罗恩·巴伦采访马斯克（2022年11月4日）

0:07I tell you something.

0:10Every time I see that clip, it chills me.

0:13Every single time.

0:15And I look at it a lot.

0:19So thank you very much for coming here.

0:21I know it's not convenient, it's not around the corner.

0:23I'm really appreciative.

0:25Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

0:27I was on a red-eye flight, so I'm a little slow at the normal.

0:31I didn't get much sleep.

0:33You know, that's sort of my first question.

0:37Is that so you're 51?

0:39Yeah

0:42And those bring I think I'm safely not a spring chicken anymore

0:47Late summer chicken

0:51But just but you I mean look great

0:56They're 51 and

0:58You do 16 hour days and you work seven hours a week and you fly all over the place and you go to these meetings constantly and

1:07And people constantly criticize you for everything.

1:09It's amazing to me.

1:10I mean, you're changing the world and you're giving yourself.

1:12Why do you do this?

1:14So my wife says to me, why are you still working?

1:16Why are you still working?

1:17What are you doing here?

1:20Well, I think that what I'm working on

1:23has an important effect on the future.

1:29In the case of Tesla, I think it's fair to say that Tesla

1:32has significantly accelerated the advent

1:37of sustainable energy.

1:39You know, before Tesla, no one was doing electric cars.

1:42And now, as a result of Tesla, I think almost every major

1:46car company in the world is building electric cars.

1:51And that's a pretty big deal.

1:56But there's still a long way to go to transition the world

1:59to a sustainable energy economy.

2:01And so we still have a lot of work ahead of us at Tesla.

2:05but that's our goal there.

2:07And then for SpaceX, I think it's important

2:10for the future to be exciting and for humanities existence

2:16to be insured over the long term.

2:19I think we must become a multi-planet species

2:21and a space-bearing civilization.

2:24You know, I think the, we're here like 4 and 1 half

2:32billion years after Earth got started, 13.8 billion years into the age of the universe.

2:42It's only now recently in the last 5,000 years that we invented writing.

2:48I would say date the first civilization by when there was the first writing, which was

2:54in ancient Sumeria around 5 or 6,000 years ago.

3:00So we've basically just been here for a very brief instance.

3:05A blink.

3:07All of human civilization is a blink of an eye, if there was an eye, on evolutionary timescale.

3:16So I think it's important we take the actions to ensure that the light of consciousness

3:20continues.

3:21Because we should really view consciousness as a small candle in a vast darkness.

3:29It could easily go out.

3:31So you have these missions and somehow, whenever you have a mission and you have this vision and you are a visionary,

3:40that somehow, whatever you do, you develop other businesses.

3:44So when you started SpaceX, you didn't think about satellites.

3:48When you started Tesla, you didn't think about robots.

3:51When you don't have enough people, you didn't think about robots.

3:55And so you didn't think about autonomous driving.

3:58And without Elon, there would not be electric cars.

4:02Nobody who makes cars wants to make electric cars.

4:05They're being forced to make them.

4:06In fact, every time they sell electric cars,

4:09they sell one fewer car that they make money on.

4:13And they have all that money invested in plants

4:14that make those other cars.

4:16So nobody wants to have these cars except for him.

4:19And everybody thought it was going to fail.

4:21So one of the things you said is that patents are for the week.

4:28And you share your patents.

4:30And with other companies, of course, on the other hand,

4:33when they get your patents, you're two or three years ahead

4:36of them.

4:37Well, I mean, joking about patents for the week,

4:41I think there is a role for patents.

4:43Let's say if somebody's spent, if somebody's spent a lot of money developing,

4:47in particular medicine, and had to go through the expense of stage three medical trials,

4:53and then they finally get something that is approved, but where the drug itself is cheap to manufacture,

4:59then I think a patent in that case makes sense, otherwise no one would go to the trouble of doing stage three medical trials.

5:06So there are definitely roles for patents.

5:08In the case of Tesla, our goal is to advance sustainable energy.

5:13And we can't just do it by ourselves.

5:18We need the whole industry to go that way.

5:20So we gave them our patents for free in order to help them accelerate electric vehicles.

5:27So must be terrifying to other companies to realize that we make cars.

5:32It's $39,000 and cost the car.

5:35And we're making $15,000, $16,000 in profit a car.

5:40And so we invest $7 billion, and we make $15 billion a year.

5:45I'm sorry, yeah.

5:47And 15, right.

5:4915 million cars, 15,000, 15 million a year

5:54on a $7 million investment.

5:56Shocking.

5:57So no one else does that.

5:59And when we're, and here you're telling us how,

6:02you want to make cars for $20,000 a piece.

6:06How do you do that?

6:08Well, we've not formally announced our next car program.

6:13So I can't talk too much about our upcoming vehicle

6:17program programs that have not been announced.

6:21But we do expect to make cars that

6:24are more affordable than the current Model 3 or Model Y.

6:32And a big factor in this is, yeah.

6:35But I think by far the biggest factor is autonomy in terms of the value of a car, because right

6:50now cars get driven for about 10 or 12 hours a week, like maybe one and a half hours a

6:56day.

6:57And so, but there's 168 hours a week.

7:03So if there were autonomous, you could probably drive, the cars could drive for 50 or 60 hours.

7:08So you would see a five-fold increase in the utility of the car, you know, that could be autonomy.

7:16This is a really, really gigantic thing.

7:19It would also mean that there was, we wouldn't need anywhere near as many parking lots.

7:24And this would also be helpful for the environment because you would need far fewer cars.

7:29So I misspoke, it was a $7 billion investment for a plant that makes a million cars a year

7:36that makes $15 billion in profits.

7:38You invest $7 billion and you make $15 billion a year.

7:42Who does that?

7:43And for a plant that makes things manufacturing.

7:49And so the way this is accomplished is that so you're doing it with casting right now and

7:56We cast the half of the car and we soon cast the other half of the car.

8:00And other companies, why don't they try?

8:03Why don't they try to do what we're doing?

8:05In fact, one of the executives of another automobile company wanted me to introduce her

8:11to you.

8:13And you did that once in a meeting and now she wants to come visit with her Director

8:17of Engineering, our plant in Austin.

8:20And I presume when I ask you, you're going to say, yeah, bring her on because you innovate

8:25It's so fast by the time anyone copies what we're doing, it's going to something else.

8:30What else is there?

8:31When you're casting, what else is there that enables us to make that cheaper?

8:36We're eliminating a lot of other parts, we're eliminating functions.

8:39What are we doing to do that?

8:42How do we sell a car that's so cheap?

8:46I mean, I think the full explanation or at least an accurate explanation would take a

8:50long time because the first approximation, a car is made of 10,000 unique parts and prices

8:56steps. And I mean Tesla is really I think at this point probably the best at

9:06manufacturing in the auto industry which I think nobody was expecting.

9:10Probably in history of the world. Probably. Yeah so I've got this like first

9:25principles algorithm that are fine to be very helpful in the design and manufacturing

9:33of anything. People here may find it helpful. The first thing you should do is make the

9:44requirements that you've been given a less dumb. Whatever constraints and requirements

9:50were given, there were some degree down and you want to make them less dumb. If you don't

9:55do that, start with this, then you answer the right, you get the right answer to the wrong

10:00question. And the requirements must be given from a person who can explain the requirement,

10:08not from a department, because then you don't know who to talk to. Then step two is delete

10:16the part or delete the process step. This sounds extremely obvious and yet over and over again

10:24we have found that parts were not needed. They were just put in there just in case or by

10:32mistake or there was a step that people someone thought was needed but was not actually needed.

10:38The sounds are saying the obvious but we have deleted so many parts from the car that were

10:43did nothing.

10:44They were just there?

10:47Well, yeah, I mean, I could give you so many examples.

10:55One example was there were three fiberglass mats on top of the battery pack.

11:01They partially covered the battery pack.

11:04And it was on the battery pack production line, and it was the number one thing choking battery

11:09prep pack production with these gluing on these three five

11:13last mats to the top of the battery pack.

11:16And so the reason I repeat this all for myself

11:20is that I first did things backwards.

11:22First, I try to automate it.

11:25Then I try to accelerate it, just have the go faster.

11:30Then I try to simplify it.

11:33And only then did I delete it.

11:34Because it turned out that the team at Tesla that does noise and vibration minimization,

11:49so making the car quiet, thought that the fiberglass mats were there because of the battery safety

11:55team, which was for battery fire prevention.

11:59And then I asked the battery fire prevention team what they needed for, and they said,

12:03noise and vibration. I'm like, okay. So then we had two cars drive, one with a microphone

12:12in the car, in each car, and you could not tell the difference. So we went to all that

12:18trouble for a part that should not exist. And then another example was there was a, again,

12:25this was like, these were choke points in the entire production system. That's why they,

12:31I'm running around the production line trying to fix the production line just like a maniac

12:36It was a Tasmanian devil just running around the factory like a winner's egg

12:40and

12:42Let's see we have the the body production line a model through we at one point stuck because

12:47That we had a laser welding cell to

12:52Weld a small cross-car beam in the passenger footwell of the of the front seats

12:58And I'm looking at this sort of this beam and I'm like, what the heck does that do?

13:03Because the entire factory stopped trying to get the laser weld cell to work.

13:10And I'm like, I can't imagine what useful thing it could do.

13:15And the production team said, oh, that's for crash safety.

13:19So then I called the crash safety team and said, is this for crash safety?

13:22And said, oh, no, that didn't do anything. We should delete it.

13:26I turned out to be totally useless.

13:30They forgot to tell the production team.

13:32So, honestly, a bunch of these things just feel like you're living in a Dilbert cartoon.

13:37Oh, no.

13:40What's that?

13:41I mean, any given company, they should have like, what's your Dilbert ratio?

13:45Okay.

13:46It's not zero.

13:48So, is this you or is this your core?

13:51Dilbert question.

13:52Try to keep it low.

13:53So, is this you or is this, so you do all these different things?

13:58different things.

13:59You know, it's literally me.

14:00So, do you have...

14:01Someone else who did this, I was in the factory in Fremont and Nevada for three years straight.

14:10It was my primary residence.

14:12Not kidding, literally.

14:14Did you keep the couch?

14:16I actually stepped in a couch at one point in a tent on the roof.

14:23And then for a while there I was just sleeping under my desk which is out in the open in the

14:28factory and for an important reason.

14:32And it was damn uncomfortable sleeping on that floor and always when I woke up I'd

14:35smell like metal dust.

14:37We went to visit and they bought him a new couch.

14:40Yeah.

14:41But actually I stopped using the couch in the, because there's a little complimentary room

14:46in the couch there, I stopped using the couch I just slept on the floor under my desk so

14:50during shift change, the entire team could see me.

14:54And this is important because, like, you know,

14:57the team, like, if they think that the sort of,

15:04their leader is off somewhere having a good time,

15:07you know, drinking my ties on Tropical Island,

15:09which I could definitely have been doing,

15:11and would much have preferred to do,

15:13I'm not actually a masochist, I think.

15:17But the thing is that since the team could see me sleeping on the floor during shift change

15:27just with nothing, they knew I was there.

15:32And that made a huge difference.

15:34And then they gave it their role.

15:36So the focus is on always lowering costs and providing leadership.

15:45In this company, we're doing a million and a half cars a year, but expected to 20.

15:51So what happens in 10 years if you're not there?

15:55What happens in five years if you're not there?

15:57How does that work?

15:58Are there all these people?

16:00So in all the engineering schools, the top engineering schools, the top choice of where

16:05everybody wants to work is test their SpaceX.

16:08Those two places.

16:09So do we have all these people coming up and

16:13writing each other for the job, or they're working together,

16:15how do you get people to say, gee, I could buy that

16:18real expensive house, but I'm not gonna do that.

16:20Boy, I could buy, I could go out on vacation.

16:22I'm not gonna, I was,

16:23I'm,

16:24Well, we do have that problem a little bit.

16:26So, you know, as a company has prosperity

16:31and then people become wealthy,

16:34then for a lot of people, you know, that once they become

16:38past, it's sort of independently wealthy,

16:40they just can't bring themselves to work,

16:43that they don't want to work.

16:44And that's totally understandable, I'm no judgment.

16:47And so I mean, I have a lot of friends

16:50who are extremely talented.

16:53And they had some success earlier in life,

16:57and they just decided that was enough trauma.

17:03And one of my good friends of mine

17:05is saying like starting a company is like eating glass

17:10and staring into the abyss.

17:12So my people will tell me, what can you do to encourage entrepreneurs to start companies?

17:21I'm like, if you need encouragement, don't start a company.

17:36In SpaceX.

17:40And so we have, no, competitors sort of, I guess.

17:46So SLS.

17:47And you know, I read about, that's not it, you know.

17:52Just bowing Northropine Lockheed.

17:54And with those guys, when they build a launching pad, it took them like 10 years and billions

18:02of dollars.

18:03And we had a build of a launching pad and it cost a few hundred million dollars and did

18:07it in six months.

18:10And then I was interested in how that was done.

18:14And the woman I'm talking to says that, Ron, did you see the plumbing when you went there?

18:19I said, why should it cost hundreds of millions?

18:21It looks like it's a landing field.

18:23And I said, would you see what's underneath?

18:25Did you see the plumbing?

18:26I said, no, they didn't show that to me.

18:28And she said, well, you should be aware that there's all these pipes that take away the

18:33heat.

18:34And then they all deliver fuel to the rocket.

18:36And it has to be there in an exact right amount at the exact right time.

18:40And if it's not, that doesn't happen, it blows up.

18:43And he says, well, how does Elon know this?

18:46And because you hire these great people, and then you ask them all these questions, and

18:50then somehow you remember everything I tell you.

18:53Is that true?

18:54Well, my memory for technical matters is very good.

19:01And I think probably a lot of people don't realize, like, what I do, apes in the time is

19:08engineering.

19:09So it's quite rare for me to give a talk.

19:14And my day-to-day work at SpaceX and Tesla

19:18is almost entirely engineering and design.

19:23So and also production.

19:29Production is key, but although I consider

19:30that to be part of engineering.

19:35Yeah.

19:35So Starship is something special.

19:40The thing that is like the holy grail,

19:46like the critical breakthrough needed to make life

19:49multi-planetary and for humanity to be a space-bearing

19:52civilization is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket,

19:56orbital rocket.

19:58And so we've gone most of the way there with Falcon 9.

20:02We may have seen the rocket glues to come back and land,

20:06and we also recover the nose cone or faring,

20:10but we do not recover the upper stage.

20:12So we've gone to the point where we're about 70% to 80%

20:18reusable with Falcon 9.

20:21With Starship, we're going for 100% reusable.

20:27I cannot, it's able to say how profound a change this will be,

20:30but a fully and rapidly reusable orbital rocket

20:36has the potential to drop the cost of access to space

20:40by a factor of a thousand.

20:42About a thousand.

20:43A thousand.

20:44Okay.

20:49And I should say also, Starship is,

20:52it's a very big rocket.

20:54It's more than twice the thrust of a Saturn V

20:57and about twice the mass.

21:01And it's also, the entire ship is designed to land

21:07propulsively.

21:08So it can land propulsively.

21:09To do what I didn't hear?

21:10To land on its engines, to land propulsively.

21:13So it can land on any solid surface in the solar system.

21:17So if we can make Starship work, then it enables us to,

21:22over time, get anywhere in the solar system.

21:25So why is it so hard?

21:27Why don't other people do the same thing?

21:29Okay, everyone says it's impossible.

21:31And how much harder is it to do what we're trying to do

21:35than we're doing with Falcon?

21:38Well, so let's see, both gravity is actually quite strong

21:44and we have a thick atmosphere.

21:47So with known physics, it is only barely possible

21:51to make a fully reusable orbital rocket,

21:54only barely possible.

21:57This was a video game, the setting is extreme difficulty.

22:01not impossible but extreme difficulty.

22:05Because it's not like those who have developed rockets

22:08before weren't aware of reusability.

22:11They were fully aware of rockets.

22:14They're fully aware of reusability.

22:15The aircraft and cars are reusable.

22:18It's just that in order for a rocket to be reusable,

22:22everything has to be perfect.

22:25So you have to have exceptionally efficient engines.

22:30You have to have an exceptionally efficient structure.

22:34You need advanced avionics and software.

22:37You need a very lightweight heat shield for orbital reentry.

22:45And then another key factor for traveling to Mars

22:48is you need orbital refilling so that you get the ship to orbit.

22:52And then you send up tankers to refill the ship in orbit,

22:57just like is done by the Air Force with aerial refueling.

23:04Those are the things that are necessary

23:06and it's never been achieved before.

23:12There've been many attempts to achieve it

23:14and they've all been, basically they all failed

23:19and they usually had canceled the program

23:21part way through once they thought

23:23it was no longer possible.

23:25So it's a very difficult engineering challenge.

23:28So SLS is supposed to get to the moon.

23:31They got a contract in 2010.

23:34And it was supposed to be for $10 billion,

23:36but it was cost plus.

23:38It's now up to $40 billion.

23:39And they say it's going to be $100 billion and $90 billion.

23:44And we haven't gotten anything.

23:47And we have our rocket is 10 meters taller than theirs.

23:52And we can reuse ours.

23:57So how can anyone possibly compete

23:59if they're not doing what we're doing?

24:00How can they compete?

24:02I don't understand.

24:03And how can they get contracts?

24:05And then I just saw something from NASA.

24:08And they said that we're spending $20 billion a year.

24:12And oh, by the way, that's 360,000 jobs

24:15in all these congressional districts.

24:18Well, I think I'd be careful of what I say here.

24:27I have enough enemies.

24:33I would like to have smaller number of companies

24:45that want me to die.

24:46That would be great.

24:47But like I said, you know, I think part of this is like what's the goal?

25:03You know, in the case of Starship, the goal is to lower the cost of access to orbit and

25:10ultimately to Mars and the Moon and elsewhere to the point where humanity can actually

25:17afford to become a multi-planet species to the point where we can afford to have a permanent

25:22based on the moon and ultimately far exceed the high watermark of Apollo, which was incredible,

25:28and I think, aspiring to all of humanity, everyone.

25:33If you were to ask people, I think, in any country, not Americans, anyone, what was the

25:41greatest, what was humanity's greatest achievement in the 20th century?

25:45Maybe everyone.

25:46space to go to the moon. And that's why they say moonshot as a metaphor. Because that was

25:54incredible. You know, it's so amazing that there was achieved. In fact, a lot of people

26:02asked me, was it real? I'm like, yeah, it was real.

26:06Well, it's probably on Twitter. That's where they asked that.

26:10Yeah. I mean that was just an incredible achievement and I think it's just one of those things that

26:21you know going to the moon makes you proud to be a member of humanity you know it's

26:27like for all mankind you know that's that it was for all mankind.

26:33So it was amazing achievements and now we have this web telescope you can you

26:40I guess the big bang was 14 billion years ago,

26:43and first light is 13 and a half billion years ago,

26:46and our plan is 4 and a half billion.

26:48So what do we get out of this?

26:50What is the, so obviously,

26:54Starlink, a really big deal,

26:56a trillion dollar opportunity, maybe, maybe more.

27:00And,

27:00maybe.

27:03So what do we get out of seeing back 13 and a half billion years?

27:0813 and a half billion years.

27:09What does that do for us?

27:11What technology do we develop?

27:12Do we know what we don't know until we do it?

27:15Yeah, I think, yeah.

27:25I think like there's two main motivations, I think,

27:29for becoming a multi-planet species

27:32and a space-bearing civilization and then ultimately going

27:37beyond that to go to other star systems

27:40and explore the galaxy.

27:42And I think we may find that there's many one planet civilizations that died out millions

27:47of years ago and never made it to the second planet.

27:50Do you think in your lifetime that happens?

27:53That I will turn to how long I live.

27:56Maybe forever.

27:57You know, if I keep increasing that enemy's list, it might not be much longer.

28:03We deeply are on it if it's someone angry on Twitter that takes me out.

28:10Well, now you keep a wolf Twitter.

28:15Yeah, exactly.

28:17So anyway, I think there's two reasons for life

28:23to become multi-planetary.

28:25Life as we know it to become multi-planetary.

28:26I think one is the defensive reason

28:28where we just, I think we want the light of consciousness

28:32to not be extinguished if something would happen to Earth.

28:36And in the case of the dinosaurs,

28:39They only had to worry about like, you know, meteors and two volcanoes and other things.

28:45But for us humans, we actually have the power to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons

28:51or some sort of, you know, crazy bio-terrorism thing.

28:56So, you know, so there's some danger that is not zero that could cause the end of life

29:05on earth as we know it.

29:06So that's kind of the defensive reason to ensure that life is not just and consciousness is just it's not only on earth

29:15That's the defensive reason to protect the future of consciousness

29:20Then the other big reason I think is that it's exciting and it's it's adventurous and

29:28It's it's it's inspiring

29:31and makes it like

29:33It makes you think positively about the future.

29:38Life can't just be about solving one problem or another.

29:43There needs to be reasons to be inspired.

29:46Reasons to move your heart and say yes, the future is going to be great.

29:51When you wake up in the morning, I can't wait to see what happens next.

29:56And I think that's, you know, humanity, go to Mars.

30:00Even if you don't, yourself want to go to Mars,

30:02and most people don't, just watch it.

30:05It's a tough gig, frankly.

30:10This would not be a luxury expedition.

30:15But you'd be able to watch it happen,

30:17and I think it would just be incredibly inspiring

30:19to the world in the same way that the Apollo program

30:21was inspiring to the world.

30:23And like I said, there's got to be,

30:24Life can't just be about solving one problem or another.

30:28We need things that make us excited and inspired

30:31about the future, and that would be one of them.

30:42So let's go to Twitter just for a minute,

30:44and we'll go back to this stuff,

30:45which is more interesting to me.

30:47I try to get out of the deal.

30:49I told you, you wanted to ask to get out.

30:54I can get back here.

30:57I reminded that scene from the Godfather, basically.

30:59you told me you wanted to ask tough questions. So in Twitter. What could

31:12possibly go wrong? So I saw this article. It says you bought something called Twitter.

31:20And it says, must put off lifting Twitter bands. And so obviously the big

31:29deal to me anyway in Twitter is that so we have this incredible, it was incredibly poorly

31:37managed this business and but those guys somehow did great for their shareholders by selling

31:43it to us.

31:47But we didn't buy what they're selling, we bought something of what it's going to become.

31:51Yes, I mean I think it's, most people would say like you're given how the market has evolved

31:58this year of the prices on the high side.

32:00Right.

32:01Right.

32:02But that's on basis of what it is.

32:05Yes.

32:06But in terms of what I think there is a tremendous amount of potential, it will be

32:12very difficult to achieve, but I think possible.

32:15And I think ultimately it could be one of the most valuable companies in the world.

32:21So, when we think about this, in order for that to happen, in order for that, so I think

32:28I met you and took me a few years,

32:30and then I believe in you and your heart, right, no heart.

32:34And so.

32:35I think you were a skeptical,

32:36and at our first meeting you were a bit skeptical.

32:37Ha ha ha ha.

32:38Ha ha ha ha.

32:40And so, the way I think about it is that,

32:43so what I'm trusting you with the future of our country,

32:46the world actually, when you're in charge of a media,

32:48like that.

32:50And so what I think about is,

32:52so how do you prevent to be in Jewish?

32:55How do you prevent this anti-Semitism or if I were black?

32:59How do you prevent all of the,

33:01the how do you prevent the use of the N word?

33:08And when I think about TikTok,

33:10and they're able, we're just looking at pictures

33:14to tell what you're gonna do,

33:15you know, you move your left arm,

33:17you move your right arm,

33:18what you other pictures you like.

33:20So that's what they do with their software

33:21and they grade their algorithm.

33:23How can we not have an amazing algorithm?

33:26Because we know more about them doing with TikTok

33:28And we ought to know what interest people have.

33:32And because of that in words, we should be able to figure

33:36out words that people are using what that means

33:39and considering what they content they're interested in.

33:43We should be able to figure out the software how

33:45to moderate this and prevent that from happening.

33:47Is that true or not?

33:48Yes, absolutely.

33:49I totally agree.

33:50I want to be clear.

33:54But content moderation policies have not changed at Twitter.

34:00And it is not OK to engage in hateful conduct on Twitter.

34:06So we have had actually, oddly, targeted attacks,

34:19where temporarily people have been able to put some hate speech

34:21on Twitter.

34:23But it has been taken down immediately.

34:26So now, part of what I'm trying to achieve with this sort

34:32of enabling everyone to be payment verified

34:36with Twitter Blue is to try to get as many people payment

34:40verified as possible.

34:42It's only eight bucks a month.

34:45Although for some people that were complaining about that,

34:48and these are people who pay more with the net for their latte.

34:51I'm going to be one of your Twitter friends.

34:52Thank you.

34:52Thank you.

34:54But it's part of its revenue, part of it is payment authentication.

34:59And so if somebody, because there is a huge problem with spam and

35:05bots and trolls on Twitter and organizations trying to manipulate a public

35:10opinion and just generally making the system worse.

35:16And I think that there is an answer to that, which is to get as many

35:22Regular users of Twitter to be a subscriber for eight dollars a month

35:27You'll get a lot more than just a blue check mark for eight dollars a month because now we can afford long-form video

35:32along for long audio podcasts

35:35And we can also start sharing revenue with content creators, which is essential

35:41Keep them a chance to make money. Yeah, absolutely

35:43Just so I mean right now you see on Twitter you'll see a lot of links posted to YouTube and TikTok

35:50And that's because at least until now Twitter is not even given them enough video length to post their video

35:57And then they give the content creators no means of monetizing the video

36:01So we're gonna change that rapidly at Twitter. It's gonna be transformative

36:06But if we can get enough verified users and we're gonna prioritize

36:11Twitter search replies

36:14mentions

36:15by verified users first and

36:18And, yeah, that's what we're getting.

36:22That's what we're called, amplified?

36:24Yeah, so if you're payment verified with Boot Checkmark,

36:29then you'll pre-priotize.

36:32And so the point of this is to make crime not to pay

36:38because right now to create a bot on Twitter

36:41costs less than a penny.

36:43So the cost of crime is so cheap,

36:46And that's part of why crime and hateful conduct pays.

36:50But if somebody risks losing even $8,

36:55it's too expensive to now have 100,000 fake accounts.

36:59Because they have to spend $800,000 a month,

37:04as opposed to $800 a month.

37:09And then we also, since we're using payment authentication,

37:12we're piggybacking on the authentication system

37:15of the payment system.

37:16And we're also paying you back in the scope of Apple's

37:19authentication system, which is another layer of security.

37:22So the net effect will be over time

37:25that the verified users will pretty much always

37:29be at the top of comments and search.

37:33And you won't really see, you'll have to scroll

37:35far to see the unverified users, which

37:38will be the bots and trolls and whatnot.

37:41And this is sort of analogous to Google Search.

37:48If you go to page 8 of Google Search,

37:50there will be a ton of scams and stuff,

37:55call it page 8, page 9, something like that.

37:59And the thing is that Google Search results

38:01are so good for page 1 that you never go to page 8.

38:06So it's rare.

38:08And the old joke is like.

38:09of something we don't want to see it gets pushed way down.

38:11Yeah, just basically the bad stuff gets pushed way down.

38:16And then crime stops paying, and then they stop

38:19trying to do all these things.

38:20And we can recruit them as engineers to program for us

38:23crime guys.

38:24Yeah.

38:26So I mean, the joke is like, what's

38:28the best place to hide a dead body would be the second page

38:31of Google search results?

38:34Nobody ever goes there.

38:38So today we fired half of Twitter,

38:43and that should save us, what, four billion a year?

38:48No, I was not gonna say four billion a year, I wish.

38:53So, I mean, to be frank,

38:56Twitter was having pretty serious revenue challenges

38:59and cost challenges before the acquisition talks started.

39:04And any company that is dependent on advertising has had a hard time.

39:10So if you look at say, Snap or Google, Facebook, whatnot,

39:16they've all had a difficult time with advertising revenue dropping.

39:21And Twitter is more currently more vulnerable than they are to advertising

39:28because most of Twitter's advertising is large brand advertising,

39:32as opposed to direct response.

39:34So it's kind of like a much more discretionary ad spend

39:37than it is for, like if you can do direct response

39:44for a specific product.

39:48And then we also recently had a lot of difficulty

39:52with activist groups pressuring major advertisers

39:57to stop spending money on Twitter.

40:01This is despite us doing everything

40:02possible to appease them and to make it clear that moderation rules and hateful conduct

40:07rules have not changed and we're continuing to enforce them. A number of major advertisers

40:15have stopped spending on Twitter. But this doesn't seem right because we've made no change

40:22in our operations at all. But nonetheless, the activist groups have been successful in

40:31causing a massive drop in Twitter advertising revenue.

40:35And we've done our absolute best to appease them,

40:37and nothing is working.

40:39So this is a major concern, and I think this is frankly

40:44an attack on the First Amendment.

40:46Like if activist groups can pressure advertisers

40:51upon which Twitter is fundamentally dependent

40:55to suppress free speech, then that doesn't seem right.

41:07I meant by the way 400 million instead of four billion.

41:10I meant actually 400 million instead of four billion.

41:13Oh yeah.

41:16Okay, so we're now there.

41:18We're living at this place.

41:19You go there for the next couple, three weeks,

41:23you're gonna devote, and then we have a team lined up.

41:26You think you have a team lined up to manage it,

41:30and then you would just do it the same way

41:31we do with SpaceX and Tesla,

41:33where you just attend the meetings regularly,

41:35say this is what we need to do, do it.

41:42Well, this is what we need.

41:44Yeah, my workload went up from about, I don't know,

41:4970 to 8 hours a week to probably 120.

41:54So yeah, I go to sleep, I wake up, I work,

41:59I go to sleep, wake up, work, do that seven days a week.

42:02I'll have to do that for a while.

42:04It's no choice.

42:07But I think once Twitter is set on the right path,

42:11I think it is a much easier thing to manage

42:13than SpaceX or Tesla.

42:16So, and I really understand the internet

42:22and how to make ROT software personally for 20 years.

42:31You know, it's one of the key people behind

42:35x.com which became PayPal.

42:36And so I also like I'm aware of like a I know how to make a way better PayPal

42:48Yeah, yeah pretty much I mean with a lot of other people but there's

42:55There's a product plan I wrote which I wish I'd kept a copy of in July of 2000

43:00where I thought it would be possible to make the most valuable financial institution in

43:05the world and we're going to execute that plan from 22 years ago, which amazingly no one

43:11has done.

43:13And so I think that's part of why I think total will be ultimately extremely valuable

43:21because I'm going to execute the x.com game plan from 22 years ago.

43:29some improvements. And we're also going to obviously make Twitter just a way

43:37about our system. I mean, it's a sense of reason that, you know, if the social media

43:45company is not taking steps to make it positive to be on that social platform,

43:56then people won't come or they'll leave, you know.

44:00So you speak of sort of anti-Semitism or racism

44:03or anything like that.

44:04Well, I mean, who's gonna stay on a platform

44:07if that's prevalent?

44:08Like that's, that's, yeah.

44:10I mean, come on.

44:12Part of it's inherent wrongness.

44:13Who's gonna stay on the platform?

44:16So you wanna be, it needs to be something where,

44:22like our goal with Twitter is like,

44:24how do we get 80% of America?

44:25Maybe not the far left and the far right,

44:28but maybe we don't want them necessarily.

44:31But how do we get 80% of the public

44:34to join a digital town square

44:38and voice their opinion and exchange ideas

44:41and maybe once in a while change their minds?

44:44An occasion.

44:45Yeah, I mean, once in a while.

44:49So Red also that you said,

44:51and then we'll move off the Twitter,

44:52But you said that your goal is you want to make the 20% of people who are on the far right

44:58hate you, just like you want to make the 20% of people on the far left hate you.

45:03So...

45:04Well, I don't want them to hate me.

45:07But I think the extremists, it's very difficult to satisfy extremists.

45:14So, unless you fully buy into whatever their dog may is.

45:19But I'm confident we can satisfy, I don't know, 80% of America, 80% of the world, but maybe

45:27not the most, the 10% most extreme of either side.

45:31And I would count that as a great outcome.

45:34And I think it is important to have a sort of a digital town square where people feel comfortable

45:39talking.

45:42And I also think it's like one of the things that's important is to be able to sort of

45:46decide what kind of experience you want to have on Twitter.

45:50Because some people might say, OK,

45:52like, this was a radio station.

45:55I want the easy listening smooth jazz station.

45:59OK, cool.

46:01So you feel to have that setting for Twitter.

46:04And then some people might say, no, I want heavy metal thrash.

46:09And like, OK, so now this is going to be sort of,

46:12then you don't mind someone saying mean things to you

46:15within the context of the law, and you don't mind engaging in vigorous arguments on Twitter

46:20and that kind of thing.

46:22But you should be able to kind of like pick your preference and decide if you want sort

46:28of full contact battle or do you want like no, I just want to look at poppies and flowers

46:34and nice landscapes and stuff.

46:36So let's go off Twitter.

46:39two other topics, 40 has some questions.

46:43The number one is logistics.

46:45When we're starting to make so many cars

46:50by the end of this year, 40,000 cars a week.

46:55I mean, I have to be careful of MMPI,

46:58but I believe I have said in the past publicly

47:01that our aspiration is to reach 40,000 a week

47:03by the end of this year.

47:04So if we're doing that, then that means

47:06that we're producing a car over 15 seconds.

47:09Yeah.

47:10And so, but that's still only two million cars a year.

47:16There's a hundred million cars that are made a year.

47:20And so the question, so presumably capacity to be able to

47:25logistics to ship all these cars all over the place to have people

47:29pick them up where they want them.

47:31But not if they all do them in the same week.

47:33Yes, totally.

47:34So, I mean, we're a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of

47:37A bit of criticism from our Q3 results because we had a lot of cars in transit.

47:45And the reason was that we got too big for our cars to actually be transported in the

47:49final few weeks.

47:52There's weren't enough car carriers and weren't enough ships.

47:55But it's actually good in the long run to smooth out deliveries and actually have cars

48:03and transit at the end of the quarter, because then you're not rushing to get everything

48:08delivered by the end of the quarter and paying all these expedite fees.

48:13So my question always is, we have autonomous driving and we have autonomous trucks.

48:18Is that one of the ideas that we're going to be able to move things around with our own

48:21with the sound of drivers that we're going to have autonomous transport?

48:25Yes.

48:26That's question one.

48:28We can also, yeah, I mean, if you're in the area, have the car just drive to you.

48:33And then the other one was about materials.

48:38And when all of a sudden, so we have somehow navigated supply chain problems from other

48:45people.

48:46And you might have thought that it was the absolute brilliance that we had to be able

48:49to do that.

48:50But probably the reason is that when you start off and you don't make any cars a year and

48:56you go to someone and say we're going to make 20 million cars a year from zero, who's going

49:00to believe you and make all the equipment that we need.

49:04So as a result of that, you were forced initially

49:06to be able to say, OK, we're going to get,

49:09we'll vertically integrate.

49:11We can't rely on you.

49:12We'll do vertically integration.

49:14And cut it.

49:18Materials.

49:19I can talk longer if you'd like.

49:20Don't shoot the messenger.

49:23Talk a little bit longer.

49:25Materials.

49:26So we have geology.

49:27Anyone wants to show us in mind, we

49:30We've got people in minds who are knowledgeable and they come to us and say we can produce

49:35this much lithium, this much copper, this much.

49:38We are able to assess that and give contracts to be able to say contractual agreements.

49:45Okay, and they'll rely on our agreement, other people they won't.

49:49Is that fair and Glencore the enough?

49:53Well, the scaling constraints change as time goes by.

49:56And in the beginning, we were very vertically integrated because suppliers didn't take us

50:03seriously.

50:04Like we could get hardly any of the A, of the best suppliers wouldn't talk to us because

50:09the car startup has not been successful in the United States since Chrysler in the 30s,

50:14I believe they started.

50:16So it's been a century since the car company was successful in the US.

50:19That was not a foreign car company coming in with that was already successful in their

50:23home market.

50:24But for an American car startup, it was the first, it tells us

50:27for success in 100 years.

50:29So you can imagine if you're an auto supplier,

50:31that doesn't sound like a smart financial decision.

50:33Exactly.

50:35So then we had to just build a lot of the stuff ourselves.

50:40Be vodically integrated or we couldn't create the car.

50:44And then that ended up being an asset because now we understood

50:48so much about the entire supply chain

50:50and what it took to build a car.

50:52So we were able to design a more integrated vehicle

50:58that actually needed far fewer parts

51:02and costs less and weighs less and has higher performance.

51:08But it is looking increasingly like

51:10for some of the critical elements of batteries

51:13that Tesla will need to get into the mining business,

51:16mining and refining.

51:18That's why Glencore was announced.

51:20That's where we're talking to Glencore, we were.

51:22No, and we've never contemplated investing in Glencore.

51:27I'm talking about Tesla doing it.

51:30Ourselves.

51:31Yes.

51:32Trans

51:44No Q&A.

51:45Who's there?

51:47The power's about to hear.

51:48I'll do it anyway.

51:49I mean, is it from me or you?

51:50I don't know.

51:52Questions?

51:54So by the way, if you leave before we give away

51:58the door prizes, which are two Teslas,

52:01you're not eligible to get the Teslas.

52:03But go ahead.

52:07I gave an extra one once, I guess it last time.

52:11But we're not going to do that again.

52:12I got to be in your seat in order to get the Tesla's.

52:16I'm paying for it, not Elon.

52:19Questions?

52:26Elon, Santa once said, every genius has a touch of madness.

52:33I thought you'd like that quote.

52:35I agree with the madness part.

52:39So even with Tesla's a publicly traded company,

52:44I think it's down 40% or something from its high,

52:48is selling at 70 times earnings.

52:50Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz, which now produces EVs,

52:54is selling for six times earnings and yielding 5%.

52:59Why should I invest in Tesla rather than Mercedes-Benz?

53:06Well, I actually rarely try to convince anyone

53:12to invest in Tesla.

53:14And many times I've recommended people don't invest in Tesla and I've set off stock is too high

53:22But then people just ignore me and keep buying the stock some reason

53:27so

53:29But if I think at

53:31At a very high level I'd say that autonomy is an insanely fundamental breakthrough

53:38And and no one is even close to Tesla

53:41for solving generalized autonomy,

53:45generalized self-driving vehicles.

53:47No one's even close.

53:50And with self-driving, as I was talking about earlier,

53:55the car becomes, call it roughly five times more useful,

53:59but it costs the same to build.

54:01Now can you imagine what would happen if a company was doing,

54:04we're doing like a 25 to 30% gross margins,

54:08But suddenly that same thing was five times more valuable.

54:16What would that do to the value of Tesla and the value of that car?

54:22It boggles the mind, actually.

54:26So if you think of net present value of future cash flows,

54:32if you actually do the math on that, it's insane.

54:36Then there's also the Optimus program, which

54:39is our humanoid robot, which we will leverage manufacturing

54:44expertise and the intelligence we've developed for self-driving

54:49to have a useful humanoid robot.

54:54Now, the economy is fundamentally GDP per capita

54:57times capita.

54:59If you no longer have a constraint on capita

55:00because of a useful humanoid robot,

55:02it is not clear that there is any limit

55:04to the size of the economy.

55:15And these things will actually happen.

55:18So that's probably a good reason.

55:23Yeah.

55:24Yeah.

55:25One more question.

55:26Okay.

55:32This is the last question.

55:35You have given all the cars that you're going to make.

55:51And I hope Ron's right, whether it's 10 million or 20 million.

55:56You're going to need a lot of charging stations around the world.

56:02Have you thought about doing it more efficiently and more economically and better for our ecosystem

56:15from an ESG perspective?

56:17Because you may or may not know, there are 400 million existing streetlights in the world.

56:26And every street light has pervasive, persistent electricity.

56:32You could take some amount of those street lights which are half owned by utilities and

56:37half owned by cities and repurpose that.

56:42And that would probably be the most cost efficient way to roll out millions of charging stations

56:49all over the world.

56:50Well, thanks. I think they actually are using that idea in London and some other cities.

56:57But if, I mean, I think the long-term goal for our supercharger stations is that they

57:03will have solar, like Tesla solar and batteries at them so that they are as many as possible

57:09are self-sustaining, that the supercharger stations generate the energy during the day

57:15and then also have a localized battery pack

57:18to so that people can charge at night.

57:21So that the Tesla Supercharging stations

57:24would continue to function even in a zombie apocalypse.

57:27So just never know, that's coming one day, we know it.

57:31It's just a matter of time.

57:36Thank you very much.

57:37Thank you to Selfie with you.

57:39That's Selfie, a post that on Twitter.

57:53Your arms are longer than mine.

57:56Also, please use Twitter.

57:58And please subscribe to Twitter Verified eight bucks.

58:05And actually it's technically at 7.99, so slightly less.

58:11But I really encourage everyone here to use Twitter.

58:15And yeah, please do that.

58:22Here we go.

58:26How do we do this?

58:26I guess this row.

58:30Okay.

58:31All right.

58:32Thank you, everyone.

58:33Thank you very much, Ian.

58:37I appreciate it.

58:38Are you staying around for dinner?

58:39That's a good idea for the position.

58:40I really appreciate it.

58:42Are you staying around for dinner?

58:46At that set, video deposition.