During a live audio chat on Twitter Spaces with Ford CEO Jim Farley, Elon Musk said that he intends to make some of Tesla’s automotive operating system code open source so that other automakers can benefit from it.
The idea is similar to what Android does for all mobile manufacturers. The cars will still belong to the respective companies, but some of the components running inside will belong to Tesla.
This conversation took place on Thursday during an online event planned to announce a milestone agreement between Tesla and Ford.
Along with the prospect of sharing codes, several other crucial decisions were taken that hint at a substantially long partnership between the two companies.
For instance, Farley mentioned during the event that creating a “fully software updatable vehicle” is hard. To which Musk replied that he would be more than happy to help them out with respect to software and programming.
If Tesla does go forward with making automotive codes open source, it’ll land in direct competition with Google, which has already created an automotive operating system based on Apple and Android.
The Biggest Highlight of The Event
The landmark announcement of the event was that Ford would be collaborating with Tesla to get Ford owners access to the latter’s charging stations.
This applies to all Ford electric vehicles, both current and the ones that will be manufactured in the future. This is a huge relief for electric vehicle users since they’ll now have access to the 12000 Tesla SuperCharger station from 2024.
This unexpected tie-up between the two competitors not only makes Ford the first major automaker to accept Tesla’s proprietary charging standard but also gives their customers access to the largest network of fast supercharging stations in the United States.
The current models and the ones already under construction will have a Tesla-developed adapter and the Combined Charging System (CCS) port, which will together help them connect to Tesla stations.
For future models, Ford plans to discard their existing charging system and instead adopt Tesla’s patented charging standard so that the vehicles can connect to the charging stations without an adaptor.
Despite the obvious rivalry, the mutual friendship that the two automakers share is interesting. On several occasions, Musk has been seen praising Farley, especially because they are the only two automakers to have avoided bankruptcy.
Farley, on the other hand, took the first step towards partnering with Tesla. He believes that there’s a way all automakers can work together while maintaining the competition to make things simpler for everyone, especially their customers. It’ll be interesting to see how this new partnership rolls out or if other automakers follow suit.
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Krishi Chowdhary
Journalist
