Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA): Did Elon Musk Steal This Idea?

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is getting a reputation among the media and others in the business world  for his business enterprises. Which of course makes sense considering he is a billionaire. It seems he is getting a lot of publicity now because of the success of Tesla Motors, though he made a lot of money with other noteworthy enterprises, something called PayPal for one, and SpaceX, a private space-travel company, as the other.

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)  has been busy working on revolutionizing the electric-car industry – well, you could make the case that Tesla IS the electric-car industry right now – with its Supercharger network of stations growing across the country, and now with its recent announcement of its 90-second battery-swapping service – and it seems that technological innovations are coming pretty fast and furious nowadays. But while everyone seems to be marvelling at this battery-swap innovation – which takes what happens at battery-change stations in Israel currently do and just speeds it up – but is it possible that Elon Musk is taking undue credit for this innovation?

Could Musk have stolen the idea from someone else? The concept of “stealing” ideas is almost part of the American way. The trouble is always whether that idea had been copyrighted or patented by the time it was “stolen.” But while Elon Musk and Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) are getting kudos for their battery-swap, there is a piece floating out there that seems to make the suggestion that this concept did not originate with Tesla.

A recent posting online is suggesting that Musk have a tour of Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) headquarters with Shai Agassi of a company called Project Better Place. The company was founded in 2007, about four years after Tesla got its start. The company started, according to Agassi, after he was asked a question in 2005 about how he would make the world a “better place” by 2020. His company came up wit a concept for battery-swapping in electric cars. Reportedly, Musk had a sit-down with Agassi not very long ago, and while there was no acknowledgment of which man brought up the battery-swap idea, Musk did admit in a recent interview, “We talked about battery swaps for a long time. This isn’t a revelation. They (Better Place) were better at marketing than they were at engineering.” He added that he claimed that Agassi got his idea from a visit to Tesla.

So what is really the big deal here?

The difference in these concepts, from all reprots, is that Better Place does its battery-swap in less than a minute, while Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) new system takes about 90 seconds. And Musk was suggesting that the just-revealed battery-swap concept was in the works at Tesla for years, and not a result of Agassi’s visit. What do you think? Does is matter much where the idea came from or who innovated? Does this adversely affect Elon Musk and Tesla if battery-swapping was actually “stolen” from somewhere else? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

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