Not a dumb question at all. I would say that it means that there's a very real business opportunity for anyone who wants to compete with Tesla and takes the open route. Beyond that who knows, but the very fact that they're shutting down analysis as much as possible (they probably don't really care that much about hackers, it's the reverse engineering shops that all the major car manufacturers run that would be their big fear), suggests that what they have is easy to copy. Or reinvent.

History, I suspect, will be on the side of the battery makers.