Report: Nissan, BMW Interested in Talks with Tesla About Vehicle Charging

Tesla's decision to open source its patents has piqued the interest of a few of the world's larger car manufacturers.

According to the Financial Times, Nissan and BMW are allegedly "keen" to chat with Tesla about possibly working together to develop charging networks that all three manufacturers' vehicles could use.

Musk's announcement was a bit of a surprise, with some seeing it as helpful suggestion by the company for pushing the growth of the electric vehicle market to new heights. Others chastised Tesla's announcement, commenting that it was a sign of the company's weakness and a desperate bid to move an industry that, by large, is fairly gasoline-focused. Without such a shift, critics argued, Tesla might not have enough individual oomph to make it in the difficult car market.

Musk, not surprisingly, sees it a bit differently. "Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. 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," Musk wrote.

"We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform," he concluded.

According to undisclosed sources speaking to the Financial Times, Nissan and BMW would be interested in working with Tesla to craft universal vehicle charging standards. "It is obviously clear that everyone would benefit if there was a far more simple way for everyone to charge their cars," those sources told the paper.

It's currently unclear whether said partnership would involve the companies using Tesla's proprietary charging setup in both companies' cars, or whether all three would use their collective brain trust to come up with an inventive new way to charge electric vehicles quickly.

Such a partnership wouldn't be Tesla's first; the company has already teamed up with Mercedes-Benz to put its charging system (and other electrical components) in the manufacturer's B-class Electric Drive.