Car companies interested in Tesla’s patents, says CEO

Electric car manufacturer Tesla has revealed that a number of automobile companies have shown an interest in the patents it provided for free earlier this year.

Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, told the USA Today newspaper that it has had a “number of enquiries from other car companies and we’ve told them to go ahead and use them”.

“I’m glad they are getting serious about electric cars—and they should,” he added.

At the moment, just three car companies are responsible for 80% of the total electric cars manufactured globally: Nissan, Tesla and BMW. US President Barack Obama pledged in 2011 to have “one million electric cars on the road by 2015”.

In June, Tesla announced that all its patents were available to other car companies to use in “good-faith”.

Writing in a blog post on the company’s website at the time, Musk said the decision was taken in the “spirit of the open source movement” and for “the advancement of the electric vehicle technology”.