Speaker 1: Latest interview of Elon Muss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, be called X, but it would be the most
Speaker 2: valuable company in the world. On the other hand, now
Speaker 2: that's not all good though. On the other hand, then
Speaker 2: a lot of super talented people would have stayed and
Speaker 2: because because people got acquired by eBay not long after,
Speaker 2: like you know, so there was like the PayPal coup
Speaker 2: at the end of two thousand, eighteen months later it
Speaker 2: was acquired by eBay. So and and then but you know,
Speaker 2: it feels to think of the companies that came out
Speaker 2: of PayPal, so called PayPal in Mafia, the YouTube you know,
Speaker 2: those that Stephen Chad created YouTube, Jerry Saltman created yelp,
Speaker 2: Interpeter created Volunteer, and a bunch of other things. There's
Speaker 2: David Sachs created this company, and Reed Hoffmann created LinkedIn.
Speaker 3: It's almost like all that market cap still exists, but
Speaker 3: now it's allocated on all these other tech companies instead
Speaker 3: of X dot com.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in retest, like I sometimes like it's maybe a
Speaker 2: good thing that uh X wasn't vall wasn't achieve those
Speaker 2: things because all these other companies would have at least
Speaker 2: been delayed or may not have existed.
Speaker 5: There's definitely been kind of a resurgence and interest as
Speaker 5: we get into kind of cryptographic you know, money and
Speaker 5: bitcoin and all that, like interest in this idea, you know.
Speaker 5: And it's interesting, like software hasn't even the banking industry yet.
Speaker 5: Software has eaten a lot of industries or some that
Speaker 5: it just hasn't, and bankings still.
Speaker 2: There, you know, stripes, stripes eating them slowly, but pretty
Speaker 2: good job. The mags are in trouble if if it's
Speaker 2: not stripe as be somebody else.
Speaker 3: And you love code, but you don't seem to be
Speaker 3: as bullish on bitcoin. Do you have any could you
Speaker 3: break down like why, because you're talking about this big
Speaker 3: database that's more secure for faster transactions. It seems like
Speaker 3: bitcoin's hitting at least some of those.
Speaker 4: I'm neither here there on bitcoin.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, what do you think when you read like
Speaker 5: Satoshi's white paper for the first time, we're like it's pretty.
Speaker 4: Interesting or.
Speaker 2: Those pretty clever. It's it's it's just like the things
Speaker 2: this always gets like the crypto people angry.
Speaker 4: But I think.
Speaker 2: There are there are there are transactions that are not
Speaker 2: within the balance of the low and those and they're
Speaker 2: obviously many of those in different countries, and normally cash
Speaker 2: is used for these transactions. But but but in order
Speaker 2: for illegal transactions to occur those the cash.
Speaker 4: Must also be used for legal transactions.
Speaker 2: You need an illegal to legal bridge.
Speaker 4: That's where crypto comes in.
Speaker 1: So is it kind of the darknet stuff?
Speaker 2: It can't be entirely dark because otherwise how do you
Speaker 2: buy normal stuff? And cash these days is used just
Speaker 2: much rarer. It's hard, it's like increasingly difficult use cash.
Speaker 2: Some places you can't use cash at all. So there's
Speaker 2: a there's a forcing function for transactions that are illegal,
Speaker 2: quasi illegal and in some cases legal, but the've got
Speaker 2: to have some it's got to be both legal and illegal.
Speaker 2: It doesn't count otherwise otherwise you simply it can't just
Speaker 2: be transactions within an legal economy, because how do you
Speaker 2: buy like, you know, food and a house or something,
Speaker 2: you know, So you must have a legal to illegal bridge.
Speaker 2: So where I see crypto as as effectively as a
Speaker 2: replacement for cash, but not as a replacement for as
Speaker 2: a primary not not as I do not see crypto
Speaker 2: being the primary database. So now this is this is
Speaker 2: something that's taken to me like I'm being judgmental about crypto,
Speaker 2: and it's actually I think there's a lot of things
Speaker 2: that are illegal that shouldn't be illegal. But you know,
Speaker 2: so it's not as the I think that sometimes governments
Speaker 2: just have too many laws about that they should I
Speaker 2: should have so many things.
Speaker 4: That are illegal.
Speaker 1: Didn't you say that on Mars there'd be less loss hopefully?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you also propose of direct democracy on Mars.
Speaker 2: I think probably that's the best, I mean, probably the
Speaker 2: best thing.
Speaker 4: Mars technocracy, the most technocracy.
Speaker 3: And you want to make laws super short and simple, right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean like if people can't understand laws,
Speaker 2: then how do you then what's usually going to happen
Speaker 2: is some special interests in a bamboos of public with
Speaker 2: long laws. Yep, and then the lord is like reading
Speaker 2: this law is like the size of the Lord of
Speaker 2: the Rings, but a very boring version of it.
Speaker 5: Like the dealership thing is just crazy to me, you know,
Speaker 5: like America is supposed to be competitive, free market.
Speaker 4: It's weird, right, yeah, absolutely, so anyway, it's just sick.
Speaker 2: You want to keep the lawder short and give them
Speaker 2: some kind of sunset period so they don't just stay
Speaker 2: there forever. I'd like it's just accumulate over time and
Speaker 2: just eventually it'll be unwieldy. So the laws should have
Speaker 2: some time prime associated with them. They automatically go away.
Speaker 2: So I mean, it's just keep a little short to
Speaker 2: avoid trickery and and sort of special interests that ultimately
Speaker 2: does not matter for the public. And and then I
Speaker 2: think direct directmocracy is less susceptible to corruption than representative democracy.
Speaker 2: So you know, corruption just being like to what degree
Speaker 2: is this actually being taken that do not serve, that
Speaker 2: generate the interests of the population, you know, do not
Speaker 2: need a results in a net increase in population happiness
Speaker 2: as a whole. So that's that's that's why I think
Speaker 2: probably the direct is better.
Speaker 4: And then you.
Speaker 2: Have things in real time, so you know, if you
Speaker 2: want to vote on something, you just you can vote on.
Speaker 4: It real fast.
Speaker 2: Probably make it, I would say, make it easier to
Speaker 2: get rid of laws then to put them in because
Speaker 2: these things tend to have a lot of inertia and
Speaker 2: to have a bias towards having laws go away and
Speaker 2: not be there, you know, so like maybe it takes
Speaker 2: sixty percent to put alaw in place for forty percent
Speaker 2: to remove it.
Speaker 4: To theming like that. Yeah, let's try it. You know,
Speaker 4: see what happens.
Speaker 1: The bills are extremely long that they pass. No one
Speaker 1: reads them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hardly anyone in Congress has read the bill. And
Speaker 2: if you even if they've read the bill, if you
Speaker 2: quized them on the details.
Speaker 4: They would not.
Speaker 1: They'll find their page.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's like, tell me what's Yeah this there was
Speaker 4: no idea.
Speaker 3: It seems kind of alarming that that's like the status
Speaker 3: quo and everyone just accepts it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, these laws tend to be written by industry
Speaker 2: groups as well, so that that they'll write the law
Speaker 2: and then and then interact with the Congressional staff and
Speaker 2: but most of the work would be done by the
Speaker 2: industry groups, and so they're going to write laws that
Speaker 2: entrench their position.
Speaker 3: It's like the people are the players buying the ref
Speaker 3: like you were saying earlier, Is that exactly so.
Speaker 2: You get the regultary capture of the exactly. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: players shouldn't be paying the ref salary type of thing. Well,
Speaker 2: the REF should be thinking I'm going to retire and
Speaker 2: get paid by the players. So it's kind of amazing
Speaker 2: that it works as well as it is, given all
Speaker 2: these issues so yeah, so then hey, hell I end
Speaker 2: up getting valaria and anyway in two thousand and one, yeah,
Speaker 2: two thousand.
Speaker 5: And one, Yeah, us about this the malaria thing that
Speaker 5: was you went on vacation, right, yeah, we're South Africa
Speaker 5: with Kimball.
Speaker 2: Actually yeah, it's crazy, and then came back and had
Speaker 2: like a near death case of hilaria.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we live grew up in So Africa.
Speaker 8: We'd go to the bushfelt all the time, to what
Speaker 8: you guys call Safari, and you just we just had
Speaker 8: a house in the bush, used to go there every
Speaker 8: every few weeks or so. I don't think we ever
Speaker 8: took malaria tablets.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 8: And then suddenly yeah, right, like and so we were
Speaker 8: we were told to and we did take malaria tablets
Speaker 8: them as well. And and when you got back, they
Speaker 8: was in Stanford and they couldn't figure out what was
Speaker 8: wrong with him. Our uncle who's a doctor in South Africa,
Speaker 8: he has malaria. And they's like, no, no, he doesn't
Speaker 8: have malaria. We checked check again. Malaria kind of hides
Speaker 8: in the body.
Speaker 6: And then.
Speaker 5: So this was after PayPal got started.
Speaker 2: Oh this is two thousand and one, so sort of
Speaker 2: after the pay PayPal coups. I was, I was on
Speaker 2: the PayPal board and I was providing, you know, providing
Speaker 2: sort of product advice and whatnot. But in December, late
Speaker 2: December two thousand, went on a trip to South Africa.
Speaker 2: Came back January, early January two thousand and one. I
Speaker 2: had a spare case malaria almost I had next to.
Speaker 9: Five days and yellow. And he just said early morning
Speaker 9: til later night, just waiting to see. And then they
Speaker 9: seem to be get some some jamas for him. And
Speaker 9: the closest store was based for lease or something, so
Speaker 9: I just got into some pajamas and then then the
Speaker 9: next thing, after five days rod and he said, so
Speaker 9: these buddies onamas.
Speaker 1: And you were sleepy, I mean, like you're it affected
Speaker 1: your brain? That that harsh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it was bad. It's really bad.
Speaker 5: Does that a change your perspective?
Speaker 4: How did the like influence you after that? I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't think it changed me that much. Would you say, no,
Speaker 4: I don't think it did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but how many times have you been on I
Speaker 2: lost like fifty pounds though it was great now.
Speaker 4: No more vacation, so well, yeah it was. It was.
Speaker 2: It took me like almost six months to get back
Speaker 2: to normal sou And then in two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: I was thinking about, you know what you next, and.
Speaker 4: And I thought the.
Speaker 2: You know, this is like okay, sustainable energy, like a
Speaker 2: basical electric cars, solar space. And then a friend of
Speaker 2: mine asked me, you know, so what are you gonna
Speaker 2: do next? I said, well, you know, that's so I
Speaker 2: would love to do something in space, but I didn't
Speaker 2: think anything of there's anything that a private individual could
Speaker 2: do in space. But at least I'm gonna go on
Speaker 2: the NASA website and find out when people are going
Speaker 2: to Mars. And I go on the net web NAST
Speaker 2: website and it's nowhere to be found, and so I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: this is pretty weird, and then ask that it was
Speaker 2: actually a NASA policy not to talk about it.
Speaker 4: Really, yeah, that's time. Why why was that?
Speaker 2: Do you think what I sold is that when George
Speaker 2: Bush the first was when he was elected, he said
Speaker 2: he has not NASA to put together a plan to
Speaker 2: send people to Mars. In ninety days, they came back
Speaker 2: of the plan and it was five hundred billion dollars,
Speaker 2: and it says all that this is like political suicide.
Speaker 2: So then after that talk of man missions to Mars
Speaker 2: were banned.
Speaker 4: That's what I sold.
Speaker 2: So anyway, so it's like, well, you know, maybe there's
Speaker 2: something that can be done here to get the public
Speaker 2: excited about going to Mars.
Speaker 4: And if I get the public excited, then they will
Speaker 4: vote mass that I have more funding. And so the.
Speaker 2: Original idea for SpaceX was just to have a philanthropic
Speaker 2: mission to Mars.
Speaker 8: Yeah, just started as a graphic of a of a
Speaker 8: pot plant. You just need to get the pot plan
Speaker 8: to Mars, you know. It was like an inspiration sure,
Speaker 8: just as a as a as a way to prove
Speaker 8: to the world that it could be done.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the mission was called Mars Oasis. There was seas
Speaker 2: and dehydrated nutrient l that would hydrate upon landing. You
Speaker 2: get this great picture of green plants right background and
Speaker 2: be like the first sort of life as we know.
Speaker 4: It on Mars.
Speaker 2: And the you can also learn, you know, a lot
Speaker 2: about what does it take to keep plants alive and
Speaker 2: have a little miniature greenhouse on on sof to Mars.
Speaker 2: So that's that's why I initially pursued as as like
Speaker 2: a way to basically increase NASA's budget.
Speaker 4: That was.
Speaker 2: It wasn't let's create a space company. It was how
Speaker 2: do we get Nasta's budget increased so we can go
Speaker 2: sim people tomorrows. And I've trying to figure out how
Speaker 2: to get this thing launched. And the rockets, the European
Speaker 2: and US rockets are too expensive and I can afford them.
Speaker 2: So I went to Russia to try to buy some
Speaker 2: ICBMs in two thousand and one, literally, and the keptu
Speaker 2: raising the price on me, and it was quite being
Speaker 2: quite difficult, and I said, I, you know, I could
Speaker 2: afford to pay like nine million dollars for ICBM, but
Speaker 2: not twenty because we need to do two of these
Speaker 2: missions because odds are good that one would fail and
Speaker 2: then it could have a negative impact potentially. So that
Speaker 2: was pretty weird. Being muscular for buy ICBMs in two
Speaker 2: thousand and one.
Speaker 4: That's amazing.
Speaker 6: Negotiate to buy an ICPN.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I caught up the military and say, well, you know
Speaker 2: they're gonna go They're gonna get rid of these things
Speaker 2: anyway because of the introduction treaties. So it's like, if
Speaker 2: you listen, if you're gonna throw it away, I'll buy
Speaker 2: take it off your hands. You know, they have to.
Speaker 2: It was like s S eighteen to never. It was
Speaker 2: the biggest nuclear mussile in the Russian fleet. And but anyway,
Speaker 2: they're know decommissioned these things, so why why not just
Speaker 2: tell me them it's dead? And then there's very time
Speaker 2: I talked to them, the price you go off, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, this is is not good because you know,
Speaker 2: even if once we do a deal, we're probably gonna
Speaker 2: get shrafted afterwards too, and this is the pre deal shafting. Well,
Speaker 2: it's like it's what's going to be after or its
Speaker 2: you know, when after I've given them money and it's good,
Speaker 2: so so that I yeah, so, And then I started
Speaker 2: looking into it as like why rockets cost so much?
Speaker 2: And there's nothing fundamental about why did you cost so much?
Speaker 2: If you add up the materials let's say, if you
Speaker 2: you know, it's not like the word materials cost that much.
Speaker 2: Really just need to figure out a smart way to
Speaker 2: get the materials in that shape, and and then you
Speaker 2: need we need to make rockets re usable. So like
Speaker 2: in any form of transport, if it's not reusable, it's
Speaker 2: extremely expensive. You know, if cars were single use, you know,
Speaker 2: and you need a round trip, you know, for a
Speaker 2: car for twenty thousand dollars, then you around trip because
Speaker 2: forty thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: That's crazy. So it's the same thing is true for
Speaker 4: aircraft and boats and rockets and everything.
Speaker 2: So so there were the rockets were expensive even as
Speaker 2: expendable things, but then they were also not reusable. So
Speaker 2: there's no way we're going to have a city on
Speaker 2: Mars unless we can have reasonable, low cost, reliable rockets.
Speaker 2: That's fundamentally the issue. So so I came to conclusion
Speaker 2: that even if this Males Away susmission was successful, it
Speaker 2: would still knock results in. It would not materially further
Speaker 2: the goal of being a multiplant species because the rocket
Speaker 2: technology was not good enough and it was not getting better.
Speaker 4: In fact, it was arguably getting worse.
Speaker 2: So so the real thing that needed to be solved
Speaker 2: here is reusable rocketry and lowering the cost of access
Speaker 2: to space, and that that's like, okay, well I'm gonna
Speaker 2: try to do that. So I've got SpaceX started in
Speaker 2: early two thousand and two. Basically I was living in
Speaker 2: pala Alta at the time, but most of the engineering
Speaker 2: expertise was in southern California, so that's why I moved
Speaker 2: to LA.
Speaker 5: Did you ever have any like even inkling of imagination
Speaker 5: that you could be doing, you know, a dozen launches
Speaker 5: a year and being contracted with NASA? Is that even
Speaker 5: like it?
Speaker 4: I thought that was fair, I know, I thought we
Speaker 4: had you know, terms of success or something like that.
Speaker 6: You ended up being chief engineer, right, because no one
Speaker 6: wanted to give up their secure jobs of.
Speaker 2: U I and something exactly I actually tried to hire. Basically,
Speaker 2: there's been a number of tents at doing a a
Speaker 2: private rocket company or commercial rocket company, and it all
Speaker 2: or really they all failed effectively. And then that's to
Speaker 2: the degree that it was like a joke in the
Speaker 2: aerospace industry, like how do you make a large portion
Speaker 2: large portion in the rock you know, start with the
Speaker 2: how do you make how do you make a small
Speaker 2: portion in the rocky industry? Start with a large one.
Speaker 7: Going to be smaller business?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how many jokes. So many times just jumped
Speaker 2: to the punchline, you know. So the Yeah, it was
Speaker 2: very hard to recruit people because I had not built
Speaker 2: any physical hardware before, and I kept being called Internet
Speaker 2: guy for the longest time for ages. As the finally
Speaker 2: start I made for the first ten years, they're calling
Speaker 2: me Internet guy, but we basically at Internet entrepreneur slash fool.
Speaker 2: He's trying to start a Rockey company. That's what if
Speaker 2: an idiot. That was generally how it went. So it
Speaker 2: was quite hard to recruit people, and you know, especially
Speaker 2: if something's got like a secure job at you know,
Speaker 2: buying a lockeed or something like that, then trying to
Speaker 2: recruit them to be you know, chief engineer of us
Speaker 2: started Rocket company.
Speaker 4: I was so hopeless.
Speaker 2: So basically no nobody, nobody who was who was good
Speaker 2: was willing to join, and there was no point in
Speaker 2: hiring somebody wasn't good. So I ended up being chief engineer,
Speaker 2: you know, which is yeah.
Speaker 4: So the.
Speaker 2: First three launch has failed and probably if I had
Speaker 2: been better than we would have gotten to at BIT sooner.
Speaker 2: So it took me a while to learn all these things.
Speaker 4: So from books or books and talking to people.
Speaker 1: Did you go to Utah and talk to anybody like it?
Speaker 1: At he Orbital?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Visited atk Orbital was Dallas, Virginia, So yeah, I visited
Speaker 2: a t K.
Speaker 4: I visited Orbital and the Orbital.
Speaker 2: Had had a success with the solid rocket based Pegasus,
Speaker 2: but they'd also gotten like an eight launch deal from Darper.
Speaker 2: So you're like, okay, if you've got if you're starting
Speaker 2: off with basically an eight launch s deal from Darper,
Speaker 2: that's a good situation. And we did not have a
Speaker 2: large seal from anyone.
Speaker 4: And Pegasus is a.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's some claar engineering with Pegasus, but fundamentally
Speaker 2: I think launching rockets from planes is not tensible.
Speaker 4: It sounds like it would be a good idea, but
Speaker 4: it's not.
Speaker 2: And then even Oval went away from doing that with
Speaker 2: their as soon as you get past certain size that
Speaker 2: went to ground launch.
Speaker 1: I was reading somewhere that at if I call Morton
Speaker 1: that they were doing snowcats, they were doing ski lifts,
Speaker 1: and they sold that to the man who made the
Speaker 1: DeLorean heat Really yeah, I just read that in their Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, that's fascinating. When to come around.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So yeah, so I got SpaceX going, and
Speaker 2: that was very difficult.
Speaker 4: We got the Falcon one rocket built. It was very simple.
Speaker 2: It's the simplest overall rocket that's a liquid fuel, so
Speaker 2: it had the potential for reusability, for useful reasbility, and
Speaker 2: then yeah, we had three failures. Finally got to orbit
Speaker 2: at the end of two thousand and eight, so.
Speaker 7: That was incredible going down to Quadalon and watching you.
Speaker 4: Wrote it like a blog for a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I actually still have it up there.
Speaker 8: It's a little and it's an old, old blogging platform
Speaker 8: that Google still keeps alive. It's called quas Rockets dot
Speaker 8: blogspot dot com.
Speaker 4: I think it's gonna get a lot of traffic soon.
Speaker 7: Yeah, totally say it.
Speaker 4: Check it out.
Speaker 7: It's all there.
Speaker 8: It's a photos and photos of There was one photo
Speaker 8: of Elaine picking up a satellite.
Speaker 7: We launched the rocket and the rocket.
Speaker 8: Exploded, which was very, very very sad.
Speaker 7: Everyone's excading.
Speaker 8: People are pouring their heart and sold into the rocket
Speaker 8: and the satellite was i think in the US Navy
Speaker 8: Air Force Academy and it was thrown out of the
Speaker 8: rocket and fell through the roof of the hangar.
Speaker 2: Well, this is like we really thinking exactly, it's like
Speaker 2: a like a like a stand up small tool shed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't supposed to do that.
Speaker 4: Maybe the size of this room. The rocket it had.
Speaker 2: This is the first Lord failure, so the it had
Speaker 2: a there's a cracked limited beanut on that that cracked
Speaker 2: during during leftoff and created so the engine there was
Speaker 2: an engine fire the this this wouldn't have been the
Speaker 2: end of the world, but there was a one of
Speaker 2: the the helium lines was steel mesh overapped with the
Speaker 2: kevlost sleeve and it melted the sleeve the.
Speaker 4: And so we.
Speaker 2: Lost pressure, pneumatic pressure which caused the engine ballast to close.
Speaker 2: So about thirty seconds after lift off, the engine shot
Speaker 2: itself off due to the engine fire, and then it went.
Speaker 2: It went ballistic and it basically smashed in the rocks
Speaker 2: just on a calple hundred Feueralk shore and when it
Speaker 2: when it's it was quite a big explosion. Actually in
Speaker 2: an explosion. The satellite, which was in a faring, went
Speaker 2: through the faring on a ballistic arc back onto the island,
Speaker 2: smashed through the tool shared roof and onto the floor
Speaker 2: in a pretty reasonable condition, like it wasn't totally gnarled.
Speaker 10: We use it.
Speaker 2: So we gave them back their satellite, so like we
Speaker 2: didn't lose your satellites may need summer affair, but it
Speaker 2: was so improbable that the satellite would come back. We
Speaker 2: had a couple more failures after that. Yeah, two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight was particularly diffult year because we had the
Speaker 2: third failure in two thousand and eight, the tales around
Speaker 2: financing round collapsed such a nightmare and I got divorced,
Speaker 2: and it was.
Speaker 8: I think two thousand and eight was bad year, really
Speaker 8: really bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that year. Yeah, I don't think anyone could. I
Speaker 4: think twenty eighteen.
Speaker 7: I think twenty eighteen was worse.
Speaker 10: What's well with the Model three ramp?
Speaker 4: Right? Oh, there were so many things that happened so strong,
Speaker 4: it's insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, sorry, so we're in two thousand and two. Sorry,
Speaker 2: space X moved down to l A and it was
Speaker 2: just it was pretty fun in the beginning, Like generally
Speaker 2: start ups are pretty fun in the beginning, and then
Speaker 2: you go through the you know, chasm of doom, Yeah,
Speaker 2: chasm of doom, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Exactly, it's rough despair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's usually always like everyone's like super optimistic and
Speaker 2: excited for first year or so, and then the then
Speaker 2: things started to go awry and there's usually many years
Speaker 2: of grief before there's finally day dawns. So yeah, so
Speaker 2: it's like two thousand and two, and then about in
Speaker 2: two thousand and three is when h Rosen and JB.
Speaker 2: Strabo called me up and said, hey, we want to
Speaker 2: have lunch. I want to say, hold Rosen. I think
Speaker 2: that's his name, but he he rarely had. He was
Speaker 2: a pioneer in space technology and electric vehicles, which crossover uh,
Speaker 2: and he'd done some Rosen Motors, which is like a
Speaker 2: sort of an electric vehicle company, and but he'd also
Speaker 2: been pioneer in ge stationary satellites. So he called me
Speaker 2: up and said, hey, let's have lunch, like lunch at
Speaker 2: like Smith and Lansky or something in in Alsigondo where
Speaker 2: SpaceX started.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 2: Stravel and Rosen talking about space stuff, and then so
Speaker 2: I was talking about electric cars, and I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, so I was gonna be working on electric
Speaker 2: car technology at Stanford and and JB said, you know,
Speaker 2: we should take a drive in the Tea zero from
Speaker 2: AC propulsion, and I was I was like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: because the timing is like lettin my own factories was
Speaker 2: really like the critical breakthrough needed for compelling electric cars.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, okay, I'll go try out there.
Speaker 2: T zero, which had spec similar to what we eventually
Speaker 2: bought to markets tells the road store. So then I so, yeah,
Speaker 2: so I got I got a ride in the T zero,
Speaker 2: and then I tried to convince Ala Caconi and Tom
Speaker 2: Gage to commercialize the T zero. Now that the teaser,
Speaker 2: and there's like lots of stuff online about it. You know,
Speaker 2: it didn't have doors or a roof, so clearly you
Speaker 2: need to add those things or any safety systems. And
Speaker 2: it was very unreliable because it was just like a
Speaker 2: sort of a proof of concept.
Speaker 4: Basically it was basically like canned assembled.
Speaker 5: You guys really had trouble scaling it.
Speaker 2: It's I mean it literally didn't have doors or a roof,
Speaker 2: or any airbags or an effective cooling system for the battery,
Speaker 2: and it was not safe, and it was very unreliable
Speaker 2: breakdown like you it need to be baby buy an
Speaker 2: engineer or would not you can use it.
Speaker 4: So but nonetheless, it did get like zero.
Speaker 2: To sixty I think, you know, under four seconds two
Speaker 2: and fifty mile range.
Speaker 4: It was enough to convince you that.
Speaker 10: It was possible.
Speaker 2: I mean it was possible because if you go from
Speaker 2: the interests you have lead Acid to to Letimon, you've
Speaker 2: got about a four x energy dwncity improvement. So you've
Speaker 2: got if you've got to say, a sixty mile range
Speaker 2: with lead acid, you're gonna have about a turn of
Speaker 2: fifty mile range with with litiumon for the same weight.
Speaker 2: So but it was it was cool to see it
Speaker 2: in action with with ac propulsion. So I tried hard
Speaker 2: to convince those guys. I could really pester them a
Speaker 2: lot to going to to commercialize the T zero, and
Speaker 2: they just did not want to do it. Weirdly, the
Speaker 2: thing they wanted to make was an electric sion. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, you guys, nobody's gonna pay seventy thousand dollars
Speaker 2: for an electric sion. Okay, that was their idea, seventy
Speaker 2: thousand dollars for an electric sion. I'm like, there's not
Speaker 2: gonna work. Okay, you will sell like fourteen of these things,
Speaker 2: you know, And I'm like, you know, I have like
Speaker 2: the email trails in these Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 2: they're still still around. So in fact, but I even say, listen,
Speaker 2: even though I think this is the dumbest idea ever,
Speaker 2: I will I will pay. I will fund one tenth
Speaker 2: of it if you can find bine other people. And
Speaker 2: I think the only other person I could find he
Speaker 2: would was gay Brin. So it's like, okay, so Gay
Speaker 2: and I are the only ones willing to do this,
Speaker 2: I think, And so they didn't actually get her off
Speaker 2: the ground, but I said it's going to fail, okay,
Speaker 2: but at least it's something and and so then eventually
Speaker 2: I said, I'm like, listen, if you guys are not
Speaker 2: going to commercialize the teaser, do you mind if I
Speaker 2: do it? And they're like no, yeah, that'd be totally fine,
Speaker 2: Like okay.
Speaker 4: So then I was gonna it's like, okay, so I.
Speaker 2: Go do this with with JB and we'll go commercialized
Speaker 2: to create a commercial version of the T zero and
Speaker 2: then engage. And Coconi said, well, you know there's some
Speaker 2: other people who also want to do it. Do you
Speaker 2: want to maybe team up with them? He said there
Speaker 2: were two other groups that wanted to do it, And
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, sure, you know, maybe this is
Speaker 2: the way that I can have my cake and eat
Speaker 2: it too. You know, last work never works up. God damn,
Speaker 2: Try to have your cake and eat it too, doesn't it?
Speaker 7: This one's going to be easy?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 4: I mean, well.
Speaker 2: I didn't think it would be easy, but it was
Speaker 2: like I thought, maybe I can allocate like twenty to
Speaker 2: thirty hours a week and just work on product and
Speaker 2: engineering and then other people can do those stuff. But
Speaker 2: I don't even like doing those souff anyway, So that
Speaker 2: it didn't work out. So so that then tom Gage said,
Speaker 2: he said, he said there were two teams, but I
Speaker 2: only ever met one, and that was ever hard toppening
Speaker 2: and right, but like, the thing that is really bugs
Speaker 2: about them is they everhard. Particular the worst guy I've
Speaker 2: ever worked with. And I want to make a note
Speaker 2: of this. He is literally the worst person I've ever
Speaker 2: worked with. And I've worked with some real ditchbacks.
Speaker 4: Okay, to be number one takes a lot. It's not easy.
Speaker 2: His version of the story is like, is that out
Speaker 2: of the blue he pitched me on on funding on
Speaker 2: funding his electric car company, and and and he convinced
Speaker 2: me to do it. Totally false, Okay, I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm creating an electric car company. It's like the Gage said,
Speaker 2: well maybe you could team up. It's like, okay, well
Speaker 2: that that might be worth worth doing. And and so
Speaker 2: the company ended up being basically five people.
Speaker 4: This is right Toppening.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, everhard struggle myself and so there's the
Speaker 2: five of us, and like topping always tries to write
Speaker 2: right right out of the history books because they had
Speaker 2: a huge battle, and they made me choose which one
Speaker 2: was going to be CEO. It's Right or Everhard, And
Speaker 2: I told JV, and is like, which one because I
Speaker 2: really didn't know want to be CEO. So they're like, okay,
Speaker 2: well both have issues, but maybe right has bigger issues
Speaker 2: than Toppening. That's what JV said, so maybe you know
Speaker 2: lesser evals. I was like, okay, fine, I gotta make
Speaker 2: a choice here because the two of them would not
Speaker 2: they would not they refuse to be the same ble.
Speaker 4: So I was like.
Speaker 2: A lot of drama that has so much trauma. And
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, you know, it's not like I said, like,
Speaker 2: you know, you know less or evils. So it's like
Speaker 2: I said, you're right, sorry, you know, not that I
Speaker 2: didn't think he had good points, but I gotta if
Speaker 2: I got to pick one, and I don't. I was
Speaker 2: trying not to be I've gotta make this rocking company work,
Speaker 2: so okay, so then made uh you know, it's like right,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like I had to leave then anyway,
Speaker 2: So we've got the Basically, we we we jammed a
Speaker 2: superpulsion powertrain and backpack into a Lotus lease with the
Speaker 2: first productyping like really just jammed it in, you know.
Speaker 2: And in retrospect this was not a good idea because
Speaker 2: the the car ended up weighing like like sixty percent
Speaker 2: more than in the lease or on that order, and
Speaker 2: we didn't have enough follow you to put the battery pack,
Speaker 2: and we had to meet all we invalidated all of
Speaker 2: the crash tests because the weight distribution was different. It
Speaker 2: was heavier, so none of the crash tests were valid anymore.
Speaker 2: To redo the airbags, the air conditioning air conditioner ran
Speaker 2: off a belt fan, so we didn't have a belt van,
Speaker 2: so we had to have a new air conditioning system,
Speaker 2: so to change the HVAC system. And so basically in
Speaker 2: the end, only about like I think six or seven
Speaker 2: percent of the parts ended up being in common with
Speaker 2: the lease. So and I went through a lot of
Speaker 2: trouble trying to shoot one everything in there, and I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a cute car, but it's ten percent too small,
Speaker 2: it's like, and then the costs ended up being crazy,
Speaker 2: and yeah, and then then yeah, there was there was
Speaker 2: an ordit of for the costs of the production costs
Speaker 2: of the roads to buy one of the investors that
Speaker 2: joined in two thousand and seven. And and then they
Speaker 2: caught me up and said, hey, the the numbers that
Speaker 2: Martin is telling you, Theybore's telling you about the roads
Speaker 2: are totally false.
Speaker 1: Oh boy.
Speaker 2: And I was like, what do you mean? Like he said, no,
Speaker 2: we just didn't order it there. It's more than twice
Speaker 2: of what do you say, the Yeah, it's like we
Speaker 2: would have to sell this car for a quarter million
Speaker 2: dollars in order to make to not lose money, Like
Speaker 2: this is insane. So anyway, then we obviously had to
Speaker 2: fire everhard. There was no choice about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then it turned out not only had he misled
Speaker 2: me directly, if he'd instructed others to also lie. Yes,
Speaker 2: when I say, like somebody, that's like the worst person
Speaker 2: who worked with it was pretty bad. So the SpaceX
Speaker 2: also hadn't gotten over at that time. So I was like, man,
Speaker 2: So like, okay, I asked, what's his name, Harris, I'm
Speaker 2: really guy.
Speaker 4: When banking on the name Interim.
Speaker 8: Uh yeah, he he ran like a manufacturing company. I mean,
Speaker 8: he seemed pretty smart. The problem The problem that I
Speaker 8: found with Testa was we were start up in Silicon
Speaker 8: Valley building a car that was really manufacturing and materials engineering,
Speaker 8: and it's really like all the talent was for You
Speaker 8: think there was probably talent, you know, in Detroit to Japan,
Speaker 8: but if you took any of those guys in to
Speaker 8: run Tesla, they would run out like a car company
Speaker 8: and then.
Speaker 7: It would be destroyed.
Speaker 4: Well, no idea, you can take somebody who's running.
Speaker 8: I could not take someone from a massive company culture
Speaker 8: and having to do a startup. And yet you couldn't
Speaker 8: find anyone in the Silicon Valley who knew who knew
Speaker 8: enough about making cars. And so we kind of found
Speaker 8: a middle, middle of the road who he was. He
Speaker 8: was an expert in manufacturing.
Speaker 2: X CEO of Flextronics, was an investor, and he agreed
Speaker 2: to just be joined us the interim CEO.
Speaker 4: And this is two thousand and seven.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but I mean Tesla was a company you tried
Speaker 8: so hard not to be CEO of.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But the thing is this is misinterpreted. If I
Speaker 2: say that, it's misinterpreteds like I somehow don't love Teesla,
Speaker 2: which I do. It's just like I tried not to
Speaker 2: go insane with work on.
Speaker 11: Yeah, you can.
Speaker 8: Being to see of a real startup is eighty hours
Speaker 8: a week. Being CEE of two is one hundred and
Speaker 8: sixty hours a week, and there's only one hundred and
Speaker 8: sixty nine hours or something of sleep of one hundred
Speaker 8: and sixty eight hours a week, so like you just
Speaker 8: can't physically do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the pain level is extreme, so that's yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 4: let's try quite hard not to be to you, but
Speaker 4: had to be no choice that or tells him die,
Speaker 4: so so that yeah.
Speaker 2: Everhard Gut was fired in July two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: and he was at the time we didn't know he'd
Speaker 2: instructed other people to lie, so we thought he was
Speaker 2: just you know, it wasn't as bad. But once he
Speaker 2: left the building then it turned out no, he'd actually
Speaker 2: orchestrated a massive deception, which is quite bad.
Speaker 4: So yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He also says he came up with the name of
Speaker 2: Tells the Motors Motors, which is false. I was created
Speaker 2: by a guy in ninety five and more of a
Speaker 2: he knows this because we went to great length we had.
Speaker 4: To buy the trademark. Yeah, exactly, So you can come
Speaker 4: about the name. It was a trademark ninety five, So
Speaker 4: it's like there's a whole bullshit backstory of it. But
Speaker 4: the guy, we almost almost had to change the name
Speaker 4: of the company because the guy who owned tells the
Speaker 4: motors wouldn't communicate with us, and so eventually we sent
Speaker 4: the nicest kind of company. Now, who's weirdly Martin's best friend,
Speaker 4: which I don't understand, but Mark Toppening super nice guy. Actually,
Speaker 4: you can't not like Mark, It's impossible. He's super nice guy.
Speaker 2: So this said Mark to go sit on the guy's
Speaker 2: door step and not leave until he until he agreed
Speaker 2: to at least negotiate with us or something. You talked
Speaker 2: to us, And then we ended up buying the trademark
Speaker 2: for seventy five thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: Yeah, was he the one who owned the domain too?
Speaker 4: No, that was a whole different nightmare.
Speaker 2: Now that domain guy that took us ten years to
Speaker 2: buy that tis dot com domain. Man, it was it
Speaker 2: is I think still like a networking engineer at Junifler.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there was, and that costs us like ten
Speaker 2: million dollars. Yeah, that was crazy, Like just the guy
Speaker 2: just held out.
Speaker 10: Was he just sitting on the domain or was he
Speaker 10: using it for something?
Speaker 2: It was impossible to No, he wasn't using it for anything.
Speaker 10: The name it's like Twitter handle Falcon heavy. We're fighting
Speaker 10: for that one.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So man, that was to us ages to buy the
Speaker 2: Tails economy, but we're gonna have to change the name
Speaker 2: to be something else.
Speaker 4: And actually the lead candidate.
Speaker 2: Was was Faraday as the name because Faraday invented the
Speaker 2: electric motor and then Tails look perfected the electric motor
Speaker 2: with the AC induction motor.
Speaker 4: So it was.
Speaker 2: So if we couldn't do Tales, that would do Faraday.
Speaker 2: And then ironically a competitor was later created.
Speaker 4: Cool, let's start up yeah China, right, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 12: So did you guys have a Faraday a logo or anything?
Speaker 12: Were you that far down there?
Speaker 2: No, we didn't really even have a tail logo until
Speaker 2: later because there's nothing to sell or anything. So but
Speaker 2: in the end, the tel the logo and the Tailor
Speaker 2: font was done by me working with basically a little firm.
Speaker 2: That's why the Tailor and SpaceX there's some similarities between
Speaker 2: the the fonts, and that's because I just don't buy
Speaker 2: the same people. Yeah, I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: on the tails and space x fonse the get a little.
Speaker 4: That's cool, Yeah, sure, sure, excellent, all right, awesome.
Speaker 2: It would be much easier if if the world was
Speaker 2: flat or if you're not if you're in a flat situations,
Speaker 2: those things are not flatten. You've got the world has
Speaker 2: undulations and curves, and and then your the car can
Speaker 2: be at any kind of at any kind of angle,
Speaker 2: and then if you if you accelerate or break, it's
Speaker 2: actually gonna tip a little bit. Yeah, we've got sort
Speaker 2: of pitch and mule compensations.
Speaker 4: That's where it gets really tricky.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean they're doing just amazing work. It literally
Speaker 5: just blows my mind every time, like there's an update,
Speaker 5: like you think it's like wow, I can't believe. It's
Speaker 5: just good, and then it just gets better.
Speaker 12: Like the big one was the faster lane changes, like
Speaker 12: you push the turn second was like like immediately, it's really.
Speaker 10: Awesome, satisfying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well I was kind of just like before, I
Speaker 5: was like, Okay, it's not that good, but it feels
Speaker 5: good because like I can't believe a computer is doing this,
Speaker 5: and we got the faster ones and I was like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, it was so bad before.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, I mean it'll be able to just
Speaker 2: do crazy maneuvers like like a high speed chase technically
Speaker 2: because it's it's you don't always want to buy into
Speaker 2: the thing to be conservative in any and actions that
Speaker 2: it takes. But there's there's quite a significant foundational rewrite
Speaker 2: in the TEES autopod system that's almost completely Yeah, and
Speaker 2: what what part of.
Speaker 5: The system like perception, like planning or.
Speaker 4: Just like.
Speaker 2: It's it's instead of having planning, perception, image recognition all
Speaker 2: be separate, they're they're they're being combined.
Speaker 13: So yeah, I don't even understand what effectually like the
Speaker 13: the sort of neural net is absorbing more and more
Speaker 13: of the problem beyond simply the is this is if
Speaker 13: you see an image, is this a car or not?
Speaker 6: Or what?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: It's it's kind of what do you what do you
Speaker 2: do from that? Three D labeling is the next big thing,
Speaker 2: where the car can go through a scene with eight
Speaker 2: cameras and and and and kind of paint a paint
Speaker 2: a path and then you can label the path in
Speaker 2: three D. This is probably two or three order of
Speaker 2: magnitude improvement in labeling efficiency and labeling accuracy, you know
Speaker 2: two through orders improvement in labeling efficiency and significant improvement
Speaker 2: in labeling accuracy as opposed to having to label individual
Speaker 2: frames from eight cameras at thirty six frames a second.
Speaker 2: Just drive through the scene, rebuild that scene as a
Speaker 2: three D thing with it, so it's like there might
Speaker 2: be a thousand frames that we used to create that
Speaker 2: scene and then you can label all at once.
Speaker 11: Is that related to the dojo thing?
Speaker 10: You mentioned that the autonomy day.
Speaker 5: Now dojo's for learning, for training the neural net. That's
Speaker 5: like when you're trying to build the neural net that
Speaker 5: you ship into the car, Dojo speeds it up by
Speaker 5: hardware accelerating it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: Are you guys has that up and running yet or no?
Speaker 2: It might be we might have first one at the
Speaker 2: end of this year, but next year. I think it's
Speaker 2: very likely next year, maybe this year. But it's essentially
Speaker 2: meant to as a massive amounts of video input and
Speaker 2: then and then train against vast amounts of data so
Speaker 2: that it can be used in the inference engine in
Speaker 2: the car. It's just like a human really, It's like
Speaker 2: how long does it take you to learn a subject
Speaker 2: versus do a subject. You know, it's like hard to learn,
Speaker 2: say calculus, but once you learned it, then you can
Speaker 2: you know, integrate something fast or something. It's like it's
Speaker 2: a it's really the same same basic thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, that'll just really tighten the feedback loop.
Speaker 5: Like at some point it just gets impossible to catch
Speaker 5: you guys, and like the rest of the people haven't
Speaker 5: even really like started the rest of the auto industry,
Speaker 5: and like the feedback loop is just getting so tight
Speaker 5: with autopilot now, it's just like makes it a lot easier.
Speaker 4: I think it will.
Speaker 2: They will catch up eventually, at least they will catch
Speaker 2: a t where TESA is now. I don't know things
Speaker 2: like like for example, we're talking about maps and directions
Speaker 2: and how today like computer based and navigation is a
Speaker 2: trouble considered trivial. But you know, back in ninety five
Speaker 2: it was not true. Yeah, it was considered very hard
Speaker 2: and the computer power you had was tiny, so like
Speaker 2: the code had to be super tight. I couldn't have
Speaker 2: fluffy code if you're you know, trying to execute something
Speaker 2: on like a three eighty six, you know, like very
Speaker 2: very puny amount of memory and compute. So so now
Speaker 2: it's but but now maps, directions are are easy. I
Speaker 2: think it's at some point in the future, it might
Speaker 2: be a decade or something, then autonomy will will seem easy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it will obviously be commoditized in the
Speaker 5: long term.
Speaker 4: Yes, it will.
Speaker 2: It will seem easy in ten years, but there will
Speaker 2: be a long stretch there where there will be vast
Speaker 2: differences between cars. Well, I have I have the order industry.
Speaker 2: It is used to slow rates of improvements, so you know,
Speaker 2: it's this will not really a car yet that matches
Speaker 2: the original model s.
Speaker 4: Maybe you canug.
Speaker 5: If you look at like the E p A ratings,
Speaker 5: it literally is just all below Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that was twenty twelve and it's twenty twenty, so
Speaker 2: it's it's still like pretty hard to get a car.
Speaker 2: Let's say that's there's not a car available at the
Speaker 2: price of the models that has the capabilities of the
Speaker 2: models of twenty twelve.
Speaker 5: It's kind of exactly what you were talking about with
Speaker 5: the Elise, where you're like, oh, we'll just put a
Speaker 5: battery in the Eleise, and that kind of showed you like, Okay,
Speaker 5: we really need to ground up electric.
Speaker 2: Disney hasn't done that, like the sort of founding principles
Speaker 2: of Teesla. We're basically completely wrong. So the premise going
Speaker 2: in is like, it's not going to be that hard.
Speaker 2: You know, we'll just take the Lotus Lease, you know,
Speaker 2: a nice light, lightweight car, and we'll take AC propulsions
Speaker 2: drive unit technology and we'll.
Speaker 4: Put them together and we'll have electric car. It'd be great.
Speaker 2: This sounds pretty easy, except the AC propulsion technology it
Speaker 2: could not be industrialized. Like it was like basically hand
Speaker 2: crafted electronics with an analog motor controller. Yeah, and so
Speaker 2: depending if there was hot or cold, you would respond
Speaker 2: differently or not at all, and the motors were hand round.
Speaker 2: It was just like it was like impossible. It cannot
Speaker 2: scale this technology. You can have like Finickey individually made
Speaker 2: super expensive prototypes, but you could. We ended up using
Speaker 2: none of the AC propulsion technology. So yeah, it's something
Speaker 2: that looks cool and works well at an individual prototype level,
Speaker 2: does not necessarily scale. And then the like I said,
Speaker 2: it was like maybe seven percent of the parts of
Speaker 2: the original roads that were in common with the Lotus Lease.
Speaker 2: It would have been way easier if we started from
Speaker 2: blank slate. It would have been a better car. So
Speaker 2: but I think like the real test of any given
Speaker 2: startup is how does it respond to adversity and adapt
Speaker 2: and and and and just figure it out?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: So like most things are just when they start out,
Speaker 2: they're just they don't make a lot of sense. But
Speaker 2: then as long as you adapt quickly, then you can
Speaker 2: make the company work. And you know, if you say
Speaker 2: like some sort of confinity, you know, doing doing pomp
Speaker 2: out tokens with the infrared port made no sense, but
Speaker 2: they adapted quickly to online payments, you know, That's that
Speaker 2: was that was key. And yeah, at at x dot
Speaker 2: com was originally going to buy it off way more
Speaker 2: than a could chew by trying to all the banking
Speaker 2: services and then also focused on payments. It's like, if
Speaker 2: we do all these banking things, we're gonna need a
Speaker 2: banking license, and banking license going to slow us down.
Speaker 2: We're just focused on payments, so we can just get
Speaker 2: a payment you know, license from the state and it's
Speaker 2: just like fifty bucks or something. You can be a
Speaker 2: money transmitter literally, and so you just go to it
Speaker 2: daft quickly.
Speaker 5: You kind of need to be naive, though if you
Speaker 5: had known as much about manufacturing, you might not have
Speaker 5: done it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, this would have been.
Speaker 2: It would have been difficult to I guess if you
Speaker 2: know the outcome is going to be good in the end. Sure,
Speaker 2: it sort of depends on how much foretnoledge do you
Speaker 2: have about it.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 2: Manufacturings is insanely difficult. It's underappreciated. It's difficulty.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I know, that's totally true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even making the roads store, which we only peak
Speaker 2: made abound six hundred roadsters in a year, but you know,
Speaker 2: call it like ten a week or something like that,
Speaker 2: you know, ten or twelve a week. So you know,
Speaker 2: if two got made in a day, that was a
Speaker 2: big day and tells us making over a thousand cars day.
Speaker 8: Now what I find amazing is from start to finish,
Speaker 8: your car is made in forty eight hours.
Speaker 4: Yeah it's been would count start to finishing?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it depends. But you can see the role of
Speaker 7: aluminum in.
Speaker 8: One section of the factory and you can see the
Speaker 8: cars coming out the other end, and then it is astounding.
Speaker 8: And cars have been built for a long time, but
Speaker 8: but this is just astounding. It's still when you you
Speaker 8: don't appreciate when you're driving a car, how much goes
Speaker 8: into the level of detail of ten thousand parts that
Speaker 8: come together, the shaping of everything that.
Speaker 2: Doesn't unique unique cards. Wow, the back alone is several
Speaker 2: thousand cells and it all.
Speaker 8: Comes together with people that are skilled. But you know,
Speaker 8: skills are changing. Is as things become a little bit
Speaker 8: there's more, there's more autonomy, but it's not it's not
Speaker 8: autonomy is not perfect. So you do need to have
Speaker 8: a lot of people there and and these cars have
Speaker 8: to be perfect.
Speaker 7: I mean, it's just.
Speaker 2: Just if we've given how much complexity there is no
Speaker 2: car it's rockable. They cost as of those they do this.
Speaker 2: There's so much that's in a car.
Speaker 12: So so what sort of processes did you remove, like
Speaker 12: you know, first principles type thing approach from the elise
Speaker 12: to like the model ass Like, was it a massive
Speaker 12: jump there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's gigantic. Yeah, tells that never made
Speaker 2: a car, made.
Speaker 4: A full car before.
Speaker 2: The uh lotis made the non power trained portion of
Speaker 2: the roadster, and then it tells about the battery pack, motor,
Speaker 2: par electronics, charger, and then put put a roll together
Speaker 2: at the end. And that final assembly was actually at
Speaker 2: an old Ford dealership in Menlo Park. You can see
Speaker 2: some of the stuff in Revenge of the Electric Car.
Speaker 10: Yeah. See, yeah, it's.
Speaker 5: Great, just gives you crazy perspective to look back on it.
Speaker 4: Crazy.
Speaker 2: We need a third one, yeah, I mean the idea
Speaker 2: of having a car like a car assembly tiny plant
Speaker 2: in Menlo parkable places. And that was just because we
Speaker 2: managed to sub lease the four dealership closed down and
Speaker 2: we managed to get it like this deal from Stamford
Speaker 2: because the SAM is going to redevelop it and they
Speaker 2: so and they they're We figured they'll probably take it
Speaker 2: way longer than they expected to redevelop it. So we said, well,
Speaker 2: you're not bringing it to anyone. Can we pay you
Speaker 2: like fifty cents of square foot and you can kick
Speaker 2: us out, kick us out whenever you want. And and
Speaker 2: it was actually huge dealership and it had enough room
Speaker 2: to do final assembly of the cars, so we just
Speaker 2: did final assembly the cars there.
Speaker 4: Amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the most absurd places to build
Speaker 2: cars on Earth is Menal.
Speaker 10: No test track or anything, just the road outside or some.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we would actually the early roasters were very unreliable,
Speaker 2: so we generally put about fifty miles of just normal
Speaker 2: driving around the Bay area with somebody following you and.
Speaker 10: Looks from people it's like what is that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we put fifty miles in each one of
Speaker 2: those cars because they just have a lot of things
Speaker 2: that are break down in the first fifty miles. So
Speaker 2: and then yeah, battery production was in Sant Colas. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so man, that was there is a lot of detail
Speaker 2: and all that. But going from the road so to
Speaker 2: MODELES was massive leap because the the models is quite
Speaker 2: a sophisticated sedan where we test about the whole thing
Speaker 2: as opposed to buildey power.
Speaker 4: Train and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, competing against Sycamacy's BMW AUDI type thing.
Speaker 2: So that that was that was a massive leap of difficulty.
Speaker 2: We did get the new me planted, but really that
Speaker 2: just meant we got eight box. Yeah, because they stroked
Speaker 2: the planet of all the great equipment. The only equipment
Speaker 2: that turn On GM left behind was the stuff that
Speaker 2: that they could not use anywhere else, So they only
Speaker 2: left the most tracky, broken pieces of equipment behind. We
Speaker 2: managed to use some of it, but but yeah, in
Speaker 2: the paint drop, I mean some of the things were
Speaker 2: literally not even worth the scrap value. So it was
Speaker 2: like not worth it to call the scrap metal dealer.
Speaker 4: What did you do with it? We made it.
Speaker 2: We made a lot of those things work. Oh you
Speaker 2: did plastic injection molding machines and we made work and
Speaker 2: the paint robots, we mostly made those work. That the
Speaker 2: assembly that the body production line had to be made
Speaker 2: new because they constructed there was just nothing. So we
Speaker 2: made the body production line for month Less was created
Speaker 2: from scratch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: Worked out, but it was very difficult. It's also in
Speaker 2: the beginning, the the top suppliers would not work with
Speaker 2: us or we would get like their D team because
Speaker 2: like who wants you know, if if they like they
Speaker 2: got all the customers, like they've got you know, the
Speaker 2: big car companies they got like Toyota, or they got
Speaker 2: you know, I. E. And W forward as customers and
Speaker 2: and a startup. Who Now you're you're in the pliers position.
Speaker 2: Which team are you going to sign to us to
Speaker 2: start up that everyone says going bankrupt? You're gonna sign
Speaker 2: assign the interns and rejects. Okay, it's not going to
Speaker 2: be your top team. The same thing with the top
Speaker 2: team is going to go to like Toyota, you know,
Speaker 2: your big customers, the top teams. So we would get
Speaker 2: the worst team usually at the supplier company. If the
Speaker 2: supply would even work with.
Speaker 5: Us, You think that influenced you to vertically integrate more.
Speaker 5: It was vertically integrate or die makes sense. Yeah, we
Speaker 5: tried outsourcing the battery production originally was going to be
Speaker 5: made at this place that made I think barbecue grills
Speaker 5: in Thailand. Yeah, and I was like, man, they have
Speaker 5: no idea how to make a battery.
Speaker 4: And I was like, this is crazy. We're moving it to.
Speaker 2: Back to headquarters in Strlis and we're gonna make it
Speaker 2: here because they're basically once there's a massive amount of
Speaker 2: work going from a prototype to production, and so you
Speaker 2: need a fast feedback loop with engineering, and if that
Speaker 2: feedback loop is all the way out in Thailand is
Speaker 2: just no way. It's it's like, it's not like it's
Speaker 2: if you have an existing production line that you already
Speaker 2: know how to make it a volume that you can move,
Speaker 2: but you cannot create a production line never existed that's
Speaker 2: super far away from where the engineers are. It's gonna
Speaker 2: it's red beef disaster. And also the cells were coming
Speaker 2: from Japan, so they go from Japan, they go to Thailand,
Speaker 2: they go through customs, they'll be waiting and that then
Speaker 2: they'd be going to a battery packed. Then that battery
Speaker 2: pack were sent to England, then Lotus if this is
Speaker 2: this is these all things that got changed, but the
Speaker 2: supply chain, like let's say they've been a problem with
Speaker 2: the cells, you would only find if this plan years
Speaker 2: change was so long that you would only find out
Speaker 2: that it didn't work five months later.
Speaker 11: Yikes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you have five months of scrap inventory.
Speaker 2: So this is a recipe for a disaster. So that
Speaker 2: that got moved to Saint Carlos sales ship directly to
Speaker 2: Saint Carlos. Put it in a module, figure out why
Speaker 2: the module's not working, fix it, maybe put into a pack,
Speaker 2: like there is no reason why the roast of battery
Speaker 2: pack had like it was like sixteen sort of blades
Speaker 2: was if was modules, if one of them didn't work,
Speaker 2: you could pull it out and put another one in.
Speaker 2: Because that happened, then we can then Yeah, so you
Speaker 2: don't really need modules in my view, should just go
Speaker 2: from cells pack at this point. But yeah, it was
Speaker 2: a very difficult thing going from roads to to modelized.
Speaker 5: The fact that like the Model three still has modules
Speaker 5: is kind of vestigial.
Speaker 4: It's fastigial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because if the modules the model three are not
Speaker 2: actually interchangeable, so there's no point in modules.
Speaker 4: Really, you just have a should just have a pack.
Speaker 10: Was that done? Is just save costs then or or
Speaker 10: some other reason.
Speaker 4: It start off because it's not it's not a sensible reason.
Speaker 2: The reason that there were seals modules and pack goes
Speaker 2: back to the early roads to days, where we'd make
Speaker 2: a module, that module would have problems and so then
Speaker 2: you could flop out a module. It's like like a
Speaker 2: server act. The idea was like, you know, if you
Speaker 2: have a bunch of servers in a server room and
Speaker 2: one of the servers flakes out, you can pull it out,
Speaker 2: put another round. So without avagur replace, so you could
Speaker 2: place a small fraction of pack instead of the whole pack.
Speaker 2: Then that then that concept just carried forward into Model
Speaker 2: s X and three, but without the the original logic
Speaker 2: no longer exists because the modules are not interchangeable. You
Speaker 2: can't just swap out a module. So but these things
Speaker 2: just have a lot of innotia. So we really want
Speaker 2: to move to no such thing as a module as
Speaker 2: just sells and pack.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, because I mean, initially they had the battery
Speaker 12: swap facility right at Harris Ring, I mean, and then
Speaker 12: the Model three. I don't think I have that capability
Speaker 12: that you could actually swap the whole pack out quickly, right.
Speaker 2: Don't It does not right, SNX still have the ability
Speaker 2: to do a fast pack swap. But things essentially evolved
Speaker 2: in the same direction that phones evolved. You know, for
Speaker 2: a long time phones had swappable battery packs, and now
Speaker 2: basically nobody, almost nobody makes a phone with a swapt
Speaker 2: full of battery pack. As soon as the range gets
Speaker 2: past a certain point. Then I agree, yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 2: make sense. But but this was far from clear at
Speaker 2: the time of designing the modeless, So we weren't in
Speaker 2: a lot of trouble to make the SNX pack capable
Speaker 2: of of a fast swap with quick disconnects and bolts
Speaker 2: coming only from the bottom and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And then we did that demo. We're just swapped out
Speaker 2: two packs faster than full of gas.
Speaker 4: It's amazing.
Speaker 5: It's kind of ridiculous to me, like taking the battery
Speaker 5: out of your cars some you know, Harris Ranch, and
Speaker 5: put a new battery in and you come back it
Speaker 5: was kind of like, it's good that super charging got
Speaker 5: a lot better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just way better to to increase the
Speaker 2: range of the pack and have better faster charging. So
Speaker 2: but but this debate, which seems obvious in retrospect, was
Speaker 2: not obvious at the time. And yeah, back then, I
Speaker 2: think at least a lot of phones had swappable packs
Speaker 2: because this was would have been designed in you know,
Speaker 2: we had the first prototype out in twenty ten for
Speaker 2: the modeless, So back twenty ten, let's say, the thought
Speaker 2: process going into this in two thousand and nine would
Speaker 2: have been, you know, at a time when I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe most phones had softable packs or something like that.
Speaker 2: You know, the iPhone was like two thousand and seven
Speaker 2: or something, iPhone one. And yeah, so then it doesn't
Speaker 2: didn't make sense. But you know, copanies have a lot
Speaker 2: of momentum. So the the sn X pack is still
Speaker 2: a soppable pack because they say it was like two
Speaker 2: hour trials to change the design. And Model three still
Speaker 2: has modules even though twodn't have modules, and somebody we
Speaker 2: like what you'll see in any given product is that
Speaker 2: the errors in the structure of an organization will manifest
Speaker 2: them selves in the product. So you know that's where Well,
Speaker 2: we have a module team, so we have modules like ways,
Speaker 2: I just combine the module team with the pack team
Speaker 2: and then the WIL modules. So generally the Yeah, the
Speaker 2: errors in the organization manifest themselves in the product.
Speaker 4: You can see where the organizational boundaries are. Uh.
Speaker 2: And then then you off and get like a box
Speaker 2: in a box. It's like, wait, why is this thing
Speaker 2: have two boxes? Well, because this team wanted to have
Speaker 2: an enclosure and this team wanted to have an enclosure,
Speaker 2: and so they have an enclosure on an enclosure. This
Speaker 2: is still the case with the sound It's like, what
Speaker 2: a silly thing, But that's actually the case with the
Speaker 2: Model three. Well three battery pack has a top enclosure
Speaker 2: and the car also has an underbody. Yep, what's the
Speaker 2: point of that. That doesn't make any sense because the
Speaker 2: pack the pack team wanted to have an enclosed battery
Speaker 2: pack and the body team wanted to happen in closed body.
Speaker 2: Yeah it makes sense, but you don't.
Speaker 4: Need to.
Speaker 2: So yeah, awesome, this is all this and and putting
Speaker 2: the top cover on the battery pack is a big
Speaker 2: pain in the neck. So as mass and class and stuff,
Speaker 2: so that should definitely go away in the future.
Speaker 4: Lots of brackets on brackets, that kind of thing.
Speaker 12: So you survived the production hell of the Model three,
Speaker 12: which was pretty intense.
Speaker 2: I mean that was like, it's stupidously difficult, and I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it's.
Speaker 4: It has a.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's accur up, but I think
Speaker 2: might be accurate. Is the first company co company to
Speaker 2: reach volume production I think on an eighty eighty or
Speaker 2: ninety years.
Speaker 4: Or something like that in the US.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's a harder time to do it for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The complexity of of like what people the regulatory requirements
Speaker 2: and the minimum expectations for a car at this point
Speaker 2: are dramatically more than they were eighty or ninety years ago.
Speaker 1: And the place you chose to do it too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was it was a super difficult one.
Speaker 2: I mean there's like there's lots of car company startups,
Speaker 2: but that's doing the prototype is the easy part. Building
Speaker 2: the production system is one hundred times hotter. So I
Speaker 2: mean that's where you see the things fail, like they've
Speaker 2: been over the course of the last century, probably thousands
Speaker 2: of car company startups, most of which people have never
Speaker 2: heard about, you know, occasionally hear about something like a
Speaker 2: Dorian or Attucker. Most of them there's there's there's not
Speaker 2: even a footnote, and it's it's because of the difficulty
Speaker 2: of production. And then and here's a real important point
Speaker 2: that is not well appreciated. This is a point that
Speaker 2: should be advanced by short sellers. But I'm not seen,
Speaker 2: I'm not seen it articulated, which it should be. The
Speaker 2: incumbent car companies make most of their money from selling
Speaker 2: spare parts to the existing fleet at high margins, and
Speaker 2: they'll sell the new cars either it de factos zero
Speaker 2: margin or even at a loss. It's kind of like
Speaker 2: printers and cartridges or razors and blades. You sell the
Speaker 2: razor at a loss, celebrates of profits, sell printer at
Speaker 2: the last sequartris and a profit. Or video game consoles.
Speaker 2: You know, the actual cost of say an Xbox is
Speaker 2: six hundred dollars, we can buy it for three or
Speaker 2: four hundred dollars because they make it up in the
Speaker 2: games that are boord So.
Speaker 4: This is this now.
Speaker 2: So if you're a new company, you do not have
Speaker 2: a fleet, so you have no fleet with which to
Speaker 2: subsidize the sale of your new cars. This is the
Speaker 2: this is the primary reason there has not been a
Speaker 2: successful car company start up in the United States. This
Speaker 2: is the primary reason. So because the incoming car companies
Speaker 2: have eighty percent of their fleet outside of a warranty
Speaker 2: or something like that. Maybe it's seventy percent, but approximately, Like,
Speaker 2: if a car lasts for say twenty years or something
Speaker 2: like that, and the warranty is for four years, then
Speaker 2: it's eighty percent out of warranty. So even if they
Speaker 2: stopped selling new cars, they would still the profit would increase.
Speaker 5: So, according to Edmunds, dealerships make twenty percent of their
Speaker 5: revenue but fifty percent of their profits on service.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly so, and the the car companies themselves will
Speaker 2: often make more than one hundred percent of their profit
Speaker 2: on selling spare parts.
Speaker 4: Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So if like, if at the point in which they're
Speaker 2: making stay one hundred and ten percent of the profit
Speaker 2: from selling spare parts, it means that they're actually selling
Speaker 2: the new class Atalyzes. So this this is a this
Speaker 2: is the very difficult thing to overcome. In order to
Speaker 2: overcome it, the a car has to be significantly more
Speaker 2: compelling then other than other vehicles, such that people are
Speaker 2: willing to pay a premium, and that you can.
Speaker 4: Actually be prizitive cash flow.
Speaker 2: Aspirationally profitable selling new cars, not simply selling spare parts
Speaker 2: of the fleet. So I mean, for Tesla's fleet, is
Speaker 2: probably ten percent of Tesla's fleet or selling in less
Speaker 2: than twenty percent is out of warranty, whereas eighty percent
Speaker 2: of the other car makers is out of warranty. So
Speaker 2: this makes it very difficult. Also, electric cars need much
Speaker 2: less servicing, so that that's another difficult thing. So so
Speaker 2: this is this is the main this should be the
Speaker 2: main argument advanced. I think for why a car a
Speaker 2: new cock company cannot be successful the main one. And
Speaker 2: so yeah, then, like I said, the in order for
Speaker 2: that car to have cock company to have any chance,
Speaker 2: there must be it must be compelling enough that people
Speaker 2: will pay for you. Otherwise there's no chance. And I
Speaker 2: think there's actually in order for a cock company to
Speaker 2: be successful, it has to succeed on two on two
Speaker 2: fundamental technology discontinuities, one being electrification, the other one being autonomy.
Speaker 2: I think not even even pure electrification by itself is
Speaker 2: not enough. So you can, like it says the movie
Speaker 2: production line, there there have been two major technology step
Speaker 2: changes being electrification and aton me and the combination of
Speaker 2: those two is the only thing that's the only opening
Speaker 2: for a new cock company to make it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, makes sense. I mean, without autonomy, you'd probably have
Speaker 5: to wait for EVS to reach price parody. With autonomy,
Speaker 5: you can drive many more miles and bridge that gap easier.
Speaker 3: And it's like, well, Tesla's mote in some ways or
Speaker 3: not mote, I guess, but like Tesla's advantage in many
Speaker 3: ways is bigger because like, these are two such different
Speaker 3: technologies that are happening at once that you've been working
Speaker 3: on while nobody else has. So it's like that much
Speaker 3: harder to replicate now that it's been accomplished.
Speaker 2: Almost, it's very hard for it's very hard for any
Speaker 2: any new C company to end of the market. That
Speaker 2: they have to make it a very compelling product, I
Speaker 2: meaning they have to have some significant technology advancements in
Speaker 2: the electric drive train and the battery pack and just
Speaker 2: generally with the car itself, and then the autonomy has
Speaker 2: to be very compelling. Autonomy in and of itself is enormous,
Speaker 2: so that both of those things company must be successful
Speaker 2: in doing or they will end up in the cemetery.
Speaker 2: So that's that's the real challenge of it.
Speaker 12: Yeah, well even with like the I mean the software updates.
Speaker 12: I mean that's something that no other manufacturer can really
Speaker 12: even get right. They can't do it over the air.
Speaker 12: You have to take your car into you know, because
Speaker 12: it doesn't work right. So that's a core component of
Speaker 12: providing updates. Instead of getting your revenue now from the
Speaker 12: dealership and spare parts stuff, you can actually send software
Speaker 12: as a service.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 10: We actually did a whole podcasts on this.
Speaker 2: Well, I've all this is to minimize service costs, whereas
Speaker 2: the other companies this is I wouldn't say that goes
Speaker 2: to maximize service costs, but it's certainly not to minimize it.
Speaker 8: The car companies also have two different businesses as the dealerships,
Speaker 8: where their business is actually just service. And I don't
Speaker 8: think it's anyone's surprised that that people don't like going
Speaker 8: to their dealer. I mean it's like it's it's because
Speaker 8: their incentives are actually not aligned with the with the
Speaker 8: customers incentives. Their goal is bring you back as often
Speaker 8: as possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were the dealerships, and saves also misligned with
Speaker 2: the the car companies in the during the warranty period
Speaker 2: because the warrant, the car company has to pay for
Speaker 2: the warranty that the service during warranty.
Speaker 4: Uh So it's so it's that they have a conflict
Speaker 4: of you can contrivate contradict of interests.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the car companies to cover the warranty costs, but
Speaker 2: the dealership makes profit on the servicing, so they want
Speaker 2: to maximize servicing even during the warranty period.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's almost like the economic factors you just mentioned have
Speaker 5: created like a complacency where there is no innovation because
Speaker 5: you know, nobody can just start a car company.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, I mean it's like Schumpetter's creative destruction. You know,
Speaker 2: there's like innovation tends to come from new entrants to
Speaker 2: an industry. So if there's if an industry has formed
Speaker 2: an oligopolg or something like that, then the forcing function
Speaker 2: is weak for innovation because innovation tends to come from
Speaker 2: new entrants. Yeah, this is a problem with rockets. There's
Speaker 2: no allowed new entrants, so innovation forcing function is weak.
Speaker 1: But it's encouraging to see rocket booster land and everyone
Speaker 1: is all like, wow, we can't innovate.
Speaker 2: Maybe Yeah, it's actually been surprising how little innovation that's
Speaker 2: been on. And despite SpaceX showing reusable rockets, landing and
Speaker 2: reflying these rockets, many times they're like, come on, you
Speaker 2: know this Covey itt something the same.
Speaker 10: Yeah, tech works just.
Speaker 4: Do the same thing.
Speaker 6: Didn't like Chinese space companies started putting grid fins on
Speaker 6: their rockets.
Speaker 2: I think there's some Chinese rocks that have launched with
Speaker 2: grid fins. Well, you can really use any kind of fin.
Speaker 2: Grid fin is just more predictable across a wide range
Speaker 2: of speeds, So from hypersonics through you know, supersonic, transonic, subsonic,
Speaker 2: they're they're just it's quite easy to predict the behavior
Speaker 2: of a gridfin and the center of pressure where a
Speaker 2: grid fin doesn't change that much, whereas if you have
Speaker 2: a you know, fin fin, like a wing looking thing,
Speaker 2: that you'll see quite a big change in where the
Speaker 2: center of pressure is across a.
Speaker 4: Wide moss regime. Either one or to work the shuttle
Speaker 4: didn't have griffins.
Speaker 6: What do you think about rock and lapse approach of
Speaker 6: trying to use a helicopter to recover the first stage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's gonna be harder than it seems so,
Speaker 2: but there are boosters quite small, so that the issue
Speaker 2: with the helicopters you run into a max lower problem,
Speaker 2: like the lifting capability of helicopter is not that great,
Speaker 2: and that lifting capability drops with altitude, and then the
Speaker 2: range of helicopters also not that great. So so then
Speaker 2: you end up having to helicopter on a show. And
Speaker 2: then if in that in heavy weather conditions, you can't
Speaker 2: take off, so that you're gonna you have to be
Speaker 2: your weather constraints at the launch point and the catch
Speaker 2: point are end up limiting your launch availability mm hmm.
Speaker 2: And then then you've gotta it's it's it's dangerous. You know,
Speaker 2: you've got somebody in a helicopter with with a you know,
Speaker 2: pilot trying to catch this thing coming out of the skuy.
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound insane, there's a there's certainly the potential
Speaker 2: for somebody, you know, somebody to go wrong. Whereas if
Speaker 2: you have a growing chip's you know, if it's smashes
Speaker 2: into drown ship, it's not a big deal.
Speaker 4: But smashing into helicopter that's a big deal. Yeah, So.
Speaker 2: You know, overall I've been you know that that's what
Speaker 2: I've been pretty impressed with rocket Lab and they're mad,
Speaker 2: they're making they're making a go of it, and they're
Speaker 2: they're gonna.
Speaker 4: Do reasonability, which is important. It's fundamental.
Speaker 5: Do you guys still see yourself doing that city to
Speaker 5: city travel in thirty minutes one day?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think they can. For sure it can be done. Yeah,
Speaker 4: for sure can be done. It is it is loud.
Speaker 2: That's that it's really annoys Is that the biggest concern there,
Speaker 2: both taking off and landing. When it comes in for landing,
Speaker 2: that sonic boom is loud. It's like, yeah, there's actually
Speaker 2: two sonic booms. So it sounds like somebody just discharged
Speaker 2: the double barl shotgun in your backyard. So it's not
Speaker 2: like it's breaking windows or anything, but it's like, it's
Speaker 2: be pretty annoying if it's happening on a regular basis.
Speaker 4: That's basically water amounts you.
Speaker 2: So that you have to off. Sure, So I think
Speaker 2: we'll do. But it can be done, definitely. It's the
Speaker 2: fastest way to get anywhere based on non physics, so
Speaker 2: and I think the economics can be made to work
Speaker 2: as well, so that it would be competitive with international
Speaker 2: air travel.
Speaker 11: Wow, I can't wait for that. I travel a lot
Speaker 11: like today, asier like minium, like twelve hour to fourteen.
Speaker 1: Will you try to keep most of the launches around
Speaker 1: the equator just or would it matter?
Speaker 4: Like it doesn't matter a ton.
Speaker 2: It matters if you're going east to know, if you
Speaker 2: if you launch east, you have the advantage of the
Speaker 2: oath rotation, the closer are of the equator and more,
Speaker 2: you can take advantage of Earth rotation if you if
Speaker 2: you fly west, you're actually counteracting US rotation, so you're
Speaker 2: the LTI blast that you need is higher, but you
Speaker 2: go in either direction. I think one of our one
Speaker 2: of our upcoming launches is actually a retrogate retrograde flight,
Speaker 2: so it's going to go against the lit'll.
Speaker 1: Be fun to watch.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But if Starship is going to launch so many
Speaker 6: times a day, how are you going to produce all
Speaker 6: these raptors? Because we've been we've been touring the SpaceX
Speaker 6: factory in author On and you're doing you're making them
Speaker 6: by hand, right? Are you going to automate any of this? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it's being made by hand, being assembled
Speaker 2: by hand maybe, but yeah, we have a lot of
Speaker 2: metal printers with a whole Yeah, three D, three D
Speaker 2: metal printing.
Speaker 4: Wow, Yeah, I love it. I mean I think.
Speaker 2: SpaceX is pushing the envelope with metal printing more than
Speaker 2: anyone else. At least that's what's the splash tell us.
Speaker 2: So we also have a foundry. Uh, that's we do
Speaker 2: are casting of exotic parts for a Raptor with a
Speaker 2: lot of CNC machines. It's a very complicated engine to build.
Speaker 2: Merlin looks like a toy relative to Raptor. It's very simple.
Speaker 4: But we're going to make a lot of rafts and starships.
Speaker 1: Are they going to be made in the States? Then yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: they'd have to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can get simple ingredients from outside the US,
Speaker 2: but other than that, we're not We're not allowed to
Speaker 2: transmit any sort of anything that is a sophisticated element
Speaker 2: of a rocket engine. Weren't allowed to transfer out the
Speaker 2: US or rockety stuff is the weapons technology.
Speaker 1: So just a starship when it's assembled to fly there
Speaker 1: and come back.
Speaker 2: Technically, there's a lot of rockets at the bottom of
Speaker 2: the ocean shout.
Speaker 4: And they have.
Speaker 3: So if you're city to city rocket travel works, does
Speaker 3: that mean Tesla doesn't need to build an electric airplane.
Speaker 2: Man building electric airplane has a lot of difficulty associated
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 4: Or what about the V tall jet, It's a lot
Speaker 4: of difficulty asia share with that.
Speaker 2: I gotta make sure, well, it takes a messi amount
Speaker 2: of effort to do any one of these things, so
Speaker 2: you can't do them all. It's not possible, say, oh,
Speaker 2: how you I like it? The resources? What's the best
Speaker 2: thing to do? Making a vtall jet can definitely be
Speaker 2: done doing electric aircraft for sure. I mean all transport
Speaker 2: will go electric, accept for rockets, yeah, everything.
Speaker 3: I guess why it seems exciting is because if Tesla's
Speaker 3: leading and energy density and battery technology, then the logical
Speaker 3: next step is like if somebody's build an electric airplane,
Speaker 3: it's the company with the best lightest, most efficient batteries.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's just it's hard. It's an entirely different regulatory regime.
Speaker 2: Like there's there are there aren't any car companies that
Speaker 2: are also aircraft companies, So why don't they just make aircraft?
Speaker 5: Actually, you know, it's kind of funny. There was like
Speaker 5: some conspiracy theories on Twitter because on Instagram, Tesla's category
Speaker 5: it's aid, automotive, and then somehow aircraft has gone.
Speaker 3: Like at the cyber truck event, cyber truck, this is
Speaker 3: like your Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: I think it's incredibly hard to bring an aircraft to
Speaker 2: production and meet all of the regulatory requirements worldwide.
Speaker 4: It's a very difficult thing. So it's not like we're
Speaker 4: something that could be just be done.
Speaker 2: We would have to not do a bunch of other things.
Speaker 2: It's not like there's like a ton of unallocated resources.
Speaker 2: Tells I'm like, oh, what should we do now? It's
Speaker 2: like a constant resource starvation, so there's like why do
Speaker 2: you do this other thing? Okay, but we're starving for resources?
Speaker 4: Then what do we you not do well?
Speaker 3: It seems like that's what's so exciting is now that
Speaker 3: the business is kind of taken this next step. The
Speaker 3: resource like starve is kind of changing, or hopefully slowly changing.
Speaker 5: I mean in the airplane like another car or something.
Speaker 10: It's not yeah, not.
Speaker 3: It'sarily an airplaneses, but just in general, it seems like
Speaker 3: the financial help means you can spend more on R
Speaker 3: and D, you can invest more, Like.
Speaker 4: That's not how it works.
Speaker 2: It's not like if you're just haending more money, you
Speaker 2: could spend it effectively in R and D. But if
Speaker 2: there was a if there was a factory producing excellent engineers,
Speaker 2: that would be true. Where is this factory.
Speaker 4: It doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: So it's incredibly difficult to find the right talent to
Speaker 2: integrate them into an organization and have it be work effectively.
Speaker 2: It's not a money thing. It's just hard to find that.
Speaker 2: This is a short number a small number.
Speaker 4: Of people, you know, more engineers.
Speaker 2: Especially, there's just a fundamental limitation on exceptional engineers.
Speaker 4: There's just not that many.
Speaker 5: So, given like these constraints and all the things you
Speaker 5: have to do, could you tell us like a little
Speaker 5: bit about your thinking on how you prioritize.
Speaker 2: And the prioritize. Prioritizing has usually been out of desperation,
Speaker 2: not choice. It's not like, oh, let's sit back and
Speaker 2: how should we spend these resources. Thing isn't going to work,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna if we don't make it work, we're
Speaker 2: going to go bacraft, you know, and then so we're
Speaker 2: better make it work.
Speaker 4: I mean the Mall free program.
Speaker 2: There were so many mistakes that were made with mal
Speaker 2: three program that the entire company had to be devoted
Speaker 2: to fixing the model reproduction system. So you know, we
Speaker 2: took everyone off solar, almost everyone off battery pack, power
Speaker 2: power pack and that kind of thing. Anyone who is
Speaker 2: working on you know, roadsters, am I everyone stopped doing
Speaker 2: that working Model three or there won't be any Tesla.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's kind of amazing. You really bet the whole
Speaker 5: company to get to this next level. But you know,
Speaker 5: I mean I have a Model three. I couldn't afford
Speaker 5: a Model less. So like, I'm very thankful that you
Speaker 5: guys decided to at the whole company.
Speaker 2: There's no choice. It's like either you got to you
Speaker 2: got to get to volume. So there's checking an next situation.
Speaker 2: You can't make the car at an affordable price unless
Speaker 2: you have high volume. Unless you have high volume, you
Speaker 2: can't get an affordable price.
Speaker 4: So now what do you do? How do you bootstrap
Speaker 4: this thing?
Speaker 2: You've basically just got to take a giant flying leap
Speaker 2: at high volume and hope you get to the you
Speaker 2: know ground, have a cliff at ledge with your fingertips.
Speaker 2: It's like Indiana Jones were like running down the thing.
Speaker 2: And here's what it actually feels like. It's like that
Speaker 2: temple are doing whatever where it's like there's a damn
Speaker 2: boulder chasing you down, okay, and it's a big hole
Speaker 2: in the ground.
Speaker 4: Can make that game and you need to jump across
Speaker 4: the hole in the ground and if you slow down,
Speaker 4: the boulder is going to crush you. This is what
Speaker 4: it feels like. It's they're like, I.
Speaker 2: Wonder what you we shall do, like boulder hol on
Speaker 2: the ground and then jump across or you're gonna die.
Speaker 2: So that's basically or you know, get the situation. You know,
Speaker 2: like at this point, maybe we could say like, okay,
Speaker 2: what shall we do at this point? You know, the
Speaker 2: biggest problem we have to solve right now is just
Speaker 2: having production on each onto it because it's insane to
Speaker 2: be making cars in California shipping them to Europe and Asia.
Speaker 2: This is I mean, as it is, making cars in
Speaker 2: the area is pretty absurd. And then you also got
Speaker 2: to ship those cars half around the world, and so
Speaker 2: you got all this finished goes inventory on the water
Speaker 2: that's very high capital carrying costs, and you can finance
Speaker 2: part of it, but not all of it.
Speaker 4: So you know, then you've got the.
Speaker 2: Transport costs, you've got tariffs, you've got you know, every
Speaker 2: time a car gets loaded and unloaded, there's some potential
Speaker 2: for damage.
Speaker 4: It's not zero, you know, So.
Speaker 2: It just creates a lot of cost and then it's
Speaker 2: hard to manage. And the factory complexity in California is
Speaker 2: is amplified because you've got several different regulatory regimes. So
Speaker 2: you're building it seems like you're building Model three, which
Speaker 2: you're actually building several versions of a Model three, depending
Speaker 2: upon whether it's going.
Speaker 4: To China, Japan, Australia, Europe.
Speaker 2: Then you got got down right hand drive. Okay, it's
Speaker 2: like every now everything's gonna go. There's some random bureaucratic
Speaker 2: decision one hundred years ago. Right hand driver, left hand drive.
Speaker 2: This is a megapain in the ass.
Speaker 10: In the middle.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely. And then all these different languages.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't have like warning labels in English,
Speaker 2: and if they don't speak English, it's like prove I
Speaker 2: don't know what it means.
Speaker 4: So this stickers all over the place for you know,
Speaker 4: or whatever it is. And that's all in one factory.
Speaker 2: So so so the complexity amplifies the difficulty of manufacturing.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 2: You kind of get into the cycle where in the
Speaker 2: first month in the core or well, I say, first
Speaker 2: six weeks in the quarter you build cars for Europe
Speaker 2: and Asia and you get them on the boats, and
Speaker 2: then for the next say three weeks, you voilt cars
Speaker 2: for the east coast of the US or North America,
Speaker 2: and then the final three weeks you built the coast
Speaker 2: cars for.
Speaker 4: The west coast.
Speaker 2: So the deliveries early in the quarter look look very
Speaker 2: very low, and they spank exponentially at the end because
Speaker 2: basically all the cars arrive at the customers.
Speaker 4: At the end of the quarter.
Speaker 2: And then we're like, then we'll have these conversations we've
Speaker 2: got to get out of this wave like and they're like, well,
Speaker 2: they'll punish us very badly if we get out of
Speaker 2: the way because the financials.
Speaker 4: Will look horrible. Yeah, So then we're okay, we'll do
Speaker 4: the wave again.
Speaker 2: And so that so that now we've got a factory
Speaker 2: in Shanghai that should that that'll go a long way
Speaker 2: towards alleviating the complexity and the cost. You know, we'll
Speaker 2: have far a few goods that we need to finance
Speaker 2: that are on boats. Wants to get the factory going
Speaker 2: in Berlin. Branderberg technically close Ble in then then then
Speaker 2: that this massively reduces the complexity of production and uh
Speaker 2: and and reduces the fundamental cost of the vehicle. So
Speaker 2: this will really de stress the company a lot.
Speaker 4: So local production will break the wave.
Speaker 2: Local production will break the wave. I mean, just like
Speaker 2: we've had number of times the headlights have come up
Speaker 2: as an issue.
Speaker 4: Is crazy.
Speaker 2: We've had to ship cars to Europe many times where
Speaker 2: the the supplier of the headlights for the EU headlights
Speaker 2: can match rate uh and and or made them wrong
Speaker 2: or something. And then so we may have to make
Speaker 2: cars with US headlights, ship them to Europe, then ship
Speaker 2: a bunch of EU headlights to Europe, change them in
Speaker 2: the port because they're not all id to exit the
Speaker 2: port until they have the EU headlights.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So that was the port problems we would see.
Speaker 2: That's one of the many poor problems. Like like first
Speaker 2: year quarter last year was a tragedy of errors, not
Speaker 2: a comedy, but a tragedy. Belgium went on strike, right
Speaker 2: and like, what do you mean Belgium's on strike? Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of cars were coming into Subruge and like okay,
Speaker 2: now what do we do?
Speaker 4: Nothing?
Speaker 2: Just cars are stuck because okay, but then they're scheduled
Speaker 2: to go off strike in this other day and like okay,
Speaker 2: so then we can move things great, And.
Speaker 4: It was just so many, so many things. Cars got
Speaker 4: stuck in the port of Shanghai because they had wrong sticker.
Speaker 10: Oh my god. Yeah, I know, I know. It's been
Speaker 10: off like just many in China.
Speaker 4: Absolutely like totally agree.
Speaker 11: You don't have to spend like two weeks, three weeks
Speaker 11: on the ocean, go there and.
Speaker 10: Roll sticker and you have to wait so replace.
Speaker 5: People don't appreciate Giggashanghai yet completely.
Speaker 10: Until recently, definitely not yet.
Speaker 5: I think people have realized it.
Speaker 4: It's extremely important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and these like shipping times or that, like
Speaker 2: like like technically as possible, if everything goes right, you
Speaker 2: can get the cars are in two weeks, but the
Speaker 2: ships don't don't leave every single day, and then you
Speaker 2: also have to cure you can't just instantly load the cars.
Speaker 2: So the cars you have like send like two thousand
Speaker 2: cars to a lot and like you know, port Oakland
Speaker 2: to Port of San Francisco, accumulate, the cars move, then
Speaker 2: they get to another place. Then they get loaded onto
Speaker 2: the ship one at a time, and then finally the
Speaker 2: ship leaves, and then like sometimes the ship has problems
Speaker 2: and like the storms or somethingstom like it's how to
Speaker 2: go through everything? There's so much drama then yeah, and
Speaker 2: then like the ship's engine brought down. It's like stuck somewhere.
Speaker 11: Yeah, but it's great, Like right now, like everything roll
Speaker 11: off the production line, go directly to the Yeah, sands great,
Speaker 11: it's wonderful. So I have another question. It's like, from
Speaker 11: your perspective, how to Chinese public perceive EV.
Speaker 2: Well, China is very pro EV and it's biggest EV
Speaker 2: marking in the world. I think it's like half of
Speaker 2: old EV's or made and bought in China something like that,
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So the China sort of.
Speaker 2: Subsides for evs dropped conservatively, so that did cause a
Speaker 2: reductional lot. But the EV incentives were very high in
Speaker 2: China and now they're much less. They're like a third
Speaker 2: of what they used to be or less, so the
Speaker 2: so that's caused some decline in demand as one would expect,
Speaker 2: but it's still China is still the biggest market for
Speaker 2: EV's in the world, so I think they're very positively received.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 12: Yea so talking about the incentives, because you I know,
Speaker 12: the price, there was a small price reduction right in
Speaker 12: the Chinese Model three and then but then the subsidies
Speaker 12: were the balance. So it's actually not it's not any
Speaker 12: impact on Tassla in no profit, right.
Speaker 4: No, I don't think so. Well, yeah, I think the.
Speaker 2: Obviously, depending on what percentage of the car is made
Speaker 2: in China, that the parts that are made in China
Speaker 2: are not subject to a tariff, so that's certainly helpful.
Speaker 2: We also save on logistics, and generally we found that
Speaker 2: locally sourced parts in China costs less than in the
Speaker 2: you know, in the US or Europe, so this is
Speaker 2: all pretty helpful. Also, the Tesla got added to the
Speaker 2: purchase tax exemption, which will all the other This is
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if you like realized just how much
Speaker 2: of an outfield battle Tesla has had to sell cars
Speaker 2: in China. It's been a you know, really basically no
Speaker 2: access to any subsidies, and we paid a tariff and
Speaker 2: we had to ship the cars over and every single
Speaker 2: thing was set against Tesla, and still we made progress
Speaker 2: decently well, So I think there will be much better,
Speaker 2: a much better situation with local production, not having to
Speaker 2: do shipping and tariffs, and being able to have lower
Speaker 2: cost local sourcing of components. So make a big difference,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: Is that your victory dance when you broke in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great, that's a big deal. Huge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just uh, just fundamental economics. It kind of makes
Speaker 2: sense that making cars on the continent where there are
Speaker 2: bought will be a lot more efficient than making them
Speaker 2: in California and shipping them around the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can get paid for the cars before
Speaker 3: paying your suppliers, which seems to not be the case
Speaker 3: if you're shipping around the world, and that could be
Speaker 3: a huge like friction on the whole kind of cash
Speaker 3: flow situation, or it.
Speaker 2: Has been for sure, it will sure make a big
Speaker 2: difference on cash flow because yeah, it's there's just no
Speaker 2: way to get the cars, especially in Europe, but but
Speaker 2: even China to get them to customers, you know, before
Speaker 2: we have to pay spliers. So if you're a rapidly
Speaker 2: growing company, it's it's night and day if if you
Speaker 2: get paid by your customers before you have to pay
Speaker 2: your suppliers, like night and day, because then the faster
Speaker 2: you grow, the video cash cash position is but if
Speaker 2: it's the other way around, where you have to pay
Speaker 2: your suppliers before you get paid for customers get paid
Speaker 2: by customers, then the faster you grow, the.
Speaker 4: Faster your cash position drops.
Speaker 10: Because you're going to spend more money to make it.
Speaker 2: Growth actually causes you to orger into the ground in
Speaker 2: a situation like that. Now it tells us we had
Speaker 2: a mixture of both things where we had a lot
Speaker 2: of customers in say in California, and that's that's fast.
Speaker 2: For sure, we would get paid by customers faster than
Speaker 2: we would have to pay suppliers. But then for cars
Speaker 2: going to Europe and Asia, it's the other way around,
Speaker 2: you know, So we would have to pay suppliers before
Speaker 2: we got paid by by customers. And now we could
Speaker 2: we could off sat some of that with the asset
Speaker 2: back line, which was pretty helpful, but only some of it,
Speaker 2: not all of it.
Speaker 4: So the.
Speaker 2: Just the fundamental financial health for sure improves dramatically by
Speaker 2: just having just been having a factory on the continent. Okay,
Speaker 2: we're not talking next door, but it's just how many oceans,
Speaker 2: you know. It's like, especially Europe was logistically super hard
Speaker 2: because we're on the west coast. If we're on the
Speaker 2: east coast, then then China would be much harder. But
Speaker 2: if if you're on the west coast, you're much harder
Speaker 2: because you've got to go through the Panama Canal or
Speaker 2: even worse around you know, Tierra del Fuego, because sometimes
Speaker 2: the Panama Canal get backed up like the spring, and
Speaker 2: ship is going to the Antarctic. It's like you can
Speaker 2: skip up to the end and the stormy as hell.
Speaker 2: It's so you send a ship around Chile, you shiitting,
Speaker 2: you know, in the middle crazy storms, and then back
Speaker 2: up all the way and then like you know, it
Speaker 2: is so funny, oh my god, so logistic nightmare. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it'd be great to just have have it, not get
Speaker 2: on a boat and crust the Pacific and Atlantic and
Speaker 2: that kind of thing.
Speaker 6: So maybe similar to Vincent's question, what's the biggest advantage
Speaker 6: in choosing Berlin other European countries, Berlin.
Speaker 4: Has the best nightclubs. I went to Bogm once.
Speaker 10: Years ago.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know. I mean he looked a lot
Speaker 4: of different different locations and.
Speaker 2: I sort of, I don't know. We're could have put
Speaker 2: it in a lot of locations. We needed to move
Speaker 2: move quickly. And actually this this place, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like wherever thirty minutes to the outskirts of Berlin, technically
Speaker 2: in brand Rondeberg. It actually was a place location that
Speaker 2: BMW was going to put a plants there, so a
Speaker 2: ton of the environmental work and all of the permits
Speaker 2: and stuff had already been done and then for some
Speaker 2: reason BMW chose a different location.
Speaker 4: But there's like I guess something on the order of
Speaker 4: a year's.
Speaker 2: Work worth of environmental you know, paperwork and stuff that's
Speaker 2: been done on that location for an auto plant. So
Speaker 2: that's it made it one of the quickest places to
Speaker 2: get going, and the like the government local and state
Speaker 2: government was very supportive.
Speaker 4: So you know, I went there and it's like, okay,
Speaker 4: this seems like some pretty good vibe this place.
Speaker 2: So there's a lovely part of this lovely place, and
Speaker 2: there's an opportunity for like it's it's close enough to Villain,
Speaker 2: that's a young people could still you know, live in
Speaker 2: an apartment in Berlain and commute to the factory. It's right,
Speaker 2: there's a train state station. The actually gonna move the
Speaker 2: train station. It's a small train station, but they're gonna
Speaker 2: move the train station to where you can literally get
Speaker 2: off the train and be.
Speaker 4: Right at the Gaga Vilain.
Speaker 10: Wow, that's great, that's great, that's perfect.
Speaker 2: You could literally just pop right off and you don't
Speaker 2: if you walk, you don't need a bicycle. So then
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, this is pretty cool. And ya, so
Speaker 2: so young people could be in a Berlain department and
Speaker 2: it's you know, work at Gay Villain. But if you
Speaker 2: want to have more a family situation, but by backyard,
Speaker 2: there's you know, affordable housing available with you know houses
Speaker 2: with yards and stuff that aren't too expensive. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: it seems like a good, good combination of factors. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of talent in the area. So it sounds
Speaker 2: cool to giggle in. It just sounds it just sounds
Speaker 2: like some some cool nightclub.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 2: You can definitely have a cool nightclub that was cooled
Speaker 2: back people like, yeah, that sounds good. Shanghai too, it
Speaker 2: sounds pretty cool. Yeah, should have like a rave cave.
Speaker 3: And the.
Speaker 6: The factory, but you should have like your own nightclub.
Speaker 2: I think that would be who who doesn't know, doesn't
Speaker 2: we should do that. I feel like i'd go for
Speaker 2: sure work at a company with guys Hut the nightclub.
Speaker 2: That sounds way more fun.
Speaker 6: Didn't you want to put a roller coaster into the
Speaker 6: Freemont factory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're still going to do that. I mean I
Speaker 2: think that would be pretty fun to do. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think we can just like do yeah, just basically have
Speaker 2: like we just needed a rail that can support like
Speaker 2: a modified modified Teslas and.
Speaker 12: Then yeah, can you imagine a plaid Yeah, just like
Speaker 12: sip around and around the factory in like five seconds.
Speaker 10: It would be booked for months. Yeah, we should get
Speaker 10: in right now. Awesome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're kind of actually versed parts of the factory.
Speaker 2: We have vehicle conveand systems. They just don't move that fast,
Speaker 2: but they're kind of like roller coasters.
Speaker 4: That move so big exactly.
Speaker 2: So yeah, but yeah, we're freeling pretty you know temp
Speaker 2: fade or anything, but feeling pretty good about where things
Speaker 2: are added. And I think this is like a lot
Speaker 2: of good things. You know, the model Wine coming out
Speaker 2: this year, and some exciting announcements about batteries, a lot
Speaker 2: of progress and autopilot. Yeah, so bullying Giga ballin and
Speaker 2: and then make your progress on some of the new
Speaker 2: vehicle developments. I went and solo, the solar roof, solar
Speaker 2: glass roof. Getting that rolled out.
Speaker 5: The cyber truck got received really well.
Speaker 10: I think, yeah, did you expect that many orders?
Speaker 4: Not? No, not really.
Speaker 8: When I first saw the cyber truck and in the
Speaker 8: France's design studio, I mean, you know, you know, and
Speaker 8: had told me that this was a this was a
Speaker 8: daring design. Although I think you're the most excited about
Speaker 8: this design than any dia.
Speaker 4: I think it's the best product ever.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and I saw it.
Speaker 8: I was just taken aback, and not not by the
Speaker 8: design so much by the pure aggression that the truck.
Speaker 8: You stand in front of it and you're like, okay,
Speaker 8: I'm afraid you know, it really is like a badass truck.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, it seems like like the other reasons why people
Speaker 2: buy a pickup trucks, you know in the US, is
Speaker 2: like because it's like the most bad ass truck, you know,
Speaker 2: like like which one is the toughest truck, And it's like,
Speaker 2: what's tough with a truck tank?
Speaker 4: Like a tank from the future. So it's like.
Speaker 10: And really fine, cyber truck just in case the first
Speaker 10: four are busy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, It's literally like how you out top
Speaker 2: of a truck, US make a futuristic adored personnel carrier,
Speaker 2: and that's the tougher than a truck.
Speaker 5: And I feel like a Tommy will probably be very
Speaker 5: like mature by the time it ships too, for sure.
Speaker 10: So how many cyber truck orders do we have right here?
Speaker 4: I got one. I ordered three. I mean it's gonna
Speaker 4: be pretty special and I look like other things, so
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, it looks so cool.
Speaker 11: Like the first time I show it to my son
Speaker 11: is like, Daddy, this is something from Alien.
Speaker 10: This is the first impression. Yes it is.
Speaker 4: That's that's how I just designed it.
Speaker 11: Was.
Speaker 2: It's like, what's the you know, let's let's make a
Speaker 2: future futuristic award personal carrier, you know. And so the
Speaker 2: inspiration board was like literally like you know, Blade Runner,
Speaker 2: you know, like sort of Mad Max back to the Future,
Speaker 2: you know, Aliens, you know, they're like, yeah, so.
Speaker 10: That's why it looks like that, Like the pre older
Speaker 10: number is amazing. It's gonna be over like four hundred
Speaker 10: thousand now right.
Speaker 5: I think it was just so risky, and it just
Speaker 5: like at first people were like even people who like
Speaker 5: were hardcore fans will rolled out and then people are
Speaker 5: like wait a minute, like, yeah, it's kind of amazing.
Speaker 12: I want you could see it like there was like
Speaker 12: in person, you could see it happening really fast, like
Speaker 12: the reaction and then they're processing and then you're seeing
Speaker 12: all the features and then the range and the price.
Speaker 10: Those are the compelling things that really like just hit everybody.
Speaker 5: Forty thousand was the biggest genres, like, oh, people are
Speaker 5: gonna be buying.
Speaker 4: And that range too, like it's just actually.
Speaker 11: Sixty nine five hundred miles with two point nine second
Speaker 11: like come.
Speaker 6: On you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, loved it too, right?
Speaker 4: Did Actually? Yeah?
Speaker 2: One of the last things he said, actually did he
Speaker 2: have a drive in it? And no, he saw pictures
Speaker 2: of it, but I think he was not. Obviously he
Speaker 2: died recently, so he didn't. He saw pictures and he said, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's great, and he says send us a note like
Speaker 2: he loves it, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, but you know, you want you want to have
Speaker 2: these things that inspire people. It feels different, not like
Speaker 2: everything else is like the same. It's like variations on
Speaker 2: the same theme. You want to have something different, but
Speaker 2: you feel like how many I wasn't sure if nobody
Speaker 2: would buy it?
Speaker 4: Or a lot of people would buy it. It just wasn't.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but you know, I just told him,
Speaker 2: like listening, if nobody wants to buy this, we can
Speaker 2: always make one that looks like the other trucks. That's
Speaker 2: not like yeah, you don't just try it and there's yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: it was you know, I could just say, okay, it
Speaker 2: was weird failure, but now you know, make one light
Speaker 2: looks just like the.
Speaker 4: Others and they you go.
Speaker 3: So it seems to capture the whole world though, like
Speaker 3: elevated Tesla and the cultural zeitgeist in a way that
Speaker 3: like is so exciting, Like the Travis Scott music video
Speaker 3: already happened, like that was so I was waiting for
Speaker 3: the first music video and I was like, yeah.
Speaker 4: Really cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna be hard to make that, by the way,
Speaker 2: So it's not. It's because because it's a different architecture.
Speaker 2: It's an exoskeleton architecture. So there isn't any cars out
Speaker 2: there that have an exo skeleton architecture. So you've got
Speaker 2: to rethink how the all the internals of the car
Speaker 2: done so that you can use the external shell as
Speaker 2: as as a load bearing structure instead of just basically
Speaker 2: thin cheap metal that is effectively just therefore aerodynamic reasons.
Speaker 2: So you could take you could take the external what's
Speaker 2: called a class office of most cars and still drive around.
Speaker 2: It loses almost no structural value. It's that they usually
Speaker 2: go very very thin sheet metal. So it's a total endoskeleton.
Speaker 2: So there'll be some some challenges building that.
Speaker 1: It's the Starships three.
Speaker 4: It's a starships. You can use the same steel as
Speaker 4: the show.
Speaker 10: I'd love one of those limited quantity ones.
Speaker 1: I don't like Timid shout out it out.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Timid asked about that everyday astronaut.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's cool guy. He's a cool guy. He really
Speaker 4: knows what he's talking about. It does.
Speaker 12: So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's there's there's a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of good things and undoubtedly be some you know, sit
Speaker 2: backs along the way, but it's it's looking looking pretty good.
Speaker 4: Should do some.
Speaker 5: Closing thoughts, you know. I just remember when I got
Speaker 5: my Model three. It was like a difficult time in
Speaker 5: my life, and it made it easier and you know,
Speaker 5: you don't have to buy gas, car drives you around.
Speaker 5: It just makes your life better. All of our lives
Speaker 5: in these little ways like all this struggle you do it.
Speaker 5: You know it really makes things better and just makes
Speaker 5: you hopeful and inspired. And you know, I just can't
Speaker 5: thank you and the whole Tesla team and uh enough
Speaker 5: for for all the love you put into the car.
Speaker 4: You know every day.
Speaker 5: It's just happy because I have a Model three.
Speaker 4: That's cool. I'm glad you like it.
Speaker 2: As let's go, I go to you know, maximize the
Speaker 2: we make peel like really touch people's heart for the product.
Speaker 2: And it's like I think, like too many of the
Speaker 2: companies out there, the design these things because it is
Speaker 2: sort of a spreadsheet and sort of marketing surveys and
Speaker 2: that kind of thing without saying do you love it?
Speaker 4: You actually like the product that you're making. Touch my
Speaker 4: heart very much.
Speaker 11: I like, thank you for this chance like doing interview
Speaker 11: with all of us, and as a shareholder and Model
Speaker 11: three owner, I remember like one time you tweak about
Speaker 11: your money is first in and will be lost out.
Speaker 11: I was really touched to see that tweak. I think
Speaker 11: it's like years ago, like right after one of the
Speaker 11: shareholder meeting, I was like like we see, oh will
Speaker 11: do this, you know, And like after I bought my
Speaker 11: Moto three. I'm more believed to the company, like I
Speaker 11: order a motor y and then two side was shrup.
Speaker 10: I was like, I'm a Porsche fans before.
Speaker 5: And then right now like he was gonna get a
Speaker 5: take on until he saw the range.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I was thinking you get a take on, like
Speaker 11: why not, like give it a try, But when you
Speaker 11: look at a spec the the range turned.
Speaker 10: Me off, like yeah, it's absolute already.
Speaker 11: Two oh one, Like who's gonna buy it for one
Speaker 11: hundred and fifty k? Just not talk about money, just
Speaker 11: talk about range itself. The spect it's like it's not
Speaker 11: there yet. So with like one hundred and fifty cake
Speaker 11: plus like nobody gonna buy it. Yeah, so thank you
Speaker 11: and absolutely thank you very much. Well yeah, well I
Speaker 11: thank thanks you guys for your sport. Just really makes difference. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean I don't know Tesla, so I hope hopefully
Speaker 6: I will.
Speaker 10: Yeah yeah true in your shareholders call it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so yeah, I got to save up, but I
Speaker 6: will buy one, and I've got to cyber truck like
Speaker 6: you said. But I've made so many great memories just
Speaker 6: like through these cars, Like I've met all you guys
Speaker 6: through Tesla and this is amazing. Just like what kind
Speaker 6: of community just is created through products that you love
Speaker 6: And I think that really means a lot, Like I
Speaker 6: don't I think I've never seen people being so excited
Speaker 6: about a product before, like having this whole family feeling.
Speaker 6: That's really cool.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, welcome, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just want to say congrats first of all,
Speaker 3: because I feel like this has been it's kind of
Speaker 3: like a feel good moment for Tesla all that's happening. Yeah, obviously,
Speaker 3: thank you, because like you've inspired all of us, and
Speaker 3: I think there's not many things in the world that
Speaker 3: like people get pumped about that are positive about the future.
Speaker 3: Like I really feel like we need that now, and
Speaker 3: so Tesla, like bringing us all together has been really
Speaker 3: awesome and really much needed.
Speaker 4: I think, great, this is this is really cool.
Speaker 1: I think i'd have to agree with what Gally said,
Speaker 1: just whear Tesla's going. You have a car that's actually
Speaker 1: making a difference with the clean energy, changing the earth,
Speaker 1: cleaning things up. I mean it made me excited to
Speaker 1: see and you're so efficient and you can you actually
Speaker 1: get things the way you do it, you just I
Speaker 1: don't know, you get it done. And I trust you
Speaker 1: and I trust the company, and it's it's I don't know,
Speaker 1: such a passion. It's amazing. I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: don't get cut the words out.
Speaker 4: Sometimes a little later we think we get it done
Speaker 4: in the end.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, yeah, always deliver.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you, you're welcome, Thanks please for it.
Speaker 12: Well, I just want to say, like how I described this,
Speaker 12: this podcast, like we kind of it kind of just
Speaker 12: grew out grassroots, right.
Speaker 4: And thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.