Tesla created patents to protect their ideas. Now they have realised that no one is interested they are trying to give them away. Their patents were worth nothing. Now those same ideas are open source and they are still worth nothing. The technology they patented isn't any good and no one bought their cars.
They probably think they can get more goodwill out of sharing 'amazing environmental ideas' than they could every get out of selling it. Its not like anyone wanted to license it off them.
At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla.
If it was any good, they would never have done this. They admit they wanted the technology for themselves. So cynical.
Thork, please don't assume that everyone is as cynical as you are (that's a very high standard, you know
). Tesla is, indeed, selling cars pretty much as fast as they can build them. However, they simply overestimated the big auto manufacturer's interest in selling all electric cars. As long as internal combustion engines are cheap and easy to build and gas is still affordable, their attempts at all electric cars will never be more than halfhearted.
Perhaps by opening up their patent portfolio, Tesla might encourage more manufacturers to enter the market now that they won't have to do all of their own R&D from scratch.