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Comment by rickdangerous1 | Hacker News Reader

There is a really important difference between companies which don't have enough margin to post a profit and companies that invest every bit of resource into capturing a new market. They're not leaking money, that is the wrong metaphor. They're conducting an expensive land grab on 3 huge industries: Cars, Energy storage, and solar.

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Assuming that is true, it doesn't really answer the question of why an existing player should be that innovative. Experiments by existing players are harshly critiqued, the division that does them is demoralized by other divisions that contribute to quarterly profits and any innovation that is useful is pretty easily copied by competition. Since every existing player has a patent portfolio of BS for the Texan kangaroo court, there wont be a good return in royalties. Running garbage through an oversized legal department while copying someone else is a better investment in R&D.

Because for the companies that don't, it is a threat to their existence. Teslas has opened their patents for anyone who wants them, and not one other company is keeping pace with their level of innovation. The entire ICE industry is now already obsolete. You don't think this should compell existing players to innovate?

If by innovation you mean try out Tesla's patents then absolutely.. I think Tesla opened their parents for PR reasons. The other companies stealing them and Tesla doing nothing would have been bad, Tesla getting countersued with bs even worse.

Yes. There's a chance that toyota, honda, daimler, Volkswagen, are wrong.

In so far as they have missed the transition from ICE to EV, they are all wrong. Tesla has such a huge lead on them, they probably will never catch up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MEB_platform

The MEB platform is part of a Volkswagen strategy to start production of new battery electric vehicles between 2019 and 2025.[3] In 2017, the VW Group announced a gradual transition from combustion engine to battery electric vehicles with all 300 models across 12 brands having an electric version by 2030.[4]

As of May 2018, the VW Group had committed US$48 billion in electric-vehicle batteries supplies[5] and announced plans to outfit 16 factories to build electric cars by the end of 2022.[6]

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