There are two major inter-related reasons we are dependent on oil (either foreign or domestic): conventional cars and conventional power plants. Tesla Motors may have found a way to make real progress to get around these two obstacles.
Whatever your opinion of the Green Energy movement (and its many-times liberal enthusiasts), there is no doubt that clean, reliable, sustainable energy would be a good thing. If it’s voluntary (and possible). But one major roadblock in the path toward freedom from oil is, oddly enough, patent law. And Tesla Motors may have found a way around it. Recently, they announced that they are putting all of their electric car patents into the public domain. This is huge. A press release from CEO Elon Musk explains the reasoning behind Tesla Motor’s decision:
When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.
At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales.
How do patents stifle progress? It’s simple really. Let’s say you are a brilliant engineer—either a lone inventor, or an innovator at a small start-up company. And you have just discovered a new piece of technology that could make electric cars more efficient and reliable. So you patent it to protect your intellectual property.
A week later, suits from Big Auto show up at your door. They tell you that Big Auto will buy the rights to your patent for 5 million dollars or $10,000—as the case may be. You are poor. You have a family. You can’t afford to pass up this offer. So you sell the patent. Does Big Auto then use your invention? Of course not. Big Auto shelves your patent, ensuring that no one will make a car that competes with what they already offer. It would cost too much capital investment to change, and as long as nothing comes along to compete with what’s already available, what’s already available will sell just fine.
The solution that Tesla Motors has come to avoids this problem altogether. By voluntarily suspending all ownership of their patents, Tesla ensures that their inventions might actually be used and improved upon. Making this move is bold, brilliant, and counter-intuitive. And it just might work. Especially if innovators and entrepreneurs realize that they can sell their patents to Tesla Motors to protect their inventions and ensure their inventions actually get used to make a better electric car.
But that’s only half of the problem. Electric cars don’t currently do a thing to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels (both foreign and domestic). The vast majority of power plants (the power plants that produce the electricity that powers electric cars) produce electricity by burning fossil fuels. So, even though a Tesla electric car is not producing carbon emissions at the point of use, that doesn’t mean an electric car reduces overall dependence on fossil fuels. It just changes when and where those hydrocarbons are being burned. And because of the nature of thermodynamics and the loss of energy during changes of energy states, the electric car might actually be producing a greater amount of carbon emissions than an efficient conventional engine. Bummer.
So how do we fix that? It’s the same solution, actually. Put Green Energy patents in the public domain. Do you think Big Oil wants a cheaper, more efficient solar panel? No. That would be a disaster for them. So what do they do? They buy up companies and patents that are researching green energy. They even use these buyouts for public relations: “See, we’re researching Green Energy!” How humanitarian of you to make yourselves obsolete. Yeah. I’m not buying it. Just like Big Auto, Big Oil buys up patents to protect their current interests. The only way around this is to make patents voluntarily unbuyable.
But that is a difficult proposition. If you were a poor inventor or a research group, could you resist a huge payday from Big Auto or Big Oil? Sure, it’s for the betterment of humanity and all that, but you’ve got to eat. I’m honestly thankful to Tesla Motors for opening this door. I hope other research groups and inventors follow suit.
Perhaps you don’t think this is a big deal. Let me explain why it is. The Middle East. The Middle East has almost no natural resources. They have very little intellectual capital. They have basically nothing to export (except sand and terrorists, of course). But for oil. Because of oil, we are entrenched right smack dab in the middle of a big cluster-turban of violence and international tension. Why? Let them kill themselves. We don’t need their oil. We don’t want it. If we dedicated our intellectual capital to finding efficient, deregulated, crowd-sourced methods for clean, sustainable energy, we would have no need of the Middle East. What little petroleum we needed (for construction vehicles and the like), would be minimal in comparison to what we currently need, and we could take care of our own demand from our own fields. It would cripple the power of the Islamic oil cabal.
Further, it would be cheaper for you. If solar panels were more efficient and less expensive, you could go completely off-grid for your personal power needs. You could power most everything from the sun God gave all of us. You can’t tell me you like spending four dollars a gallon on gas. Let’s say you like your big truck or muscle car. Great. Can you imagine what the price of gasoline would look like if most everyone’s commuter vehicle was running on sun, wind, and tide provided electricity? You could buy a gallon of gas for a quarter.
This needs to happen. Open-sourcing patents may be the only way that any progress will be made in this most crucial area. Green energy is not a liberal agenda. They’ve hijacked it for their own power. True green energy doesn’t look like more regulations, more government control, and more centralization. True green energy looks a whole lot like freedom from the corrupt lobbying crony capitalism that has been forcing all of us to pay for the price of our own slavery.
Tesla rocks!!
Did you read the article?
Do you KNOW what runs the electricity power plants today?
Hhahahaaha, Sooooooooo NAIVE.
Right. Did you read the article?
Since you have trouble with the my question.
“Do you KNOW what runs the electricity power plants today?”
The answer is……………..COAL
Here’s a quote from the article. It’s only a few more words than the headline, so I’m pretty sure you can handle it:
But that’s only half of the problem. Electric cars don’t currently do a thing to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels (both foreign and domestic). The vast majority of power plants (the power plants that produce the electricity that powers electric cars) produce electricity by burning fossil fuels. So, even though a Tesla electric car is not producing carbon emissions at the point of use, that doesn’t mean an electric car reduces overall dependence on fossil fuels. It just changes when and where those hydrocarbons are being burned. And because of the nature of thermodynamics and the loss of energy during changes of energy states, the electric car might actually be producing a greater amount of carbon emissions than an efficient conventional engine. Bummer.
So I guess that there’s nothing particularly green about overpriced Tesla cars. Why would anyone want to buy one? How much US federal money has gone into this? (Subsidies. Grants. Etc.)
Since you have trouble with the my question.
“Do you KNOW what runs the electricity power plants today?”
The answer is…………..COAL
Well written article Michael and unfortunately, the second half of your post (above) is conveniently overlooked by liberals. That’s why Al Gore refuses to a debate regarding Climate Change -because the FACTS are an inconvenient truth.
For all you liberals out there, Carbon Emissions are:
– 98% water
– 2% Carbon
– man-made carbon is responsible for 0.4% of all the carbon
– the U.S. covers 7% of the entire planet
With these facts in mind, PLEASE tell me (libs) how our EPA policies against coal mines is going to improve our climate? They aren’t.
Good post. Too bad the progs can’t wrap their mini-minds around these few facts.
All for naught – the discussion about ‘green’ is meaningless without a resolution to the panty / shorts problem if you know what I mean – and maybe you do.
Solar and wind energy are the least GREEN energy sources on the planet. The fact that they use rare elements, have lousy performance, are unreliable, the materials cannot be recycled, require big maintenance, and have huge ecologically damaging footprints show that they are chosen by the government because they want our energy supply to fail.
There is no such thing as “green energy”; so says I – MS, PhD, Engineering, UCLA – with specialties in Heat & Mass Transfer and in Thermodynamics.
Say what you want, but at least Tesla Motors is doing something to try to mitigate the problem … and please note that I said “try”. We are at the point where we need to try _everything_ with any promise (no matter how far down the road) of more abundant, less expensive energy.
Wind is a non-starter in much of the world, but it could possibly be effective in mountainous regions above the flight altitudes of most birds. Solar won’t work in the shade or where clouds are common, but smaller-scale solar generation facilities in sunny climes could reduce individual dependence on the grid. Nuclear is a silly notion in earthquake (and tsunami) zones, and we still have to solve the problem of dealing with nuclear waste, but well-designed nuclear power plants are safely delivering lots of megawatts all over the world. Coal, petroleum, natural gas and hydropower are old standbys we understand and can improve on. Geothermal power is a possibility, although it appears to be a distant one at this point. I’m probably missing a few others, but you get my point: try everything, use what works in a given location/situation, don’t insist on just one (or more) politically favored energy sources while excluding others.
What Tesla is doing has an immeasurably small impact on any environmental factor.
True enough, today. But what will Tesla’s patents (now effectively public domain) lead to ten years from now? Innovators improve and build their own inventions based on prior art; one or more of the Tesla patents may lead to a future breakthrough in electrical efficiency that will, in turn, have a substantial impact on energy usage.
Tesla is also proving the practicality of all-electric cars for short to medium-distance travel. I wouldn’t buy one today as my only vehicle, because I frequently travel longer distances than the range of a single charge; but as battery capacity and overall vehicle efficiency improve, so will the range. Right now we don’t have that many recharging stations, but that will change as electric (and plug-in hybrid) cars become more prevalent.
Tesla is an example of my “try everything” strategy. Couple an all-electric luxury car like the Tesla with a rooftop covered with more efficient solar panels and storage batteries, and you have almost-free commuting after the car and power generation system are paid off; the wealthy pay the costs of R&D for the next generation of less expensive, more efficient cars and solar power systems. As more electric vehicles take to the roads, wise investors will look for companies with all sorts of promising power generating — and transportation — technologies.
Some people will still want or need gasoline and diesel engines in their vehicles. Others will be able to get by nicely with all-electric cars and trucks. Still others will begin using public transportation, if municipalities use common sense in designing, routing and publicizing bus and train systems. Some will change their habits, or move closer to work, or telecommute, or find some other way of reducing their total energy requirements (mostly to save money, but perhaps also “for the environment”).
I doubled my fuel economy by trading in my old SUV on a mid-size sedan a year ago, something I was able to do by relocating from a rural area to a small city; finding a home near most of the places I go for shopping, dining and entertainment (I’m retired, so no workplace) saves me even more money. Next time I buy a new vehicle, a few years from now, I expect to get even better fuel economy. By then I’ll probably be living where I can devote an acre or two to solar power; I’d rather have a profitable oil well or a small nuclear plant, but the former is highly unlikely and the latter is even more so … even if I could get zoning variances. 🙂
Tesla is trying to do something and it is very positive, but with near zero impact … I believe it is marketing to buy good will and sell their products more than sharing technology. Trade [technology] secrets of how something is done efficiently and cost effectively is where companies maintain their edge.
it is extremely hard to economically retrofit existing structures, homes and communities into reducing energy consumption without effecting lifestyle [warmer homes in summer and cooler in winter … smaller cars … car pools-mass transit … cooler hot water etc].
However, new construction can introduce efficiencies very effectively through improved insulation and sealing technique, building orientation and reflective-absorptive surfaces [color – texture] relative to sun, geothermal, and solar energy conversions [electrical and bulk heating].
I do not agree with the carbon footprint assumption of this article at all. It takes about $ 1.90 worth of electricity at current rates to charge a Tesla car that will get 220 miles to a charge. Even a car that gets 35 miles to the gallon will burn over six gallons of fuel to go that far. A power plant cannot burn over 6 gallons to produce 1.90 worth of juice, that dog don’t hunt.
The problem with the Tesla is its initial cost. They are simply way too expensive for the common man to buy. If Tesla can come out with an automobile that is reasonably priced, or a creative way for Joe Blow to be able to afford one, they cannot succeed.
Maybe Elon will come up with that, but the current method of using thousands of small cells seems like a poor method to me. Too much chance of dead cells.