Tesla is open to sharing Autopilot with other automakers

While conversing with ARK CIO Cathie Wood and analyst Tasha Keeney, Musk described Tesla’s terms for other carmakers who wish to use Autopilot software, as well as the company’s experiences with other automakers that have looked into adopting the driver-assist system in the past.

Musk maintained that while Tesla is willing to share its software with other companies, other automakers have not been easy to work with. For one, Musk noted that carmakers that showed interest in Autopilot have requested Tesla to change aspects of the software before it can be shared. Such requests, according to Musk, bring an unnecessary addition to Tesla engineering’s overhead.

“Generally, we’ve found that it’s like, it’s not easy to work with traditional automakers. It’s not like; they’re not exactly banging on our doors to work with us. On the patents, they have, that’s very different from say, creating an integrated system. So if there’s an automaker out there that wants to implement this same hardware system as Tesla and use our software, we would be very open to it. But we’re not gonna change it.