I was discussing with my father about Tesla Motors opening all its patents for everyone. And Elon's gigafactory plan. And suddenly I felt how both the business move is connected. By the time other companies will be rolling out a better battery powered cars. Elon will be leading the manufacturing of batteries throughout the world!
You thought of it from "won't this let its competitors catch-up and beat Tesla?" point of view, and yes the correct answer for that would be that Tesla is already ahead of everyone else.<p>But there's another point of view, that the release of patents will accelerate both the supply and demand of electric cars <i>in general</i>, which means Tesla will also gain, especially if they remain the leader. The market leader always wins the most when "all boats rise", because the leader will rise the highest.<p>Then there's the fact that Tesla is trying to get other car manufacturers to license its Supercharger Network. This has 3 effects, all beneficial to Tesla:<p>1) lowers costs for Tesla, while it allows them to expand faster the network faster globally<p>2) as the network grows, Tesla will become more entrenched as an electric car market leader, since it will be harder and harder to create "competing" networks<p>3) a standard network will be beneficial for everyone, it's hard enough to promote electric cars without solid infrastructure, so why have competing networks, when all manufacturers can build just one, and Tesla's network also happens to charge the fastest, plus it offers its customers the ability to have "free charging for life" thanks to the solar power.