罗恩·巴伦采访马斯克（2022年11月4日）

0:07I tell you something. Every time I see that clip, it chills me. Every single time. And I look at it a lot. So thank you very much for coming here. I know it's not convenient, it's not around the corner. I'm really appreciative. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I was on a red-eye flight, so I'm a little slow at the normal.

0:31I didn't get much sleep. You know, that's sort of my first question. Is that so you're 51? Yeah And those bring I think I'm safely not a spring chicken anymore Late summer chicken But just but you I mean look great They're 51 and You 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. It's amazing to me. I mean, you're changing the world and you're giving yourself. Why do you do this? So my wife says to me, why are you still working? Why are you still working? What are you doing here? Well, I think that what I'm working on has an important effect on the future.

1:29In the case of Tesla, I think it's fair to say that Tesla has significantly accelerated the advent of sustainable energy. You know, before Tesla, no one was doing electric cars. And now, as a result of Tesla, I think almost every major car company in the world is building electric cars.

1:51And that's a pretty big deal. But there's still a long way to go to transition the world to a sustainable energy economy. And so we still have a lot of work ahead of us at Tesla. but that's our goal there. And then for SpaceX, I think it's important for the future to be exciting and for humanities existence

2:16to be insured over the long term. I think we must become a multi-planet species and a space-bearing civilization. You know, I think the, we're here like 4 and 1 half billion years after Earth got started, 13.8 billion years into the age of the universe. It'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 in ancient Sumeria around 5 or 6,000 years ago. So we've basically just been here for a very brief instance. A blink. All 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 continues. Because we should really view consciousness as a small candle in a vast darkness. It could easily go out. So 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. So when you started SpaceX, you didn't think about satellites. When you started Tesla, you didn't think about robots. When you don't have enough people, you didn't think about robots. And so you didn't think about autonomous driving.

3:58And without Elon, there would not be electric cars. Nobody who makes cars wants to make electric cars. They're being forced to make them. In fact, every time they sell electric cars, they sell one fewer car that they make money on. And they have all that money invested in plants that make those other cars.

4:16So nobody wants to have these cars except for him. And everybody thought it was going to fail. So one of the things you said is that patents are for the week. And you share your patents. And with other companies, of course, on the other hand, when they get your patents, you're two or three years ahead of them.

4:37Well, I mean, joking about patents for the week, I think there is a role for patents. Let's say if somebody's spent, if somebody's spent a lot of money developing, in particular medicine, and had to go through the expense of stage three medical trials, and 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. So there are definitely roles for patents. In the case of Tesla, our goal is to advance sustainable energy. And we can't just do it by ourselves. We 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. So must be terrifying to other companies to realize that we make cars. It's $39,000 and cost the car. And we're making $15,000, $16,000 in profit a car. And so we invest $7 billion, and we make $15 billion a year.

5:45I'm sorry, yeah. And 15, right. 15 million cars, 15,000, 15 million a year on a $7 million investment. Shocking. So no one else does that. And when we're, and here you're telling us how, you want to make cars for $20,000 a piece. How do you do that? Well, we've not formally announced our next car program.

6:13So I can't talk too much about our upcoming vehicle program programs that have not been announced. But we do expect to make cars that are more affordable than the current Model 3 or Model Y. And a big factor in this is, yeah. But 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 day. And so, but there's 168 hours a week. So if there were autonomous, you could probably drive, the cars could drive for 50 or 60 hours. So 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. It would also mean that there was, we wouldn't need anywhere near as many parking lots. And this would also be helpful for the environment because you would need far fewer cars. So 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. You invest $7 billion and you make $15 billion a year. Who does that? And for a plant that makes things manufacturing. And so the way this is accomplished is that so you're doing it with casting right now and We 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? Why don't they try to do what we're doing? In fact, one of the executives of another automobile company wanted me to introduce her to you. And you did that once in a meeting and now she wants to come visit with her Director of 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 It's so fast by the time anyone copies what we're doing, it's going to something else. What else is there? When you're casting, what else is there that enables us to make that cheaper? We're eliminating a lot of other parts, we're eliminating functions.

8:39What are we doing to do that? How do we sell a car that's so cheap? I mean, I think the full explanation or at least an accurate explanation would take a long time because the first approximation, a car is made of 10,000 unique parts and prices steps. 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. Probably 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 of anything. People here may find it helpful. The first thing you should do is make the requirements that you've been given a less dumb. Whatever constraints and requirements were 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 question. And the requirements must be given from a person who can explain the requirement, not from a department, because then you don't know who to talk to. Then step two is delete the 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 mistake or there was a step that people someone thought was needed but was not actually needed. The sounds are saying the obvious but we have deleted so many parts from the car that were did nothing.

10:44They were just there? Well, yeah, I mean, I could give you so many examples. One example was there were three fiberglass mats on top of the battery pack. They partially covered the battery pack. And 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 last mats to the top of the battery pack. And so the reason I repeat this all for myself is that I first did things backwards. First, I try to automate it. Then I try to accelerate it, just have the go faster. Then I try to simplify it.

11:33And only then did I delete it. Because 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 team, which was for battery fire prevention. And then I asked the battery fire prevention team what they needed for, and they said, noise 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 trouble for a part that should not exist. And then another example was there was a, again, this was like, these were choke points in the entire production system. That's why they, I'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 and Let's see we have the the body production line a model through we at one point stuck because That we had a laser welding cell to Weld 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? Because the entire factory stopped trying to get the laser weld cell to work. And I'm like, I can't imagine what useful thing it could do. And 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? And said, oh, no, that didn't do anything. We should delete it. I turned out to be totally useless. They forgot to tell the production team. So, honestly, a bunch of these things just feel like you're living in a Dilbert cartoon.

13:37Oh, no. What's that? I mean, any given company, they should have like, what's your Dilbert ratio? Okay. It's not zero. So, is this you or is this your core? Dilbert question. Try to keep it low. So, is this you or is this, so you do all these different things? different things. You know, it's literally me.

14:00So, do you have... Someone else who did this, I was in the factory in Fremont and Nevada for three years straight. It was my primary residence. Not kidding, literally. Did you keep the couch? I actually stepped in a couch at one point in a tent on the roof. And 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. And it was damn uncomfortable sleeping on that floor and always when I woke up I'd smell like metal dust. We went to visit and they bought him a new couch. Yeah. But 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 during shift change, the entire team could see me. And this is important because, like, you know, the team, like, if they think that the sort of, their leader is off somewhere having a good time, you know, drinking my ties on Tropical Island, which I could definitely have been doing, and would much have preferred to do, I'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 just with nothing, they knew I was there. And that made a huge difference. And then they gave it their role. So the focus is on always lowering costs and providing leadership. In 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? What happens in five years if you're not there? How does that work? Are there all these people? So in all the engineering schools, the top engineering schools, the top choice of where everybody wants to work is test their SpaceX. Those two places.

16:09So do we have all these people coming up and writing each other for the job, or they're working together, how do you get people to say, gee, I could buy that real expensive house, but I'm not gonna do that. Boy, I could buy, I could go out on vacation. I'm not gonna, I was, I'm, Well, we do have that problem a little bit.

16:26So, you know, as a company has prosperity and then people become wealthy, then for a lot of people, you know, that once they become past, it's sort of independently wealthy, they just can't bring themselves to work, that they don't want to work. And that's totally understandable, I'm no judgment.

16:47And so I mean, I have a lot of friends who are extremely talented. And they had some success earlier in life, and they just decided that was enough trauma. And one of my good friends of mine is saying like starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss. So 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. And so we have, no, competitors sort of, I guess. So SLS. And you know, I read about, that's not it, you know. Just bowing Northropine Lockheed. And with those guys, when they build a launching pad, it took them like 10 years and billions of dollars. And we had a build of a launching pad and it cost a few hundred million dollars and did it in six months.

18:10And then I was interested in how that was done. And the woman I'm talking to says that, Ron, did you see the plumbing when you went there? I said, why should it cost hundreds of millions? It looks like it's a landing field. And I said, would you see what's underneath? Did you see the plumbing?

18:26I said, no, they didn't show that to me. And she said, well, you should be aware that there's all these pipes that take away the heat. And then they all deliver fuel to the rocket. And it has to be there in an exact right amount at the exact right time. And if it's not, that doesn't happen, it blows up.

18:43And he says, well, how does Elon know this? And because you hire these great people, and then you ask them all these questions, and then somehow you remember everything I tell you. Is that true? Well, my memory for technical matters is very good. And I think probably a lot of people don't realize, like, what I do, apes in the time is

19:08engineering. So it's quite rare for me to give a talk. And my day-to-day work at SpaceX and Tesla is almost entirely engineering and design. So and also production. Production is key, but although I consider that to be part of engineering. Yeah. So Starship is something special.

19:40The thing that is like the holy grail, like the critical breakthrough needed to make life multi-planetary and for humanity to be a space-bearing civilization is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, orbital rocket. And so we've gone most of the way there with Falcon 9. We may have seen the rocket glues to come back and land, and we also recover the nose cone or faring, but we do not recover the upper stage.

20:12So we've gone to the point where we're about 70% to 80% reusable with Falcon 9. With Starship, we're going for 100% reusable. I cannot, it's able to say how profound a change this will be, but a fully and rapidly reusable orbital rocket has the potential to drop the cost of access to space by a factor of a thousand.

20:42About a thousand. A thousand. Okay. And I should say also, Starship is, it's a very big rocket. It's more than twice the thrust of a Saturn V and about twice the mass. And it's also, the entire ship is designed to land propulsively. So it can land propulsively. To do what I didn't hear?

21:10To land on its engines, to land propulsively. So it can land on any solid surface in the solar system. So if we can make Starship work, then it enables us to, over time, get anywhere in the solar system. So why is it so hard? Why don't other people do the same thing? Okay, everyone says it's impossible.

21:31And how much harder is it to do what we're trying to do than we're doing with Falcon? Well, so let's see, both gravity is actually quite strong and we have a thick atmosphere. So with known physics, it is only barely possible to make a fully reusable orbital rocket, only barely possible.

21:57This was a video game, the setting is extreme difficulty. not impossible but extreme difficulty. Because it's not like those who have developed rockets before weren't aware of reusability. They were fully aware of rockets. They're fully aware of reusability. The aircraft and cars are reusable.

22:18It's just that in order for a rocket to be reusable, everything has to be perfect. So you have to have exceptionally efficient engines. You have to have an exceptionally efficient structure. You need advanced avionics and software. You need a very lightweight heat shield for orbital reentry.

22:45And then another key factor for traveling to Mars is you need orbital refilling so that you get the ship to orbit. And then you send up tankers to refill the ship in orbit, just like is done by the Air Force with aerial refueling. Those are the things that are necessary and it's never been achieved before.

23:12There've been many attempts to achieve it and they've all been, basically they all failed and they usually had canceled the program part way through once they thought it was no longer possible. So it's a very difficult engineering challenge. So SLS is supposed to get to the moon.

23:31They got a contract in 2010. And it was supposed to be for $10 billion, but it was cost plus. It's now up to $40 billion. And they say it's going to be $100 billion and $90 billion. And we haven't gotten anything. And we have our rocket is 10 meters taller than theirs. And we can reuse ours.

23:57So how can anyone possibly compete if they're not doing what we're doing? How can they compete? I don't understand. And how can they get contracts? And then I just saw something from NASA. And they said that we're spending $20 billion a year. And oh, by the way, that's 360,000 jobs in all these congressional districts.

24:18Well, I think I'd be careful of what I say here. I have enough enemies. I would like to have smaller number of companies that want me to die. That would be great. But 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 ultimately to Mars and the Moon and elsewhere to the point where humanity can actually afford to become a multi-planet species to the point where we can afford to have a permanent based 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. If you were to ask people, I think, in any country, not Americans, anyone, what was the greatest, what was humanity's greatest achievement in the 20th century? Maybe everyone. space 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 asked me, was it real? I'm like, yeah, it was real. Well, it's probably on Twitter. That's where they asked that. Yeah. 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 like for all mankind you know that's that it was for all mankind. So it was amazing achievements and now we have this web telescope you can you I guess the big bang was 14 billion years ago, and first light is 13 and a half billion years ago, and our plan is 4 and a half billion.

26:48So what do we get out of this? What is the, so obviously, Starlink, a really big deal, a trillion dollar opportunity, maybe, maybe more. And, maybe. So what do we get out of seeing back 13 and a half billion years? 13 and a half billion years. What does that do for us? What technology do we develop?

27:12Do we know what we don't know until we do it? Yeah, I think, yeah. I think like there's two main motivations, I think, for becoming a multi-planet species and a space-bearing civilization and then ultimately going beyond that to go to other star systems and explore the galaxy. And 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. Do you think in your lifetime that happens? That I will turn to how long I live. Maybe forever. You know, if I keep increasing that enemy's list, it might not be much longer. We deeply are on it if it's someone angry on Twitter that takes me out.

28:10Well, now you keep a wolf Twitter. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I think there's two reasons for life to become multi-planetary. Life as we know it to become multi-planetary. I think one is the defensive reason where we just, I think we want the light of consciousness to not be extinguished if something would happen to Earth.

28:36And in the case of the dinosaurs, They only had to worry about like, you know, meteors and two volcanoes and other things. But for us humans, we actually have the power to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons or some sort of, you know, crazy bio-terrorism thing. So, 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. So that's kind of the defensive reason to ensure that life is not just and consciousness is just it's not only on earth That's the defensive reason to protect the future of consciousness Then 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 and makes it like It makes you think positively about the future. Life can't just be about solving one problem or another. There needs to be reasons to be inspired. Reasons to move your heart and say yes, the future is going to be great. When 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. Even if you don't, yourself want to go to Mars, and most people don't, just watch it. It's a tough gig, frankly. This would not be a luxury expedition. But you'd be able to watch it happen, and I think it would just be incredibly inspiring to the world in the same way that the Apollo program was inspiring to the world.

30:23And like I said, there's got to be, Life can't just be about solving one problem or another. We need things that make us excited and inspired about the future, and that would be one of them. So let's go to Twitter just for a minute, and we'll go back to this stuff, which is more interesting to me.

30:47I try to get out of the deal. I told you, you wanted to ask to get out. I can get back here. I reminded that scene from the Godfather, basically. you 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. And it says, must put off lifting Twitter bands. And so obviously the big deal to me anyway in Twitter is that so we have this incredible, it was incredibly poorly managed this business and but those guys somehow did great for their shareholders by selling

31:43it to us. But we didn't buy what they're selling, we bought something of what it's going to become. Yes, I mean I think it's, most people would say like you're given how the market has evolved this year of the prices on the high side. Right. Right. But that's on basis of what it is.

32:05Yes. But in terms of what I think there is a tremendous amount of potential, it will be very difficult to achieve, but I think possible. And I think ultimately it could be one of the most valuable companies in the world. So, 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, and then I believe in you and your heart, right, no heart. And so. I think you were a skeptical, and at our first meeting you were a bit skeptical. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. And so, the way I think about it is that, so what I'm trusting you with the future of our country, the world actually, when you're in charge of a media, like that.

32:50And so what I think about is, so how do you prevent to be in Jewish? How do you prevent this anti-Semitism or if I were black? How do you prevent all of the, the how do you prevent the use of the N word? And when I think about TikTok, and they're able, we're just looking at pictures to tell what you're gonna do, you know, you move your left arm, you move your right arm, what you other pictures you like.

33:20So that's what they do with their software and they grade their algorithm. How can we not have an amazing algorithm? Because we know more about them doing with TikTok And we ought to know what interest people have. And because of that in words, we should be able to figure out words that people are using what that means and considering what they content they're interested in.

33:43We should be able to figure out the software how to moderate this and prevent that from happening. Is that true or not? Yes, absolutely. I totally agree. I want to be clear. But content moderation policies have not changed at Twitter. And it is not OK to engage in hateful conduct on Twitter.

34:06So we have had actually, oddly, targeted attacks, where temporarily people have been able to put some hate speech on Twitter. But it has been taken down immediately. So now, part of what I'm trying to achieve with this sort of enabling everyone to be payment verified with Twitter Blue is to try to get as many people payment

34:40verified as possible. It's only eight bucks a month. Although for some people that were complaining about that, and these are people who pay more with the net for their latte. I'm going to be one of your Twitter friends. Thank you. Thank you. But 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 bots and trolls on Twitter and organizations trying to manipulate a public opinion and just generally making the system worse. And I think that there is an answer to that, which is to get as many Regular 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 along for long audio podcasts And we can also start sharing revenue with content creators, which is essential Keep them a chance to make money. Yeah, absolutely Just 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 And then they give the content creators no means of monetizing the video So we're gonna change that rapidly at Twitter. It's gonna be transformative But if we can get enough verified users and we're gonna prioritize

36:11Twitter search replies mentions by verified users first and And, yeah, that's what we're getting. That's what we're called, amplified? Yeah, so if you're payment verified with Boot Checkmark, then you'll pre-priotize. And so the point of this is to make crime not to pay because right now to create a bot on Twitter costs less than a penny.

36:43So the cost of crime is so cheap, And that's part of why crime and hateful conduct pays. But if somebody risks losing even $8, it's too expensive to now have 100,000 fake accounts. Because they have to spend $800,000 a month, as opposed to $800 a month. And then we also, since we're using payment authentication, we're piggybacking on the authentication system of the payment system.

37:16And we're also paying you back in the scope of Apple's authentication system, which is another layer of security. So the net effect will be over time that the verified users will pretty much always be at the top of comments and search. And you won't really see, you'll have to scroll far to see the unverified users, which will be the bots and trolls and whatnot.

37:41And this is sort of analogous to Google Search. If you go to page 8 of Google Search, there will be a ton of scams and stuff, call it page 8, page 9, something like that. And the thing is that Google Search results are so good for page 1 that you never go to page 8. So it's rare.

38:08And the old joke is like. of something we don't want to see it gets pushed way down. Yeah, just basically the bad stuff gets pushed way down. And then crime stops paying, and then they stop trying to do all these things. And we can recruit them as engineers to program for us crime guys.

38:24Yeah. So I mean, the joke is like, what's the best place to hide a dead body would be the second page of Google search results? Nobody ever goes there. So today we fired half of Twitter, and that should save us, what, four billion a year? No, I was not gonna say four billion a year, I wish.

38:53So, I mean, to be frank, Twitter was having pretty serious revenue challenges and cost challenges before the acquisition talks started. And any company that is dependent on advertising has had a hard time. So if you look at say, Snap or Google, Facebook, whatnot, they've all had a difficult time with advertising revenue dropping.

39:21And Twitter is more currently more vulnerable than they are to advertising because most of Twitter's advertising is large brand advertising, as opposed to direct response. So it's kind of like a much more discretionary ad spend than it is for, like if you can do direct response for a specific product.

39:48And then we also recently had a lot of difficulty with activist groups pressuring major advertisers to stop spending money on Twitter. This is despite us doing everything possible to appease them and to make it clear that moderation rules and hateful conduct rules 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 in our operations at all. But nonetheless, the activist groups have been successful in causing a massive drop in Twitter advertising revenue. And we've done our absolute best to appease them, and nothing is working.

40:39So this is a major concern, and I think this is frankly an attack on the First Amendment. Like if activist groups can pressure advertisers upon which Twitter is fundamentally dependent to suppress free speech, then that doesn't seem right.

41:07I meant by the way 400 million instead of four billion. I meant actually 400 million instead of four billion. Oh yeah. Okay, so we're now there. We're living at this place. You go there for the next couple, three weeks, you're gonna devote, and then we have a team lined up. You think you have a team lined up to manage it, and then you would just do it the same way we do with SpaceX and Tesla, where you just attend the meetings regularly, say this is what we need to do, do it.

41:42Well, this is what we need. Yeah, my workload went up from about, I don't know, 70 to 8 hours a week to probably 120. So yeah, I go to sleep, I wake up, I work, I go to sleep, wake up, work, do that seven days a week. I'll have to do that for a while. It's no choice. But I think once Twitter is set on the right path, I think it is a much easier thing to manage than SpaceX or Tesla.

42:16So, and I really understand the internet and how to make ROT software personally for 20 years. You know, it's one of the key people behind x.com which became PayPal. And so I also like I'm aware of like a I know how to make a way better PayPal Yeah, 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 where I thought it would be possible to make the most valuable financial institution in the world and we're going to execute that plan from 22 years ago, which amazingly no one has done. And 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. some improvements. And we're also going to obviously make Twitter just a way about our system. I mean, it's a sense of reason that, you know, if the social media company 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. So you speak of sort of anti-Semitism or racism or anything like that. Well, I mean, who's gonna stay on a platform if that's prevalent? Like that's, that's, yeah. I mean, come on. Part of it's inherent wrongness. Who's gonna stay on the platform?

44:16So you wanna be, it needs to be something where, like our goal with Twitter is like, how do we get 80% of America? Maybe not the far left and the far right, but maybe we don't want them necessarily. But how do we get 80% of the public to join a digital town square and voice their opinion and exchange ideas and maybe once in a while change their minds?

44:44An occasion. Yeah, I mean, once in a while. So Red also that you said, and then we'll move off the Twitter, But you said that your goal is you want to make the 20% of people who are on the far right hate you, just like you want to make the 20% of people on the far left hate you.

45:03So... Well, I don't want them to hate me. But I think the extremists, it's very difficult to satisfy extremists. So, unless you fully buy into whatever their dog may is. But I'm confident we can satisfy, I don't know, 80% of America, 80% of the world, but maybe not the most, the 10% most extreme of either side.

45:31And I would count that as a great outcome. And I think it is important to have a sort of a digital town square where people feel comfortable talking. And I also think it's like one of the things that's important is to be able to sort of decide what kind of experience you want to have on Twitter.

45:50Because some people might say, OK, like, this was a radio station. I want the easy listening smooth jazz station. OK, cool. So you feel to have that setting for Twitter. And then some people might say, no, I want heavy metal thrash. And like, OK, so now this is going to be sort of, then you don't mind someone saying mean things to you within the context of the law, and you don't mind engaging in vigorous arguments on Twitter

46:20and that kind of thing. But you should be able to kind of like pick your preference and decide if you want sort of full contact battle or do you want like no, I just want to look at poppies and flowers and nice landscapes and stuff. So let's go off Twitter. two other topics, 40 has some questions.

46:43The number one is logistics. When we're starting to make so many cars by the end of this year, 40,000 cars a week. I mean, I have to be careful of MMPI, but I believe I have said in the past publicly that our aspiration is to reach 40,000 a week by the end of this year. So if we're doing that, then that means that we're producing a car over 15 seconds.

47:09Yeah. And so, but that's still only two million cars a year. There's a hundred million cars that are made a year. And so the question, so presumably capacity to be able to logistics to ship all these cars all over the place to have people pick them up where they want them. But not if they all do them in the same week.

47:33Yes, totally. So, I mean, we're a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of A bit of criticism from our Q3 results because we had a lot of cars in transit. And the reason was that we got too big for our cars to actually be transported in the final few weeks. There'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 and transit at the end of the quarter, because then you're not rushing to get everything delivered by the end of the quarter and paying all these expedite fees. So 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 with the sound of drivers that we're going to have autonomous transport? Yes. That's question one. We can also, yeah, I mean, if you're in the area, have the car just drive to you. And then the other one was about materials.

48:38And when all of a sudden, so we have somehow navigated supply chain problems from other people. And you might have thought that it was the absolute brilliance that we had to be able to do that. But 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 to believe you and make all the equipment that we need. So as a result of that, you were forced initially to be able to say, OK, we're going to get, we'll vertically integrate. We can't rely on you.

49:12We'll do vertically integration. And cut it. Materials. I can talk longer if you'd like. Don't shoot the messenger. Talk a little bit longer. Materials. So we have geology. Anyone wants to show us in mind, we We'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. We are able to assess that and give contracts to be able to say contractual agreements. Okay, and they'll rely on our agreement, other people they won't. Is that fair and Glencore the enough? Well, the scaling constraints change as time goes by.

49:56And in the beginning, we were very vertically integrated because suppliers didn't take us seriously. Like we could get hardly any of the A, of the best suppliers wouldn't talk to us because the car startup has not been successful in the United States since Chrysler in the 30s, I believe they started.

50:16So it's been a century since the car company was successful in the US. That was not a foreign car company coming in with that was already successful in their home market. But for an American car startup, it was the first, it tells us for success in 100 years. So you can imagine if you're an auto supplier, that doesn't sound like a smart financial decision.

50:33Exactly. So then we had to just build a lot of the stuff ourselves. Be vodically integrated or we couldn't create the car. And then that ended up being an asset because now we understood so much about the entire supply chain and what it took to build a car. So we were able to design a more integrated vehicle

50:58that actually needed far fewer parts and costs less and weighs less and has higher performance. But it is looking increasingly like for some of the critical elements of batteries that Tesla will need to get into the mining business, mining and refining. That's why Glencore was announced.

51:20That's where we're talking to Glencore, we were. No, and we've never contemplated investing in Glencore. I'm talking about Tesla doing it. Ourselves. Yes. Trans No Q&A. Who's there? The power's about to hear. I'll do it anyway. I mean, is it from me or you? I don't know. Questions?

51:54So by the way, if you leave before we give away the door prizes, which are two Teslas, you're not eligible to get the Teslas. But go ahead. I gave an extra one once, I guess it last time. But we're not going to do that again. I got to be in your seat in order to get the Tesla's.

52:16I'm paying for it, not Elon. Questions? Elon, Santa once said, every genius has a touch of madness. I thought you'd like that quote. I agree with the madness part. So even with Tesla's a publicly traded company, I think it's down 40% or something from its high, is selling at 70 times earnings.

52:50Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz, which now produces EVs, is selling for six times earnings and yielding 5%. Why should I invest in Tesla rather than Mercedes-Benz? Well, I actually rarely try to convince anyone to invest in Tesla. And 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 so But if I think at At a very high level I'd say that autonomy is an insanely fundamental breakthrough And and no one is even close to Tesla for solving generalized autonomy, generalized self-driving vehicles.

53:47No one's even close. And with self-driving, as I was talking about earlier, the car becomes, call it roughly five times more useful, but it costs the same to build. Now can you imagine what would happen if a company was doing, we're doing like a 25 to 30% gross margins, But 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? It boggles the mind, actually. So if you think of net present value of future cash flows, if you actually do the math on that, it's insane. Then there's also the Optimus program, which is our humanoid robot, which we will leverage manufacturing

54:44expertise and the intelligence we've developed for self-driving to have a useful humanoid robot. Now, the economy is fundamentally GDP per capita times capita. If you no longer have a constraint on capita because of a useful humanoid robot, it is not clear that there is any limit to the size of the economy.

55:15And these things will actually happen. So that's probably a good reason. Yeah. Yeah. One more question. Okay. This is the last question. You 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. You're going to need a lot of charging stations around the world. Have you thought about doing it more efficiently and more economically and better for our ecosystem

56:15from an ESG perspective? Because you may or may not know, there are 400 million existing streetlights in the world. And every street light has pervasive, persistent electricity. You could take some amount of those street lights which are half owned by utilities and half owned by cities and repurpose that.

56:42And that would probably be the most cost efficient way to roll out millions of charging stations all over the world. Well, thanks. I think they actually are using that idea in London and some other cities. But 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 are self-sustaining, that the supercharger stations generate the energy during the day and then also have a localized battery pack to so that people can charge at night. So that the Tesla Supercharging stations would continue to function even in a zombie apocalypse.

57:27So just never know, that's coming one day, we know it. It's just a matter of time. Thank you very much. Thank you to Selfie with you. That's Selfie, a post that on Twitter.

57:53Your arms are longer than mine. Also, please use Twitter. And please subscribe to Twitter Verified eight bucks. And actually it's technically at 7.99, so slightly less. But I really encourage everyone here to use Twitter. And yeah, please do that. Here we go. How do we do this? I guess this row.

58:30Okay. All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you very much, Ian. I appreciate it. Are you staying around for dinner? That's a good idea for the position. I really appreciate it. Are you staying around for dinner? At that set, video deposition.