马斯克谈生命、宇宙及一切：访谈第2部分

0:04So this is like we're getting like some serious drama here. So On a parallel thread, I'd like to meet someone and they say like if you come through Germany you stop by and I said Okay, all my way to India I'm gonna stop by Daimler headquarters and talk to them And see if there's any kind of partnership that could be had this is

0:30I forget the exact It's it's right before I gave the the IAC tokens. So that like it would be a that's how I want to place it. And I met with their engineering team and I said, like, is there anything you guys, like what do you guys want? Like, is there, you know, I'm trouble a cool here, you know, even though, like, we definitely need some kind of partnership where we're screwed.

0:56And they said, well, they're thinking about an electric smart car. So, like, okay, if we were to do something, you know, You know, when, like, when would you want to see it? And I said, well, we've got like a delegation of downlink executives coming through in January, January of 2009.

1:16And I think this was October or something like that. And I talked to JB, like Drew and Scott and Vanit and a bunch of others. It's like, guys, we need to get a smart car. And we need to stuff a rose to powertrain into it and make it custom battery. And it needs to work. By the time the Daimler team comes here in January.

1:47Oh my. We can interview JB about it. Maybe he would add some additional color. So the problem was that there were no smart cars We're not being sold in the US, but they were being sold in Mexico. So we sent someone to Mexico to just buy a smart car and drive across the border. So we just, so we, so we, this is a gasoline and smart car.

2:09So just with Mexican plates. So we went and bought a smart car in Mexico, drove across the border and, and then literally put a roster drive unit and modified battery pack in, in the smart car and had it working. by January when the diamond delegation came by. And I remember that being in that diamond meeting, and man, they were just, they're like, it's clearly that they're quite grumpy that they even have to meet with us.

2:39They did not know we had this electric smart guard. So they're grumpy that they had to meet with us, and we're clearly trying to get out of the room as quickly as possible. And when we started off, made the mistake of starting off with PowerPoint, and that which immediately made them even grumpier, because everything works in PowerPoint, and they were seeing way too many PowerPoint slides.

2:57And they were literally getting ready to walk out from the PowerPoint presentation. I said, what would you like to drive the car? They're like, what do you mean? It's like, well, we have an electric smart car. See, we're going to drive it. You don't have an electric smart car. That's impossible.

3:14Yeah, it's in the parking lot. You're going to drive it. Actually, it was a smart car. It was fucking sick. This thing had a roast of powertrain in a smart car. the part of weight ratio this thing was bananas. It was like you could pull wheelies in a smart car. Literally if you stepped on it.

3:29Yeah, you could lift the front wheels up the van. Yeah, it was most of a token of four wheel vehicles. It was insane. You could burn rubber in a smart car. It looked bizarre. Like you've just never seen a thing reflect that. I thought I might actually drive a smart car if I was like that.

3:47Yeah, it was awesome. Anyway, so we blew their minds. They're like, what? How is this? This is like, what impossible black magic can you figure it out to have an electric smart car? It's like, well, we got one from Mexico three months ago and we put a roster prop train in it and modified battery pack.

4:05And you can still use the car. The interior of the car was so full of usable. So we didn't intrude on the interior space. And we're like, yeah, we can. And they're like, okay, well, this is pretty impressive. They never seen anything like this before. So they're like, okay, well they'll consider, they will do some smart car limited production.

4:27Like part of this is because they had to make the regulators happy. So this was not like, they needed like some sustainable energy cars to make the regulators happy. That was the reason for this electric smart car. The fleet miles away. It was not a grand vision by down let's go electric.

4:43was to get these annoying regulators without back. So for the credits, right? There was like compliance. Compliance vehicles. So there was like a minimum number of electric vehicles the HAT team made. They could also make fuel cell vehicles, but that was way more expensive. So from this standpoint, at the time, it was really more like, watch the least amount of money we can spend and get the regulators without the regulator of monkey over back.

5:08So, like so, so, anyway, so that, so we end up making a bunch of electric smart cars for Perdaimler. And then over time we actually extended that into like an electric AB class, but there were always just really compliance vehicles that did not want to make, Daimler was not willing to place at that time a big bet on electric vehicles. And so the volume and the

5:41price were always like the volume is too low, the price is too high, these are going to be niche vehicles no matter what. But anyway, so what it did lead to, which was really essential, was Tesla getting saved by Daimler investing $50 million. So the $40 million invested in December of 2008, just gave us six months of runway.

6:03So that basically gave us until June of 2009. And again, during this period, General Motors has bankrupt, Chrysler has bankrupt. So not a lot of people are interested in investing in a startup car company, let alone an electric car company. And remember, this is back when Electric San- it was synonymous with dump.

6:24You could just say, instead of using electric car company, could just substitute dumb. Do you want to invest in a dumb car company? That's what it sounded like to most people. So at the time, I think like Daimler vaguely thought that the Volkswagen group might invest in Tesla, and they didn't want that.

6:52So they essentially to block VW from investing in Tesla, which by the way, VW was not going to invest in Tesla. I talked to their person and they expressed some initial interest, but then they went darker me. So actually, the only one, the only investor that was interested in Tesla at all was Daimler.

7:14And that was because of the electric small program. So they invested $50 million into Tesla at roughly a $500 million valuation. So it worked out. Yeah, 10% right. Yeah, it did. You got 10% on the company. I mean, we're really in the weeds here. So hopefully this is interesting to some people.

7:36But this is definitely some deep lower war story stuff. So in 2009, we're also just figuring out how to actually get the roads into volume production. So we were not able to reach volume production, even for the Fireroids, their standards in 2008. And we still had a bunch of things in the car that were brought.

7:59I think we managed to deliver like maybe 20 or 25 cars in 2008, most of which were in December. And then we had to bring all of those cars back to have the drive trains replaced. And I think most of them got their battery pack replaced too. So I mean it was just a fumbling mess basically.

8:24It was insane. But in 2009, it's when we actually figured out how to make the car half decent, half decent roads for one where you could give it to someone and it wouldn't just like break down immediately. And like a roughly summer of 2009 is when the car wasn't complete these are trash.

8:48That just didn't work. And then we did a roadster 1.5 and then Franz joined and Franz helped redesign the roads and make it better with the Roadster II. Then buying basically late 2009, early 2010, was where the Roadster was decent as a toy. Not as transport you could count on, but as a toy.

9:21It became decent run under 2009, early 2010. Anyway, so that diamond investment in May 2009 was what was essential to Tesla's survival, not a government loans. So this is another thing that is misunderstanding here. Because they got confused because GM and Chrysler and Ford, GM got a massive bailout, just like a flat out freaking donation from taxpayers.

9:57like tens of billions of dollars. So GM got like, yeah, 30 billion dollar handout basically with no repayment. Last I checked, there's over 14 billion, that's unpaid. Okay so maybe it's- Yeah, it's on a real amount though. Okay, it's 14, it has not been repaid and never will be, I suspect. So I think the crisis

10:21got a bunch of money and then Ford got like a five billion dollar loan. But Ford is in better financial shape because I don't know for whatever reason. I think that Ford family has more long-term thinking than the people that were running GM and Chrysler. So they were in a better financial position. But it remains the case today that the only company

10:45American companies have not gone bankrupt or Tesla and Ford. Unless something changes significantly with Rovian and Lucid, they will both go bankrupt. They're tracking to bankruptcy. They may not say like that is currently like if there's an airplane, they're like they're going like that.

11:06So if something happens to go change, okay, but currently they're intersectional with doom. So, you know, I hope they are able to do something, but unless they cut their they're cost dramatically though, do trouble. And we'll end up in the cemetery like every other company with the exception of Tesla and Ford.

11:30Anyway, that diamond investment was essential to Tesla survival. Around that time in mid-2009, we got a letter, sort of a letter of interest, like a non-binding letter of interest from the DOE for a loan that I believe was around $500 Now that was not alone where they just give you $500 million.

11:55That was one where you spend the money, you provide invoices. Those invoices are provided to DOE. They then refund you based on the audited expenses that you paid. It's not like the lump sum type of thing. It's retroactive after you spend it. It's a reimbursement. It's a loan reimbursement.

12:18So there's nothing, I think it's given for free. It's a low in reimbursement. So it would not be possible to use that as advanced capital to make something happen. It can only be used to reimburse expenses that have already taken place with a two to three month lag. And that letter of interest did not become an actual binding document until 2010.

12:45And the first money that Tesla received as a reimbursement from that, I think, was March or April of 2010, by which time the recession had passed. So if we had needed the money from that loan, Tesla would have gone bankrupt. The DOE loan, I think, was helpful as an accelerant, but it was not a life-or-death thing, potentially.

13:11And ultimately, the problem is that that DOE was second guessing our business plan and our execution. So we're like, well, we need to change the business plan, because if we keep going in that direction, we're going to die. So we're going to go in that direction, in the non-death direction.

13:28And then you're explaining to someone at the DOE why you're changing the plan. And then they're like, but the plan is different. You need to stay the plan. Like, well, if we stay the plan, we're going to crash. And the company will die. And that's why we want to change the plan.

13:39But that's the plan. But that's the plan. OK, this is not good. With enough effort, we could actually get the DOE to agree to change the plan. But this was taken up a lot of bandwidth to be constantly convincing people at DOE that the new plan is better than the old plan. So, after the IPO in 2010, we paid back the DOE loan.

14:19And we actually had to pay a penalty, an early repayment penalty. So we paid back the loan with interest plus a prepayment penalty. Like taxpayers made money on the loan. Very important. experts made money on the Tesla DOE loan. Whereas they're still $14 billion down on $14 billion down on GM.

14:47Another thing was pointing out is none of the incentives, the EV incentives that exist, not one of them was obtained by Tesla, not one of them. The $75,000 tax credit was General Motors. They're the one who got that. Like Tesla had no loving power in DC. I don't like the, but GM had huge loving powers.

15:09They're the ones that got the $75,000 tax credit out put in place. And Nissan, but we had basically no presence in DC. So, yeah, I mean, you'll certainly hear like, oh, Tesla and tax credit. I'm like, okay, well, currently, we don't have, the $7,500 tax credit does not apply to Tesla, but it does apply to our competitors.

15:37So anyone who has not made any company that's a cumulative production blow to $200,000 cars has a $7,500 tax credit, and Tesla does not, because we've long go exceeded the 200,000 car maximum. So, Tesla is any competitive disadvantage with respect to tax credits. that is quite significant when you're talking about, like say, a $40,000 car, and a $7,500

16:01tax credit, that's like almost a 20% difference. So big deal. So Tesla is successful currently in spite of our competitors having materially greater tax advantages than Tesla, in spite of it, not because of it. If you eliminated all EV incentives tomorrow, Tesla's competitive position would improve significantly. I'll say that again, if you eliminated all tax credits,

16:32EV tax credits, Tesla's position would improve immediately. And Tesla did the purpose of the tax credits before, right, to drive that innovation ramp. You guys just actually did it so fast that the competitors are still using it. Well, when we started Tesla, gas was under two bucks a gallon in California and there were no tax credits. So it was not from the standpoint of like, hey, this is a great opportunity.

16:55I mean, when we saw the Tesla, I should be clear, like it was an expectation of success of less than 10% and the same for SpaceX. And who in their right mind would think that a car company would have anything more than a 10% probability of success? If you've never built a car in your entire life before and there have been...

17:15I've been, yeah, there's only, exactly, there's only, at the time, you know, GM, Ford and Chrysler, and the history of car companies is like, there have been like over a thousand car company startups in the United States and they're all dead. So, and you know, with the 2008-2009 recession, GM and Chrysler also went bankrupt.

17:38So the chances of survival are extremely tiny. Only a fool would start a car company with electric car company or a car company whatsoever and think that the probability of success was high. So my initial thought for both Tesla and SpaceX was that I'd take half the money from PayPal.

18:01And I'd waste half of it on two ludicrous banjos born being a car company and a rock company. And that would be dumb and I'd just lose it all. And that would be, but I'd still have $90 million left. So whatever. But in the end, I could say the companies were like children to me.

18:19So I gave the companies all the money that I had. And then I would have had no money at all if Tesla and SpaceX had not survived. I would have owed a lot of money and been personally bankrupt if Tesla and SpaceX had not survived. That hadn't happened. We still wouldn't have electric vehicles.

18:37Yeah, I think so. It tells us, I mean, it's like, what is Tesla's fundamental value? It is to serve as an accelerant to sustainable energy. And if you say, metaphor Tesla, what would the world be like? In ways that, let's say you're looking at this from the macroeconomic God standpoint, or civilization,

19:02or the Sims or something. What's the difference here? the difference between Tesla and not Tesla is how many years is sustainable energy accelerated. That is the fundamental good of Tesla. And then there's also the autonomy thing, which is I think it will be very significant. But I'd say like in the absence of there being a fundamental technology discontinuity in

19:30the form of electrification and autonomy. Both of them together, I think a new car company cannot succeed. So now I'll tell you, actually, the real reason that people should have been shorting Tesla, and perhaps why some of them were shorting Tesla, and the real reason that new car companies cannot succeed, or why it's very hard for them to succeed.

19:54And this was first told to me by this automotive investor when I was at Axel Springer headquarters getting the Golden Stirring World Award and this guy is apparently like the best automotive investor in the world, you know, comes out to me and like, it's like, hi, no, why are you going to fail? I'm like, well, please tell me. I can think of several reasons.

20:13Tell me when I don't know. Yes. And he said the car companies don't make any money on the new car sales. They make all all of their money selling parts to the existing fleet. So when the warranty runs out, like the life of a car before it hits the junkyard might be 20 years. Warranty is gonna typically run out after four years, and there's a bunch of stuff that's not covered under warranty.

20:40So if you've got a steady state fleet, it means that 80% of your fleet is not under warranty. So you can sell high margin parts, replacement parts, for the existing fleet. and you can sell your new cars at effectively zero margin. It's like a razor and blades thing. So you sell the razor for zero margin and you sell the blades at high margin.

21:04So then this creates a massive barrier to entry for any new car company because you have no existing fleet. So the only way for a new car company to succeed is that does not have an existing fleet is to charge a lot more for your car than what others are paying, than competitors.

21:24And in order to charge a lot more, have people actually buy it, the product must be so compelling that people are willing to pay the premium above the alternative cars from the incumbent car makers. This is the only way. And I think without both electrification and autonomy, this does not succeed.

21:45So that is the only way to do it. You have to win on an autonomy, and you went on electrification and you have to make the product so compelling that it is worth paying the premium relative to the incumbent competitors. This is a very big deal. Yeah. Very, very big deal. So, yeah.

22:09Why am I exactly that customer, by the way? First of all, I'm a Tesla in 2015. The acceleration and all that was cool and the electric was cool. But when I tapped the stick for AutoViolet 1.0 and it walked on the rail on the road like rails. I mean, holy shit, the future's here.

22:23And went from a $4,000 card at the time of fully loaded Model S opposite in the spectrum. That exact angle was it. And it's gotten so many people in the way. Yeah. A autopilot, I'm bringing it back. I'm probably still going to be a Tesla member. Yeah. Why exactly? The thing that actually got me, because we got to be able to get a lot of flak for like autopilot deaths and stuff.

22:43But let me tell you that, yeah, it's like no amount of statistics can convince people otherwise. They're like, yeah. I don't know. Time. Yeah. But the thing that actually got me to really get a move on with Autopilot was that this anecdote illustrates several things, by the way.

23:05So, and I think this was, it might have been like 2014 or something like that, a model less owner in the Bay Area fell asleep while driving his model S and ran over a cyclist and killed a cyclist. Now if there had been even basic lane following, that cyclist would still be alive.

23:32So it was like, man, if anything illustrates the importance of autopilot, it's this case here where that innocent cyclist would still be alive. If that guy that fell asleep had had autopilot, or any kind of like lane following, even basic lane following, the car would not have veered off the road and killed the cyclist.

23:49So it's like, we've got to get a move on here. This is a real safety issue. So that's part of what really encouraged me to like, we need to go make this happen as quickly as possible. But there's more to the story. The guy that ran over the cyclist did not internalize responsibility for himself.

24:14He said the problem was he blamed it on Tesla and said he fell asleep because of the new car smell. I'm not making this up. You can literally search the court records. And he got a lawyer, amazingly, got a lawyer to represent him by a low-suit against Tesla saying it's not his fault he ran over the the cyclist

24:35it's because of the new cost mail that put him to sleep now obviously when the Scott before the judge judges like that's ridiculous case is most but this just gives you some sense of both the importance of autopilot and generally people's unwilling this to internalize responsibility car smells yeah I mean he actually had to know to engage a lawyer and file

25:04lawsuit and like wow that's it's in the court records yeah like oh yeah dude maybe it's not maybe it's you know judge like it's you okay take a small sport of reaction so anyway but but that yeah so so that's why I I think unless some new car company is able to solve autonomy and electrification and make

25:32a product that's extremely compelling and reach value production where the cost of the car is low enough that you can charge a price where you don't exceed the affordability limit of people. Like the, there are a lot of times I have this conversation with rich investors and Wall Street is crazy because there are two factors of play.

25:57One is value for money. The other is fundamental affordability. So these things are often conflated by if somebody has tens million dollars, lives on Wall Street and whatever. They don't understand that they just think about value for money, they don't think about affordability.

26:18All cars are affordable. Someone literally does not have enough money in the bank account, they cannot buy the car, even if you rail desirability to infinite. Like we'll just turn the desirability knob. This is this thing will transform into a jet and fly you to a private island that it will create by itself.

26:41You make it so desirable that it's, you can just make desirability infinite. But if it costs more than people can afford, they can't buy no matter how great it is. And so that affordability threshold is very, very important. So it must both be good value of money and be affordable in order to achieve the unit volumes. And where

27:03a car companies can get kind of painted into a corner, the corner of DOOM is if the cost of the car is so high that they have to raise the price of the car to the point where the price price of the car is, and Rivian I think it has this problem, so you know, that they even need to fix it or they're in deep trouble, they raise the price to the point where only a very small number of people can afford the car, no matter how desirable it is.

27:34Then at that point, if you cannot achieve a unit volume that covers your fixed costs, you're screwed. So, and Rivian, my advice to Rivian too, would be to cut costs immediately across the board dramatically or they're doomed. So, what does it apply to any car company? As you raise the price, the percentage of

28:05people who can afford the car starts to drop exponentially. So, you know, like, it started getting a car above $100,000. It's very, very few people can afford it, no matter how desirable is. But you've got to have enough unit volume to pay for your fixed-up heads. You've got to cover your operating expenses.

28:35We can do a time check too if we need to. No, I'm just afraid of mine. It's like suggesting that I draw a hard drive by posting more memes from them. I'm just going to keep stealing their memes and and posting them without giving them credit. People love that. That's the internet.

28:56But we use belonging to the internet. Yeah, exactly. It's a whole point of the meme. Exactly. Yeah. And typically, you'll like the meme, too, that you'll post. And so people know where it's coming down. It's belonging to people. Yeah. You quit your own memes, though, don't you? I saw my kid who created some memes.

29:14Your meme game is strong. Thank you. Who controls it? Memes control. My friend is saying I should post hard drive memes and declare that I made it myself. I made it myself. I'm over sucking. And then tell hard drives to stop copying me. Well, maybe what a, I don't have an AI figure I don't have a copy of.

29:43Yeah. It's not that much scary. It's so vexed. So, yeah. You good on time too? Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm okay this I was just getting little text buzzes so But nothing is like the house, you know something's on fire which by the way sometimes I do get the text The house on fire the cars on fire the dumpsters on fire We've had a lot of dumpster fires to Tesla actually

30:19What's going on free my system like a lot of fire Yeah, my friends here keep text me every time. But there's a dumster fire. The literal dumpster fire. It's like, not a better particle dumpster fire. Just literally a dumpster on fire. I just imagine, though, if you see the beeb of the dumpster on fire floating down the river, the valley of the river.

30:39I mean, if you have a lot of cardboard and wood packaging in a dumpster, then or whatever, it's going to, like it's flammable. It's, you know, then somebody, I don't know, Sometimes I think some of these things are some kids having fun or whatever just like being an artist and some of it are just you know, I don't know how these things like try to

30:59figure out why is this stuff started on fire? I don't know. It's on fire clearly but why did the fire start? I don't know. Nobody knows how the fire started. Like the dumpster fires are actually not that dangerous but they're like, you know, unless it's indoors or something but like an out and out and dumpster fire is not intrinsically

31:18dangerous. Yeah, it's contained. It's like it's good enough. Just not gonna melt or anything So it tends to just be like it just general it creates drama, but it's not like actually dangerous So currently we get to give we've all been FSC beta you guys. Thank you by the way. It's been fun. Yeah, thank you testing

31:34Recently got kicked out Yeah, I was on a long drive to San Francisco and unfortunately on really long road trips I have this problem where I'll get the nag thing will give you enough times at all disable and you know I did like 800 miles across Texas and I'll get tired of it. That's actually not what it's about.

31:52We currently get to give feedback for when the car does something wrong. Would it be useful if we got to give feedback when the car did something like really well and really right? Because I haven't do great things all the time. But I have nobody to call somebody or mark the video and say, hey, they did this turn incredibly and everything well.

32:07And I mean, because I was assuming the AI is being trained with reinforcement learning as well, it'd be great if we could help give that feedback when the car is like, great job buddy, like the plus one button or something. I don't know. All input is error. Yeah, all input is error, exactly.

32:25Unless somebody missed the future, in which case, no input is error. In some cases, we've got cool features. Nobody ever used when new was there. Like the wizards in winter dance with the Model X stores. And it's rare to encounter a customer who actually knows about that. Most of them don't know it exists.

32:44And then we made it too hard to do. And it should be the offset of an Easter egg. to be like this maximized number of people know about it. No black minimizes. I actually have a word in the Tesla. I actually shot the video. Oh, OK. All right, great. I'm trying to get it out there.

32:57Yeah, I think people didn't translate that to my car can also do this. It was a good question. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. But still today, I bet probably, I don't know, at least two-thirds of Model X owners have no idea the car can do that. Yeah, I was talking about the Christmas dance, are you?

33:17Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's like, OK. Yeah. So all these do, but yeah. Because I've done it so much for my neighbors. I know. I know. But I feel like it's great. I mean, you're not really seeing a car do anything like that. So no. It's like riding up. Yeah. Do you have a favorite Easter egg or feature

33:38that you put into the cars that is just your favorite? Well, I suppose that the sort of Wizarding Winter Door Dense is my favorite sort of Easter eggy feature or fun thing that has no value in it. So it's a entertainment. Yeah, it's like a entertainment. But it's like an unnecessary thing.

34:03That's cool. I mean, there was the Tap Autopilot four times to play more Cabo. Yeah. Yeah. And people would get kicked. But that's the one that you could accidentally do. And then your screen turns to Mario Kart. Rainbow Road. Yep. And... I'm going downhill or all. Yeah. Kids can't be sleeping during that time.

34:36Yeah. Fantastic. I think it's quite a few times people accidentally. Accidentally because it's like it is a thing you could just tap too many times It's like it's not one of those Easter eggs, you know, it's like one of those like old school arcade games Where it's like up down down left left right like it, you know, it's like just press it four times and finger

34:53It's I think a lot of people just like what happened Am I going crazy? Well, I think I'm doing this Yeah, so that that's a cool one And it contains the car to enter 42 cars. Name change left, universe, and everything. There's the James Bond, where it turns into the spy love me car.

35:21That's the submarine car. Yeah. Yep. What were you? Undiscovered? Easter or anything? Personal component changes to Thomas Edison. Is that my report? Right. Maybe, actually. Maybe, actually, there's a ha ha ha, if you want to change the screen to reindeer. Ha ha, not funny. Ha ha, not funny.

35:45We'll play the song, Grandma got run over with reindeer. Grandma got run over by reindeer. It's the ha ha, not funny. Yes. I mean, there might be. I don't necessarily tell me about all the Easter eggs, you know? But I mean, the thing is that, like, we can't spend too much time on Easter eggs because

36:11we should be... Come on, that should be the entire focus. Well, the problem is if something is rare, like what you're really trying to do is maximize the area under the curve of a number of people times degree of enjoyment. Yeah. So it's fine to have a low effort Easter egg that is something that a small number of

36:34people will get a lot of joy from. And then you're like the area of the curve of like, well, they got a lot of joy, but it's a small number of people. But what you're really looking for is something that would provide a lot of people enjoyment and maximize the area under the curve of total people times amount of an average enjoyment. That's what you're actually

36:53trying to do, you know. So that's why I can't get carried away with the Easter egg, so. Yeah. Yeah. You really want everyone to experience it, not make it some extremely, you know, 0.01% of people actually even know it exists situation. Yeah. So I think we've got a lot of work to do, actually, with the basic software in the car.

37:14Like our web browser sucks. And we definitely need to do work on the overall interface in the car. like, you know, there's a lot of complaints on the interface, and they do better on the interface. But like, if you try to use the web browser in the car, it like takes a long time to load, and then it's a trash browser.

37:30It's worse than like some iPad from five years ago, like by a lot. And like the rear screen and the SNX, the controls, need a lot of work. But like, it can be quite helpful for like entertaining like your kid's now has something to watch in the back. And you put YouTube stuff on.

37:53It's a game changer. It is a game changer. But for example, that's something where we should have separate audio for the back. And what's the point of, we can't really replay the same audio level for that back screen in the front as in the back. It should just play the back should play that audio.

38:15Or it should like route to a Bluetooth that's keyed off of the rear screen and then you'd give them headphones or something. So that people can listen to music in the front and not get blasted by the YouTube Kids Show audio in the front, which is currently the situation. That's correct.

38:31So there's like a bunch of stuff like that that we need to fix. But the overwhelming focus is solving full self-driving. So yeah, and that's essential. And like, that's really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero. One question I was going to ask with a little, maybe, remaining time.

38:59Is there any additional questions or thought or misinformation about Tesla? Or I don't know, maybe you want to walk around the factory or whatever you have time for? It's kind of quiet, so whatever you have time for, we'll game for. Well, I mean, is there anything we should go over that would be helpful?

39:18I mean, I think some of these things are like the whole founder thing. It's like, I think fundamentally, even a kind of a stupid question, because what does it mean to found something? There's some critical mass of inspiration and perspiration, but it's an enabulous number or it's an enabulous metric to say, you know, those person deserves to be

39:45a co-founder of this one doesn't. It's enabulous. But I think you could apply the but for question. Like, but for this person would the company exist? Or would it have gone bankrupt or not exist in a form that it is currently in a much diminished form or simply not existed at all.

40:04And the only two people that you could apply the But Four argument to are JB's trouble in me. But Four, JB's trouble in me tells I would, I think, never have existed in any meaningful way. And if it had, it would have gone bankrupt. So those are the only two people that the But Four argument applies.

40:23Maybe you want to go into this here or not. You mentioned, I think, gotten to whatever recently about the coal, shoulder, Tesla, and and stuff has experienced and brought our economic and political climate. Do you want to share more about how that's been affecting change? I got a little bit of that.

40:39How do you see that changing as Tesla expands in the great Lone Star State? Sure. So, I mean, those that follow closely are aware of it. I think you're probably aware of it, so somewhat of a rhetorical question I suspect. But the – I think the general public is not aware of the degree to which the Union's

41:01control of democratic party. This is – when does not need to speculate on this point, last year President Biden held an EV summit where Tesla was explicitly not allowed to come, but the UAW was. So now Tesla has made two thirds of all electric vehicles in the United States. So deliberately excluding us from an EV summit at the White House, but including the UAW.

41:31That tells you all you need to know. The reality is UAW would prefer that Tesla was dead or unionized, but not anything but alive and unionized. And there are no fans of sustainable energy. They have for sustainable energy the entire way. So at Tesla, far from, like Tesla has the highest pay in the auto industry and moreover,

41:59the people that work out of Fremont plant have like five job offers to work somewhere else. There's negative unemployment in the Bay Area. Try hiring someone in the Bay Area. It's ridiculous. It's negative unemployment. So our challenge is how do we convince people to stay given the many other opportunities

42:16that they have? Let alone a union. Like they're like, what? five of the jobs. That's the real reason. It's a complete opposite for what their characterizes. And the UAW has never been able to get even enough people to do a boat, let alone get to 50%. And California is an extremely pro-union state. There's nothing you could do to stop

42:35the year and if they want to come in. The California will roll out the red carpet. So So then the UAW is basically forced to engage in dirty tricks and attempt to demonize the me and anyone else associated with the company. If the company is run by someone who is procedurally good, then they have trouble unionizing

43:00because they're like, well, he's a good guy. Why would you want to unionize that company? So they have to make me evil somehow. And so I do not, as you can tell, I don't like the UAW because they have run a dirty trick campaign on me since at least 2017. Basically the point of which they thought maybe Tesla

43:20wasn't going to go bankrupt because while they thought Tesla was going to go bankrupt, there was no point in dirty tricks. When they thought Tesla might not go bankrupt, that's when the dirty tricks and the sort of smear campaign started. So I'm not a huge fan of them. Now their attacks did lose a bit of the wind and the sales when the president

43:39to the UAW was sent to prison. So that took a little wind out of their sales. And then when the next UAW president, who was supposed to be the person who had cleaned things up, when he was sent to prison, also, that also took some more wind out of their sales. And but since then, recently in the last several months,

44:06they've sort of backed their old trics. So, and I mean, they have so much power over the White House that they can exclude Tesla from an EV Summit. It's insane. Insane. And just in case the first thing, in case that wasn't enough, then you have President Biden with Mary Barra at a subsequent event congratulating Mary for having led the company

44:36the EV revolution. This is... There's 26 EVs in Q4. Exactly. Exactly. I believe it was in the same quarter that GM delivered 26 electric vehicles and Tesla delivered 300,000. It's like not 26,000, 26. This is not... This is what they said. Like it's not us saying, oh, oh, you're artificially saying their number is low.

45:02No, that's what they put in their earnings report, okay. We're just reading it. So that's like some next level insanity. So it's not like a sort of a conspiracy theory. It's just like, it's just observe what, if anyone is remotely impartial observer, just observe the actions and what other conclusion could you come to, then the Democratic Party does not support Tesla because it is not unionized.

45:37They would rather Tesla was dead than be alive and on unionized. And I think the pressure on this will increase over time. So the more Tesla is successful, the more Tesla is an existential threat to UAW. And so the more pressure they'll put on the people that they got elected to do harm to Tesla.

46:04How's reception been a Tesla moving into Texas? I mean, it's been good. I mean, the thing about building the factory here that I think should be noted is that we built a factory here in less time than it would have taken to get the permits in California. So, a typical permit permitting time for a green field in California is two years.

46:35Two years and you're going to get sued by, you're just going to get sued because you're in California. We didn't get any lawsuits here and we got the factory built in 18 months. Is that insane? Yeah. Sensing the factory come online. I'm gonna get flown here. I'll get people in the airport and be like, oh, he worked at Tesla.

46:59They were so excited. That's the general incentive that I've seen. I had a guy while driving down to see Star Bay, stop it. He's an oil man, but he was like, my goodness, if this is what they're doing with the rockets, their cars have got to be amazing too. I think it's working.

47:12Yeah, it's like I love living in California, but the problem is you cannot get things done. Yeah. So it's like that's what I mean by like this is not like this is simply a description of fact and ask anyone and anyone who's done a large project in California how long would it take you to get the approval to proceed and pass CEQA in California for a large project?

47:35Oh two years and you're doing well if you do it in two years and you're going to get a ton of people is going to see you just for the hell of it, basically. And like I said, we got this both in 18 months. Less time than it would take to get the permit down in California. And when you go back to the fundamental good of Tesla is to what degree are we accelerating sustainable energy.

47:56It matters if we get it done now or in two years. That explains a lot actually. Yeah. I didn't think, yeah. So we therefore have a choice. Do you get factory in California and delay progress by two years? or accelerated by two years in Jordan, Texas. What does Marley write things to do, obviously, Texas?

48:16Yeah. Yeah. So, like this California can need like a crisis to have deregulation and delitigation. It's just the two entities that most control the Democratic party, other unions, and secondarily the plaintiff bar, the plaintiff's bar on the law side. Basically, the lawyer is that sued, especially class action.

48:52That's who controls the Democratic Party. Anyone who's familiar with the inside baseball of this is what I agree with me. This is in fact the case, especially in California. So the issue is that the lawyers write the legislation to make it easy to win lawsuits in California because they funded the election of the officials of the people that got elected

49:16for funded by Democrats and lawyers. So then they write legislation to make it easy to win lawsuits and get gigantic awards because they got the people elected. And you have this sort of circle of nightmarish circle until there has to be an above 0% chance of a Republican getting elected in California.

49:35It has to be above 0%. Otherwise, you have a one-party state. Yeah. And then the political parties are irrelevant and it's just the primaries. So that's the situation in California, and unless there's a crisis, one possible solution is more open primaries. Like more open primaries, I think would reduce the probability of special interests manipulating

50:04the election. I think in LA, the mayoral election is open primaries or sort of open primaries. It looks like maybe Rick Caruso will get elected. And he's like, I think it'd be great. But for the most part, California is gerrymandered to hell and gone and to ensure a majority Democrat outcome.

50:37Generally speaking, why are you here about politics? Why are you here about multiple different jurisdictions? Consciousness, you mentioned that. Did you feel like that's maybe not the case or not true? Well, I mean, there's something at times when I have balanced, I think that's a good question asked,

51:11because it goes to, like, what at a foundational level, what is my philosophy? And why does it lead to this conclusion? Yes. So the reason is that when I was a teenager, I had like an existential crisis to try to figure out what's the meaning of life. It doesn't seem to be any meaning.

51:35For me, at least, the religious texts, and I read all of them that I'd get my hands on, did not seem convincing. So then I'm like, OK, then I started reading flossers. You're capable of reading German flossers as a teenager. And I'm like, I'm not going to help with your depression.

51:57So reading show up an hour and each year, as an adult, that's much more manageable. But as a kid, you're like, whoa. So then I was like, man, I'm just like struggling to find meaning in life here. And then I read, a Hijag Sky to the Galaxy. And basically what Douglas Adams was saying is that, we don't really know what the right questions are to ask.

52:18Like the question is not, what's the meaning of life? You know, in the Hijag Sky to the Galaxy, the Earth it turns out is a big computer. That's, and its goal is to answer the question what's the meaning of life and Earth comes up with the answer 42. this is where the 42 number comes from.

52:41And 420 is just 10 times 42. Yeah. So what, in that book, which is really sort of a book about is an existential philosophy book disguised as humor, They come from the conclusion that the real problem is trying to formulate the question. And to really have the right question, you need a much bigger computer than Earth.

53:21And so maybe, I think one way of characterizing this review is to say, the universe is the answer what is the question? And the more or what are the questions, the more we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, the better we can understand what questions to ask about the answer that is to the universe. And the more we can expand consciousness,

53:52become a multi-panned species, ultimately a multi-cellar species, we have a chance of figuring out what the hell's going on. And this is why I think we should have more humans and more digital, both biological and digital consciousness. And why should we become a multi-pants species and a multi-cell species, is so that we can understand the nature of the universe.

54:20And then in order for that to occur, then we have to make sure that things are good on Earth. We don't want Earth to despair. So sustainable energy is important for ensuring the long-term viability of Earth. And making life multi-planetary is important for extending consciousness.

54:46And ultimately we want to go and visit other star systems to see if there are alien civilizations there that perhaps still exist or perhaps died out millions of years ago. The extraordinarily short, I think, don't realize just how short civilization, like the first writings were only about 5,000 years ago.

55:11So I don't know what happened around 5,000 years ago, but for every reason, there's not really writings before that. So there's not like some coherent symbolic representation before about 5,000, maybe 5,500 years ago. So you can call, like, if you date civilization from the point of which we had writing, it's only 5,000 years

55:33old. Earth has been around for, I don't know, 4 and 1 half billion years, 5 billion-ish. The universe has been around for 13.8 billion years. They were shellfish basically 500 million years ago. So basically, what I'm saying is civilization has existed for an instant. For a galactic time scale, frame of reference,

56:12civilization at 5,000 years is basically flashing the pan. And if you look at the history of civilizations, which I encourage people to read the history of civilizations, in fact, it's literally a book called The Story of Civilization. It's quite good. And there's been the rise and fall of many civilizations over the last 5,000 years.

56:38And if you look at, say, the ancient Egyptian civilization, which is one of the first writings, the first, but close to the first. They pulled these incredible permits and had this sophisticated writing system. And then the people living in the area passed a certain point, maybe around 1500 years ago,

57:04the last person who could read hieroglyphics died. I think probably 1500 to almost 2000 years ago. And well before that, the last people who could build permits died. And then basically people were living next to these structures with that there was just didn't know where they came from and with funny symbols written on them.

57:29And if it took Napoleon invading Egypt and bringing a bunch of scholars with him and the Rosetta Stone, but much more than the Rosetta Stone ultimately to decide for hieroglyphics. That's quite a difficult thing to decipher. So I'm saying that's a civilization that had a really good run.

57:53The ancient Egyptians had a 2500 year run-ish. That's a very long time. You know, like 10 times longer than the United States has been a country. But still they died out. The ancient Sumerians died out. They were arguably the first, from an archaeological standpoint, the first evidence of writing is

58:24the ancient Sumerian. They even found like school books, stuff, like clay school books with like teachers' corrections and stuff. So it's just like, basically, civilization has existed for a split second, is really what it amounts to. So I think it's very important that we become a multi-panned

58:53species while we can, and before technology potentially subsides below the level where it's possible. One of the possible scenarios, and I I think possibly even a probable scenario is that our tech level actually drops, just like the ancient Egyptian, just like every civilization which has gone through on a sine

59:25wave, but ultimately down with something sine wave. So just like the Egyptians living in Egypt, forgot how to build permits and read hierarchical effects, we may forget how to build spaceships. And so we should build the spaceships and make life multi-planetary while it is possible.

59:54And if there were to be a World War III, which is not zero probably, looking at recent events, What will be left after that? Will they even be, I mean, will there be, who's to say what technology would be left after World War III situation? Should we know that Russia still has an off nukes appointed at the United States to make every major city, to make the radioactive rubble bounce several times in every major American city, currently, several thousand.

1:00:45You think that'll start a lack of character, right? Yeah. Do you think this is all happening before? No. I don't know if anyway. I mean, archaeologists are really trying hard to find anything interesting. So if you found evidence of an advanced alien civilization, you'd be like, no one hero

1:01:07in the entire archaeological profession. You know, it's like they're trying very hard to blame these things. We don't find anything so And people sometimes asked me have I Seen evidence of aliens. I'm like I've not And frankly if I had seen evidence of aliens I'd be like hey guys we find evidence of aliens

1:01:29Everyone to give SpaceX less more money because we need to improve our rocket technology. Otherwise. These aliens are gonna get us I thought you were the alien. Yeah. I wasn't an alien until I got your citizenship. That's an alien registration card, I said. I think funds rock and velvet are like a war.

1:01:54Yeah, totally. If the deity had evidence of aliens, immediately tried them out and said, Danger aliens give us more money Yeah, and everybody like absolutely that's not least aliens may not be friendly, you know, so The best way knowledge there's no evidence of aliens so But anyway like going back to the philosophy part is like if you

1:02:21accept as a proposition that We don't really understand meaning of life and we wish to understand the meaning of life then in order to to understanding of life, we should expand consciousness, such that we can ask better questions, learn more, expand beyond the solar system, ensure that life and earth is good,

1:02:45collectively for civilization, and then we can be less dumb about the nature of the universe, and maybe we can answer some questions about where this all came from and where it's going. I think that's a sound philosophy. so at least on Sound Plus B I can echo.