Speaker 1: Elon Musk is here.
Speaker 2: He is chief executive of two startup companies with bowl missions.
Speaker 2: He leads Tesla Motors, the electric car company that has
Speaker 2: attracted attention from both car enthusiasts and environmentalist as well.
Speaker 2: The company's powerful rochister, which can travel from zero to
Speaker 2: sixty in less than four seconds, is entirely powered by batteries.
Speaker 2: The company plans to break into the mainstream modo market
Speaker 2: with an electric sedan as early as twenty eleven. Mosk
Speaker 2: is also a found to see of Space Exploration Technologies,
Speaker 2: a company trying to slash the cost of space travel.
Speaker 2: Last year, the company signed an agreement with NASA to
Speaker 2: send cargo to the International Space Station and if that
Speaker 2: is not enough. He's also chairman of a growing company
Speaker 2: called Solar City that installs solar panels on homes and businesses.
Speaker 2: He has thrived in Silicon Valley one of the co
Speaker 2: founders of PayPal, the online payments company that eBay bought
Speaker 2: for one point five billion dollars in two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: I am pleased to have him here at this table
Speaker 1: for the first time.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Thank you, thanks for having me. I've been a
Speaker 3: big find of the show for a long time.
Speaker 4: Let's just talk about you first, so that if the
Speaker 4: audience does not know growing up in South Africa. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 4: and why how how did you end up in Canada?
Speaker 3: Well, I guess growing up in South Africa, I was
Speaker 3: actually it was very technology oriented and I taught myself
Speaker 3: how to program computers, mostly because I wanted to program games.
Speaker 3: And I when when I was about twelve, program sold
Speaker 3: my first game, and whenever I'd read about technology and
Speaker 3: great innovation, it's it was coming from from the United States, and.
Speaker 1: So it was, you know, that's where I wanted to be.
Speaker 3: And I tried to convince my parents to move move there,
Speaker 3: and uh, neither of them would They would have wahed.
Speaker 3: I tried my mother trying to find neither would would
Speaker 3: do it. My mother later moved back to initially Canada
Speaker 3: and then and then the US. And so when I
Speaker 3: was seventeen, as soon as I got my Canadian passport,
Speaker 3: three weeks later, I was in Canada.
Speaker 4: So here you are, and you come to Canada and
Speaker 4: make it to the United States, and then you and
Speaker 4: and several other guys come together and create PayPal right
Speaker 4: and you sell it to eBay for one point whatever.
Speaker 1: It was five billion dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so after PayPal, Uh that that gave me, you know,
Speaker 3: a fair bit of capital. And uh, there were there
Speaker 3: were there were three areas when as in college, there
Speaker 3: were three areas that I though would most affect the
Speaker 3: future of humanity and and those were the Internet, the
Speaker 3: transition to a sustainable energy and transportation sector. And the
Speaker 3: third was space exploration and particularly the extension of life
Speaker 3: to multiple planets. And I didn't ever expect to be
Speaker 3: involved in the third one, but but it just that
Speaker 3: seems to.
Speaker 1: Me that's something that would be very important for the future.
Speaker 3: And with the capital I got from the sale of PayPal,
Speaker 3: I was able to go into both those those areas.
Speaker 3: And uh and so hint hents uh SpaceX and and
Speaker 3: in the space and then in in the sustainable energy
Speaker 3: and transportation you've got Solar City and and Tesla.
Speaker 1: We to talk about space exploration just for a moment.
Speaker 4: How is it going in terms of creating the systems
Speaker 4: that will engage in space exploration, not just for governments
Speaker 4: and not just for NASA, but for private citizens as well.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: You have to divide the efforts that are going on
Speaker 3: into what isn't an orbit class effort versus a sub
Speaker 3: orbital class effort, and there's really a very big difference.
Speaker 3: But the general public doesn't understand the difference between getting
Speaker 3: to space and getting to getting to orbit, and so
Speaker 3: it's important to make that distinction. To do a suborbital flight,
Speaker 3: you need a terminal velosity of around mark three. To
Speaker 3: get to orbit you need a terminal polosophy of mark
Speaker 3: twenty five. It's a huge, huge difference. And because the
Speaker 3: energy required to do that scales with the square of
Speaker 3: the velocity, So suborbital maybe nine units of energy, orbit
Speaker 3: is six hundred and twenty five units of energy, So
Speaker 3: it's only about one and a half percent of the
Speaker 3: energy of orbit is required to get to SubOrbit. So
Speaker 3: that there's there are a number of efforts in the
Speaker 3: suboverval category that certainly could grow one day to to orbital.
Speaker 3: Jeff Bezos has an effort, and uh, I know that
Speaker 3: that's something that that's Ranson involved in this. Branson absolutely,
Speaker 3: not so much directly from the technology standpoint, but from
Speaker 3: he's he's funding that development at Scales Composits in California.
Speaker 1: What are you doing? So we're in the we're in
Speaker 1: the in the in the orbit class.
Speaker 3: And that's it's it's a lot more capital and and
Speaker 3: uh and and and that's really where you're sort of
Speaker 3: pushing the ragged edge of of what's what's physically possible.
Speaker 1: And uh, last year we got to orbit uh with
Speaker 1: for the first.
Speaker 3: Time with with our rocket and UH that was certainly
Speaker 3: a huge relief and a milestone.
Speaker 1: And so what's the next step, You're gonna rocket into orbit?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so next month we were putting a satellite for
Speaker 3: Malaysia into orbit uh and then from Malaysia form Formulasia
Speaker 3: Malasian satellite. And but in the rocket business, the rocket
Speaker 3: company does launch. It's not like the airline business. So
Speaker 3: you don't sell the rocket, you sell the launch. And
Speaker 3: and then later this year we'll be launching out big
Speaker 3: rocket from Cape Canaveral. That's the Falcon Mine and that's
Speaker 3: the one that's going to be servicing the space station
Speaker 3: among other things.
Speaker 4: Is there a philosophy here that somehow the private sector
Speaker 4: can do a lot more than than it has done
Speaker 4: in in areas that seem because of them because of
Speaker 4: the size related reserved for government.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, the private sector is very good at at
Speaker 3: optimization and an innovation. I mean, private sector is generally
Speaker 3: better doing things than the government. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's that's fair to say.
Speaker 3: But you know, there are certain things that that that
Speaker 3: the government that that asks through to the government, like
Speaker 3: basic research and that sort of thing. But yeah, so
Speaker 3: as far as uh, space, the reason that there hasn't
Speaker 3: been a huge number of a big improvement in the
Speaker 3: space industry, I think it's because of it's very difficult
Speaker 3: for it is create a destruction process to to to
Speaker 3: coming to effect because it is such a significant amount
Speaker 3: of capital that's needed to start a rocket company, and
Speaker 3: it's a very difficult technical challenge. And the number of
Speaker 3: people that that really understand rocketry in the world is
Speaker 3: a very small number. So it's it's just it's really
Speaker 3: a huge barrier to entry and and that's why we
Speaker 3: haven't seen the forcing function of improvement that that there
Speaker 3: should have been over the years.
Speaker 4: And your understanding came from sort of from this was
Speaker 4: not what you studied in college. Well, I studied physics,
Speaker 4: but I was studying physics and studying rocket science thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it gives you the basics, It gives you
Speaker 3: the basics. Good framework, analytical framework. So, uh, but no,
Speaker 3: I picked it up along the way. But what is
Speaker 3: your core competent you think you? I think it's uh technology, technology, Yeah, yeah, technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: If if, if something has to be designed and invented
Speaker 3: and then and you have to figure out how to
Speaker 3: ensure that the value of the thing you create is
Speaker 3: greater than the cost of the inputs, then that's that's
Speaker 3: probably my course skill.
Speaker 4: Now bring me to the car. And I drove a
Speaker 4: car this afternoon. So far, so good, which was terrific.
Speaker 4: It's the Roadster. Yeah. Where does that stand you? Obviously
Speaker 4: I've been I've been in the Google parking lot. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you're seen a few that I've seen a few there. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm sure that's true another place in Silicon Valley. I
Speaker 4: don't know whether it's particularly a car that appeals to
Speaker 4: people in Silicon Valley because of interest in technology and
Speaker 4: high performance and lots of other things, or or what
Speaker 4: whether there are a lot of rich people and who
Speaker 4: willing to spend that kind of money for something they
Speaker 4: think is on the cutting edge of causes A believe
Speaker 4: in sustainable energy. Right, tell me about how where you
Speaker 4: are in this development of this electric car which has
Speaker 4: most of all this extraordinary sort of power.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Yeah, zero to takes sixty times a
Speaker 3: three point nine Seguis and.
Speaker 1: The roast is extraordinary.
Speaker 4: When you think about the sports car, isn't there anything
Speaker 4: else that's out on the road today.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In fact, on the top gear test track, our standard
Speaker 3: roads to beats the Porsche GT three exactly, which is
Speaker 3: one that reference, and the roads total to even better.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But you've also said, in terms of where you want
Speaker 4: to go that that developing a high performer sports car
Speaker 4: is not what this is about.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it is about something else. And you want to
Speaker 1: develop a sedan. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The whole purpose behind Tesla, the reason I've put so
Speaker 3: much of my time and money it's helping create the
Speaker 3: business is is we want to serve as a catalyst
Speaker 3: for accelerating the electric car revolution.
Speaker 1: The price of gas.
Speaker 3: At the pump does not reflect the true cost of
Speaker 3: gasoline because you have a consumption of.
Speaker 1: A public good.
Speaker 3: It's one of the most It's really a common problem economos.
Speaker 3: You have the same thing in fishing, where because there's
Speaker 3: no cost to fishing stocks, people just over fish and
Speaker 3: you have disaster that ensues. And here we're not paying
Speaker 3: for the cost of this year two concentration in the
Speaker 3: oceans and the atmospheres. We're not paying for all these
Speaker 3: the ancillary effects of the wars and all the other
Speaker 3: things at the gas prompt So you effectively have a
Speaker 3: subsidy taking place at the gas comp because of that.
Speaker 3: So the only way to bridge that is with innovation
Speaker 3: is to try to try to make electric cars better
Speaker 3: sooner than they would.
Speaker 4: Otherwise be this Suppose this, this is a hypothetical which
Speaker 4: it may or may not speak to the point.
Speaker 1: But suppose fifteen.
Speaker 4: Years ago, let's say Bill Clinton as president, who talked
Speaker 4: about the road to the twenty first cent fion and
Speaker 4: all of that.
Speaker 1: Suppose he had said, I.
Speaker 4: Believe so much unsustainable energy that I want to make
Speaker 4: a commitment and the federal government, using all of its resources,
Speaker 4: will develop an electric car with appropriate battery power that
Speaker 4: will change the face of automobile, the automobile industry in
Speaker 4: the world. Was that very doable? Bill Clinton was elected
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety two, seventeen years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could have made a reasonably good electric car
Speaker 3: around that time for a lot of investment.
Speaker 4: And should that have been done, should the US government
Speaker 4: have made that kind of otherwise you will not be
Speaker 4: able to change the driving habits of Americans.
Speaker 1: Was it a worthwhile expenditu or add that time, probably
Speaker 1: would have been a worthwhile expenditure.
Speaker 3: But the thing that really helps electric cars is lithium
Speaker 3: my own right?
Speaker 1: And when did that come around?
Speaker 4: I mean, explain why our batteries has always been the
Speaker 4: great dilemma for developing an electric car.
Speaker 3: Sure well, the energy contained with their battery is so
Speaker 3: much less than it's contained in gasoline that I mean,
Speaker 3: it's really almost it's hard to quite describe. Another way
Speaker 3: to put it is the Tesla battery pack in the roadstuff,
Speaker 3: which is the most advanced batory pack in the world.
Speaker 3: The common reference is to call what is actually a
Speaker 3: cell a battery, right, So a cell is the little
Speaker 3: single kin of chemicals. And then if you have multiple cells,
Speaker 3: that's that's what actually a battery. Right, That's that's virtually
Speaker 3: what a battery means, multiple cells, multiple cells. And then
Speaker 3: and usually as the batteries get bigger and bigger, they
Speaker 3: get harder and harder to deal with. So the cell
Speaker 3: that we use as a commodity cell, it's bid anywhere
Speaker 3: pretty much and it's and it's the same sort of
Speaker 3: thing that's in any one of a number of laptops.
Speaker 3: That the challenge is combining those cells into and having
Speaker 3: thousands of them, making sure they're safe, making sure that
Speaker 3: they'll last for two hundred thousand miles or one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand over bumps and potholes and extremes of temperature, and
Speaker 3: safe in a crash, and that that compounds the problem massively,
Speaker 3: and you've got to make sure the charges and temperatures
Speaker 3: balanced across the whole thing. So the difficulty is really
Speaker 3: at the pack level much more than it is at
Speaker 3: the cell level, and that's really where where the single
Speaker 3: biggest area of Tesla's expertise, although I should point out
Speaker 3: the Tesla also has we designed to build the motor
Speaker 3: and the power electronics, and then the software that manages
Speaker 3: the whole thing, so that those are important too, But
Speaker 3: the battery is the single most important thing. And the
Speaker 3: Tesla battery pack to reference to gasoline, it weighs about
Speaker 3: one thousand pounds and it has the energy content of
Speaker 3: two and a half gallons of gasoline. So so that
Speaker 3: means you've got to have a lot of charges. Well,
Speaker 3: what that means is that but there's there's an advantage
Speaker 3: that that. That's because the the consumption of that energy
Speaker 3: is much more efficient in an electric car. And this
Speaker 3: and this is I'll get to. You know why why
Speaker 3: is the Tesla roads twice as efficient as as a Prius.
Speaker 1: Which is obviously not as sports car? Right?
Speaker 3: And the reason is because an electric motor is fundamentally
Speaker 3: super efficient at turning energy into motion.
Speaker 1: So a good electric motor.
Speaker 3: Such as the one that we have in the Tesla Roadster,
Speaker 3: is about ninety percent efficient at turning the Christie into motion,
Speaker 3: whereas a gasoline internal combustion engine is somewhere typically in
Speaker 3: the range of around seventeen or eighteen percent. Most of
Speaker 3: what it does is generate heat. So even though it's
Speaker 3: only two and a half gallons gasoline, that two and
Speaker 3: a half gallons of energy content goes really far compared
Speaker 3: with you know, if you had.
Speaker 4: If that was okay, compared to the Priest, but also
Speaker 4: compared to the new GM volt, Right, how does it
Speaker 4: do in comparison with the volt?
Speaker 1: The vault is a different architecture it uses.
Speaker 3: It's a plug in hybrid architecture, so it's a I
Speaker 3: think about a forty miles or so battery back what
Speaker 3: they say, and then there's an engine with a generator
Speaker 3: that allows you to go beyond the forty miles, right,
Speaker 3: and whereas ours pure electric and the strategy that we've
Speaker 3: decided to hew to is a pure electric strategy. And
Speaker 3: I mean, I've been criticized sometimes for responding to questions
Speaker 3: like yours to explain why we've gone to electric, and
Speaker 3: then people have taken that to be an attack on
Speaker 3: on on the Vault, which is is not the case.
Speaker 3: I I hope the Bolt succeeds, and I think it
Speaker 3: can be a pretty good car kind of I don't
Speaker 3: take this as an attack U totally. It's it's it's
Speaker 3: not but that. But I just wanted to to put that.
Speaker 4: And what I hope to do in this conversation with
Speaker 4: you is figure out what it is you've done, because
Speaker 4: you've got a fair amount of attention, so figure out
Speaker 4: why you're not further along than you are, or figure
Speaker 4: out why you are and what your expectations are to
Speaker 4: do when and where is the game for you.
Speaker 3: I think it's taken a while for the industry to
Speaker 3: come around to this point, but I think it's it's
Speaker 3: largely at this point, it's it's it's almost become conventional
Speaker 3: wisdom that the future is electric cars. The only question
Speaker 3: is this interim period, of this transitional period. But if
Speaker 3: you look at the pace of battery improvement, it's clear
Speaker 3: that that's what I mean, it's inevitable the future will
Speaker 3: be entirely electric.
Speaker 4: And the iron of all this conversation is that in
Speaker 4: the last year, a year before it's bankruptcy, General Motors
Speaker 4: had announced that the bold you know, it was.
Speaker 1: The key to their future, right as an holm Bill company, right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean one area of Christism I think that it
Speaker 3: is valid regarding Jim is have.
Speaker 1: Them come to that conclusion.
Speaker 3: By the way, well, they should have probably done a
Speaker 3: prius or something like that. But I think if you know,
Speaker 3: they had the e.
Speaker 4: V one right right exactly, which didn't work, didn't work,
Speaker 4: but didn't make it for reasons I'm not clear, right,
Speaker 4: and you know as a marketing success.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Chris Pain did a movie Who Killed the Electric
Speaker 3: Car about it, and it was sort of trying to.
Speaker 1: Viiscia that issue.
Speaker 3: But I think it's it's notable that in that movie
Speaker 3: it shows that the customers who had the EV one,
Speaker 3: the cause had to be taken away from them and crushed,
Speaker 3: and they held a candlelight vigil.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: If you have people that really love a product to
Speaker 3: the degree that they're willing to hold a candle lit
Speaker 3: vigil for it, that that says, hey.
Speaker 1: Maybe you should make an EV too. It certainly does
Speaker 1: say that. You know.
Speaker 4: So the car that I drove today coached to two,
Speaker 4: I think, I mean, I think it was a roaster
Speaker 4: before this, this is right, second iteration of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, came came through production.
Speaker 3: What year the first roaster number one, the first first
Speaker 3: production roster which was fully deplotment of transport.
Speaker 1: Legal and all that sort of stuff at all the standards. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was Februar of last year, and that was my car.
Speaker 1: That was the car, your car meaning what the one?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so then you decided immediately to make improvements
Speaker 4: on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely it was. It was a little little
Speaker 3: rough going in the beginning, and we had some issues
Speaker 3: with some of the powertrain components. In fact, not that
Speaker 3: not the hard stuff, but the stuff that's sort of
Speaker 3: theoretically easier, and you know, we're able to fix those
Speaker 3: and get get production wrapped up, and now we're at
Speaker 3: the point where we're delivering about twenty to twenty five
Speaker 3: cars a week.
Speaker 4: You know that Tata Motors obviously, you know, and I
Speaker 4: know take for a moment what he's doing in India. Yeah,
Speaker 4: developing a little sedan for twenty three hundred dollars none, right, right, right?
Speaker 4: Where do you put that in the whole equation of
Speaker 4: where the future of cars are?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's a good idea to have affordable cause.
Speaker 3: You know, I think I think we're with the problem
Speaker 3: with with something something like like the Nana, which I think,
Speaker 3: by the way, I'll say a problem. I think it's
Speaker 3: a great idea. And Jack Russian is a gentleman. The
Speaker 3: skull and all of those are. Yeah, it's hard not
Speaker 3: to yeah, exactly. I think where it's going to come
Speaker 3: challenging the futures. As the price of gasoline rises, the
Speaker 3: cost of acquiring the car is much less of an
Speaker 3: issue than the cost of operating in that car, right,
Speaker 3: And uh, And I think oil.
Speaker 4: Is inevitable, it's already moving back up. And you, yeah,
Speaker 4: do you have some assumptions in your own calculations as
Speaker 4: to where oil will level off.
Speaker 3: I think it will exceed that the numbers we've seen
Speaker 3: last year one hundred and forty four. Oh yeah, sure, absolutely,
Speaker 3: I think we'll see it sort of approach two hundred
Speaker 3: dollars and beyond.
Speaker 1: By twenty ten, eleven, twelve somewhere.
Speaker 3: Now, I'd say, whenever the next boom is so as
Speaker 3: they say the next boom is four years from now,
Speaker 3: it'll be around that around that point.
Speaker 4: Of all your businesses, which one do you care the
Speaker 4: most about?
Speaker 3: Well, right now my time is split roughly evenly between
Speaker 3: Tesla and SpaceX, so it's I guess it would be
Speaker 3: pretty pretty even between the two. And that Solar City
Speaker 3: is doing great on its own, and the two co
Speaker 3: founders that are living to Peter Rve have done a
Speaker 3: phenomenal job and thankfully it requires very little my attention
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 4: The reason to create a sports car a roaster as
Speaker 4: the first stage of this is because it attracts attention
Speaker 4: or what oh.
Speaker 1: So good, great, great question.
Speaker 3: So because I feel often misinterpret why we have created
Speaker 3: a sports car because they will say.
Speaker 4: You know, the implication will be cars for rich guys,
Speaker 4: is that I saw the energy from.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, And they would sort of like that that
Speaker 3: I feel that there was somehow a shortage of sports cars.
Speaker 1: For rich guys or something like that.
Speaker 3: And that was the part and not only if you're
Speaker 3: if any new technology is expensive when it starts out,
Speaker 3: and you can point pretty much anything. And and because
Speaker 3: the first thing that that you, the engineers are trying
Speaker 3: to do is make it work. And then when you
Speaker 3: made it work, make it work, then you optimize and
Speaker 3: new optimize and new optimized. And you look at the
Speaker 3: early days of computers or cell phones or almost anything,
Speaker 3: even the early days of gasoline cars. There used to
Speaker 3: be toys for rich people until they were made affordable
Speaker 3: and mass products. Yeah, and and and and then you
Speaker 3: combine them with and and then you combine that with
Speaker 3: the fact that we were just a little startup and
Speaker 3: you know, there's there's just no way that we could
Speaker 3: afford a billion dollars to make a giant car plant
Speaker 3: that that would uh make you know, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of cars a year, because that's the kind of volume
Speaker 3: you have to get to to make to make cheap cars,
Speaker 3: and uh and then and it's also the first iteration
Speaker 3: of technology.
Speaker 1: So we had both a.
Speaker 3: Volume problem and a new technology problem, and so that
Speaker 3: naturally that you have to reach scale. You have to
Speaker 3: reach scale, and you have to work the bugs out
Speaker 3: of the system, and so you've got to make it
Speaker 3: and you want to make mistakes at a small scale.
Speaker 4: Okay, So how's that going. Reaching scale and being able
Speaker 4: to create a marketing, a business plan, they'll enable you
Speaker 4: to reach a large audience, you know, and create and
Speaker 4: continue the development of the technology.
Speaker 3: They'll make it even more attractive. It's going really well. Actually,
Speaker 3: so it was. We had a few bumpy, bumpy years
Speaker 3: in the beginning, but at this point we're producing at
Speaker 3: a steady state of about an annualized production rate of
Speaker 3: about a thousand roads to sports cause a year. We
Speaker 3: unveiled at saidan a few months ago, which is a
Speaker 3: much more functional car, and it's a fifty thousand dollars car,
Speaker 3: so it's basically it's about half the price of the
Speaker 3: roads and.
Speaker 4: The production run, say for the year twenty ten, for
Speaker 4: the roads, that will be about one thousand, and for
Speaker 4: the sedan.
Speaker 1: The sedan is only coming out in two years.
Speaker 4: Twenty eleven will be the first year, right, and what's
Speaker 4: the projection for that.
Speaker 3: We're expecting to do twenty thousand units a year for
Speaker 3: the Sedan. It's always difficult to predict these things exactly,
Speaker 3: but our target is we'll produce a total of about
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand of them in about twenty thousand a year,
Speaker 3: and they're going to be many variations on that. We'll
Speaker 3: do an suv and we'll do you know, other things,
Speaker 3: and then we'll do our third generation platform beyond the.
Speaker 1: Sedan.
Speaker 3: The model of Sedan will be a sub thirty thousand
Speaker 3: dollar car. So we're trying to get to mass production
Speaker 3: as soon as we possibly can. And but that's both
Speaker 3: from the cars that we make ourselves as well as
Speaker 3: the cause we do in partnership with others, like the
Speaker 3: Dialer deal you may have read about.
Speaker 1: And so how do you measure the odds of success personally?
Speaker 3: I would say success for me for Tesla is that
Speaker 3: we've accelerated the advent of electric cars by at least
Speaker 3: five years.
Speaker 4: That's at the goal to accelerate the advent of electric
Speaker 4: cars or to create a great electric car company.
Speaker 1: I think the two are anonymous. I mean or I
Speaker 1: mean that you do one, you do the other.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, And why is it that it's happening by
Speaker 4: a guy who created a startup in two thousand and three,
Speaker 4: rather than a whole range of sort of industrial autombile
Speaker 4: companies around.
Speaker 1: The world, not just here.
Speaker 4: Theod is a successful car company and their own Chrysler right.
Speaker 3: Well, disruptive technology like where you really have a big
Speaker 3: technology discontinuity, it tends to come from new companies. You know,
Speaker 3: you could ask the same question of why does Google
Speaker 3: come from Google?
Speaker 1: Larry and Lari.
Speaker 3: By the way, I've known Larry since before he got
Speaker 3: venture funding for for Google.
Speaker 1: Man is he But is he an investor in Tesla?
Speaker 1: He is, Larry?
Speaker 3: Answergar investors in Tesla and they drive them or don't drive? Yeah,
Speaker 3: they drive them?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Uh it because some of the criticism that comes at
Speaker 4: you and the company now is that that you went
Speaker 4: out to seek a lot of external financing and did
Speaker 4: not reach your goals.
Speaker 1: Well, we we're taken as longer to reach our goals.
Speaker 4: But what was it raise one hundred million to raise
Speaker 4: forty or what was it?
Speaker 1: What was the goal? Well?
Speaker 3: I think it's you know, some of some of the
Speaker 3: stumbles were were silly mistakes we made ourselves.
Speaker 1: Some of them were market externalities, and.
Speaker 3: We were getting ready to raise or we're in the
Speaker 3: facets of raising about one hundred million dollars round. That
Speaker 3: began in sort of the summer of last year and
Speaker 3: then ran into uh, you know four or five hurricane.
Speaker 1: An economic circumstance that took everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so so that that forced us to scale
Speaker 3: back our plans a little bit. We had to do
Speaker 3: a layoff, and we had to raise the money internally
Speaker 3: from existing investors. I had to put up a lot
Speaker 3: of the money personally, and uh think there was just
Speaker 3: no money and so that that was it was sort
Speaker 3: of a hair raising time for the company. But at
Speaker 3: this point we're actually in good shape. We expect to
Speaker 3: be profitable in the third quarter.
Speaker 1: And that comes from the success of the roaster, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the roads.
Speaker 3: Then we also have a power train supply business to
Speaker 3: Diamoner as well for the electric smart that we're doing
Speaker 3: with them.
Speaker 1: Make the smart car an electric car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the smart car was always intended to
Speaker 3: be an electric car, but they can never get they
Speaker 3: can never get the battery right. So a year and
Speaker 3: a half ago we met with Daimler and that I
Speaker 3: was trying to convince them to work with us. We actually,
Speaker 3: I mean we've really tried hard to work with a
Speaker 3: lot of different car companies and what happened, Well, I
Speaker 3: guess they think, well, this took the attitude of what,
Speaker 3: you know, what if some little startup in Silicon Valley
Speaker 3: know that that that.
Speaker 1: We don't know or couldn't do, and what would.
Speaker 3: You say to them, Well, we'd say, drive our car
Speaker 3: and look at our technology. And I don't know, it
Speaker 3: just never seemed to sort of sink in. But the
Speaker 3: diamer uh that put diamelet did. Actually, so I I went,
Speaker 3: I went through Stuttgart, went out on the way to
Speaker 3: India actually uh and met with the doctor Waver, the
Speaker 3: head of Global R and D and and and we
Speaker 3: had conversations.
Speaker 1: Said, well, what does it take for us to to
Speaker 1: work together. We'd love to do something.
Speaker 3: We'd love to do something with, you know, an affordable
Speaker 3: mass market car that you know we ourselves couldn't do
Speaker 3: right now because we don't have the cast of it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and and and so I said, what about you know
Speaker 3: what what about electric smart?
Speaker 1: And because the Smart was always intended.
Speaker 3: To be an an electric car, and and and what
Speaker 3: would take for us to work together? And he said, well,
Speaker 3: if you could do a prototype that would that would
Speaker 3: really go a long way. So we did. We worked
Speaker 3: really hard. The power trying team led by JB. Stravel
Speaker 3: don awesome job. And forty days later when when when
Speaker 3: they came out to visit, we said here's the car,
Speaker 3: take a drive, and they really liked what they saw,
Speaker 3: and so what did they do?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 3: Then they said, okay, well let's let's take it sort
Speaker 3: of another step further, and that they gave us a
Speaker 3: little little R and D contract and eventually got to
Speaker 3: the point where where we got a contract for to
Speaker 3: supply it thousand cars for them and then if we
Speaker 3: do well and that we'll we'll potentially go into you know,
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of cars.
Speaker 1: So so that but this is a car.
Speaker 3: That everyone could afford and and could hopefully come quite soon.
Speaker 4: Do you have a profile of the people who you
Speaker 4: think will want to buy these roasters?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's it's the kind of person who who likes
Speaker 3: the performance car.
Speaker 1: Maybe they want a Porsche or you know.
Speaker 4: You know Lamborghini or you know this car is actually
Speaker 4: faster than Lamborghini zero sixty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's I think faster than almost almost
Speaker 1: anything anything I know of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's like things that the really sort
Speaker 3: of million dollars supercars. Obviously those will those will be
Speaker 3: like Frienzo exactly. But but it's it's pretty much faster
Speaker 3: than any normal, normal sports car, and.
Speaker 1: And it's really easy to drive.
Speaker 3: If you want a hyperformance car with a clean conscience,
Speaker 3: this is the only option. And the sedan is going
Speaker 3: to be for someone that wants a great sedan and
Speaker 3: also you know, clean conscience, and it's it's going to
Speaker 3: be cheap and operate.
Speaker 1: Then.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you are, as you well know, a controversial
Speaker 4: guy as well.
Speaker 1: I try to I try not to be controversial. Controversy
Speaker 1: it finds you.
Speaker 4: It finds you because you think big. You're a software
Speaker 4: guy who has been successful in the private sector. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, and see no reason you can't do things
Speaker 4: that other people have not been able to do. No,
Speaker 4: a lot of how large the corporate enterpise create the
Speaker 4: best electric car or be put privately astronauts in space,
Speaker 4: which you say you will do in two years.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it sort of depends on when NASA asked
Speaker 3: us to do that. If so, if NASA tunes on
Speaker 3: the access to do that this year, which we're hopeful
Speaker 3: that they will. The White House has a convened a
Speaker 3: panel on the future of human spaceflight that that panel
Speaker 3: is going to make their recommendations in a few months.
Speaker 1: I hope though some of those recommendations will be favorable to.
Speaker 3: SpaceX, because the alternative is, if SpaceX doesn't do it,
Speaker 3: we will be entirely dependent on the Russians to carry
Speaker 3: our astronauts to the space station after twenty ten, and
Speaker 3: billions of dollars will be spent on essentially a soul
Speaker 3: source situation to the Russians, which I think is outrageous.
Speaker 4: And you haven't taken advantage of the opportunity to do
Speaker 4: in space yourself, have you?
Speaker 1: No? I have not. Have you wanted to?
Speaker 3: If it was if it was purely a matter of
Speaker 3: personal interest, I would I would have done it already.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I do want it, I want interested
Speaker 4: in that or no is expressed some interesting, some interesting.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, I would like to go at some point,
Speaker 3: but it's I'm also in the point where it's difficult
Speaker 3: for me to take personal risks.
Speaker 1: I used to take a lot of personal risks of children.
Speaker 3: I've got my kids and responsibilities for the companies as well,
Speaker 3: and so if I, if I do things for they
Speaker 3: have personal risk. At this point, I risked more than
Speaker 3: my own moment.
Speaker 1: You've had.
Speaker 4: How many trips do you have? One set of trips
Speaker 4: on one set of twins?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have the twins Smithy in New York.
Speaker 1: Actually, so they like they like the car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they can't drive and they can't go on
Speaker 3: the road, so because it doesn't you know, it's not
Speaker 3: very kit friendly, but.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's not very good friendly. You're right.
Speaker 4: The Sedan will be ideal for them. So much success
Speaker 4: to you. Thank you for coming, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4: See you next time.