Indeed, poor Tesla, ending up poor and alone in an apartment in NYC at the end of his life. A disgrace to capitalism's treatment of the brilliant ones.
Yes, barter, I've heard that many times over the years about companies suppressing new technologies that threaten their base of profits. Subsitute energys, rubberless tires, ect. It's all been hashed around.
But that's what makes me wonder about this. If they got this far along, why hasn't someone tried to quash them before they got a small holding company to back them to the point where they are filing multiple patents? Very intriguing scenario here.