
Chinese Tesla Clones - cryptoz
http://www.wired.com/2015/10/attack-of-the-tesla-clones-from-china/
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vvanders
One thing missing from this picture is the significant amount of software that
Tesla has that's not open-source.

It's not trivial to get an always-connected car working(as we've seen from
other mfgrs). I think where you'll see Tesla succeed is using the aggregated
data across it's whole fleet to make smart engineering/product decisions
moving forward.

We've already seen this when the bumped up the spec on the 85D from 5.2s to
3.9s 0-60 based on real-world motor usage.

~~~
sounds
The article is critically lacking in insight because it implies that open
sourcing patents gave Chinese manufacturers an advantage.

That's not how patents work.

A patent includes the description of how the invention works right in the
application. Consequently, if you live in a jurisdiction where you don't fear
prosecution, you can immediately clone the idea. The only way Tesla could have
kept their ideas "secret" would have been to not patent them at all!

Tesla's patent pledge was just a public statement that, under certain
conditions, they wouldn't sue.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> A patent includes the description of how the invention works right in the
> application. Consequently, if you live in a jurisdiction where you don't
> fear prosecution, you can immediately clone the idea. The only way Tesla
> could have kept their ideas "secret" would have been to not patent them at
> all!

That's exactly why SpaceX doesn't patent their technologies; the actors who
would copy them are orgs they can't sue (nation states).

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andrewtbham
This is good news for Tesla. Elon Musk has often stated he welcomes the
competition and his goal is to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles.

Hopefully they will use the same charging standard so they can use super
charger network. I suspect Tesla wouldn't mind just making drive trains and
super chargers for all the world's vehichles. There is also talk of giga
factory as a product, so that's another possibility.

~~~
icc97
Indeed, as Tesla stated when open sourcing their patents [1]:

> Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars
> being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out
> of the world’s factories every day.

[1]: [http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-
yo...](http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you)

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rebootthesystem
I've already stated in another thread my general paranoid state with anything
related to China stemming from years in manufacturing. Please don't be
dismissive of the threat to Tesla and the industry in general. It's very real.

Look, electric cars are easy to build. I feel funny saying this but, well, it
isn't rocket science. The vast majority of people have no need for the gizmos
a Tesla has. They need to get from point A to point B and back in comfort and
with reliability.

Is that difficult to achieve?

Well, considering an electric car has a thousand or more less parts than an
internal combustion car, probably not.

Is that enough? Is the lack of an IC engine enough?

No.

You have to know how to design a chassis and suspension. There are plenty of
people who do that for a living. No rocket science there.

You have to know how to make a good electric motor and controller. There are
plenty of folks who do that too. Look at the electric forklift industry.
Electric motors and their controls are solved problems, from switched
reluctance through PM BM to AC motors, loads of people know how to design and
build them. I'd venture to say a good number of them are made in China these
days.

Well, how about batteries and battery chargers? Panasonic probably has that
covered pretty well. They'd throw an entire engineering team at you just to
sell you batteries.

I mean, an electric car is an overgrown RC car. Very, very simple at the core.
The complexity comes in if you want to turn it into a computer on wheels. And,
I would venture to say, a lot of that is probably not that difficult these
days. Load it up with ChromeOS or something like that and go.

I am not diminishing the amount of work it would be to design and build a new
electric car. It's monumental. All I am saying is I don't think it is as much
about inventing new technology as much as money and execution in a business
where most of the moving parts are well known solved problems.

I think Tesla --and the world-- needs to take this very seriously. The way the
Chinese piss all over intellectual property and manipulate markets is
despicable.

~~~
1971genocide
Its not despicable if you come from a country that is not in the western
hemisphere.

Tesla will never sell its cars - in africa.

And lets not forget that america was built on blatant coping of IP from europe
for over 100 years !

Paradoxically this blatant copying is actually going to lead to strong IP in
china in the future.

A country can go so far by copying others - they will always be behind america
by 10-20 years.

Anyway China is not a real threat to american interest - the american govt is.

~~~
dogma1138
Tesla will release the PowerWall thing in Africa next year, South Africa might
very well get Tesla cars as well but it's some what of a unique case where it
comes to the rest of the continent. But anyhow no Tesla wont sell it's cars in
Africa just like BMW won't sell it's cars in Africa (outside of few corrupt
government officials) even their planned 30,000$ car is way too expensive for
most of the world.

Africa is also not a very good place to sell electric cars in it lacks the
required infrastructure it has at least 3-4 more decades of development until
electric cars will be viable there. Africa needs cheap, dependable preferably
multi-fuel (diesel/bio-diesel) cars, it might be able to handle hybrids but
even that is pushing it.

China doesn't need to replicate Tesla, if they make an electric car which is
just good enough it will have huge impact on the air-quality in the cities and
sine China is pretty much the only country which is developing and building
new nuclear power plants as well as leading the research into fusion when it
will be able to make even a 1/3rd of a Tesla it should have enough emission
free electricity to actual make a big difference.

China is also quite good at actually completing tasks it sets it's sights on
no matter the "cost" or what the market says if the Government will put
electric cars by 2025 as a mandate the rest will fall in line.

~~~
1971genocide
I agree with everything you just said -

Just pointing out coping IP may be bad in the short term ( Tesla doesn't make
as much money as they excepted ) - but in the long term its good for humanity.

~~~
rebootthesystem
In general terms, no, you are wrong.

Why?

The "R" in "R&D" is the expensive part. Very expensive. Ridiculously expensive
in some segments (pharmaceuticals).

Doing the "D" part once someone paid for the "R" part is easy and cheap.
That's what stealing IP is about. If "R" was easy and inexpensive everyone
would do it. Not so.

The problem with saying "Oh, it's OK, China will make it better for humanity
in the long run" is that killing-off companies that are engaged in heavy "R"
creates a situation where all you have in the market is crap or you
effectively freeze "R&D" for decades until the equation makes sense again or
someone is stupid enough or rich enough to throw money at a problem.

Patents and IP protection make a lot of sense when used for real inventions,
real "improvements in the art". It is when they are used by trolls who make
nothing, contribute nothing to society and get in the way of progress that
patents turn evil.

Stealing legitimate IP is a terrible thing. The only people who don't see it
that way are those who have never devoted time, treasure and effort to find a
solution for a difficult problem. That is when, in no uncertain terms, you
absolutely get it.

In my case, I devoted ten years in a constant effort to develop a technology.
It was extremely difficult work. I funded all of it and it cost a bundle. At
the end of the process anyone could have just taken the "D" part and gone with
it with very little effort in relative terms. Go through something half as
intensive as that and you'll understand where I and others are coming from.

~~~
dogma1138
China and India have been infringing on US patents for 4 decades now and
nothing has happened yet.

~~~
rebootthesystem
Citation please.

~~~
dogma1138
Of what that China is on the priority watch list of the USTR for IPR
violations?
[https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/USTR%202014%20Special%2...](https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/USTR%202014%20Special%20301%20Report%20to%20Congress%20FINAL.pdf)

Or that the US economy hasn't collapsed?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\))

~~~
rebootthesystem
You are changing the topic. You said that patent infringement over decades has
had no effects. Quoting:

"China and India have been infringing on US patents for 4 decades now and
nothing has happened yet."

I just want to know how you came to that conclusion.

The problem with your atatement is that it requires access to data that may
not be public. If I had not had IP stolen by a Chinese company I would not
have some of the insights I gained during that experience. Mine isn't the only
company that has had these kinds of issues. During my ordeal I got to meet
other business owners affected by Chinese IP theft. Why? Because we got the
State Department involved and that was the conduit through which I met others.

Unless you've had access at that level it would be hard for you to understand
the subject. In our case the IP theft probably cost us $30 million dollars in
R&D, over a hundred million dollars in lost sales and hundreds of very high
paying jobs.

No, IP theft is a very serious problem.

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ck2
Judging by the quality of every else made in china, the batteries will last a
year and the flash memory used in the computers will fail after a few thousand
cycles.

~~~
goldenkey
That's a funny view considering that most semiconductor companies have
manufacturing plants _in_ Asia.

Intel: Fab 68 Dalian, Liaoning, China

AMD: Fab 2 & Fab 7 Singapore

~~~
dogma1138
AMD doesn't have fabs anymore it had to sell all of them to GlobalFoundries.

Fab 68 is a 65nm fab even tho it's their newest it's pretty much delegated for
making non-vital parts.

The only Fabs Intel has outside of the US that are manufacturing CPU's and
high-value components are in Ireland(24, 14nm) and Israel(28, 22nm currently
will be Intel's first 10nm fab by mid 2016).

But anyhow no one doubts China has the capability to manufacture quality
components, and they got better at developing internally as well many of the
newer Chinese consumer electronics brands can quite easily compete with other
Asian primarily Korean manufacturers quite well.

The Chinese automotive industry on the other hand well didn't had much success
as far as designing goes their best cars currently are probably the MG (or
which ever brand SAIC Motor uses these days) ones which are based on existing
designs and IP from the MG Rover buyout, and although they look very modern
allot of them are based on quite old designs even the newer MG's can still be
traced to the Rover 75 and the Streetwise which were well kinda outdated
designs to begin with.

I've drove the MG 6 when I was in China, it's not a bad car it looks quite
nice the accessory pack of the leasing agency unlike in Western countries was
probably couple of levels beyond what ever is normally sold in the local
markets but it still felt like an older car, the steering, responsiveness
breaking everything felt like a car from the late 90's early 2000's which
under all the flare it kinda is.

~~~
goldenkey
I was referring to GlobalFoundries since yes, AMD no longer fabricates any of
its own chips. The car note is interesting. I think it is less about tech and
more about price probably. Because it shouldnt be difficult to do the ol'
chinaroo dupe like they do with phones and handbags. Yes, a car is
significantly harder but I dont doubt the ability to be copied

~~~
dogma1138
Well when China puts their heads to it and actually builds a quality device
e.g. Oppo and Huawei cell phones they look, feel, and act like a modern
Korean, Japanese or US designed phones but they also cost pretty much the
same... When you have a premium design that uses premium components you can't
save that much money by building it in China because that is where it would've
been built anyhow ;)

When it comes to their old-chinaroo stuff well we all know what those things
feel like and how they fall apart after 3 days.

For a knockoff hand bag its not an issue, for a car well.... some people even
in China probably value human life enough to understand that there's that many
corners you can cut before you turn your product into another government
sponsored population control project.

