Nissan, Mahindra Reva welcome Tesla’s move on patents

In a blog post on June 12, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, sprang a surprise by breaking down the ‘wall of Tesla patents’ for any other OEM to benefit from them. Musk says his move is ‘in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology’.

This move seems to have found support from Mahindra Reva, India’s first EV maker, and Nissan, the global leader in the EV market. It won’t be surprising if Nissan and/or Mahindra Reva join hands with Tesla to share any of its technologies.

“We will take a deeper look at the technology and it’s too early to comment if there is a benefit in using any. We are always open to work with organisations to jointly develop on EV technology,” says Chetan Maini, founder and CEO, Mahindra Reva. Technologies related to battery management and fast charging could be of interest to a company like Mahindra Reva, which is also developing India’s first performance electric car – Halo – scheduled for launch in 2015-16.

Nissan, which manufactures the world’s largest selling EV, the Leaf, welcomes others joining in the effort to promote EV. It is ‘working with numerous partners across the world’ to develop charging infrastructure readily available to EV drivers’. Nissan is reportedly keen to collaborate with its rival EV maker Tesla, after the latter’s CEO opened up its patents to all ‘who, in good faith, wants to use our (Tesla’s) technology’. “Nissan regularly has informal dialogue with a number of parties in the EV space in the interest of constantly improving customer satisfaction with our products,” says a very senior official of the company. The Japanese OEM feels that joint efforts in creating universally compatible charging infrastructure will further accelerate EV adoption.

With the above reactions from Nissan and Mahindra Reva, it seems Musk has made the right move to build a community of EV makers. “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,” said Musk in his blog.

Maini seconds Musk’s views. “I believe it’s (removing patent barriers) to make EV technology more accessible to achieve an ultimate goal of going petrol-free in transportation. With more players at it, the goal can be achieved earlier,” says the technocrat who launched India’s first EV, the Reva-i in 2001.