That was a trojan horse offer. Tesla required anyone accepting the deal to give up their right to ever sue tesla over any patent infringement of any kind. Any automaker's legal department that allowed their boss to sign that would have needed to be immediately fired.

I specifically remember Elon stating that anyone could just use the technology without even informing Tesla, so I looked it up:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ca6c332f-2cc5...

Indeed, there are no documents for executives to sign, but the patents aren't exactly fully free to use either: Tesla promised not to sue any company infringing on its patents as long as they're acting in "good faith," which obviously has a bunch of caveats (one being that you can't sue Tesla over any other patent related issues).

The end result is the same: a decent idea ruined by the lawyers.

> a decent idea ruined by the lawyers.

Or, more cynically, a publicity stunt, facilitated by lawyers. A lot of "look, you can use our patents!" things fall under this umbrella; they're devised in such a way that the company gets some publicity, but no-one can realistically use the patents.

So it was essentially a cross-licensing deal that allowed other automakers to use Tesla charging tech (did this include other Tesla-owned patents?), but the others would effectively have to license their entire patent portfolio to Tesla (can't sue is not too far from a blanket license to use).

I believe the issue always was they'd have to use Tesla's billing infrastructure as there are no screens etc on the superchargers. I hear you though.

The standards based version of that is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Charge_Point_Protocol I've no idea if Tesla use something similar.

Certificate built into the car.

Nope.. and every other vendor is having issues implementing it. The ID.4 from VW is awaiting a software update to enable plug and charge. Tesla's is proprietary.

Ford Mustang Mach-e has plug and charge. Some users are having good luck with it, but quite a few are experiencing issues. It mostly works at EA locations.

Exactly.. it's not the "no-brainer" it should be at all yet... and it's been this way for quite some time.

Hardware people can't do software.

Tesla is more of a software company than any other car maker, that's why they'll win.