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China would be short sighted to cross Tesla right now. Tesla is way more valuable over the long term. It would ridiculously stupid to cross Tesla for a shitty

China would be short sighted to cross Tesla right now. Tesla is way more valuable over the long term. It would ridiculously stupid to cross Tesla for a shitty copy of last year's code. Prediction: The lawsuit will be prosecuted and resolved in favor of Tesla.

taneq 6y ago
Settled out of court is the way these things usually go when one party realises it'd save money by doing so.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  China doesn’t have to settle; they control their courts.
durpkingOP 6y ago
why would china care about the long term value of tesla when tencent has a 5% stake????????????????? gotdang optimiz3
aspenmayer 6y ago
What does it matter if it takes China years longer to clone the tech through grey market means and RE versus legally actionable means like they are suspected of having done? Individuals in every company are trying to create this. Everyone else will try to copy or clone it. Some will try to misappropriate the IP. Lots of value to be captured or lost. Nations that provide for their citizens by enabling them to reach their full economic potential will have an advantage over nations that have to buy the labor and output of another country. Skills and knowledge gaps are consequences of investment gaps on the individual level and cause productivity and capital gaps on the national level. International actors appear as countervailing and prevailing forces that create the conditions for a market solution but also encourage territoriality and IP protection schemes as well as other kinds of schemes regarding other people’s intellectual property. Part of me feels disconnected from this whole argument. I would download a car. I don’t feel bad and I don’t think anyone should for feeling that way. Culture is free. If you didn’t want the world to know about it and use it you shouldn’t have shared your creation, knowledge, invention, or property with society by allowing them to legally acquire it. First sale doctrine and interoperability exceptions to copyright law are clear on this. If I buy a self-driving car, and get the title, it’s really, actually, legally my car now. If I can figure out how my car’s self-driving system works without violating any of the car vendor’s computers, that is my right to do so in order to adapt the car to my needs and desires. Provided I don’t interfere with or prevent the normal operation of the vendor’s computers this should be entirely legal. It is legal to modify the operation of the computers in the cars I own. Writ large this means China will get their self-driving cars once the first people do because they will be in line buying them like everyone else. Then they will clone the tech just like everyone else. I don’t see what the big deal is besides all the money everyone feels they should be making and conversely all of the money to be saved by making your own system or cloning another. Like all displacement goods it will just take over the market and create a new one where self-driving is an implicit assumption of every car interaction and purchasing decision. It’s just so valuable a technology it won’t be possible to properly control it through traditional means if at all. All of this is why I think the secret sauce of higher level self-driving to be a very real brass ring, that once snatched, will be hidden behind a velvet rope. It will be licensed and controlled remotely, not owned and operated by the end user and simply mediated by the car offline. I would expect future cars to have always online functionality to enable self-driving functionality checks simply for road safety reasons and also to deter IP leakage via encrypted firmware and remotely validated automatic updates. It will be interesting to see if any kind of open source challenger will appear in such a future. I hope we all get to see it sooner rather than later.
- sacks2k 6y ago
  "Part of me feels disconnected from this whole argument. I would download a car. I don’t feel bad and I don’t think anyone should for feeling that way" I see this come up on HN from time to time. How would you feel if a large company made millions of dollars on your open source project, and never gave anything back in return? "Culture is free. If you didn’t want the world to know about it and use it you shouldn’t have shared your creation, knowledge, invention, or property with society by allowing them to legally acquire it." This has very dangerous implications. If we have no intellectual property rights, large companies could just wait until small startups came out with a good idea..and it could be ripped off and copied. It only pushes us towards a world that's controlled by a couple of large corporations and governments. "If I can figure out how my car’s self-driving system works without violating any of the car vendor’s computers, that is my right to do so in order to adapt the car to my needs and desires" We aren't talking about reverse-engineering a car that you buy (which is legal). We are talking about an employee exfiltrating source code and other proprietary documents to be used at a competing company. "Then they will clone the tech just like everyone else." Sure, but who wants to be the first person to market and spend billions of dollars on R&D when you can just clone it after some other company does all of the hard work for you? Another reason why we need IP laws is that innovation is actually stifled without them. China is a good example of this. I can't think of one thing innovative that came out of China in decades. Most are cheap (and many times worse) copies of technology from more innovative countries. It reminds me of the current state of new drugs. The majority of new drugs are created in the US and are then cloned and sold for a much cheaper cost to countries with socialized medicine...mostly because they don't have to do any of the expensive R&D/clinical trials to get the drug to market. "I would expect future cars to have always online functionality to enable self-driving functionality checks simply for road safety reasons and also to deter IP leakage via encrypted firmware and remotely validated automatic updates. It will be interesting to see if any kind of open source challenger will appear in such a future" This is where most software has gone in the last decade (from download and install a copy to SAAS), so it makes sense.
gamblor956 6y ago
Oh no! China fears the terrible might of Tesla, which sells fewer cars than even the smallest domestic manufacturer! More likely, China will simply steal Tesla's technology, share it with domestic manufacturers, and tell Tesla to swallow their medicine or leave the market, like they've done with every other foreign manufacturer that tried to dictate terms.
- optimiz3 6y ago
  It's pretty simple. Tesla has the best technology right now and likely will for the next few years. Causing Tesla to leave means China loses out on future technology. Ergo, China will likely side with Tesla. Witness the incredible subsidies and favorable loans Tesla has been receiving in China.
  - krtong 6y ago
    Rapid technology growth also slows the adoption of electric vehicles because it increases the complexity of manufacturing and the pricetag for their cars. China’s in the business of making products of lower quality but much lower cost, then flooding foreign and domestic markets so Tesla cant compete. And given the option, many people would choose an electric vehicle, if it was cheaper. For tesla to continue rapidly developing new tech it needs cheap manual labor for production and large markets to sell in. If china floods the markets with cheap electric vehicles, tesla loses their markets, their economy of scale, their data collection etc.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    Then China will find other ways to creatively borrow their tech.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    China can steal trade secrets almost as easily from the US and they can from China, but they have significantly more leverage when the company has a physical presence and assets in the country. China has been buttering up Tesla to make it easier to steal the technology by convincing then to move a huge portion of their manufacturing and process research into China.
justicezyx 6y ago
Downvoted. But based on my talk with my friends in Shanghai Auto, and LandRover China (with Geely), the Chinese government pretty much are going to keep Tesla in China as the Catfish in the muddy water. The theory is to have a strong predator to force the weaker players to die and stronger to learn. The government learned that the organizational structure inside Chinese domestic firms are not going to provide the soil for creative work. Tesla is treated like a teacher, but they are not touched, as that defeat the whole purpose of having a strong predator in the market. You might disagree, but I guarantee that Chinese government is not blind to where it needs to learn.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  This is quite interesting to see written out explicitly. I've nothing to add save the fact that I'm continuously impressed with China's ability to raise up its technology sectors using just enough protectionism to make them sustainable without so much as to coddle them so that they don't lack viability on the global stage once they've been raised up. Huawei comes to mind.

taneq 6y ago

Settled out of court is the way these things usually go when one party realises it'd save money by doing so.

ashtonkem 6y ago
China doesn’t have to settle; they control their courts.

durpkingOP 6y ago

why would china care about the long term value of tesla when tencent has a 5% stake????????????????? gotdang optimiz3

aspenmayer 6y ago

What does it matter if it takes China years longer to clone the tech through grey market means and RE versus legally actionable means like they are suspected of having done? Individuals in every company are trying to create this. Everyone else will try to copy or clone it. Some will try to misappropriate the IP. Lots of value to be captured or lost. Nations that provide for their citizens by enabling them to reach their full economic potential will have an advantage over nations that have to buy the labor and output of another country. Skills and knowledge gaps are consequences of investment gaps on the individual level and cause productivity and capital gaps on the national level. International actors appear as countervailing and prevailing forces that create the conditions for a market solution but also encourage territoriality and IP protection schemes as well as other kinds of schemes regarding other people’s intellectual property. Part of me feels disconnected from this whole argument. I would download a car. I don’t feel bad and I don’t think anyone should for feeling that way. Culture is free. If you didn’t want the world to know about it and use it you shouldn’t have shared your creation, knowledge, invention, or property with society by allowing them to legally acquire it. First sale doctrine and interoperability exceptions to copyright law are clear on this. If I buy a self-driving car, and get the title, it’s really, actually, legally my car now. If I can figure out how my car’s self-driving system works without violating any of the car vendor’s computers, that is my right to do so in order to adapt the car to my needs and desires. Provided I don’t interfere with or prevent the normal operation of the vendor’s computers this should be entirely legal. It is legal to modify the operation of the computers in the cars I own. Writ large this means China will get their self-driving cars once the first people do because they will be in line buying them like everyone else. Then they will clone the tech just like everyone else. I don’t see what the big deal is besides all the money everyone feels they should be making and conversely all of the money to be saved by making your own system or cloning another. Like all displacement goods it will just take over the market and create a new one where self-driving is an implicit assumption of every car interaction and purchasing decision. It’s just so valuable a technology it won’t be possible to properly control it through traditional means if at all. All of this is why I think the secret sauce of higher level self-driving to be a very real brass ring, that once snatched, will be hidden behind a velvet rope. It will be licensed and controlled remotely, not owned and operated by the end user and simply mediated by the car offline. I would expect future cars to have always online functionality to enable self-driving functionality checks simply for road safety reasons and also to deter IP leakage via encrypted firmware and remotely validated automatic updates. It will be interesting to see if any kind of open source challenger will appear in such a future. I hope we all get to see it sooner rather than later.

sacks2k 6y ago
"Part of me feels disconnected from this whole argument. I would download a car. I don’t feel bad and I don’t think anyone should for feeling that way" I see this come up on HN from time to time. How would you feel if a large company made millions of dollars on your open source project, and never gave anything back in return? "Culture is free. If you didn’t want the world to know about it and use it you shouldn’t have shared your creation, knowledge, invention, or property with society by allowing them to legally acquire it." This has very dangerous implications. If we have no intellectual property rights, large companies could just wait until small startups came out with a good idea..and it could be ripped off and copied. It only pushes us towards a world that's controlled by a couple of large corporations and governments. "If I can figure out how my car’s self-driving system works without violating any of the car vendor’s computers, that is my right to do so in order to adapt the car to my needs and desires" We aren't talking about reverse-engineering a car that you buy (which is legal). We are talking about an employee exfiltrating source code and other proprietary documents to be used at a competing company. "Then they will clone the tech just like everyone else." Sure, but who wants to be the first person to market and spend billions of dollars on R&D when you can just clone it after some other company does all of the hard work for you? Another reason why we need IP laws is that innovation is actually stifled without them. China is a good example of this. I can't think of one thing innovative that came out of China in decades. Most are cheap (and many times worse) copies of technology from more innovative countries. It reminds me of the current state of new drugs. The majority of new drugs are created in the US and are then cloned and sold for a much cheaper cost to countries with socialized medicine...mostly because they don't have to do any of the expensive R&D/clinical trials to get the drug to market. "I would expect future cars to have always online functionality to enable self-driving functionality checks simply for road safety reasons and also to deter IP leakage via encrypted firmware and remotely validated automatic updates. It will be interesting to see if any kind of open source challenger will appear in such a future" This is where most software has gone in the last decade (from download and install a copy to SAAS), so it makes sense.

gamblor956 6y ago

Oh no! China fears the terrible might of Tesla, which sells fewer cars than even the smallest domestic manufacturer! More likely, China will simply steal Tesla's technology, share it with domestic manufacturers, and tell Tesla to swallow their medicine or leave the market, like they've done with every other foreign manufacturer that tried to dictate terms.

optimiz3 6y ago
It's pretty simple. Tesla has the best technology right now and likely will for the next few years. Causing Tesla to leave means China loses out on future technology. Ergo, China will likely side with Tesla. Witness the incredible subsidies and favorable loans Tesla has been receiving in China.
- krtong 6y ago
  Rapid technology growth also slows the adoption of electric vehicles because it increases the complexity of manufacturing and the pricetag for their cars. China’s in the business of making products of lower quality but much lower cost, then flooding foreign and domestic markets so Tesla cant compete. And given the option, many people would choose an electric vehicle, if it was cheaper. For tesla to continue rapidly developing new tech it needs cheap manual labor for production and large markets to sell in. If china floods the markets with cheap electric vehicles, tesla loses their markets, their economy of scale, their data collection etc.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Then China will find other ways to creatively borrow their tech.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  China can steal trade secrets almost as easily from the US and they can from China, but they have significantly more leverage when the company has a physical presence and assets in the country. China has been buttering up Tesla to make it easier to steal the technology by convincing then to move a huge portion of their manufacturing and process research into China.

justicezyx 6y ago

Downvoted. But based on my talk with my friends in Shanghai Auto, and LandRover China (with Geely), the Chinese government pretty much are going to keep Tesla in China as the Catfish in the muddy water. The theory is to have a strong predator to force the weaker players to die and stronger to learn. The government learned that the organizational structure inside Chinese domestic firms are not going to provide the soil for creative work. Tesla is treated like a teacher, but they are not touched, as that defeat the whole purpose of having a strong predator in the market. You might disagree, but I guarantee that Chinese government is not blind to where it needs to learn.

crocodiletears 6y ago
This is quite interesting to see written out explicitly. I've nothing to add save the fact that I'm continuously impressed with China's ability to raise up its technology sectors using just enough protectionism to make them sustainable without so much as to coddle them so that they don't lack viability on the global stage once they've been raised up. Huawei comes to mind.