注意，特斯拉开放专利留了一手
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特斯拉（Tesla）首席执行官埃隆•穆斯克希望公司开放专利的决定能最终促使大型汽车制造商研发出更多电动汽车投向市场。汽车业和他们那种“我们只要自己发明的东西”的文化会买账吗？ 调查公司Navigant Research的分析师萨姆•杰夫表示，至今为止，这家豪华电动汽车制造商仍掌握着一系列令人惊叹的专利，涉及电池包、汽车设计、电化学和自动化等方面。比如说，这家公司创造性地根据小型的圆柱形锂离子电池设计了电池包，而业内的其他公司仍然在大型的方形蓄电池上止步不前。 杰夫说：“毫无疑问，小型电池更加便宜。由于特斯拉的知识产权专利，其他大型汽车制造商可能会在进入小型电池领域时犹豫不决。想要不和特斯拉的专利雷同是很困难的事情。” 杰夫称，小型电池可能更便宜，但需要更先进的散热技术、感应技术和架线技术。比如说，特斯拉Model S的85千瓦时电池包中包含7,100枚独立电池，每枚电池都需要有与汇集电流的母线焊接的电线。这就意味着电池包中得有几千个焊接点，而雪佛兰伏特（Chevrolet Volt）的大型电池包中只包含288枚电池。 杰夫说：“特斯拉最重要的专利之一就是这种自动化焊接技术。”这家电动汽车制造商的其他几大创新技术包括电池结构、安全工程和电池监控技术。 特斯拉开放专利后，专利诉讼的危险就降低了。但是目前还不清楚汽车制造业的同行们究竟会不会碰这些专利。 杰夫说：“汽车制造商都很害怕用的东西不是自己的。他们最不希望的事情，就是被人看成是照搬其他公司想法和设计的厂商。” 穆斯克本周与宝马高管进行了会晤。这件事让人开始推测这两家公司会不会彼此分享各自的技术，开辟出汽车制造业的经营新道路。宝马生产了电动汽车i3和插电式混合动力车i8，许多分析家认为它是特斯拉的直接竞争对手。（想要了解更多情况，请点击观看我们最近关于宝马的财富科技辩论会。） 特斯拉发言人西蒙•斯普洛尔强调，汽车制造商一直以来都会举行这样的会面，分享观点，探讨一些想法的可能性。斯普洛尔说：“这完全是日常的商务活动。” 福特汽车公司（Ford Motor Co.）没有表示自己是否会使用特斯拉的技术。福特称自己是第一家、也是唯一一家拥有专用的开源硬件及软件平台的汽车制造商。公司女发言人表示，他们鼓励业内采用创新性技术。她说：“我们不断地广泛授权我们的专利技术，包括可充气的安全带系统、防翻滚稳定控制系统、供警车使用的‘监督模式’技术和我们的未系安全带提醒系统，希望能扩大它们的采用率。” |
Tesla Motors TSLA 1.42% CEO Elon Musk hopes the company’s great patent giveaway will be the carrot that will finally encourage large automakers to bring more electric vehicles to market. Will the automotive industry and its we-invented-it-here culture bite? The luxury electric vehicle maker has, until now, closely held a compelling batch of patents related to its battery pack, car design, electrochemistry and automation, said Navigant Research analyst Sam Jaffe. For instance, the company designed its innovative battery pack around small format cylindrical lithium-ion cells, while the rest of the industry has stuck with large format prismatic cells. “There’s no debate that the small cells are cheaper,” Jaffe said. “The large automakers may have hesitated to go to the small cells because of Tesla’s intellectual property patents. It would have been hard not to bump into them.” The small cells might be cheaper, but they also require a lot of thermal cooling, sensors and wiring, Jaffe says. For instance, Tesla’s Model S 85 kWh battery packs have 7,100 individual batteries. Each one needs a wire welded to a busbar, which collects the current. That means thousands of weld points, versus the Chevrolet Volt large format battery pack, which has only 288 cells. “One of Tesla’s most important patents dealt with the automation those welds,” Jaffe said. The electric automaker’s cell structure, safety engineering and battery monitoring are other innovative pieces of technology. In releasing the patents, Tesla reduces the threat of patent lawsuits. But it’s unclear whether peer automakers would even engage with them. “Automakers tend to suffer from the not-created-here syndrome,” Jaffe said. “The last thing they want is to be seen as using another company’s ideas or design.” Musk met with BMW executives this week. The event has led to speculation over whether the two companies would share their respective technologies¬ and give life to a new way of conducting business in the auto industry. BMW manufactures the electric i3 and plug-in hybrid i8, and many analysts consider the automaker a direct competitor to Tesla. (For more,watch our recent Fortune Tech Debate about the company.) Tesla spokesman Simon Sproule stressed automakers have meetings like this all the time to share ideas and “what if” scenarios. “It’s totally normal daily business,” Sproule said. Ford Motor Co. F 0.24% wouldn’t say whether it would use Tesla’s technology. The company, which describes itself as the first and only automaker to have a dedicated open source hardware and software platform, said through a spokeswoman that it encourages the adoption of innovative technology across the industry. “We repeatedly have offered to widely license our patent technology to encourage expanded adoption, including our inflatable safety belt system, Roll Stability Control, “Surveillance mode” technology for police vehicles and our Belt-Minder system,” she said. |
