Posts Tagged: "Elon Musk"

SolarCity was a little more muted on the topic of how many jobs it would create in Buffalo, and yet those promises are still being broken. News reports from the area pinned a definitive number on exactly how many jobs the Buffalo plant will create: 1,460. This included, according to news reports, at least 1,000 production jobs to create shifts of 300 to 400 workers which could operate the plant around the clock. A reported 400 jobs would be for engineers and require at least a bachelor’s degree. Residents of the city (including this writer) can tell you that, although the city has shown signs of pulling itself out of a decades-long depression, many hopes involving Buffalo’s immediate economic futures have been pinned on SolarCity, and the state has backed that hope up to the tune of $750 million. This represents most of the cash set aside for Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion initiative which is currently under heavy investigation by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara based on a series of subpoenas issued by federal prosecutors over the past year.

A space race has been heating up in the private commercial sector and it involves some of the biggest names in high tech industries. Right now it would seem to most observers that SpaceX has the lead in the private space race, although that lead may not be insurmountable. Blue Origin hasn’t been able to send a rocket into orbit and then land it successful back on the Earth’s surface. For its part, SpaceX just landed its Dragon capsule successfully in the Pacific Ocean yesterday, delivering more than 3,700 pounds of supplies from the ISS including a great number of samples for use in biotechnology, physical science and other forms of research.

In many ways, 2015 has been the year of the automobile, especially in the tech world. Throughout the course of the year we’ve noted a great deal of business and technological developments that have been reshaping the entire vehicle manufacturing sector. Gone are the days that the market is completely dominated by names such as General Motors Company, Ford Motor Company or Toyota Motor Corp. As 2015 draws to a close, these traditional automaker behemoths are seeing encroachment on their position from some unusual names, especially those residing in Silicon Valley.

Yet another tech developer known for consumer electronics is getting into the autonomous vehicle market, a sign that we can continue to expect disruption for the conventional automaker model in that sector. A recent data breach settlement underscores the growing cybersecurity threat the world faces. The latest theory about alien life on other planets starts to fizzle and fade. Also, we hear some stories featuring notable names in the tech business world, including Michael Bloomberg and Elon Musk.

Our latest Tech Round-Up here on IPWatchdog takes a brief glance at many of the stories which have caught our attention in recent days. As he often does, Elon Musk takes center-stage in a couple of news items regarding challenges he’ll be facing in the realms of space travel as well as electric vehicles. In Europe, the first successful installation of light-based wireless Internet could be the first step in a new age of Internet connectivity. Data breaches and genetically modified foods round out our discussion of recent events in the worlds of high-tech and science.

Musk maintains that he has avoided patents since leaving a business venture in 1999 but we’ve been pointing out how companies in which he holds a large interest have been acquiring IP and filing new patent applications themselves. In fact, as the IP portfolio analysis tools from Innography show us, Tesla has earned 27 patents thus far in 2015, making it pretty clear that Elon Musk is doing an awful job of avoiding patents, which really has to make you wonder what is behind his anti-patent rhetoric.

Elon Musk also has a bizarro acquaintance with the truth, at least when it comes to patents. In his All Our Patent Are Belong To You [sic] blog post, which has served as the seminal moment for the current open-source trend in the auto industry, Musk stated that since his departure from Zip2, a previous business venture, in 1999, that he has “avoided [patents] whenever possible.” That anti-patent sentiment has raised Musk to rockstar status in the eyes of some, but even a cursory review of the facts suggests that Musk does not practice what he preaches. The fact that we can do a profile of patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to SolarCity in this year alone proves that, at least where it comes to patents, Elon Musk’s message is at best a “do as I say not as I do” approach to business. At worst, Musk is not true to his word.

Skynet. HAL 9000. The Matrix. The Joshua Computer from WarGames. It’s not hard to look around popular culture and find examples of artificial intelligence (AI) stirring a span of doomsday fears stemming from either a lack of understanding of AI’s dangers to the actual targeting of humans by AI weapons. The names of Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Stephen Hawking, along with several faculty members from academic institutions like Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are among hundreds of signatures found attached to an open letter published by the Future of Life Institute which calls for “concrete research directions” to pursue for ensuring that AI remains a social benefit.

SpaceX and NASA suffered a serious setback when the unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 craft exploded, rendering its mission to deliver supplies and hardware to ISS a complete failure. Excessive pressure building up in a liquid oxygen tank of one of the craft’s upper stages caused the space launcher to break up shortly after leaving Cape Canaveral, FL. Air Force safety officers gave the command for the SpaceX Falcon 9 to self-destruct, largely so that fuel reserves could be burnt off and not dropped into the ocean.

Chien argues that it is impossible for someone to donate their technology without fearing that another will get a patent on it and defeat the well-meaning donation to the public. Such a statement plays into urban mythology and preys upon those who are convinced that patent applicants can and do steal innovations and get patents instead of the rightful inventor. If that were actually true I’d be all in favor of opening up the patent system, whatever that means. Unfortunately, Chien builds her argument on a factually erroneous foundation.

To Musk’s credit, he has not denied that his companies received substantial government assistance, and it seems as though he’s never refuted the amount of money he has received, which one reporter for the Los Angeles Times pegged as high as $4.9 billion when accounting for public assistance to any of Musk’s companies. In Musk’s mind, the benefits that his corporations pose in the form of new age technologies and well-paying jobs more than make up for the public investment into his business activities. He’s also keen to point out that his companies would still be in business without government assistance, a point that is nearly impossible to prove. Further, he sought to deflect inquiry by pointing out that the incentives his company has received “are a tiny, tiny, pittance compared to what the oil and gas industry receives every year.”

Tesla’s Powerwall batteries will come in two varieties: one a 10 kilowatt-hour (kWh) version for a weekly cycle unit designed for backup applications, the other a 7 kWh unit for everyday use. The batteries can be installed in groups of up to nine, providing a maximum of 90 kWh hours of backup energy (or 63 kWh of energy available daily). The dimensions of the Powerwall battery are about four feet tall and nearly three feet wide; its slender 7.1 inches of depth and sleek design gives it a form which fits neatly on most walls, inside or out. It can be installed in an afternoon and does not need major home rewiring. The 10 kWh model costs $3,500 ($3,000 for the 7 kWh version) although a homeowner must pay for installation and an inverter if the property includes solar panels.

Musk has been creating some waves in his role as CEO of Tesla Motors. In a self-authored blog post published on the official Tesla Motors blog, Musk announced that the company was trying to make the company ‘open source’ by allowing other people to infringe on their patent portfolio with the supposed intent of encouraging the development of electric vehicle technologies . . . Of course, it is hard to ignore the reality that several weeks before this allegedly altruistic proclamation by Musk, Toyota announced that it would be phasing out its deal with Tesla Motors. Not surprisingly, a little more than a week after the Musk announcement Toyota unveiled its hydrogen car. Time is reporting that the car will be introduced first in Japan in 2015 and eventually in the U.S. market during the summer of 2015, likely at a price tag of $70,000.