True, but if you were Gigantic Auto Manufacturer, would you build these patents into a billion-dollar factory without a stronger guarantee that Tesla won't about-face in 5-10 years? I wouldn't risk it.
No. But you'd never have any sort of dependency in a business of that size that wasn't properly licensed/firm. This might help your development teams though prototype stuff more easily without fear knowing that if it got the greenlight then the lawyers/bd people would call Tesla and start negotiating.
It's an interesting move...you help produce (potentially) lots of little companies to attack the market share of the entrenched players, but those same players cannot/will not be able to use the same advantages. Good show.
If they can get uptake of some of their key patents then this equates to "standards". It possibly could help spread the recharging kiosks if there are more cars on the road that use the same tech. I love the fact that Musk thinks he can just outcompete other companies. Very very cool.
> They would be on the receiving end of a PR shitstorm if they tried to enforce their patents after publishing this.
I can see a situation where a competitor / patent troll sues them, and they use the patents defensively. If they're obviously on the right side, their PR department won't have such a hard time.
