations, which gives rise to range anxiety. Charging the vehicle at home requires the purchase and installation of expensive equipment.
Another opinion:
With electricity costs destined to go up with the War on Coal, natural gas vehicles may be the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_vehicle
Natural gas is a stopgap at best. Already natural gas yields are turning out not to be as rosy as predicted a few years ago. It's the quickest way to get carbon output down, because it's a relatively easy conversion (compared to solar or wind or tidal electricity anyway), but sooner or later (and it's looking sooner and sooner) we'll need replacements for carbon-based fuels or we're quite simply screwed.
What about fuel cells, specifically hydrogen fuel cells? They always seem to be right around the corner but never are.
It seems to be a question of who is going to jump first. The energy distribution companies won't invest in a hydrogen refueling stations until there is a market for it, and the car manufacturers won't build the fuel cell cars in mass until their is demand, but without the refueling stations there won't be the demand.
I guess it won't happen until a large government mandates it.
One advantage electric cars have is that they can be charged up over night without having to rely on third-parties for supporting technology.
I understand the problem with hydrogen was that it is costly to compress. To make it liquid, it also needs freezing and something like 1/3 of the energy of the hydrogen is needed to make it liquid.
People are working on it:
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/energy-and-environment/news/british-firm-boosts-hydrogen-compression-and-storage/1011435.article
The other option is to use a catalyst. Again from a flawed memory, Boron is a good catalyst for holding hydrogen, and you can get as much hydrogen in a powder catalyst as you can in liquid nitrogen. (Or something like that.) The problem with that is that the Boron gets contaminated, and cleaning it is costly.
here is a bit on it:
http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/materials-science/alternative-energy-materials/boron-hydrogen-storage.html
now if anyone has cracked that recently, then that would be great, as hydrogen is so easy to make. All our energy storage problems would be over. solar, wind anything can be turned into hydrogen for later use in vehicles (and powering terminators)
Energy is NOT Cheep
QuoteEnergy is NOT Cheep
I think it is :) At the moment anyway.
Try this one.....Fill your tank with a gallon of fuel. Drive it till it runs out. Push it home.
bloody hard work pushing it back, might even need levers to get it up some of those hills, and how much does it cost to get it there?
Less than £6 in the UK. Cheaper than a packet of fags or a couple of beers.
Price of Electricity Hit Record for May
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/price-electricity-hit-record-may
imho
Telsa may not be the answer to transport in the future.
Quote from: Mackin USA on June 18, 2014, 05:18:13 PM
imho
Telsa may not be the answer to transport in the future.
Sure, first movers are not necessarily successful and it may be that the first mover moves too soon, before the market/culture/technology/infrastructure is ready.
It always drives me nuts when I see journalists talk about "energy from fuel cells" or compare electricity to petroleum. I understand Mackin's point - as consumers electricity and petroleum are both end products. But from an energy policy standpoint, electricity is really a means of transporting energy, not a source of energy.
There is no doubt that if we move toward using electricity for more things, that stresses the infrastructure and drives prices up. But the question is what are our potential sources for energy and how are they likely to be transported and distributed.
1. Fossil fuels. We know one thing - there's a limited supply and we aren't making any more.
- Price future: this has to get very expensive as we run out unless it's actually obsoleted by then.
- Distributions forms: liquid, gas and electricity
- Distribution means: through tankers, pipelines and electrical lines.
2. Nuclear. Fission has the same fundamental problem as fossil fuel, plus the waste disposal problem. Fusion, as they say, is the energy of the future and always will be. When I was in high school in the 1970s I wrote a paper about how fusion was 5-10 years from achieving breakeven. It's been 5-10 years from breakeven ever since. I have no faith we will see cheap, usable fusion before things get nasty with fossil fuel.
- Price future: unclear. Possibly cheap if we can create cheap fusion reactors, otherwise fairly expensive.
- Distributions forms: electricity
- Distribution means: electrical lines.
3. Biofuels. Absolute non-starter with current technology. Biofuels are horribly inefficient and use the same part of the plant that people eat (the sugars and oils essentially). In the 1990s the DOE did a study and found out that the inputs for ethanol were greater than the outputs. The processes have improved since and we're on the positive side, but guess what? Many of the major corn-producing regions are drawing their aquifers dry (I just read an article saying that if farmers paid the same price for their water as Atlanta residents pay for tap water, a cheeseburger would be $23 - that, it should be noted, includes water the farmers get naturally in the form of rain, so not the most useful number, but in general agricultural water is ridiculously cheap and highly subsidized, which affects our perception of food cost and availability).
We may see a huge retraction in arable land in the coming century even without climate change, which will accelerate the process. Even putting that aside, the EU did a study to find out what it would take to meet 20% of their energy needs with biofuel and it was something like half of all the arable land.
The only hope here is that we learn how to convert non-edible, woody plant parts into biofuel (so corn stalks, cheatgrass and willow branches, but despite much hype under the Bush admin, I haven't heard much about this since - it might be like fusion: it's 10-20 years away and always will be). If we could crack this problem, this would be a huge source of fuel, but we don't seem to know how to do it yet.
- Price future: given the future of water and population, I'm going to say the trend here will be up, possibly sharply unless we solve the biochem needed to break down woody materials. That could be a hard one to crack.
- Distributions forms: liquid, and electricity
- Distribution means: through tankers, pipelines and electrical lines.
4. Solar, wind, tidal.
We actually know how to get a positive energy balance here (as recently as the 1980s, the energy inputs to solar panels were more than their expected lifetime output, but this has flipped and is strongly positive). The problem is the storage and distribution systems suck. We know how to upgrade the distribution systems and we should do it anyway before a solar flare takes out every high-voltage transformer in the world and cripples the worldwide energy system (this is a very real threat).
And we do have storage options, their efficiency just stinks. Example: pump water uphill all day, store it in a reservoir and generate electricity when it runs back down hill at night - several nuclear plants do this already.
- Price future: falling substantially. In some markets already competitive with fossil fuels. Huge advantage also in that it is not subject to long-term price volatility, which makes utilities planners very happy.
- Distributions forms: electricity
- Distribution means: electrical lines.
What is the one thing they all have in common? They can all be distributed as electricity. Of course, half of them can be distributed as liquid, which seems to have efficiency advantages right now.
That said, option #4 is the only one that I know of that has proven long-term reserves and the technology to implement today, so it's not a bad bet that the future of energy distribution is not tankers and pipelines and gas pumps, but electrical lines.
Finally, if we look at likely price evolutions, the ones that can only practically be distributed as electricity are the ones that have the best chances of seeing prices fall over time. The ones that are naturally liquid in form have very strong upward price pressures.
So if I look at all that together, I have trouble seeing anything other than electric winning out over the long term. The question is will the "long term" be short term enough that Tesla is still around to take advantage of it? I expect a sort of flattened hockey stick curve on this one, but have no idea whether the inflection point is 10, 20 or 30 years away (I'm sure it is not 50 years away).
And to be clear: fuel cells are a means of storing energy and therefore are "source neutral" but are really "electric" in terms of use. I just say that because people often say "yeah but what about fuel cells?" in these discussions.
GOOD INFO ergophobe
OFF TOPIC maybe BUT Harley-Davidson introduces electric motorcycle
Not much detail on the e-Harley yet, but here are some pretty pictures and a video:
http://www.rsvlts.com/2014/06/19/harley-davidson-electric-bike/
Its a nice way for them to leapfrog out of 1940s technology.
Harley
http://www.wired.com/2014/06/harley-davidson-livewire/
Unfortunately it is not scheduled for production. This is a demo bike supposedly touring the country with a few of them getting rider feedback for 2 years. Sounds to me like a marketing ploy primarily.
http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/
These you can go and buy today, very interesting ride.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/25/5841024/toyotas-answer-to-tesla-is-this-70000-fuel-cell-car
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Toyota may be the maker of the most iconic hybrid vehicle of them all, the Prius, but the Japanese company refuses to go all-in on electric and is instead focusing on hydrogen fuel cells for powering its future cars. The first among them will be a 2015 sedan that has today been priced at ¥7 million (roughly $70,000) for its launch market of Japan. That's right in line with Tesla's Model S, which will be its most direct competitor in the developing market for alternative energy vehicles. Toyota claims a cruising range of 430 miles for its hydrogen-fueled car and a refueling time of just three minutes — both numbers underlining the key benefits of its technology over standard batteries.
Had a ride in one of these over the w/e:
http://www.mitsubishi-cars.co.uk/outlander/phev-overview.aspx
145 mpg. (claimed)
>first movers are not necessarily successful and it may be that the first mover moves too soon, before the market/culture/technology/infrastructure is ready.
From what I'm seeing, it appears the market started pulling away from Tesla/Musk this week.
What I'm waiting for is an electric small to mid sized pickup truck or small delivery van.
Quote from: Brad on May 03, 2018, 04:31:57 PM
What I'm waiting for is an electric small to mid sized pickup truck or small delivery van.
AWD is pretty much a must where we live (otherwise you have to constantly put chains on and take them off). I am trying to hang on to my old cars until a reasonably-priced AWD EV comes to market. I believe the Chevy is available as AWD in Europe or is slated to be, but no plans for the US yet