Speaker 1: I'd like to start by, I mean, you're involved in
Speaker 1: several really cutting edge kinds of things that are cool.
Speaker 1: But let's talk for a minute about this, the electric car,
Speaker 1: which is really an old concept in the car industry,
Speaker 1: right it is, actually and but you know there's a
Speaker 1: modern take on it. Why are you in that business?
Speaker 1: And do you agree with what has been written about
Speaker 1: you that it's fair to say that you have proven
Speaker 1: this is this can be sold at a profit in
Speaker 1: market conditions.
Speaker 2: Sure, so the reason for Tesla was not because I
Speaker 2: thought that there was some huge opportunity in electric cars,
Speaker 2: or that I thought it was some rank order best
Speaker 2: way to get a return on investment or something like that.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think so a car company, particular electric
Speaker 2: car company, would have to rank as one of the
Speaker 2: dumbest things you could possibly do on that scale. And
Speaker 2: it may seem like, I mean, today, obviously we've we've
Speaker 2: got quite a quite a high market gap, just call
Speaker 2: it that. And so it may seem, oh, well, this
Speaker 2: is sort of obviously a good thing to have done.
Speaker 3: But for for many years people would people regarded this.
Speaker 2: In fact, most people, almost all people regarded it as
Speaker 2: stupid or insane or both you know to have done that,
Speaker 2: so it's not so the reason for doing it was
Speaker 2: was not because I thought it was some great opportunity.
Speaker 2: The easiest thing for me to have done after people
Speaker 2: would have been to start a new internet company. That
Speaker 2: would have been like falling off LUG, I mean, quite
Speaker 2: really easy. And and so the the reason it was
Speaker 2: because it clear that we were not going to see
Speaker 2: electric cars from the incumbent manufacturers.
Speaker 3: For for a while that I thought that we potentially.
Speaker 2: Would, because you had the E V one from General Motors,
Speaker 2: for example, and it seemed like the obvious thing to
Speaker 2: do would then be do the e B two EV three.
Speaker 3: Frankly, if Jeral Motives had done that, they would be
Speaker 3: in a far better position today.
Speaker 2: And but then instead, what what Gero Motives did was
Speaker 2: as soon as California changed the regulations, they recalled the
Speaker 2: e V ones and just to make sure that nobody
Speaker 2: could get them back, they took them to a junkyard
Speaker 2: and crushed them and h and and if you've seen
Speaker 2: the movie Who Killed the Electric Car, you'll see that
Speaker 2: they actually those customers tried the best to keep the cars, and.
Speaker 3: When the cars were taken to the junk yard and crushed.
Speaker 3: They held a candle at vigil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the cars were leased, they were not ever
Speaker 1: sold out right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: They held the candle at vigil as though it was
Speaker 3: someone dying. And I think that should be a pretty
Speaker 3: big wake up hall.
Speaker 2: If people are holding a candle a visual for your product,
Speaker 2: maybe you shouldn't cancel it. Yeah, maybe you shouldn't cancel it,
Speaker 2: you know, and yeah, so but but they did, and
Speaker 2: so they can't all people activities. So the reason for
Speaker 2: Forteesla was to show that it actually is possible to
Speaker 2: create a compelling electric car or you know, a long
Speaker 2: range car electric car, and if you did that that
Speaker 2: people would buy it because the condosary is operating on
Speaker 2: what I believe to be two false premises. One was
Speaker 2: that you could not make a compelling electric car, one
Speaker 2: that was esthetically appealing, long range, higher formance, all these things,
Speaker 2: and that even if you did all those things, the
Speaker 2: Conisstry's opinion was that people would still not buy it
Speaker 2: because it was electric and they had some bardaners for
Speaker 2: burning gasoling.
Speaker 4: People had moved you into it?
Speaker 5: What was the starting you said, Internet company was like
Speaker 5: falling off a log, easy to do why that area.
Speaker 3: Then why electric cars? Oh?
Speaker 2: So, because I think it's I think it's important that
Speaker 2: we transition to sustainable transport. If we don't transition to
Speaker 2: sustainable transport, obviously totologically it's not sustainable. And even if
Speaker 2: there were not an environmental issue, in fact, even if
Speaker 2: you were to say hypothetically that emitting cobbon was good
Speaker 2: for the environment, because of the scarcity of of oil
Speaker 2: and natural gas and support, the would eventually face extremely
Speaker 2: high gasoline costs and the economy would grind into a
Speaker 2: halt if we did not find some sustainable means of transport.
Speaker 1: Do you worry that the electricity that is generated and
Speaker 1: used when the cars are recharged and plugged in is
Speaker 1: a lot of it is generated from coal?
Speaker 3: Does that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean, depending on where you are in the country,
Speaker 2: you know, say roughly half of it is it is
Speaker 2: not colled, but so roughly half of it is hydrocarbon based.
Speaker 2: And however, that's that's There are two obs rebuttals. That
Speaker 2: one is that if you take the same source fuel
Speaker 2: and you burn it at the power plant level, you
Speaker 2: will get two to three times the efficiency.
Speaker 3: Then if you burnt it in the car itself, because.
Speaker 2: At the power plant level you're not constrained by mass
Speaker 2: and volume, so you can have something that's big and heavy,
Speaker 2: and you can also take the waste heat and generate
Speaker 2: a steam and a user turn of steam turbine, so.
Speaker 3: You get what's called cogeneration.
Speaker 2: To your maximum extractful energy, it is much greater for
Speaker 2: the stationary power plant than if you burned that same
Speaker 2: fuel in a mobile transfer. We have formal constraints. And
Speaker 2: then the other factor is that we have to find
Speaker 2: sustainable means of electricity production anyway, So if you believe
Speaker 2: in that predicate, you can write that predicate and say,
Speaker 2: given that we must have sustainable electricity production, the obvious
Speaker 2: move for transport is electric.
Speaker 5: So when you're talking about these ideas of getting doing
Speaker 5: this particular thing, one of the things that's I think
Speaker 5: struck a lot of people about you is the scale
Speaker 5: of the vision. That it's not one that it's very difficult,
Speaker 5: two that it's a little crazy going along with city sex.
Speaker 5: At the same time, what what do you imagine is
Speaker 5: that you've had many years doing this, many critics, You're going.
Speaker 4: To make it. You're getting a lot of what was
Speaker 4: going about subsidies.
Speaker 5: I think that you talk about that what is the
Speaker 5: why these kind of projects?
Speaker 4: And this is sort of a bigger question, I want
Speaker 4: to think you but the idea of the bigness.
Speaker 5: Of the project, because there's been this The industry has
Speaker 5: been littered with electric car funerals, essentially, and not as
Speaker 5: many candle like vigils obviously, but right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that there have been many car company failures, not
Speaker 2: just electric of course. And honestly, I've had like a
Speaker 2: dollar for every time somebody brought up Glorian or Tucker.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't need an IPO, you know, it would have
Speaker 2: been perfectly financed just on that alone. So when I
Speaker 2: was in college, I wanted to be involved in things
Speaker 2: that I thought would affect the world, and there were
Speaker 2: three areas that I thought would most affect the world,
Speaker 2: and one of them was the Internet.
Speaker 3: So did a couple of companies in that. But then
Speaker 3: it seemed like after payfo hours, like there's a lot
Speaker 3: of really.
Speaker 2: Talented entrepreneurs and a lot of capital doing Internet ventures.
Speaker 2: So it didn't seem like I could necessarily be all
Speaker 2: that incrementally useful in the Internet arena, and so it
Speaker 2: was times to then go to two other the other
Speaker 2: two areas which were sustainable energy and space exploration, in
Speaker 2: particular developing a technology necessary to make life multiplanetary.
Speaker 1: So multiplanetary life is it might be more interesting than cars.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that surely, but I do have to
Speaker 1: ask you know, the this is it's an important it's
Speaker 1: very important that you've made an attractive car with longer
Speaker 1: range than I think than you're right, than people thought possible.
Speaker 1: That's electric, all electric, but it's fairly expensive, I think,
Speaker 1: at least upfront. And what does it cost your most
Speaker 1: successful one.
Speaker 3: Well, before text credits, it's about seventy thousand dollars. After
Speaker 3: tax credits is like sixty.
Speaker 1: Now we're getting a tax credits, so there's like a
Speaker 1: there's some kind of federal tax credit right for buying
Speaker 1: a pure election. And then you were telling me backstage,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of states, fifteen states or something have these.
Speaker 3: Right, there's different types of credits.
Speaker 2: So the the first thing I should say is that.
Speaker 3: People think of like electric cars.
Speaker 2: As receiving a subsidy, but but in fact what's occurring
Speaker 2: is that they are receiving less of a subsidy than
Speaker 2: gasoline cars if you would actually look at the subsidy
Speaker 2: of gasolete gasoline cars, and particularly if you're priced in
Speaker 2: the economic oil the inventory of the environmental damages. The
Speaker 2: what's really occurring is that every time you buy a gasoline.
Speaker 3: Car that there are huge subsidies occurring.
Speaker 2: And you can actually tell that these subsidies are are
Speaker 2: higher than they than than than the substituce for electric cars,
Speaker 2: because people are not buying electric cars except I mean ours,
Speaker 2: and not huge.
Speaker 1: These are upstream subsidies to the oil companies and so forth.
Speaker 1: For the they're both direct whole the whole tax.
Speaker 2: It's there's some normals, some of it's like half a
Speaker 2: trillion dollars in substys too.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you do get you also get some federal
Speaker 1: and state subsidies, right, yes, And then there's this these
Speaker 1: credits that you are able to sell to the other
Speaker 1: car companies. Can you explain what that is?
Speaker 3: Sure? Sure?
Speaker 2: Although just to emphasize game, it's it's pretty obvious that
Speaker 2: the credit, whatever substes are occurring for electric cars are
Speaker 2: are less than for gasing cars. Otherwise things like the
Speaker 2: Chovy Vault or the nis On Leaf would sell in
Speaker 2: large quantities, but they are not, and so that's like
Speaker 2: an obvious test. Then with respect to zerium mission vehicle credits,
Speaker 2: so ZEV credits, these apply to about forty percent.
Speaker 3: Of the viewers population and they were.
Speaker 2: Actually put in place quite a while ago to deal
Speaker 2: with pollution and evolution in in places like LA and
Speaker 2: the Bay Area in New York and so so whenever
Speaker 2: you're driving cars in the dense an area, you're essentially
Speaker 2: emitting a bunch of toxic gases that negatively affect people's
Speaker 2: health and obviously the quality of the air.
Speaker 3: And it's pretty obvious in LA during the summer.
Speaker 2: So in order to motivate manufacturers to move away from that,
Speaker 2: the States enacted the ZEV credit mandate, which was that
Speaker 2: a small number of electric or zero mission vehicles have
Speaker 2: to be made by all large scale manufacturers, and if
Speaker 2: they don't make those vehicles, then they have to purchase
Speaker 2: ZEV credits.
Speaker 3: From someone who has. But when we sell a ZEV credit,
Speaker 3: we sell.
Speaker 2: It at sixty five cents on the dollar. So the
Speaker 2: best thing that another.
Speaker 3: Manufacturer could make would be electric.
Speaker 2: Cars, because then they get one hundred cents on the
Speaker 2: dollar for every tax credit.
Speaker 1: So why don't they.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm hopeful that they will. I think to some
Speaker 3: degree at least, some of the manufacturers were hoping that.
Speaker 2: No one would come up with an electric vehicle that
Speaker 2: anyone wanted to buy, and that California the other ZEV
Speaker 2: states would repeal their ZERV mandate because they've lobbied for
Speaker 2: that outcome many times and have less well been unsuccessful
Speaker 2: if Tesla. If Tesla was unsuccessful, then I think they
Speaker 2: would have been able to repeal ZEV mandates.
Speaker 5: So when you're getting into the concept of these cars,
Speaker 5: these prices are still along with subsidies and everything else
Speaker 5: is still a high price tag. What is your goal
Speaker 5: is to bring in I mean you have there's lots
Speaker 5: of people here who owned Tesla's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you everyone.
Speaker 2: Thank you for Brian Tesla by the way, so to say,
Speaker 2: all of you guys who bought Tesla's.
Speaker 1: You guys are some significant percentage of your your customers
Speaker 1: are here. But but what there.
Speaker 6: Is there's a larger country, far sighted awesome individuals and
Speaker 6: board Tesla's.
Speaker 3: Where do I actually I'd.
Speaker 2: Like to say a special shout out to Tony Say
Speaker 2: who has the largest what made the largest number of
Speaker 2: Tesla orders in the US of one.
Speaker 3: Hundred cars for his project in downtown Vegas.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so thanks Tony.
Speaker 4: H So that's a very it's a super interesting project.
Speaker 5: How do you get it down to levels that Tony
Speaker 5: of Zappos, We don't have to be twenty of Zappos five.
Speaker 3: So Tesla, you know, when we first started out, I
Speaker 3: actually wrote.
Speaker 2: A blog piece to outlining the Tesla strategy, and it's
Speaker 2: been out there for a long time.
Speaker 3: It really just outlined the sort of three step.
Speaker 2: Process that Tesla's going through to get to mass market
Speaker 2: compelling electric cars. And step one was making the tels
Speaker 2: the roads, so high price low volume, then mid price
Speaker 2: mid volume, and then low price high volume.
Speaker 3: So there's a you know, we'd step two. The price
Speaker 3: of the model is actually less than it may.
Speaker 2: Seem at first because the cost of gasoline is so
Speaker 2: much more than the cost of electricity that you save
Speaker 2: a lot of money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And you know that that depending upon how you counted,
Speaker 2: as you know, somewhere in the fifteen to twenty thousand
Speaker 2: dollar region over.
Speaker 6: The lifetime of the car, over the of a sort
Speaker 6: of seven years figure, it's been roughly two thousand dollars
Speaker 6: a year, depending upon what you assumption is for gas
Speaker 6: prices are Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: When will there be a thirty thousand or thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars tesla?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So step three I'm expecting in about three to
Speaker 2: four years.
Speaker 1: And what's required to get you from here to there
Speaker 1: is it got to do with design and technology.
Speaker 3: It's one of the scale or what well the.
Speaker 2: I think any new technology needs at least three major
Speaker 2: iterations to get to the mass market. I mean, certainly
Speaker 2: cell phones have gone through many more than that, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure people remember like the Wall Street one where
Speaker 2: he's walking down the beach from the giant break of
Speaker 2: a cell phone on his ear, and that thing was
Speaker 2: super expensive and like lasted for thirty minutes. You can't
Speaker 2: evenity this audio quality was terrible. And now you can
Speaker 2: have a supercomputer in your pocket for one hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: And so with electric vehicles similar you're trying to compete
Speaker 2: with gasline cars that have had one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: years and trillions of dollars spent on them. So I
Speaker 2: think if we can make it there by our third generation,
Speaker 2: that's pretty awesome. So I think there's certainly design optimization
Speaker 2: is one factor, and then the.
Speaker 3: Other is the call will be a little bit smaller,
Speaker 3: so maybe twenty percent smaller than the model less, and
Speaker 3: we will have an.
Speaker 2: Order of magnitude greater production, so we have the economy's scale.
Speaker 3: To help us out. I think those three factors will
Speaker 3: take us to fifty percent.
Speaker 1: And and when will you be at a point where
Speaker 1: if even if you didn't have subsidies or and credit sales,
Speaker 1: you would be profitable?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think.
Speaker 2: We're anticipating being profitable or I should say even better,
Speaker 2: will better than slightly profitable in the fourth quarter of
Speaker 2: this year. We're projecting twenty five percent gross margins absence
Speaker 2: of credits as absolute.
Speaker 5: Credits, so not getting this extra subs money, but not
Speaker 5: absent the texts.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and there's a consumer sort of tax credit,
Speaker 2: which is effectively something that improves the level of demand
Speaker 2: for the product, but doesn't directly affect our gross margins.
Speaker 2: And so we don't get that Tesla doesn't get the
Speaker 2: tax credit the consumers.
Speaker 5: Why haven't many companies raised to you and you're showing
Speaker 5: that there are cars people, there is an audience for this.
Speaker 4: Where are the rest of these companies now.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm hopeful that our results from the first quarter
Speaker 2: world cause the other car companies to answer the electric
Speaker 2: car in a significant way. But until now, they didn't
Speaker 2: really have a good basis for that because they would
Speaker 2: look at you, say, what are the examples of successful
Speaker 2: electric cars. I mean, we did have our Tesla roads
Speaker 2: are out there, but they wrote that off as being
Speaker 2: something that's really low volume, kind of a niche product
Speaker 2: for techno geeks type of thing.
Speaker 3: And so they they wrote that off right, And yeah,
Speaker 3: it's actually funny.
Speaker 2: Because before we were able to get the roads round,
Speaker 2: then they'd say, well, you couldn't possibly make that car work.
Speaker 2: And then we made the car work, they'd say, well,
Speaker 2: nobody's gonna buy it, and then people bought it, and
Speaker 2: then we announced the models and.
Speaker 3: So many people called bullshit on that. It was ridiculous.
Speaker 2: And and yet actually the we're able to bring it
Speaker 2: to market, and then we brought it to market. They said, well,
Speaker 2: you're never going to be able to produced volume and
Speaker 2: did that, and then they said you will never be
Speaker 2: able to make a profit, and then we did that
Speaker 2: in Q one. So I'm hopeful that there's a you know,
Speaker 2: people will observe that there's a trend here, and and
Speaker 2: if so, now that we have been profitable, I think
Speaker 2: other manufacturers are more likely to embark on electric vehicle projects.
Speaker 2: And and it's also be mentioned that we do make electric.
Speaker 3: Power trains for Daimler and Toyota, so for.
Speaker 2: The electric graph for we make the battery pack and
Speaker 2: power train for the Mercedes Beak classes coming out later
Speaker 2: this year, we'll be making that whole.
Speaker 4: Are they open to that? Do you feel that they're open?
Speaker 5: I mean a lot of the you know, you can
Speaker 5: paint the car company what we want, but are they
Speaker 5: Do you feel as if they're open or thinking about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 2: The challenge is to convince them that it should be
Speaker 2: more than just a little niche.
Speaker 4: Product or a hybrid or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they may, I mean turn it off was
Speaker 2: gonna make just quite big on hybrids. But the to
Speaker 2: convince them that electric cars should be a mainstream item.
Speaker 2: There's a little bit of work to do on that front.
Speaker 1: And until they're a mainstream item in terms of having
Speaker 1: enough of an infrastructure of charging, obviously you've done a
Speaker 1: lot to help that problem with range, but still people
Speaker 1: want to feel like they're not going to be stranded,
Speaker 1: that there are going to be charging stations, and I know, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've got an announcement about that.
Speaker 1: To my advice, you do yeah here, now, well, uh.
Speaker 5: You you just sort of let the cat out of
Speaker 5: the back.
Speaker 3: Might as well just well.
Speaker 5: Hm hmm, because you're so quiet and retiring mostly exactly
Speaker 5: you never do anything, just mouth off at a New
Speaker 5: York Times reporter for example.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: All right, well, so so wait, something called the supercharger,
Speaker 2: right because which is an advanced charging technology that we developed,
Speaker 2: and uh yeah, I guess I might as.
Speaker 3: Well let the cat out of the back. Why not?
Speaker 2: The so the super charge of technology. Super charging technology
Speaker 2: is so we developed because obviously traditional charging has been
Speaker 2: way too slow and it's not been effected. It's effective
Speaker 2: for long distance travel, so it's it is very important
Speaker 2: to address this issue of long distance travel because when
Speaker 2: when people buy a car that there's they're also buying
Speaker 2: something which is a sense of freedom and ability to
Speaker 2: go anywhere that they want and not feel fettered. So
Speaker 2: we had to make something that was really quick to charge.
Speaker 2: So so that were we developed and there are actually
Speaker 2: a bunch of them out there now in California and
Speaker 2: on the East Coast from allowing you to go from
Speaker 2: Boston to d.
Speaker 3: C and travel throughout California and Nevada.
Speaker 2: And what we're what we were going to announce tomorrow
Speaker 2: is that there's there's going to be a dramatic acceleration
Speaker 2: of the supercharging network.
Speaker 3: And by the end of next month.
Speaker 2: We will triple the supercharger coverage area.
Speaker 1: Where where is it going?
Speaker 2: So it'll it'll be uh, there's actually a map that
Speaker 2: will be go live tomorrow obviously, but people will be
Speaker 2: quest priced learn learn this. But at Tesla.
Speaker 5: Uh, blame it on the CEO of SpaceX, yeah exactly,
Speaker 5: or if you want, you can blame it on me.
Speaker 1: All right, blame it on its Waltz boy, because you
Speaker 1: know you like tangling with reviewers.
Speaker 3: Reviewers, but you do good reviews.
Speaker 1: I haven't reviewed your car.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I should say accurate reviews.
Speaker 1: Thank you all.
Speaker 2: So, the Supercharge Network, by the end of this year
Speaker 2: will will have covered most of the major metro areas
Speaker 2: of the US and southern Canada, and in fact, you'll
Speaker 2: be able to drive all the way from l A
Speaker 2: to New York just using the supercharge.
Speaker 3: Network and does that?
Speaker 1: Does that? Also does that includes not only putting it
Speaker 1: in places where it doesn't exist today, but also increasing
Speaker 1: the density on the two coasts.
Speaker 3: Absolutely exactly good point. The density is not quite as
Speaker 3: good as it should be.
Speaker 2: So we're both improving the density of the supercharges stations
Speaker 2: along well traveled routes as well as increasing the geographic.
Speaker 3: Scope of the network.
Speaker 1: That's usually important.
Speaker 3: It is absolutely because even tell.
Speaker 1: Me if you think I'm nuts, but I think that.
Speaker 1: It's like in the old days, people would go and
Speaker 1: buy a desktop tower computer and they would not buy
Speaker 1: one unless it had five slots for cards in it.
Speaker 1: Never opened the computer and put a card in it. Well,
Speaker 1: I yeah you did, But I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: people would be told by their techy friend, you have
Speaker 1: to have you know, three empty slots or five euntry slots,
Speaker 1: but they never opened it put the slots in. Even
Speaker 1: if you only drive your car commuting to work, well
Speaker 1: within the range of the car and a few errands
Speaker 1: and stuff, you always want that sense of freedom. If
Speaker 1: I had joy, could get in this car exactly and
Speaker 1: go from Boston, DC or something.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean psychologically it's really very very important.
Speaker 3: It's extremely important and so on. Because all testas are wirelessly.
Speaker 2: Updated by the cell networks, we actually update the supercharger
Speaker 2: locations in the car.
Speaker 3: So on the Tesla map, if you just tap the little.
Speaker 2: Lightning button, it'll actually direct you to the nearest supercharger.
Speaker 2: So as you're driving, you can go wherever you want.
Speaker 2: And with the release later this year, you'll be able
Speaker 2: to navigate anywhere in the country in the car will
Speaker 2: automatically route you to the supercharger along the way.
Speaker 1: Fantastic.
Speaker 5: So one question is that why you hit back so
Speaker 5: hard at the times? I mean, we joke about it
Speaker 5: and stuff like that, but many people don't do that.
Speaker 5: What was the reasoning? And I know you've said a
Speaker 5: lot about this, brother, Yeah, what was your reasoning?
Speaker 7: It's like you're not going to take this or you Yeah, well,
Speaker 7: I mean I thought about it a fair a bit
Speaker 7: before actually responding, so it wasn't sort of just totally
Speaker 7: off the cuff thing.
Speaker 2: But but when the articles was published, we saw a
Speaker 2: significant decrease in sales, particularly in the New York Times
Speaker 2: sort of main readership area in sort of the North Northeast,
Speaker 2: particularly in cold areas, and the the article that really
Speaker 2: sort of played to people's biggest fear about electric cars,
Speaker 2: that that that you're right out and that they don't
Speaker 2: work in the cold, which is actually completely false.
Speaker 3: They do work really well in the cold.
Speaker 2: In fact, our highest sales per capita are in Norway,
Speaker 2: and the single person who's bought the single largest number
Speaker 2: as an individual of Tesla's literally lives above the Arctic Circle.
Speaker 2: Why he is an ophthalmologist in it against Crotholms is
Speaker 2: his name is great guy.
Speaker 1: Wait, he's an ophtthalmologist. He lives above the artist circle
Speaker 1: and he has a whole bunch of electric cars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wanted.
Speaker 6: To get I mean, one of the I just wanted
Speaker 6: to get the scenario.
Speaker 1: But true, it's amazing. Yeah, any and every day takes
Speaker 1: an electronic pill also.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, but driving through like the you know winner
Speaker 2: which is Pomany midnight and so obviously they.
Speaker 3: Work pretty well. And in fact, after that article, we had.
Speaker 2: Since it was still sort of winter Norway, we actually
Speaker 2: had someone do it a modeless test drive from I
Speaker 2: think almost near the Artic circle uh to Oslo Okay.
Speaker 1: But you know, as I'm a reviewer. Yeah, we've already
Speaker 1: discussed and some people in the room now. But ah,
Speaker 1: so part of a review is factual. This is actually
Speaker 1: what part of the review is that factual? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: which okay, no, let me let me explain. Part of
Speaker 1: the a review is opinion. Y yeah, sure so, but
Speaker 1: you have to state if you're doing specs, if you're
Speaker 1: doing like in my case, it's it's a battery test
Speaker 1: on something. I have to think, this is how I
Speaker 1: did the battery test. This is what the result is.
Speaker 1: I can then have an opinion. You might have a
Speaker 1: different but you might say, well, even if I accept
Speaker 1: Mossburg's battery tests, I don't agree with him that this
Speaker 1: is good enough battery life. I need better battery life.
Speaker 1: So I think he's too easy on this product, or
Speaker 1: the other way around, you know whatever. So part of
Speaker 1: it is the facts, and part of it is what
Speaker 1: opinions you draw from that. Sure, you know, the screen
Speaker 1: is this big, the camera has this those are facts.
Speaker 1: So was it was it just for the guys? There was?
Speaker 8: It was?
Speaker 2: It was a fact thing in fact in fact. So
Speaker 2: when when we got the call back, we looked at
Speaker 2: the at the data logues as compared to the article
Speaker 2: that that was written. And the article is factually incorrect
Speaker 2: and in multiple places and in fact, and one could
Speaker 2: perhaps subscribe that to to error on his part, but
Speaker 2: by the tenth mistake in a row that is interpreted
Speaker 2: in the wrong direction, that that lacks credibility.
Speaker 3: And so you know, if we it's like if you
Speaker 3: did that battery test.
Speaker 2: On something and and you and you you said factual
Speaker 2: information that was it was untrue in a very important way.
Speaker 3: I mean that that that's that's a big deal.
Speaker 2: And so if we didn't speak out against that, that
Speaker 2: article would live forever and people would have this this
Speaker 2: really wrong impression of the car, and they would think.
Speaker 3: That what he said if we did not oppose it.
Speaker 1: Times didn't back down, did they?
Speaker 3: Actually?
Speaker 2: The public editor of the Times did an investigation and
Speaker 2: concluded that that he that the article was was wrong.
Speaker 3: We disagree.
Speaker 2: I agree with the public editor over the motivation in
Speaker 2: the words, the public editor said the article was wrong,
Speaker 2: but didn't agree that it was intentional, whereas in my opinion,
Speaker 2: it's difficult to interpret that as anything but intentional.
Speaker 1: And then what then, just to close this up up,
Speaker 1: wasn't there some controversy about the fact that you had
Speaker 1: put sensors on the car that aren't normally sold on
Speaker 1: the car.
Speaker 3: No, it's the same sensors.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is really important, but space the final frontier. Sure,
Speaker 1: are you what is your ultimate plan or goal for SpaceX?
Speaker 1: What is it you want to do with it? Is
Speaker 1: it just to prove that a private company can deliver
Speaker 1: stuff to the space station or.
Speaker 3: What is Like I said, it's the goal with SpaceX
Speaker 3: is to.
Speaker 2: Improve rocket technology and spacecraft technology and keep improving it
Speaker 2: every year until ultimately we're able to send people to
Speaker 2: Mars and estellish a self sustaining base on Mars.
Speaker 3: That's Mars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to make make a life multiplanetary, as I's saying,
Speaker 2: as long as I expect that this will necessary. Cur mean,
Speaker 2: I agree that this is an unlikely outcome, but if
Speaker 2: we do not keep improving space technology every year, then
Speaker 2: that that will never happen.
Speaker 1: Didn't George W. Bush want to go to Mars?
Speaker 3: He did? Actually, how many of people know that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's kind of put you in George W.
Speaker 1: Bush in the same category as George is his dad
Speaker 1: h one of them not wanted a space program. First
Speaker 1: get us to Mars?
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, Actually George H. W.
Speaker 2: Bush, shortly after gaining office, actually asked NASA to come
Speaker 2: up with a plan in ninety days for sending people
Speaker 2: to Mars, and NASA did come up.
Speaker 3: With that plan, but it was habit trillion dollars.
Speaker 2: So he decided that maybe it wasn't such a great idea.
Speaker 2: And that was obviously twenty years ago, whatever it was,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: So why why Mars?
Speaker 1: Explained meant, what what what's the track mark? That was?
Speaker 1: That was really was a hapatrille?
Speaker 2: That's cheap, right, I know, it's well the fence budgets
Speaker 2: bigger than that.
Speaker 4: So why Mars? Why Mars? Over now? Just purposes?
Speaker 5: Elon went to space Camp many years ago with the
Speaker 5: Serge Larry Meghan, James, Joaquin Pierra Medio or a bunch
Speaker 5: of you very strange people SpaceX right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: What why and you know, were you in a star
Speaker 4: trek mode or what.
Speaker 3: Was the what was the space camp?
Speaker 5: I know you guys did that, but but what they
Speaker 5: had out.
Speaker 4: What was interest?
Speaker 1: Because you said a few minutes ago that that there
Speaker 1: were three things that you were you know, and what
Speaker 1: was the Internet? When was the electric car and the
Speaker 1: other was space. So why what got you into space?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: So, if if you mean about the future of humanity,
Speaker 2: it's going to fundamentally bafecate in two directions old life
Speaker 2: as we know it. Either it's going to become multiplanetary
Speaker 2: or it's going to be confined to one planet until
Speaker 2: some eventual extinction events. So I think it's much more
Speaker 2: to put.
Speaker 4: It that way. Let's go to Mark.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I'm optimistic about life on it
Speaker 2: if as long as though I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, I think we'reise, but you're convinced there will be
Speaker 1: an extinction event, Well, I.
Speaker 3: Mean that's pretty obvious from the Fussil record.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's for sure we.
Speaker 2: Face dangers that the dinosaurs didn't face because it could
Speaker 2: be yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah we could.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do ourselves in the.
Speaker 1: Actually I had better diets Theynosty exactly.
Speaker 2: So so the I just think, you know, we want
Speaker 2: to have a future ultimately where humanity is out there
Speaker 2: exploring the stars or space. Frank civilization and the things
Speaker 2: that we read about in science fiction books and and
Speaker 2: seeing movies becomes true. We don't want that always to
Speaker 2: be a fiction of the future. So if we don't
Speaker 2: improve space technology every year, we're never going to get there.
Speaker 2: And so the gold of SpaceX is to make as
Speaker 2: much improvement as possible and and hopefully we'll we'll see
Speaker 2: people land on us in our lifetime.
Speaker 1: I have to ask, I just have to ask you.
Speaker 1: Have you literally looked into or had someone look into
Speaker 1: or are they still looking at you for you whether
Speaker 1: you could do warp drive? I mean, really actually.
Speaker 2: Is a well, you know this, there actually seems to
Speaker 2: be oddly enough some breakthrough on the whole wolf drive thing,
Speaker 2: because you can't exceed the speed of light, but technically
Speaker 2: it is possible, theoretically possible to wolf space itself.
Speaker 3: So that even on your in your in your local
Speaker 3: space time.
Speaker 2: Continuing, you're not traveling faster than the speed of light,
Speaker 2: but you're you're warping space such that space is moving.
Speaker 1: And and that's what got that? Is that A Now,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I actually kind of.
Speaker 4: Like he goes to the Star Trek Museum in Las Vegas,
Speaker 4: So let's not.
Speaker 1: Is is that like in the fourth quarter or next year?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not sure warp drives ultimately, I mean, warp
Speaker 2: drive may or may not come to come to fruition.
Speaker 3: But I think if we at least.
Speaker 2: Have a base on Mars, that's going to create a
Speaker 2: forcing function for the improvement in space transport technology and
Speaker 2: gives us the best chance of ever achieving something like
Speaker 2: a wolf drive that would enable to travel easily.
Speaker 5: But listen, Scottie Spock, let's talk about now.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, right, second, good.
Speaker 2: Movie by the way, Yeah, it's it's recommend seeing the
Speaker 2: New Start movie.
Speaker 5: By the way, Larry Elson's son produced it, which is right,
Speaker 5: only enough, what's happening now? What's available now for us?
Speaker 5: Not warp drive, not transporter beams or whatever.
Speaker 2: The big breakthrough that's needed in rocketry is to achieve
Speaker 2: a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, and.
Speaker 3: It's important to have those. Those are important qualifications because.
Speaker 2: If you think of any other motor transport like a
Speaker 2: plane or bike, car anything, of course that they are reusable. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you can very reasonable quickly and you know, fairly
Speaker 2: completely apart from maintenance schedules.
Speaker 1: And the only one we have the United States at
Speaker 1: least built, or anybody built, I think, was the Shuttle, right,
Speaker 1: and that was partly usable, but not quickly.
Speaker 2: And it was only partly reusable. So the main tank,
Speaker 2: the big orange thing, was not reusable. I was guaranteed
Speaker 2: to be expendable every time. There wasn't just a tank
Speaker 2: that that big arch thing was actually the primary airframe
Speaker 2: to which the orbit of the plane pot and the
Speaker 2: side boost is attached. So even in the best case scenario,
Speaker 2: it would not have been reusable in a substantial way.
Speaker 2: And then it took an army of ten thousand people
Speaker 2: nine months to refurbish a shuttle for flight, which is
Speaker 2: obviously not rapidly reusable. So in order to have a breakthrough,
Speaker 2: you have to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket,
Speaker 2: and we're making progress in that direction, and I'm hopeful
Speaker 2: that sometime in the next couple of years we'll be
Speaker 2: able to achieve full and rapid usability of the first stage,
Speaker 2: which is about three quarters of the cost of the rocket,
Speaker 2: and then with a future design architecture, achieve full reusability.
Speaker 1: And how long does it take to get to Mars
Speaker 1: with whatever the technologies you.
Speaker 2: Play with With relatively sort of standard rockets, a low
Speaker 2: energy trajectory would be about six months. Well, you can
Speaker 2: compress it down to three months without too.
Speaker 1: Much trouble and you're now and there's no You're talking
Speaker 1: about a humans on this rocket going to Mars. So
Speaker 1: are there any dangers? I have read that there are
Speaker 1: radius possibly go wrong. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 9: Come on, I don't even like to drive with you.
Speaker 9: I mean, yeah, a vice versa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's it's uh, there's probably some challenges along
Speaker 2: the way, but but I think.
Speaker 3: It's I think it's possible. I think we can make
Speaker 3: it work like this way.
Speaker 2: There's no if we're not violating any laws of physics,
Speaker 2: it's all.
Speaker 3: It's all.
Speaker 2: It's difficult but achievable, and and I think we should
Speaker 2: really try our hardest to make it happen. And why
Speaker 2: Mars wells is the only place where we could really
Speaker 2: create a self sustaining civilization of on on a planet scale?
Speaker 5: Can you explain these people who don't know like myself?
Speaker 3: Okay, well, so.
Speaker 2: If you look at you know, various planets we've got
Speaker 2: Mercury is too close to the sun, Venus is yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean the rock smells on Mercury, so yeah, toasty.
Speaker 3: And then and then Venus is still pretty pretty hot.
Speaker 2: It's several hundred degrees and it's hype, and the atmosphere
Speaker 2: is high pressure and it's acidic, so it's a high pressure,
Speaker 2: hot acid bath.
Speaker 1: So we actually thought of having a de conference on Venus.
Speaker 3: Going to work say that Venus would be very challenging.
Speaker 2: And then Mars obviously is on the other side of Earth,
Speaker 2: and it's it's it's colder than Earth, but it's it's uh,
Speaker 2: the temperature on Mars actually gets above room temperature on
Speaker 2: Earth on a hot day in the summer.
Speaker 3: And you could warm Mars.
Speaker 2: Up over time with greenhouse gases and kind of the
Speaker 2: opposite of what.
Speaker 3: We're doing on Earth. Yeah, this is great export our
Speaker 3: greenhouse gas and we're good at that.
Speaker 4: You can bring all the gas covering all the.
Speaker 1: All the GM cars there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Mars' atmosphere is primarily common dix side, which
Speaker 2: shows you how long, I mean, it's been there for
Speaker 2: four billion years, shows you how long common dox side lasts.
Speaker 1: It hangs around slowly, it warms up a planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was quite a thin common dox that atmosphere.
Speaker 2: But if you would but we could bucket.
Speaker 3: Up, we could buck it up.
Speaker 1: We know, we have practice exactly.
Speaker 3: So mas Is, you know, is a sort of it's
Speaker 3: a fixed rupper of the planet. But we could we
Speaker 3: could make it work. We can make it work.
Speaker 4: Do you do you do you want to go there yourself?
Speaker 5: I know you said you didn't want to die in
Speaker 5: a rocket accident rather just impact.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, impact, But you don't mind dying there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, I mean, all things considered, I mean,
Speaker 2: if one's gonna die anywhere, kind of cool, you know,
Speaker 2: cool to die in Mazan.
Speaker 4: I'm going with Hawaii. But yeah, so.
Speaker 3: I think I think that, yeah, that'll be that'll be neat.
Speaker 2: But I just think the the things that kind of
Speaker 2: get me going are like, I think it's just really
Speaker 2: important to to me to and I think to a
Speaker 2: part of the other people in this room that if.
Speaker 3: You look to the future, that it's an inspiring, exciting thing.
Speaker 2: You know, the future is a better better than the present,
Speaker 2: or this has a good chance of being better than
Speaker 2: the present. And I think that's that's the main driver
Speaker 2: for me. It's it's it's like, okay, what we have
Speaker 2: what would.
Speaker 3: Be a space frank civilization.
Speaker 2: Or what we've be confined to point, I think it
Speaker 2: would be so much better if it was the former.
Speaker 5: Right now, your rocketsto are for doing payloads, and it's
Speaker 5: a you're trying to make a business out of it too, correct.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, yeah, absolutely, So we've got to keep SpaceX.
Speaker 2: We've got to pay the Bose, right, And so the
Speaker 2: what SpaceX does is is launch satellites for commercial customers
Speaker 2: and do space station servicing. Cool NASA, So we won
Speaker 2: the primary contract to do space station transport of cargo
Speaker 2: to and from the space station, in fact with the
Speaker 2: only craft capable of bringing significant cargo.
Speaker 3: Back from the space station.
Speaker 1: But it's not readily reusable yet, correct, it's not. It's
Speaker 1: so you're in. Your breakthrough in a sense has been
Speaker 1: to do what NASA and the Soviets used to do
Speaker 1: or still do to some extent.
Speaker 3: Soviets still do it.
Speaker 1: But to do it in a via a private company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say you breakthroughs thus far on the SpaceX
Speaker 2: side are are incremental in nature, not revolutionary, and the
Speaker 2: aspiration is to to have a revolutionary breakthrough. And I
Speaker 2: should point out that the cost of the propellant in
Speaker 2: the rocket is only about zero point three percent of
Speaker 2: the cost of the of the vehicle, so it's maybe
Speaker 2: a couple hundred thousand dollars to refuel the rocket, and
Speaker 2: where's costs of sixty million dollars? And which it makes
Speaker 2: sense if you think about planes, like how much does
Speaker 2: a plane cost versus refueling a plane?
Speaker 3: Right, big, big difference.
Speaker 2: Nobody would be flying if you had to buy a
Speaker 2: new plane every flight.
Speaker 1: Now, although although United should.
Speaker 3: Right exactly that this come of time, we.
Speaker 1: Have some of those United flights.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just lim along in the tooth.
Speaker 4: When you're thinking of these things, you're doing a lot
Speaker 4: of stuff. Kind of busy fella. Who were your heroes?
Speaker 4: Who are you? What inspired you to be this?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Well think uh, generally a lot of people that ad
Speaker 2: mind in history, certainly scientists and engineers and technologists in general.
Speaker 2: Obviously I'm a big admier of Tesla, Nicola, Tesla, and
Speaker 2: and and you know many others huh, I mean on
Speaker 2: the obvious people you can imagine saying I like I
Speaker 2: like Tesla, Edison too. Other people sometimes are surprised to
Speaker 2: hear that since we were company called Tesla. And uh,
Speaker 2: you know Einstein Newton, Uh, just like Darwin A big
Speaker 2: fan of Ben Franklin. I think he's just you know,
Speaker 2: some example of a great human being in history, you know,
Speaker 2: so that I'd say that people like that.
Speaker 1: And are are there. Obviously you, uh were one of
Speaker 1: the pioneers of an important Internet company, PayPal. Did anybody
Speaker 1: else in the kind of IT t area inspire you?
Speaker 1: I mean obvious, See, all those people you mentioned are
Speaker 1: really great geniuses, but they were kind of well before
Speaker 1: the There are more scientists and theyre and inventors well
Speaker 1: before the IT era or is it just too early
Speaker 1: in the It?
Speaker 2: Absolutely amy anyone who's who's worked hard to accomplish some
Speaker 2: great thing, I mean, it's it's worthy of admiration. So
Speaker 2: you know, obviously it's hard not to admry someone like
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs, you know, Bill Gates or you know sort
Speaker 2: of present day big fan of Larry Page is a
Speaker 2: good friend of mine, you know what him and said
Speaker 2: I give on there is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and then probably many many journalists.
Speaker 3: I'm not against journalist. Look you're here, yeah exactly.
Speaker 5: But when you talk about the Internet of today, how
Speaker 5: do you look at it? You were in a very
Speaker 5: clear part of the Internet that was you know, and
Speaker 5: I remember you and you were mister Web one point
Speaker 5: zero like they were, right, you know, and you did
Speaker 5: infect pose in front of cars.
Speaker 4: I remember there was some car picture.
Speaker 2: These Yeah, yeah, por mclareneff one, right exactly, So.
Speaker 1: You weren't close, no, no.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so you know what that is. And I
Speaker 3: shall tell you here. I actually do have I haven't
Speaker 3: told me was.
Speaker 2: In a while, but I do actually still own one
Speaker 2: gasoline car, which is a sixty seven Series one E
Speaker 2: type jagh.
Speaker 4: I don't know which great, I know exactly what it says.
Speaker 4: I have a Master five. I love a lot.
Speaker 2: But when I when I was sort of in college,
Speaker 2: there were I was reading about the mclareneff one and
Speaker 2: it's just an insuring work of art. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: really really done right, and and so I thought, if
Speaker 2: I haven't made a plenty that i'd buy them mclareneff one.
Speaker 2: So I'm actually living in an apartment in Pola Walter
Speaker 2: that that costs.
Speaker 3: Significantly less than the car.
Speaker 4: I remember that picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was either upgrade to a house or
Speaker 2: buy the car. And I bought the car.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And were you married at the time.
Speaker 4: I was, actually, Yeah, you posed in front of it.
Speaker 4: It was quite a symbol of the time, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I wasn't really it probably wasn't the best idea, but
Speaker 2: there was an impact. It was was kind of funny.
Speaker 2: It was this show which was like if there was
Speaker 2: ever sort of a show in Hubris who probably was
Speaker 2: called Silicon Valley gold Rush and it was literally filmed
Speaker 2: in ninety nine, in nineteen ninety nine, and and so
Speaker 2: they filled me and getting the McLaren and and a.
Speaker 3: Number of other people as well.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately PayPal worked out, otherwise it would have been extremely embarrassing.
Speaker 4: Did you go like, ooh, I go one or something.
Speaker 3: I know how to do that, but I was pretty
Speaker 3: excited about getting it.
Speaker 5: So why when you look at the Internet of today
Speaker 5: when the we're gonna get to questions from lots of
Speaker 5: questions from the audience, I'm sure, what do you think
Speaker 5: of the rest of the space the photo sharing? Is
Speaker 5: it meaningless because given you're going to Mars and everything,
Speaker 5: or is it.
Speaker 3: What I mean?
Speaker 1: People are like Vine, like, you know, you a selfie
Speaker 1: just animated. A lot of people you know, are kind
Speaker 1: of excited about I love them. Carriage had some great ones, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but it's not going It's not to planetary habitats. It's
Speaker 1: like a different thing, you know, or even being able
Speaker 1: to drive from New York to la on electric power
Speaker 1: on electric power.
Speaker 5: What do you think of when you look at the
Speaker 5: Internet right now, what do you about what's developing and
Speaker 5: what's happening.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I think I actually I'm not dismissive
Speaker 2: of things like like photo sharing apps and that kind
Speaker 2: of thing.
Speaker 3: I think the.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of things where it provides
Speaker 2: say a small amount of value to a lot of people,
Speaker 2: and that you know, sums up to some large value.
Speaker 3: And that's that's still good.
Speaker 2: I mean, people able to share photos of their friends
Speaker 2: and family in a better way.
Speaker 3: I think that makes their lives better.
Speaker 2: And if if that puts a high value on the company,
Speaker 2: so be it.
Speaker 3: I think that's not that bad.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I think we've got an enormously a
Speaker 2: lot of talents and people, a lot of talent, entrepreneurs,
Speaker 2: Finnish capitalists and now those in the Internet arena, and
Speaker 2: I think it'd be great if some of those people
Speaker 2: would would actually go to other arenas that that could
Speaker 2: use their talent.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the only thing that I.
Speaker 5: Would say, Well, there is this concept someone someone the
Speaker 5: other day when I was asking what's going.
Speaker 4: On in Silicon Valley and he said, very smart guy.
Speaker 5: He said, you know, there's a lot of big minds
Speaker 5: chasing small ideas, right, and I sometimes you know the
Speaker 5: ninth kind.
Speaker 4: Of silly little thing.
Speaker 5: You're like, Wow, these are fantastic and yet like everyone's
Speaker 5: making twinkies, right kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and I think that's there's probably I mean,
Speaker 2: i'd recommend that that people consider arenas outside of the Internet,
Speaker 2: because there's there's there's a lot of like I said,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of industries that could use that entrepreneurial
Speaker 2: talent and the skills that people have learned in creating companies.
Speaker 3: And you know, then there's actually a lot of.
Speaker 2: Opportunity, uh in these industries, particularly once where they've been
Speaker 2: kind of dominated by an oligobalistic set of companies for
Speaker 2: a long time. Oligopolies are not diopolism. Monopolies are not
Speaker 2: great at innovation. Innovation comes from new entrants to an arena,
Speaker 2: and so when an industry has had the absence of
Speaker 2: new entrants, it tends to have very limited innovation, which
Speaker 2: also means that if you do get a break on
Speaker 2: through the other side, then you, there is a lot
Speaker 2: of opportunity for a company that's that's created there.
Speaker 4: So what are you doing next?
Speaker 5: Because you're you know, we're kind of bored with these
Speaker 5: last two.
Speaker 2: Well, I think I'll be occupied with Teslim and SpaceX
Speaker 2: for a long time.
Speaker 4: But is there one other?
Speaker 1: Don't you have a solar thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah? In fact, But I should clarify that a lot of.
Speaker 2: Times people ascribe the success of Soul City to me,
Speaker 2: but I surely should be ascribed to the my cousins,
Speaker 2: the co founders, Leonard and Peter Rive. I mean, I
Speaker 2: provide some strategic advice and I suggested that they do
Speaker 2: a company in the solar arena. But but they deserve
Speaker 2: the vast majority of the credit for for that outcome,
Speaker 2: and it should simply shouldn't be ascribed to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well we're going to take thanks you.
Speaker 5: And by the way, Elon said to me, he wasn't
Speaker 5: why would we want him here? He's not a technologist,
Speaker 5: just so you know, well, and I just was like,
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: What you're talking.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a technologist, but I'm not on Internet, so
Speaker 2: I'm not like digital.
Speaker 3: That's the thing.
Speaker 2: It's like, I was like, okay, well things digital, Well
Speaker 2: nothing digital's not exactly digital.
Speaker 1: There's nothing digital in the Tesla.
Speaker 2: There are digital things, but it's yeah, it's in sale
Speaker 2: things digital and physical.
Speaker 4: All right, let's get to the question. Sure, just be
Speaker 4: called old Things. That's our new name.
Speaker 1: You want to serve there?
Speaker 10: Okay, all right, Surevan picturevar from Sharp Howlan. I've been
Speaker 10: coming here for many years, and all of us so
Speaker 10: who have been here for many years of we're always
Speaker 10: inspired to see see jobs here and obviously we all
Speaker 10: miss him deeply, but somehow your presence here and your
Speaker 10: inspiration really eases that pain. So thank you for coming.
Speaker 10: I say, Elan, there there is one idea you have
Speaker 10: that we've discussed before, which is hyper loop, and I
Speaker 10: would love for you to tell this audience what that
Speaker 10: is and how it could change our world. Again, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would actually love to to answer that question.
Speaker 2: But if I do it, will that will be the
Speaker 2: news tomorrow it whereas I need to do the test
Speaker 2: of news. You did that, yeah, so so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think probably'll.
Speaker 2: Be able to talk about the Hyperloupe idea and maybe
Speaker 2: pretty soon there's there's a Tesla announcement We've got next
Speaker 2: month or so, around June twentieth or so, and I think.
Speaker 3: I think at some point.
Speaker 2: After that would I took that should hopefully that that
Speaker 2: that will be a good time to talk about the
Speaker 2: Hyperloupe idea.
Speaker 3: But for those that aren't aware, the basic.
Speaker 2: Thought is is is there a better way to travel
Speaker 2: quickly from uh say, downtown LA to downtown San Francisco
Speaker 2: or Eli to San Francisco that's better than the high
Speaker 2: speed rail that's being proposed, because the high speed rail
Speaker 2: that that's what it originally got to me to.
Speaker 3: Think about, you is there some better way to do it?
Speaker 2: Because the high speed rail that's being proposed would actually
Speaker 2: be the slowest of the slowest bull training in the
Speaker 2: world and the most expensive for a mile in the world,
Speaker 2: which is not the suppoters we're.
Speaker 11: Looking for black our Internet, but it's you know, I
Speaker 11: think this it's all depressing to sort of have something.
Speaker 2: That's like the slowest bulletrain in the world in California
Speaker 2: at enormous cost.
Speaker 3: And isn't this something better that we could come.
Speaker 1: Up with that's something better as the hyper loop? Well?
Speaker 1: I think so probably, but I don't know what that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to ride on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: You know, even even if even if I'm sort of
Speaker 2: wrong about the economic assumptions behind the hyper loop, it
Speaker 2: would still be a really fun ride.
Speaker 3: Even if only one of it ever existed. It would
Speaker 3: be a really.
Speaker 12: Fun run.
Speaker 4: A plane, automobile.
Speaker 3: It's it's a transporter machine. It's a cross between a
Speaker 3: concord and a rail gun.
Speaker 1: A concord and a rail gun. Okay, but you're not
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want.
Speaker 2: To hear something else in there, just to make it
Speaker 2: sound even more even more bizarre, since crusts me to concord,
Speaker 2: a rail gun.
Speaker 3: And an air hockey table. But a baby, somehow.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want to go a little bit beyond that.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Okay, let's go. Let's go San Francisco.
Speaker 4: Is in you blaying a baby? We love it? Thank you,
Speaker 4: and THATX will help.
Speaker 13: Since since you're feeling so loquacious to okay, when are
Speaker 13: you planning to.
Speaker 4: Take the first people up into orbit?
Speaker 13: Whether it's the space station or Bigelow or whatever she
Speaker 13: wants to go?
Speaker 2: Yeaheah, absolutely well, we're actually we're working on working in
Speaker 2: version two about Dragon spacecraft and in partnership with with with.
Speaker 3: NASA, so this is uh NASA's.
Speaker 2: NASA is our biggest customer, although we also expect to
Speaker 2: transport UH private citizens and we think we'll probably see
Speaker 2: the first flights of people in two to three years.
Speaker 4: So thank you nice knowing.
Speaker 13: No, no, I'm retiring on Mars, but not yet. Okay,
Speaker 13: Yes we're here Allison Sheridan from Raythan and I am
Speaker 13: behind the camera. Now I know why everybody's been saying
Speaker 13: that looking right through the camera.
Speaker 4: Thanks for your presence at all things to you.
Speaker 13: A couple of years ago, I did get a chance
Speaker 13: to drive the Tesla roadster.
Speaker 1: That was so much fun.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 13: I scared the guy though, he got a little nervous.
Speaker 13: But what I actually wanted to ask you about was
Speaker 13: we've talked a lot here about the importance of STEM
Speaker 13: education and trying to.
Speaker 1: Encourage that, and it's been suggested that.
Speaker 13: Part of our strategy really should be immigrant STEM type people.
Speaker 13: And I'm just guessing that with your background, maybe you
Speaker 13: have some interesting perspective on that.
Speaker 4: Oh I forgot that question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh you're welcome, great question.
Speaker 2: But I did think, yeah, I did think we should
Speaker 2: be I mean, if there's some really talented grad students
Speaker 2: at American colleges. It's easy to send them home or
Speaker 2: force them to go home.
Speaker 3: In a lot of cases.
Speaker 2: So I think we should have some reform of immigration
Speaker 2: policy that actually has has us, you know, arguably recruiting.
Speaker 3: I mean you should think of.
Speaker 2: Like like if you if if this was a company,
Speaker 2: if the United States a company, You'll be working hard
Speaker 2: to recruit top people and you certainly wouldn't be expelling them.
Speaker 3: That would be that would be crazy.
Speaker 2: So we should definitely have some reform on that front.
Speaker 2: And it doesn a near to the benefit of other countries.
Speaker 3: But but but we should try to have them stay here,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: And but with respect to to STEM in general, I
Speaker 2: think to agree that there are exciting technology projects that
Speaker 2: kids in school can read about and and and say, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'd like to be I'd like to work work on
Speaker 2: that or be part of that.
Speaker 3: That is what craws people into the science and technology.
Speaker 2: And like the biggest thing I think in history that
Speaker 2: is on on that front has been there was their
Speaker 2: poll or programs. I think there's probably not been any
Speaker 2: single thing that's been more powerful in enjoying kids in
Speaker 2: because they're like like, wow, we send something, I want
Speaker 2: to help make that happen or or you know, and
Speaker 2: and and go beyond that. So I think I think
Speaker 2: it's it's really important to.
Speaker 3: Have those projects that their kids.
Speaker 2: Can can read about and want to be part of
Speaker 2: in school and.
Speaker 3: And that will really draw them.
Speaker 1: Since we just touched on immigration, can you explain what
Speaker 1: happened with the uh political lobbying effort started by Mark
Speaker 1: Soberg you were, you were supporter of, but then you
Speaker 1: withdrew along with some others. What was that all about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So initially when I was, uh, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't agree to be part of Forward US because the
Speaker 2: I do believe in immigration reform.
Speaker 3: I think we need to you know, we've got some
Speaker 3: really auntecreated laws and.
Speaker 2: Change them and and there's you know, other things that
Speaker 2: that also need to be on on the agenda.
Speaker 3: So I thought, okay, I'll support that, and.
Speaker 2: But but I think that the methods that were employed,
Speaker 2: I mean there was a little too much of the
Speaker 2: sort of Kissinger esque reality politic, you know, and that
Speaker 2: wasn't I mean, I think we should try to make
Speaker 2: things happen for like the right reason and and and
Speaker 2: and we shouldn't We shouldn't give into the cynicism of politics.
Speaker 3: I mean, we should be we should.
Speaker 2: Fight the cynicism and if we if we don't, if
Speaker 2: we do anything to encourage that, then we'll get the
Speaker 2: political system that we deserve.
Speaker 14: Okay, uh I think maybe Okay, Dan Simon with CNN Elon,
Speaker 14: given the runaway success and reviews of the Model Less,
Speaker 14: you have to believe that the other carmakers are going
Speaker 14: to be gunning for you.
Speaker 12: So I'm wondering how the company is going to keep
Speaker 12: its competitive edge because you know that success can be
Speaker 12: a fleeting moment. Also, when do you think that electric
Speaker 12: vehicles will overtake gasoline vehicles? And finally wondering if you
Speaker 12: have a message for the nation's oil companies.
Speaker 2: Sure well, I really hope that the large car companies
Speaker 2: make a considered effort to create electric vehicles.
Speaker 3: And ultimately, if Tesla makes competitive.
Speaker 2: Electric cars, then will deserve to be around. And if
Speaker 2: we don't, then we don't deserve to be around. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm optimistic that we'll be able to make
Speaker 2: good products and so far from being concerned about other
Speaker 2: car companies coming in, we're actually doing our best to
Speaker 2: convince them to make electric cars and in fact to
Speaker 2: make powertrains for them.
Speaker 3: You know, where they will allow us to do so.
Speaker 3: So I hope they.
Speaker 2: I hope they look at the success the model less
Speaker 2: and that encourages them to make a big move into
Speaker 2: electric cars.
Speaker 3: And all the oil companies. You know, the tricky thing is.
Speaker 2: The way the system is set up because we have
Speaker 2: an unpriced externality, We have the strategy of the commons
Speaker 2: problem with the c O two capacity of the oceans
Speaker 2: and atmosphere.
Speaker 3: The incentive structure is such that the the the the
Speaker 3: oil companies have.
Speaker 2: You know, it's hard to ask ask the CEO of
Speaker 2: an oil company to act against their best interests that
Speaker 2: that's the thing. In fact, if they do that, they
Speaker 2: might get fired by their by their shareholders. So the
Speaker 2: right thing for us to do is to change the
Speaker 2: rules of the game so that it incense the right behavior.
Speaker 2: And that's why I'm a big believer of a.
Speaker 3: Cobbon tax is the right way to go.
Speaker 2: And uh, we don't even have to necessarily change the
Speaker 2: amount of money that that that we collect from from
Speaker 2: from the tax space, but I do think it's it's
Speaker 2: sensible to disproportionately tax things that at.
Speaker 3: Least have a likelihood of being bad.
Speaker 2: So just as we on a personal level will tax
Speaker 2: to bacco and alcohol, it's back up particularly is bad
Speaker 2: and that's well established fact. We should disproportionately tax co
Speaker 2: two emissions and uh and then I think the right
Speaker 2: behavior will occur.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, I.
Speaker 2: Have a hard time condemning the oil and gas companies
Speaker 2: because the current system incensed them to do bad behavior.
Speaker 5: That tax.
Speaker 12: That tax gets passed along though to consumers and ultimately
Speaker 12: hurts the economy.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: See, if if the amount of revenue being generated is
Speaker 2: the same, it's it's not going to the You know
Speaker 2: that we need to collect a certain amount of money
Speaker 2: to pay for the federal government, and how we collect
Speaker 2: that is, you know, just you can correct collect that
Speaker 2: in a wide range of wide range of ways. But
Speaker 2: but effectively, what we're doing is we're saying a portion
Speaker 2: of somebody's labor has to go to federal government activities,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't you know, it's not going to negatively
Speaker 2: affect the economy. Really, how how we collect that money.
Speaker 2: You may think it has negative effect, but it really doesn't.
Speaker 2: It's it's the same it's a certain amount of money
Speaker 2: collected to pay for the federal government. It's like I said,
Speaker 2: we don't actually need to change the amount of money raised,
Speaker 2: but we need to wait it towards the things that
Speaker 2: are more likely to be bad than things are more
Speaker 2: likely to be good. I guess I mean we're I
Speaker 2: have an issue with oil and gas guys is when they,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes engaged in the various tactics and all
Speaker 2: things that are sort of somewhat somewhere insidious, like like
Speaker 2: funding academic studies that people can then point to as
Speaker 2: though they have some credibility.
Speaker 3: And and and it's.
Speaker 2: Some prominent professor somewhere, but but that person is actually
Speaker 2: has been paid off by the by the oil industry
Speaker 2: to write that that study. It's so that kind of
Speaker 2: thing obviously should be condemned, condemned in the strongest words.
Speaker 2: And and I'd recommend people read a book called Merchants
Speaker 2: of Doubt that that actually spells it out in detail
Speaker 2: how some of these things are going on. Where I
Speaker 2: mean it's oil gas industry. Is all they need to
Speaker 2: is to create doubt, and that that's that's what they've done.
Speaker 2: In fact, they've actually employed a lot of people of
Speaker 2: individuals and firms that were employed by the tobacco industry,
Speaker 2: like literally.
Speaker 3: The same people. Like surprised that some of these people
Speaker 3: are still.
Speaker 2: Around because they're, like, you know, they're quite old. But
Speaker 2: in some cases, literally the same people have been employed
Speaker 2: by the oil and gas industry.
Speaker 1: Okay, get to this, Thanks, We only have a couple
Speaker 1: more questions.
Speaker 15: Hi, Jared from SCRIBB, Thank you so much for coming elon.
Speaker 15: My question is about SpaceX. So, even without a fully
Speaker 15: and rapidly reasonable rocket, you've still managed to reduce the
Speaker 15: cost to orbit by an order of magnitude or more,
Speaker 15: just with more incremental improvements. And so, firstly, at what
Speaker 15: point did you realize that such an opportunity existed in
Speaker 15: the space field? And secondly, are there other parallel opportunities
Speaker 15: in other areas that you wish somebody else would chase,
Speaker 15: even if you don't personally have time to do them all?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: So when I started SpaceX, it was actually I thought
Speaker 2: the most likely outcome was that we would fail. In fact,
Speaker 2: I thought that was really very likely that SpaceX would fail.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't really with the expectation of success that
Speaker 2: I started the company.
Speaker 3: Obviously, the.
Speaker 2: But what gave me a clue that we could make
Speaker 2: a significant breakthrough was looking at the cost of a rocket,
Speaker 2: and instead of looking at it with reference to what
Speaker 2: other rockets had cost in the past, I said.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, what is a rocket made of? What are
Speaker 3: the material constituents?
Speaker 2: What what metals you know, common cliber, what what are
Speaker 2: the beariest materials that coused you a rocket?
Speaker 3: And if you had a pile.
Speaker 2: Of those materials array before you and you could wave
Speaker 2: magic wand what would that rocket cost to build?
Speaker 3: And that is a remarkably small number, you.
Speaker 2: Know, was maybe a few percent or one or two
Speaker 2: percent of what rockets actually cost. So clearly people were
Speaker 2: doing something silly in how they were putting those materials together.
Speaker 2: And so just by eliminating those those sort of foolish things,
Speaker 2: were able to make a rocket for much less. And
Speaker 2: and then I wasn't It wasn't obviously that one could
Speaker 2: achieve full and rapid reusability.
Speaker 3: Because Earth's gravity is right on the cusp of where
Speaker 3: that's possible and not possible.
Speaker 2: And in order to achieve that, really everything has got
Speaker 2: to be done super super.
Speaker 3: Well, every aspect of the vehicle. So there's only maybe
Speaker 3: two or three years ago.
Speaker 2: For maybe three years ago that I thought it was
Speaker 2: actually achievable, and now I'm fairly certain it's achievable. But
Speaker 2: there's still a long way to go between here and there,
Speaker 2: and as mentioned before, we've not yet recovered a single
Speaker 2: rocket stage, so we have a long way to go.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think this has to be the last question.
Speaker 8: Yeah, hi, Elan greg Tar from Cross Spacific Capital up
Speaker 8: in Palo Alto, a question for you. I used to
Speaker 8: work for Toyota's US headquarters and when we in nineteen
Speaker 8: ninety scale up the Lexus dealership network, it was pretty tough,
Speaker 8: and I wanted to get an understanding of what kind
Speaker 8: of innovation you're going to bring in terms of.
Speaker 4: The service area.
Speaker 8: It generally takes three hundred dealerships to support about one
Speaker 8: hundred thousand units, and you're doing a tremendous job, which
Speaker 8: I admire, and I want to understand what your plans
Speaker 8: are because eventually the middle part of the country will
Speaker 8: begin to understand the revolution happening on the East and
Speaker 8: West coast.
Speaker 1: How will you.
Speaker 8: Make it happen in the dealership network and service?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, service in fact, for the last three or four
Speaker 2: months has been my main focus at Tesla, And it
Speaker 2: was three or four months ago it was our service
Speaker 2: was okay and.
Speaker 3: In some cases quite bad.
Speaker 5: In particularly and asked me about that, the weird service
Speaker 5: of Tesla, But.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, Yeah, I'd say we had some pretty nightmarriage
Speaker 2: service situations probably in the January of every time frame.
Speaker 2: Things have goten steadily better and and but like for example,
Speaker 2: La was a problem pretty huge for a really long
Speaker 2: time because we were supposed to have three service centers
Speaker 2: open and permits would laid on two of them, so
Speaker 2: we're operating at one third capacity.
Speaker 3: So as long as you're.
Speaker 2: Your modelis didn't break down, your awsome experience.
Speaker 3: If it broke down, it was brutal.
Speaker 2: So now we've got all three open, things are a
Speaker 2: lot better, but it is going to take enormus amount
Speaker 2: of work to scale service across the country and then
Speaker 2: internationally we start delivering in Europe in July. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know if we've got any I've got any
Speaker 2: brilliant insights that you probably you probably know all the
Speaker 2: things that I would I would say, but you've got
Speaker 2: to have really good diagnostics tools and we do have
Speaker 2: the advantage in that the car has so much intelligence
Speaker 2: center you can do a lot of self diagnostics and
Speaker 2: we can query you know, what what parts need to
Speaker 2: be fixed on the car before it even comes in,
Speaker 2: so that so we can be more efficient in our service.
Speaker 3: And then something we're announced.
Speaker 2: Recently was that we're building this fleet and largely have
Speaker 2: built at this point this fleet of the service loaners
Speaker 2: so that when if your car breaks down, what we'll
Speaker 2: do is and we also have ballet service, so if
Speaker 2: your car breaks down or you need service, we will
Speaker 2: go to wherever your car is and replace it with
Speaker 2: one of our top of the line cars. So our
Speaker 2: service loners are not sort of the standard cars, they're
Speaker 2: actually the top of the line cars. And so we'll
Speaker 2: just ballet a service loaners to wherever you are, pick
Speaker 2: your car up, take it, get serviced, and then and
Speaker 2: then we will turn your car when it's done.
Speaker 3: So the experience should be really seamless.
Speaker 2: And you should really feel like like you should you've
Speaker 2: got to actually an even better car than the one
Speaker 2: that you had serviced for some period of time and
Speaker 2: it was no interruption to your life.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the most important thing. Lexus did did
Speaker 3: this to some degree.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if Lexister does the full valet thing
Speaker 2: or not, but certainly did the Service Learner program, which
Speaker 2: was done done really well, actually