I can't emphasize us enough. You know, if you get some digital superintelligence,
it might be in charge of China and said, are you and I'm
not sure you would like that. Well, it's actually gone reasonably close to
what I would happen, which is from that point roughly a fifty percent year
over year compound annual growth, which is a confidence that the Tales the Team
is the fastest growing a large manufactured object ever, which I think the second
is like the model T back in the day, so about a hundred years
ago. So the Tales of Team are very proud to work with them.
They they're executed incredibly well, and we anticipate something close to you know,
percent growth to continue. So that is very exciting, and it means that
we should expect electrication of transport, especially passenger vehicle, you know, quite
quite quickly. It's because the normal human instinct is to extrapolate on a linear
basis, but really, if you look at the curves, electric vehicles are
growing exponentially. So I think that's great news for those in the room.
You have a lot of customers, well, you have a lot of ev
customers ready and saying you will have many more. You know, and forgive
me for waxing on a little bit here, but sometimes asked, well,
when will evs be most of the cars? The important thing to remember is
that you've got two billion cars and trucks out there, so and about one
hundred million for your new vehicle production, which kind of makes sense, so
sort of a life of about twenty years before a vehicle finally goes to the
scrapyard. So even if if one hundred percent elect vehicles were our new vehicle
production was was electric today, will still take twenty years to replace the fleet.
So it's just important to bear that in mind centers of new vehicle production
versus versus total fleet. But I think we're moving quickly to the point where
and probably half of all new vehicles made will be electric, and I think
that's that's that's likely to happen, I think before the end of this decade.
But then this still quote another twenty years beyond that, before that the
fleet really becomes a majority EV So yeah, and it's interesting because as we've
done the analysis for California, right, we have an executive order that calls
for all new vehicle sales being zero emission by twenty thirty five. That's in
mind with the forecast that we've had in our own scenario analysis that's still puts
US at about three quarters of passenger vehicles being electric in twenty forty five when
the stake is sent, and zero to be off by a little bit.
But I mean, I think that the larger point is that man electricity is
going to be extremely high. So so I I, you know, hope
it's good news. The you know, the if just do the rough back
the envelope math, you need to roughly triple electricity to get to equally electric
economy. You know, roughly a third of power is electric and then uh,
you know these are very rough nubers. Roughly a third is spent in
transportation of various kinds with with the fossil fuels or hydrocoffins, and then roughly
a third is heating. So even assuming the the sort of current economy economic
usage electricity of a capita being constant, you're looking at roughly a troubling of
electricity demand and the so it's really going to take a tremindous effort to address
this demand. This is a sort of you know, I think, very
very good news for those producing electricity, but also entails a treminous kind of
work ahead in new production capacity and production capacity that is as sustainable as possible.
Well, I mean, it very requires a whole system to be ramping
up. It's you know, you are dealing with the storage side, and
the vehicle side and the charging side, and we'll talk a little bit more
about that a bit. Yeah, we have the wires, but you know
we need we need support from all across the economy, right, absolutely,
It's it's really, it's really very much a joint effort. I think it's
it's a it's a very very positive future for the producers and distributors of electricity.
Really couldn't ask for a better, you know, growing market that's going
to grow in a better way than this. But it is a tremendous amount
of hard work, as everyone here knows, to actually put that generation in
place and then transport it to where where it gets used, and then dealing
with the peaks and and and and then taking advantage of the valleys of power
production. I mean, that's really where, like the tells, the Megapact
that you're just alluding to is actually incredibly helpful. Is in sort of peak
shaving the grid based basically charging up when you have excess power production and then
and then releasing it when you have insufficient power production where you want to peak
shave. It's the you know, I really believe that stationary battery packs are
absolutely way to the way to go, and it is actually the fastest growing
portion of the entire test the business. So we're so our vehicles growing in
thirty percent a year, about our stationary storage is growing at two to three
hundred percent a year. So it's really you know, it's it's a really
big deal, really helpful, but it's it's like it's just a obviously it's
a battery at scale and a buffers electricity. If you need electricity buffered,
then it's a good product. Well and well, we'll get back to electric
vehicles heet in a minute. But I remember where you and I spoke a
number of years ago. You already had that vision of global electrification. Yeah,
and I think you've positioned your company right with storage, pees with solar.
So this integrated view of where the market is going and how Tesla fits
into Yeah. Yeah, well there's I mean, there's pundamently three three pillars
too, A sustainable energy future one you know, one is sustainable energy generation,
which is solar, wind, hydro. Actually, you know a fan
of nuclear, of good, good old vision, I think it is underrated.
I mean, we can easily supply all of the world's like Trusty with
vision. But people I don't know some of that. Sometimes they're understanding of
physics is not amazing, and so they get scared of things that shouldn't be
sed gheto so so very much pros basically any electricity we can say, okay,
this is not going to meaningfully change the chemistry of the climate notions you
know, the atsmart oceans and so. So you got sustainable electricity generation one
side. Then you've got stationary batteries as the third pillar. Second pillar,
which is needed for any kind of intermittent electricity production, and by its nature,
solar and wind are intermittent, so batteries and solar and wind go together
extremely well. And and then the third pillar is electric transport. So get
all three of those pillars going and we have a sustainable futurists as long as
the sun shiants and the wind blows, which is gave me a long time.
Well, I think you know this idea of having a balance across these
resources. It takes a lot of tools in the toolbox. Let me get
back to electric vehicles though, because left to go a couple levels deeper here,
we're talking some you know, a few minutes ago, I think that
was more on passenger vehicles. Well, let's talk a bit about about bigger
once. So you know, we're all excited to see the first Tesla semi
trucks on the road in California, and that means a lot in terms of
the viability of trucking systems in the future. We also have the us EPA,
you know, proposed vehicle standards. It could accelerate the medium and heavy
duty electrification. We have California doing its thing, as well as a number
of other states. But ultimately the vehicle need to be economical for fleet operators,
and particularly in southern California where we have all the traffic coming up from
the ports. A lot of those truck operators are not big fleets, right,
they're small, mom and pop owners. So absolutely so, how how
quickly are you thinking that freight movement really goes electric and in a way that's
affordable so that you can really serve up that mix of owners something. Yeah,
well, I think i'd certainly encourage people to look at our semi truck
presentations because in fact, the one of the things we emphasize with electric semi
truck is that's it's much more energy efficient than a diesel truck, you know
so, and I mean you get things like the genitive breaking. So like
let's say you're going over a mountain range. Well, in diesel truck,
you actually don't capture that the energy of high too potential energy. You have
to actually spend a lot of money on expensive breaks going down the other side,
so you run out of control. So whereas an electric semi truck is
able to recapture the energy gravitational potential energy and actually when it goes down the
other side does not overheat breaks and back puts the energy back in the pack.
So things like that are incredibly helpful for the energy efficiency. And they
just generally look the entire chain from electricity production to take into account the efficiency
of the energy produced, the energy lust during transmission, energy lust during charging,
and then see how many miles were driven. You could take the same
diesel that is used to power a a truck, use it and burn it
electricity and still be at least fifty harm percent better with an electric semi truck
then with an if you put that diesel directly in the truck. I think
that's in line. We were talking earlier in our board meeting about just the
efficient security. It's efficiency of electric technologies, right, So it's a big
part of the story here. Yeah, just fundamentally, combustion engines in a
vehicle are constrained in massive volume, so you have to you're therefore limited in
how much efficiency, how much useful energy you can extract from a fuel when
you have a very constrained massive volume for the truck. Whereas a power plant
does not have the constraints of mass volume. It can be heavier and bigger,
obviously, and you can take the waste heat and run a steam turbine,
so can your sort of Carno. Efficiency of a power plant is dramatically
greater than if it's in a mobile application like a vehicle, And even when
taking into account transmission losses and charging losses, that there's still don't account for
the massive difference in efficiency of even hydrocoffins being built at a power plant versus
being used in a car, which sets up thinking about, well, what's
the transition there, but ultimately though looking at a future that's electric. So
we're all we're all agreeing on the efficiency of the trucks. Let me state
something that's plainly obvious. Bigger and more trucks, bigger and more batteries,
right, So let's talk about the supply chain for batteries. And I want
to say thank you because a number of the folks here were able to get
a tour of the Giga factory here in Austin. Yes, and actually apologized
I didn't probably answer your question with respector trucks, because so semi trucks,
because they do use a large battery, will be toward will be later than
than other vehicles because we need to have excess sufficient battery supply in order to
have a battery that's you know, maybe four or five times larger than it
would be in a passenger car have that be in in a semi truck.
That's the reason why we haven't gone to scale production of semi truck yet is
because they're just worn't off batteries. Now, as the battery problem is solved,
we will go to volume production with the semi truck and I'm pretty sure
it tells will refers on this, but we're expecting to reach volume production probably
sometime next mute and the next year is you know what we're waiting for.
And again, because it's not going to be overnight all the trucks become electric,
because you have to reach a certain percent of new semi trucks built then
replace the fleet. The fleet is you know, at least ten years old
in the semi truck case, and so you know, but I think it
probably gets the fifty percent of new semi trucks built within probably three or four
years, eighty five years, and then it's another ten fifteen years before you
see most trucks be electric. So that's I don't know, demand on on
your perspective, that's either really soon or far away or a little bit about
Yeah. Yeah, So that's that helps get a sense of the time scale
here, I think a one level level deeper though, and when you think
about the actual underlying challenges in getting that battery scale again, a gigafactor here
seems like it's a great advancement in terms of the manufacturing side. Yeah,
but then how do you think about the supply chain behind it the rare earth
materials. Are you thinking about different chemistries over time or other ways to make
sure you're getting the suppot supplier batteries you need for that kind of scale growth.
Yeah, so the row materials are not really an issue here, especially
when you consider iron based cathodes. So we think probably the most of the
batteries made will be with an iron cath Iron is extremely common. It's actually
the most common element on Earth by mass. Is is iron, second is
oxygen. Everything else is in the remaining roughly, so we have more iron
that we were basically a rusty well that's what Earth is, iron oxide,
iron and oxygen, iron and oxygen and a little some silicon and a few
other things. But it's it's funny that Earth is by mass almost two thirds
iron and oxygen. So we're not gonna run out of iron, that's for
sure, and especially forestationary storage where mass and volume are not that important,
and iron based lithium ion cell. So the thinking about lithiumy itself is like
it's a lot of torque of lithium, but actually lithium is like the salt
on the salad. It's not the salad itself. So the costs tend to
be predominate, and certainly the mass of the fact predominates in the cathode,
which is it's going to be a metal, and the higher energy chemistries are
tend to be nickel, and then the lower and lower engine des chemistry will
be iron. So to use nickel for kind of long range stuff where where
mass and volume really matter and you'd use ironware it's less important. So medium
range cars, stationary storage, iron long range cars and aircraft would definitely be
nickel. Well, let's let's talk about how we actually charge all those batteries.
And back in twenty fifteen you describe the need for fast charging to help
long distance travel work, even as most of the charging, we think it
ends up happening at home. So you built a supercharger network. I think
it's still the benchmark in terms of public ev charging out there. You've made
some really big announcements recently. You've been fun to watch with Forward and more
recently with GM. Just curiously, you know, why are you opening up
the network? You know, how do you see this creating competitive advan they've
been working with with others. Well, I don't know if it is a
competitive advantage but it might be actually competitive disadvantage. But the the purpose of
Talesla from the beginning has been to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy, and
so you know, we're and I've been very clear with that. Even when
we went to IPO, I said, hey, look, some of the
things we do may not be you know, super profit maximizing, so don't
invest if that's a problem. Cars tool to sell our stock. If that's
a problem. On the other hand, we'll make up for it with some
epic products. So I think on balance will be okay. And we were
in public at I think one point roughly just over one and a half billion
dollars, so improve since then, Yeah, you know, I made some
progress. You know some of the things that maybe we could have done that
were not totally profit optimizing. I mean, we've open sourced all of our
patents, so anyone can use our patents, which is pretty unusual. So
you know, it's and I mean mostly do the patents just to stop like
patent trolls and people people are doing blocking actions. So we'll do a patent
and then make it open so that there's because like patents are like a minefield,
you know, it's just like you don't want those a clear path to
the future of sustainability. And then you know, as far as opening up
our network, I actually don't even know if this is actually, you know,
a good thing for treasure or a bad thing. I mean, I
think it's morally right, but it's whether it's financially smart race to be seen.
But it was it would you know it was something that that would help
the rest of the industry go electric, So we opened it up. And
so we don't want to use it as kind of a world garden or competitive
weapon. It's if it's something that would help advance sustainable energy, will do
it. Let's say powerful statement about the commitment to sustainability exchanges. I'm curious
salon and doing and taking that step. Might it also influence how you think
about the evolution of your own charging networks? So for example, I think
some of the other charging networks might have higher U voltages for fast charging.
Is that something that you think would then lead you to migrators at or do
you think you're in the right suite spot? Well, it depends on which
cars. If we're talking about here, there's there's a maximum rate of which
you can charge a pack. So you know, if you want to see
that rate, it's not it's not relevant to that particular vehicle. You know,
our latest superchargers will do of a three hundred Yeah fair to kill abots
each other, we had to go back to some more planning. If yeah,
exactly, so big big cable or very high voltage, we just crank
it up to a million volts. Look at the same cables, electuisity joke.
Yeah. So yeah, if you I mean that our squared our heating
is real can really get you, but you just crank up the vaultage.
So yeah, I mean it's three fifty kilobots. I mean you really are
exceeding the rate which almost any battery can it can take an actually charge without
damaging the battery. So I think we're will be found on out front.
Our voltage for a long time has been roughly four hundred volts plus NINUS thirty
and with the next generation, we're doubling that to the eight hundred volts.
So I mean, there's there's it's it's not it's not as big a game
as it may seem, but it's you know, it's slightly better. So
our our super chargers will be able to operate it either four hundred or eight
hundred volts and just you know, impedence matched to whatever the vehicles that's once
be charged. Well again, it's a really fascinating move and it will be
interesting to see how other OEMs you know, approach the Ford and GM announcements.
Yeah. Like I said, we're you know, really just trying to
do the right thing here, and you know it's there with gym Folly and
very arter that you know, we will support GM and Ford cars on an
equal footing note you know, special status for test the vehicles and that kind
of thing. It's got to be fair. Sots talk about more will stick
to it. It sounds like it's in line with making your patents open source,
right Yeah. Yeah, Well all of those chargers are going to drive
the need for a lot of infrastructure on our side of the grid. Yes.
Actually, I can't emphasize enough. We need more electricity. How much
electricity you think you need is more than that is needed. I show you
if you're thinking traveled this incremental production capacity of electricity, Yes, definitely.
You have as rooms fast as possible. Amen, So you have a room
full of folks here. Some of folks are you members of EI regulated utility
folks. There's suppliers here, vendors. It's a whole community that's that's needed
here to make this happen. We also need to support of government, right
and so it's been exciting to see the IRA funding. We're talking about this
earlier today. Irai j a transformational for the US. Yeah, but we
still need more help, right than getting permitting, inciting reform for example,
to get the steal in the ground. I feel I feel the same way
like it's it's man. I mean, we're like practically leaking construction illegal in
this country, especially in California. I mean, you know, no offense.
I lived there for a long time and I still I still spend I
still spend a lot of time in California, FI and I am still pro
California. Not easy sometimes, remember I am a California And I mean it's
you know, even then, you know what I'm talking about that being recorded.
I mean, I mean, try getting a permit to radio kitchen in
LA. I mean it's a forget no deal, but but you know what
that is. It is really something we're all dealing with. The Crosshill States
it's federal permitting. At state levels, it's like we're just like you know,
gullibus travels and each one of those regulations by themselves maybe not so bad,
but it's like a like you've got a thousand, ten thousand little strings,
you know, holding the Giant of America down, frankly from a regulatory
standpoint. So that so that it's one part that we need to solve and
appreciate testless engagement and policy space what you've done. Yeah, there's another part
of this, which is the collaboration between utilities and our customers, whether it's
Tesla or somebody else. I was out in in Barstow, California recently,
See territory, and I was seeing the upgrades that our team was making to
accommodate the large super charger station because you know, Barstow, for those of
you who don't know, smack between the drive between La and Las Vegas,
right so popular spot for charging. I've charged there, So I think this
one's going to open, you know, right right following weekend or something something.
Charges are like major power, droll serious and so so they are,
and that means we need good collaboration. One of the things that EI has
done is reach out to the customer community, whether it's charging companies, whether
it's large fleet operators, to get that collaboration. But I'm curious, from
your perspective, what more do we to be doing to collaborate better with you
and with the OEMs and you know with frankly, you're charging competitors because we
need everybody to get this ecosystem going. Well, I guess anything we can
do to make me grow faster would be would be great, and obvious is
not all in your hands. There's there's a lot of permitting and whatnot that
has to happen. But but I really can empasize enough. We're at,
like I think, a very exciting juncture for electricity providers, which is that
the demand for electricity is going to go, is going exponential and well,
like I said, roughly roughly trouble where it is today to get to a
fully sustainable economy. So so I think I would just be courtious about extrapolating
from the past, because the future is not like the past. The future
is is a massive increase in electricity demand and it's going to take everything we've
got to just keep up with it. So I think speed, like just
figure out like how do we move faster, how do we have fast deployment
of electricity? And that's the whole everything matters, from generation to transmission to
the local substation. And I understand there's like like quite a long lead time
on like stepped down transformers. So man, I hope tells doesn't have to
make those too, but look forward to it. We need more of them.
Yeah. Well, well, I mean, my my my challenge to
this the Megapact team is like, okay, guys, look, let's try
to get it to where you just take the big cables, the power cables
and you just blogging in you know, no substation. You know that'd be
sweet. You know, you just just take the big metal wire and climb
it down here and you're done. Engineers talked a little bit about that.
I mean, it's it's totally doable. You know, if you don't go
too crazy on the voltage, it's totally doable. You know, you do
start having these like you know, can't have the wires too close together because
we're arking limits and stuff. But but but generally, like if they look
at MEGAPAC deployments, one of the limiting factors is the substation equipment to do
voltage step up, you know, And and so we're just looking at like,
okay, how can we make what are all the things that slow us
down to getting to a sustainable energy economy and then we just tackle whatever appears
to be the biggest issue. And and I think, as we'll know,
we also have these sort of consumer side of power wall which is obviously it's
very tiny compared to the megapac, but it's also very can be very helpful
in a neighborhood for balancing power and offer having having the power walls operate collectively
to smooth out the power in a neighborhood, which we've got working quite well
in Australia at this point. And I believe we've got some test efforts in
California as well. I thank you we do with sc virtual power plant efforts.
PGNA has m as well. That's a good transition tour I wanted to
go next, or just when you think about that interaction with the customer,
Clearly we are interesting interacting with the customer. You are as well. It
can be through virtual power plants. I'll throw in by directional charging into the
equation too, right, So you put all these things together, technologies enabling
some different relationships with the customer. What's your vision for you know, how
how that evolved server that experience. Well, like I can empsize enough that
we're just going to hit constraints on electricity production and transmission on mass across the
boards. That's why I'm like, I know, obviously it takes time to
plant, form and permit and build a new power generation plant, but I
that's why I'm encouraging important to start now. I'm not sure what your plans
are for future electricity demand, but it's going to be I'm pretty sure it's
gonna be much higher than what what what you currently think electricity man is going
to be. Well, I mean necessarily must be three times what it is
today in order of us to have a sustainable energy future. So that means
power plants, transmission. I mean there's obviously some I think that's not this
this to some degree, we can improve the power throughput of some of the
lines by jacking up the voltage. You know, make me requires separating cables
a bit more, but I obviously need to step up to step down transformers
different cables too. So just we have an area here called the hub with
a number of companies that have different technologies. We had Gates join us yesterday,
and you know, with a number of the companies that breakthrough, energy
of interest is supporting. One of those was a company that's making a cable
that can carry a lot more capacity. Right, So I agree that all
those technologies will be important. By the way, as we do the analysis
for California wide, we do see a future where California gets in at zero
and twenty five and it's not quite fully electrified. It's mostly electrified because other
other tools in the toolbox. And that's that's at least a sixty percent increasing
load, whereas it has been flat for decades now. So it's coming,
we agree, Okay, So I like, I think that's that's basically that's
it will be much more low than that maybe, yeah, by like a
lot like yeah, we're doing in our head are it's just everything's gonna be
electric. And I think the actually the average power users for a person is
going to increase, affair. But I means an interesting thing to consider it
is like he is total power used by humans on average over time, you
know, and you say, like you go from not that long ago when
the best we could do is kind of make a campfire. So you say,
and I'm talking like electricity and thermal energy per human was extremely tiny.
If you even go back two hundred years, we literally had to you know,
burn what are called locally to gain heat. There was no electricity,
you know. So and even if you take all of the like all the
steam engines to everything, and divide that by total number of humans, power
usage per human thermal electrical otherwise was a minuscule two hundred years ago and even
less three hundred years ago. Now it is incredibly high, and it is
rising. And this is and you're going to see I think a lot of
electricity usage by the sort of neural net data centers as well. There's a
heavy power draws. So in fact, I think one of the scaling constraints
for AI is going to be power availability. That there are quite power hungry.
So you've got you've got basically average energy usage for a person increasing dramatically
and a transition from burning hydrocobbins to things that are more sustainable. Anyways,
the point is it's going to be three x current, and I think that
three x number is probably probably have around fish. So this is the thing
about exponential growth, is it really it's counterintuitive and well you know, actually
exponentials are to tend to be kind of sort of underestimated, just you know
it just there's a long tradition of that. It's cell phones, other technologies
that yes, you know, humans have not been able to see escalating.
You know, this this brings up a different question area around some of the
other places where electrification is going to play a role. So we know,
we spent a long time talking a lot cars, but you know, building
electrification maybe another important tool to help reduce emissions over time. You know,
again, California different from other states, but we think that we're going to
see something like, you know, thirty percent of all buildings needing heat bumps
to get to the twenty already targets of the state has yet by twenty five.
How much focus are you putting on the building side of electrification right now?
And is that a place where you think testam I go, uh,
well, we have the power wall, which is but that's that's somewhat more
of a support. Yeah, that's like a for homes, homes and small
businesses. Its powerwall. I would certainly appreciate support from utilities with bringing powerwalls
online. And one of the you know, selling points of a power wall
is to give the homes like some amount of protection against brown out, blackout
type of thing. But sometimes we we we do get some up pushback from
utilities about enabling a sort of cut off switch because if if you don't if
if you don't cuttle power to if you if the grid loses power, then
point you just send up say if you've got, if you've got, you're
approaching electricity you know, back onto the grid, and it's kind of pointless.
It doesn't doesn't work. So we would appreciate some support in approving and
installing the backups, which which really just enables homeowners to have power for whatever
reason. There's there's the grids down for some reason. So that would be
most most appreciated and we'll continue to engage in that. Also from the utility
side, I want to make sure we're managing you know, safety reliability issues,
but you know, it's making sure we're understanding the technology and engaging with
your team to work through the details. Yeah, so but I maybe it's
it could be pretty helpful. And then like I said, the powerbls,
you know, operating collectively and help to stay alize the grid in a particular
neighborhood. I do think like local power generation, uh, you know,
basically rooftop solar and and with an accompanying battery pack is a helpful part of
solving the energy problem because there's a lot of neighborhoods where it's hard to get
incremental power to that neighborhood because you need like more substations, you need more
you know, overhead wires, and then you know, in a lot of
places that can be extremely difficult to achieve, you know because just from opposition
from people not wanting additional electricity wires overhead and not wanting to expand substations.
So there's a sort of a solution to there's where where local solar and local
storage helps alleviate some some very thorny situations where you just can't it's extremely difficult
to get more power to that neighborhood. So a little bit of local power
generation is pretty helpful. In fact, when when we do our analysis for
California, we see the state needing to add something like eighty giggle, what's
the bolt power renewables and thirty giggle what's of boll power storage? We're also
counting on thirty giggle what's it distributed renewables and ten gigs distributed storage. We
see, we need all the tools in the toolbox for what for it's coming
out exactly. Yeah, well, you know, one other touch points you've
had with our sector has been the work that you're doing here in Texas.
Where as I understand it, your you announced an energy retail business with a
subscription program right that allows powerable customers to I think it's a thirty dollars monthly
flat feet. Yeah, I mean, we're trying different experiments, so we
don't know what actually makes sense, but we're trying different experiments and see what
what might work. So yeah, for sure, trying to figuet like power
walls or working together help stabilize the grid, which they can reflect on that
many times now, and some megapact which is great at the sort of utility
or heavy industry level. So yeah, it seems, you know, we're
just trying to help foster or sustainable energy future, and it's going to take
many, many, many different technology solutions and different arenas to solve this kind
of tripling of electricity demand and provision problem. Well, let me let me
shift topics a little bit. And you mentioned AI earlier in the context of
being one of those drivers of electricity load increases, but you've also been pretty
outspoken about both the potential and the risk of AI. I think a number
of us are moving really quickly right now with use cases and how we use
it. I'll given one example at Edison. Last year, we did almost
two hundred thousand asset inspections and high wildfire risk areas using drones, just generating
terabytes of data, you know, a great ability to capture images all around.
There's no way humans could process all those images. So we've been using
an AI enabled tool to down select the images that we're going to look at.
Looking at other use cases right now, but we recognize ours risk too,
So love your thoughts about you know, broadly across the industry, and
then if you think about our sector, how should we be thinking about AI
from your perspective and both the opportunities in the risks there? Well, I
mean I've had many stupiless nights thinking about AI, So I am worried about
AI. On the downside, you know, I just it's sort of a
technology like like nuclear It's extremely powerful, but it could get out of hand.
And so I have been struggling with this question for a long time of
what do mitigate AI existential risk? And I've been a big proponent actually a
regulation of at least some having some oversight by the government, you know,
acting as kind of a referee to make sure that AI companies don't go do
super dangerous things and nobody's even watching them, or there's there's no there's no
sort of agent of the public, which is really you know, regulation when
it's done done right, is they're trying to oversee the good of the public
and make sure that companies don't kind of cut corners or break rules or do
things that would endanger the public. And this is the origin of the FAA,
and it's various regulatory organizations that exist. And now those regulatory agencies only
came into being after a lot of people died, you know, a lot
of things went wrong. So with AI, I don't think we can afford
luxury of like waiting until it goes wrong, you know, so I think
we need to be preemptive on this front. So I've had had a number
of conversations with world leaders, you know, including you know, personior people
in China, and it's around the world Europe. I'm actually heading to Europe
tomorrow have some AI safety conversations with with some of the country leaders there.
Is because I think, I think this is the kind of thing where the
world needs to work together on AI Safety's it's a really big deal. I
can't emphasize this enough. So I was someone encouraged by China's willingness to engage
AI regulation. And I did point out that you know, if you get
some digital superintelligence, it might be in charge of China and said, are
you and I'm not sure you would like that that that that argument seemed to
resonate. Well, you know, since you're bringing out of China, you
know, you're very active there, also active with government leaders. A little
ass script here, but as you think about US China relationship and how it
helps navigate or hurts, and as we don't trying to navigate whether it's AI,
whether it's a competitiveness for your products both in the US and Chinese markets,
how are you thinking about how that evolves and what's the endgame here in
terms of being able to work at both markets. I don't know what the
endgame is, but I can say the mid game is going to be spicy.
Have you with your operations in China? Have you do you feel like
we've enjoyed good support and are you comfortable with that in virtual property? Yeah,
we've actually gotten very good support in China. Tells it has the only
fully barn owned car factory in China, and we do very well in the
domestic market in China, and our you know, our shang Hi factory is
our highest per pointing factory globally. So it's a it's very impressive team that
tells it has in China. The work ethic there is incredible, so,
you know, I think it very interesting future the you know, we aren't
entering a phase where US will not be the biggest economy in the world.
And there's nobody alive today who can remember when the United States was not the
biggest economy in the world. So it is it's gary a little probably discomforting
at first to a lot of people to have China be probably you know,
two or three times the size of the US economy. So it's already higher
than the industrial output. Manufactual output is already significantly higher than the US,
and that will increase. And they've had a significant investment focus in electric vehicles.
Yes, China is actually, of any large country, the most board
leading with sustainable energy. So they have massive solar projects when projects and have
done the most with respect to electric vehicles of any large country. Of smaller
countries, norways leader, but for any logic for a large economy, it's
China set far the most forward leaning for sustainability. Well, let me pull
up from Tesla and you do have a few other places where you spend your
time. Yeah, so so you know, and I mentioned introducing you with
SpaceX, Twitter boring company Neuralink, which is really exciting. I saw you
at some approvals recently offering free brand shipping. As you leave the conference,
can I suggest a few folks to go first app here. You won't feel
a thing, you know, joking aside, you're making a personal choice to
spend time across these is there is there a common thread in terms of mission
across all of these And you know, and what what excites you most of
about your portfolio? Well, I mean the aspiration with these various things is
to maximize the probi The future is good for civilization. So it's, you
know, the future is just a set of probabilities, like we don't know,
you know, for sure what's going to happen, but degree we can
check the probabilities towards a positive future for civilization. I think we want to
do that. And me, this is really just you know, if you're
sort of long term thinker at all, it's this is naturally what one should
want to do, because you know, how can we really exist in the
absence of civilization. I mean, you can see what it's like just watch
you know, Naked and afraid is what it is when you don't have civilization.
It's a civilization pretty great. So I think we want to keep it
going and you know, and and keep advancing civilization. So I think we
can we should try to expand the scope and scale consciousness such that we are
better able to understand the universe and now places in it. So I would
call, you know, my philosophy of phlosophy of curiosity. And while we
will all die as individuals civilization and continue very poor, very very long time
billions of years or more, so we should try to make sure that happens.
So these various things that are doing, are trying to shift the probability
of future being good. Now, I hope that's It may turn out that
some of these things. The road to hell is paved with good intentions,
so hopefully, you know, those good intentions to not translate to something bad.
But I think the road to hell is is mostly paved by bad intentions.
And you know, once in a while there's a good intention of paving
stone in there, but the intent is to maximize probably the future is good
for civilization. So with in a case, so say your link it's like,
well, how does that affect things? It's like, well, if
we are to link the sort of the path of the AI too human,
well then what are the what what could act to impair that that linkage?
And we're getting pretty esoteric here, but one of the issues is the bandwidth
between your cortex and your computer or your AI, the AI extensive extension of
yourself. And if that bandwidth is too low, then the computer will simply
be bored. You will you know, as bandwidth I guess very low,
you effectively have a very thin stroll between yourself and the AI extension of yourself.
Now, now we're already cybulks when you think about the fact that your
phone and your computer are an extension of yourself, and probably you know,
I think most people if you forget your phone somewhere, it's like having missing
limb syndrome, you know, and you're like patting your pockets, and it's
like the phone is basically an extension of yourself, starting with you don't know
anybody's phone number anymore? Yes, right, exactly. I had just like
nightmare like where I was stuck at a party and someone else was taking my
phone and and and so I had their phone, but I can't use it.
And then they were like, so, well, well who should recall
I'm like, I don't know anyone's number, so you don't even know who
to call. How do you it's supposed to happen to what's happen a lot,
you know, It's like you don't know anyone's number, and you have
they've put your phone, and you can't call whatever, anuver or anything,
and you're just Stuckcause I like that idea of increasing the bandwidth between the computer
assistant and the brain, but apparently we also need a safety lock to make
sure we don't lose the computer in the process. Elon, this has been
terrific and I hope that it's not another eight years before we see her here.
Appreciate all the efforts you have and frankly the symptom and you provided around
trying to improve humanity and recognizing that the collaboration that we have between our sector
and your company it's critical to helping humanity deal with climates help. Thank you
so much for doing and please know we're all stand ready to continue to partner
to make this transition a real thing. Everybody, let's thank Elon very much
and thank you so much