Tesla Motors Information

Tesla Motors patents are those patents issued to Tesla Motors, Inc. Tesla Motors is an organization established for the purpose of accelerating the implementation sustainable transportation. To achieve this mission, Tesla Motors designs, develops, builds, and sells electric automobiles while operating an expansive charging station network for its Tesla Motors electric automobiles.

In addition, Tesla Motors also distributes powertrain components for electric automobiles to other electric vehicle manufacturers. Tesla also sells battery systems designed for home use, commercial site usage, and use by utilities.

In February 2017, Tesla Motors filed a Form 8-K, which is a form that’s submitted to the United States Security and Exchange Commission to change its official name from Tesla Motors to Tesla. In April 2017, it was reported that Tesla Motors had grown its market capitalization to $51.2 billion, which surpassed the market capitalization of Ford Motor Company, which has a market capitalization of $45.6 billion.

Tesla Patents

As it relates to patent infringement lawsuits, Tesla Motors has adopted a policy of not initiating a lawsuit for patent infringement if the infringer is acting in good faith and simply wants to utilize Tesla Motors’ technology. However, Tesla Motors does not feel the same about large automakers.

Tesla Motors has felt compelled to file patent applications for protection from these large automobile manufacturers that may have an interest in copying Tesla Motors technology to then utilize their own massive infrastructure to manufacture, market, and sell a similar product with the goal of overtaking Tesla Motors.

Currently, the global annual new automobile production volume is approximately 100 million cars. The number of automobiles that have already been produced around the globe is approximately 2 billion. Given these staggering figures, Tesla Motors has found it impossible to design, develop, build, and sell electric automobiles at a fast enough rate to even begin to deal with the issues related to carbon emissions.

Furthermore, these figures drive home the point that the automobile market is enormously large. The figures also highlight the fact that Tesla Motors main competition is those large automakers who mass produce gasoline powered automobiles from their factories each day, rather than the relatively small amount of electric automobiles being distributed by Tesla Motors competitors each year.

Despite the tough competition from gasoline-powered automobile manufactures, Tesla Motors and other electric automobile manufacturers believe that all can greatly benefit from a shared, common, and ever-evolving platform of new technology. In the past, Tesla Motors headquarters in Palo Alto used to display its patents on the wall of its lobby. Presently, that wall of patents has been removed, as Tesla Motors has fully embraced the open source movement and its spirit with a desire to continue to pioneer advances in technology as it relates to the electric automobile industry.

In June 2017, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk made the announcement that Tesla Motors would make all of its electric automobile patents available to others through open source. This move has been hailed as bold for Tesla Motors, as most gasoline-powered automobile manufacturers have not generally shared their intellectual property so openly. This move by Tesla Motors was initiated to start a revolution in society that would allow electrical engineers, among others, to focus on technological improvements without the normal fear of litigation due to patent infringement.

Tesla Patent Applications

The following are some examples of patent applications filed by Tesla Motors:

  • Energy Storage System with a Heat Pipe Thermal Management
  • Tunable Materials
  • Method of Selecting an Application Target Window in a User Interface
  • Monopost for Free-Standing Vehicle Seat
  • Battery Swapping System and Techniques
  • Vehicle Air System with High-Efficiency Filter
  • Control System for An All-Wheel Drive Electric Vehicle
  • Device with Top-Side Base Plate
  • Rotor Design for an Electric Motor Having Brazed Structure for Connecting Rotor Bars
  • Attachment Bracket with Adjustment Mechanisms and Pivot
  • Battery Pack Base Plate Heat Exchanger
  • Heat-Recovering Temperature-Gradient Based Oven System
  • Functional Redundancy of Communications and Data Transmission in Energy Storage System
  • Energy Storage Pack
  • Solar panels with integrated cell-level MPPT devices
  • Vehicle front door power opening system
  • Solar cell with electroplated metal grid

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