Yes. I would associate Tesla with Samsung as much as with Apple. Samsung LCD/OLED technology is in many high-end mobile device for example, even though they have flagship products that directly compete.. they are selling the more fundamental technologies. In the same way, Tesla (Elon) would much rather be selling batteries to many other car manufacturers and home battery storage manufacturers (the patent release makes a lot of sense within this line of thinking).

The challenge with energy storage is not only in the R&D, but also in the manufacturing at scale, cars are a great avenue to approach this challenge.