Well, long-term, this is genius. In 2.5 years, Tesla will become the world's largest L-Ion battery manufacture. If most large automakers adopt Tesla's standard (why not, the R&D is complete), these autos will need billions of L-Ion Batteries.
Tesla will become the battery supplier for millions of BEV, and in a long enough time line, making a percentage of most cars sold worldwide.
Short term, there's an even greater green/tech halo over Tesla's brand.
IMO - long term, auto dealers are SOL. An upstart brand from China will likely reverse engineer the ModelS, and can now ship the car to the US without concern of the cars getting caught at the dock due to a patent problem. They could cut a few corners, using lesser materials or maybe incorporating a 40kw battery shaving a few grand off the cost, selling it for cheaper online, foregoing the costs for Service Centers, Show Rooms, SuperChargers. Ostensively, it's the same car as a ModelS, looks similar, runs the same OS, hooks up to SuperChargers. But service will be up to the consumer.
