马斯克Code Conference完整采访

0:00You know let me start by saying we're very glad you're here safe and sound thanks. I had to start with lead. I was Flank I flew here with the landing gear down because it was like some kind of landing gear issue Lending air was stuck. There's some kind of warning light my Pilot said that if they were attracted to landing gear it may not go back down again, so

0:21So this happens to you. Yeah Yeah. Okay. And we're glad you're here today. I'm glad you're here today. I'm glad you're here today. So, anyway, we're happy to wait for you. And we're glad you got here safe. It's great to see you guys. Thank you for coming. I really appreciate it.

0:36You kept your promise, which was nice. Of course. I think you were drunk when you promised me, but that's okay. I'll take it. So, you know, in the couple of years since you've come, you've done some astonishing things in terms of substantive stuff with both your companies. Let's start talking about space and what you've been doing there.

0:55Obviously you've had some success landing the rocket. You've done a bunch of other things that were people thought you weren't going to be successful. Talk a little bit about the progress you think you've made with SpaceX. Sure. Well, there's a lot of things where I think I didn't think would be successful.

1:11So the most significant thing is being able to land an orbit class rocket, a brew stage, and bring it both back to Cape Canaveral, land and land, and be able to land on a drone ship out in the ocean. There is a bit of an education process that's needed to understand orbital dynamics because

1:40a lot of people are confused of like why the heck are you landing a ship, landing a rocket in a ship in the ocean. That seems pretty inconvenient. And the reason is because that going up and staying up is actually about velocity horizontal to the Earth's surface. So there's a huge difference between space and orbit.

2:04It's like space you could think of as like, say being the international waters boundary for the Pacific Ocean. Like if you go, you know, 100 miles or shore, you're technically out of coastal waters now, you're in the Pacific. So it's like technically you're in the Pacific. But orbit is like circumnavigating the globe.

2:23It's a really giant difference. And the reason that things go up and stay up is because you're zooming around the Earth so fast that your outward radial acceleration is equal to the inward acceleration of gravity. And so those balance out and you have a net zero gravity. So when you see the space station, the thing that's a little sort of counterintuitive is

2:46that the space station is actually zooming around the earth at 17,000 miles an hour. Even though it seems like it's just... It seems really still, you know, but it's moving really, really fast. I mean to put that into perspective, a bullet from a 45 gun, you know, a handgun is just

3:08below the speed of sound. So the space station is going more than 25 times faster than that. And that's what's needed actually to go up and stay up. And that's why there's the term escape velocity, not escape altitude. There's no such thing as an escape altitude. There's only an escape velocity.

3:26You need to be a certain speed to escape the gravity of the Earth. Yeah, you can think of gravity as kind of a funnel in space time. So think of like a coin funnel. final. It's very much like that, but it's obviously a sort of four-dimensional coin funnel. If you spin a model, or a coin, on a coin funnel, when it's far out, it sort of

3:52spins slowly, and then as it gets closer, it spins faster and faster. If you were to start at the bottom of the coin funnel and you wanted to exit, you'd spin it horizontally, and it would spin out, and that's really how you get to orbit. Yeah, so gravity well is like the final.

4:14Why you wanna land on a ship in the ocean? Because in order to get to orbit, all that matters is your horizontal velocity. Your altitude doesn't really matter. In fact, the force of gravity at, say, the phenomenal boundary of space, 100 kilometers, is almost exactly the same as it is on the surface of the earth.

4:40It's a few percent lower than the surface of the earth. So in order to go up and stay up, the only thing that matters is how fast are you going horizontal to the earth's surface? So you have that outward radial acceleration, or think about like maybe like tether ball or something like that.

4:56It's really that outward acceleration is the thing that matters. And so when the rocket is going to orbit, the only reason it's going up is to get out of the thick part of the atmosphere, because at high velocity, the atmosphere is thick as molasses. And so it goes up very briefly.

5:13But if you look at a long exposure of the rocket's trajectory, you'll see it goes up, but immediately curves over and starts going horizontal. And so at the point at which the stages separate, those two stages, the primary boost stage, which is the most expensive part of the rocket, the point at which that staging occurs can be as high as Mach 10.

5:47So it's going away from the launch site 10 times the speed of sound. So in order to get back to the launch site, you would have to have enough fuel and oxygen to reverse out that velocity and boost back all the way to the launch site. And you just don't have the physics of it don't really allow you to have that much.

6:10It's not about saving money on fuel or anything. It's just physically impossible. Because another sort of thing about, if you're in space is that there's nothing to react against. So like whereas an aircraft can circle very easily because it's reacting against air in vacuum, there's nothing to react against.

6:34So the only way to go back the other direction is to apply just as much energy as it took you to go, if you want to go backwards, you have to apply just as much energy as it took you to go forwards. In fact, well twice as much really, because you go to zero it out and then you've got to.

6:47You've got to land elsewhere. Yeah, so bottom line is this thing is zinging out to zinging out to see it super at 10 times fast enough for it. That point, it may well be over the ocean because the ocean covers most of the... Oh, it's actually... The point of separation, it's not that far away.

7:02It's maybe 100 kilometers away from the launch site, but it is going like hell in the opposite way from the launch site. So the only way to really land it is to have it continue on that arc, that ballistic arc, and then land far out to sea on a ship that's pre-positioned to a particular latitude and

7:26longitude, very precise to within about a meter. And then the rocket will then go from vacuum through rarefied air at hypersonic velocity. So when it's in vacuum it has to, obviously you can't use aerosol surfaces, you have to use nitrogen jets to control the attitude and position.

7:50And then as it starts to encounter the air, we use grid fins because grid fins looked like a waffle. That they work quite well across a wide regime from both very high velocity hypersonics through supersonic, transonic, and subsonic. So it's hard to have arrow surfaces that work well across that entire regime.

8:17And then, so once the arrow forces become high, it uses the four grid fins to sort of control its attitude. To land it, so. Yeah, it's controlling pitch your end roll with the grid fins. And then once, and those grid fins will then position it to where it's fairly close to the ship and then it will light, in this case, three of the nine engines to arrest the velocity and then drop to one engine

8:49for precision right before landing. Right, OK. Super hard. Super hard. Maybe a bit of a long explanation. OK, what we're going to get to is that's super fucking hard. There's a video. So why is that important? Why has that this moment been important for you? Well, so in order to reuse the boost age, which is about 70% of the cost of the rocket,

9:15so that. Which cost is that? How much is that? Well, I mean, it's sort of on the order of $30 to $35 million. Right. So you want to save that? Yeah. I mean, it's like, I try to tell my team, it's like, imagine there was a pallet of cash that was formatting through the atmosphere.

9:33it was going to burn up and smash into tiny pieces, would you try to save it? Right, right, right. Probably yes. Yes, okay. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Right, okay. -huh. So, so yeah, so we want to get a bag. Right. And that way we don't have to make another one. Right. And I think it's quite tragic if rockets like get smashed into tiny pieces and land the

9:57part of the aircraft. So can I ask a question? We've been going to space for, what, 50 years or something like that. Nobody, until you started doing this and Jeff Bezos' company has done it, the government never sort of saved the rockets. They never saved the palette of cash. Why not?

10:17And the Russians didn't either. I mean, well, it wasn't a real air. Yeah, I mean, there was some attempt to do that with the space shuttle, but there was no return. It's the first time that a rocket beast has returned to launch site from an orbital mission, and certainly the first time that there's been a landing on a ship out to see.

10:34But the regular rockets that weren't designed like planes never tried to do this. Right. The plane thing is not a good idea in my view. So the plane, and the reason I think it's intuitively it seems like a plane should work, but actually If you consider that really every mode of transport has a design that is appropriate to its medium.

11:01And if you're in space, wings are not very useful, because there's no air. And then if you want to go somewhere other than Earth, there's also no runways. So these are important considerations. So that's why when they went to the moon, they used propulsive landing. Right. But what I'm saying was when they built the space shuttle, it sort of was like a, looked like a kind of bulb.

11:32I think that appealed to Congress. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In my school. It's cool. Yeah. It's like an airplane. Can you explain the, you know, Jeff Bezos. Good one. Jeff Bezos was here last night and I asked him, what's the difference from what you're doing and what Elon Musk is doing?

11:48And he said, well, I think you were like-minded in the general sense of it, and then he went on to explain some differences. Do you? But he talked about, and correctly if I'm misquoting him, but I think he was saying, this is all about laying the foundations of being able to do greater things by getting the basic infrastructure of being able to reuse these rockets down right.

12:18Do you, is that correct? Do you have a similar starting point from him and your thinking process? I think there's certainly some similarities of opinion. I think both Jeff and I believe that is important to the future to be a space-braying civilization. And ultimately, you'd be out there among the stars.

12:35And I think that's the exciting, inspiring future that I think certainly people in this room want. Well, particularly after seeing that the asteroids are going to destroy this planet. I mean, I mean, I don't. I mean, I don't view it as, you know, we want, we, I mean, I think what, when I say, you know, multi-planets species, like that's really what we want to be.

12:57It's not like, you know, still being a single planet species, but moving planets. It's really being a multi-planets species and having civilization and life as we know extend beyond us to the rest of the solar system and ultimately to other star systems. I think that's the thing, that's the future that's exciting and inspiring.

13:16I think that's what, you know, I think, you know, any kind of, any things like that to make, to be glad to wake up in the morning. You know, like life, life can't be just about solving problems. Like they have to be things that are inspiring and deciding to make you glad to be alive.

13:31So what, in the immediate timeframe, what is your goal for SpaceX, now that you've done this, which is a huge accomplishment, what is the plan for you in the immediate time and then the longer range? Sure, so we plan to re-fly one of the landed rocket boosters hopefully in about two or

13:56three months, something like that. And then that will be an important milestone. So far the stages are looking quite good. Even though they come through quite, there's a really difficult entry situation, but they're looking, like they're in good shape. And we now have four of them.

14:19So we wanna start reflaying them towards the end of summer. And then hopefully by the end of the year, we'll be launching Falcon Heavy, which will be the most powerful rocket in the world by more than a factor of two. So Falcon Heavy is, will be on the order of five million pounds of thrust on lift torque, which is about two thirds the size of a seven five.

14:44Oh, really? Yeah, so that's the rocket that took the astronauts to the moon. Right, exactly. So in fact, launching from the same pad. From the Apollo 11 pad. Wow. That's amazing. So you're going to launch that Falcon Heavy by the end of this year, you see? Yeah, that's our aspiration.

15:02Now, that's somewhat of a delay from when you first hope to launch it, right? Yeah, but the I mean it's not like we had a lot of pressing customers who wanted us to launch it In fact the first launch will will not have any operational satellites it'll be a demonstration launch and

15:22The first operational flights where customers actually want us launch it or next year Where is there's there's a lot of customers who want us to launch Falcon 9? So about a quarter of our flights are for NASA, but three quarters are for commercial satellites, of broadcasting communication satellites, or science missions for other countries.

15:47And there's quite a backlog. And we had an issue with the rocket last year, so that part of that is six-month hold in our schedule. So we sort of backlogged on our launches, and we're trying to get them out as quickly we can and service our customers. So the launches will take place every two to four weeks.

16:10It was quite a high launch cadence. That's a much faster cadence than NASA had, right? Yeah, it'll be more launches than anything else in the world. So more than Russia, more than Europe, more than China by next year, certainly. And largely to deliver customers, Yeah, it's, it's, it's a lot of broadcasting communication satellites that are going to

16:33geosynchronous orbit. And, and then there's, we're, we'll also be launching the new iridium constellation. So that radium's got a next generation constellation of satellites, I think 60 or 70 satellites, quite, you know, decent sized satellites. That'll be, I think many orders of magnitude improvement over the current radium system.

16:57So we'll be able to have global broadband. So that'll be a whole bunch of launches. And then next year, we'll be flying Dragon Version 2, which is the one that's capable of taking up to seven astronauts to the space station. And in fact, Dragon 2 really is a propulsive lander as well.

17:21And it'll be the, it's intended to carry Ashland's Space Station, but it's also capable of being a general science delivery platform to anywhere in the solar system. So where are you going with it? We're gonna send one to Mars in 2018. Now, let's talk about 2018, that's for sure.

17:43Yeah, a couple years. Now, will you be on that flight? No. You have talked about this, you said you don't want it, You want to die on Mars just not on landing, right? Is that correct? Well, I mean, I think if you're going to choose a place to die, then Mars is probably not a bad choice.

18:01All right. But you're not ready. It's not some sort of Martian death wish or something. But yeah, I mean, you're going to be born on Earth, die on Mars. So sending this up to Mars 2018. Sending this up to Mars 2018, when will someone like you get there from your plans? Sure, so the 2018 mission would be a Dragon version two.

18:26And that I wouldn't recommend traveling to Mars in that. Because it has the interior volume of a large SUV. OK. The trip for a dragon would be on the order of six months. It's a long time to spend in an SUV, I think. It can be done, but not probably not ideal. And it also doesn't have the capability of getting back to us.

18:57That seems more important than the space of... Yeah, we can put that in the fine print. Yeah. Sorry. It's like the side effects in a drug ad. By the way, we cannot get back to Earth. Yeah. We saw the movie. We saw what happened. He got back. Yeah. So I actually enjoyed the movie.

19:17So do you think he could have gotten back like that? There was that plausible? Well, I thought there was some connection. It was mostly, it was like 80% scientifically correct. They did connect a series of improbable events. Such as? Well, I mean, I don't think you can sort of just take off from Mars on an unguided rocket, really.

19:37And then hurt your finger on the space suit and navigate to a space ship. Right? Yeah. Not impossible, just extremely unlikely. So the standard volume. But if you're Matt Damon, maybe? Maybe. You have some mad skills, for sure. So when will people like yourself get there? And I assume you'll be first in line for that.

20:02Yeah, so I later this year in September at the IAC, which is the big sort of world space conference, industry-based conference, I'm going to be presenting the architecture for Mars colonization. So I think what really matters is being able to transport large numbers of people and ultimately

20:26millions of tons of cargo to Mars. And that's what's necessary in order to create a self-sustaining, not really self-sustaining, but a growing city on Mars. I'm curious. Have you bent a space yet? No. Why? And you could just go up right for a little bit or not. I could I suppose yeah why haven't you like walk around the world something or

20:51Yeah, probably will well you do a moon test before you go to Mars Yeah, I've never like probably I'm gonna go to orbit in four or five years Is it like that but again space and orbit are very different things, but on the Mars thing would you send up? two or three Whether it's you or not, I kind of would prefer it if you tried it frankly, but

21:15Because it would be exciting but would you send up some people before you do this whole architecture for Colonizing Mars just a handful of people to kind of see what I mean the basic game plan is like we're gonna send Emission to Mars with every Mars opportunity from 2018 onwards, so and they occur approximately every 26 months

21:38So, you know, we're establishing cargo flights to Mars that people can count on for cargo. And it's like I said, the Earth Mars orbital rendezvous is only every 26 months. So it's one in 2018, that would be another one in 2020. And I think if things go according to plan, we should be able to launch people probably

22:08in 2024 with arrival in 2025. Is that a more certain schedule than United Airlines? Well, I don't know. Well, he's been on that idea. Certainly he's associated with that. So, I'm going to show... Anyway, that's the game plan. Like, approximately 2024 to launch the first of the Mars on your transport system, where

22:39I want to get back to what you said earlier about a multi-million. This will be a very big rocket. Okay. Very big, bigger than the Saturn fire. Yes. Twice as big or what? September. I'll tell you. Not going to say anything until September? Come on. Very big. Come on. Has to be very big.

22:57How big is very big? So big. Do you think we should abandon the Earth at something? No. No, I think that's great. But you have said things. Oh, do you have an Earth? It's really nice here. You've said things about we may have to abandon the Earth, so it's good to have a Plan B instead of the Earth.

23:19No, that was amazing. That's amazing. I think that's amazing. I don't know, but it wasn't me. All right, OK. It wasn't me, like Shaggy. So let's move to things on this Earth. Let's move to Hyperloop Tesla, other things. Let's talk about Tesla first. Where do you feel like the company is at at this point?

23:40And there's been lots of activity in self-driving cars, autonomous, autonomous. How do you look at how everybody's jumped in? Google, Apple, others. And all the car manufacturers. Yeah, I mean, there have been so many announcements of like autonomous EV startups. I'm waiting for my mom to announce one.

23:59It's like mom, you two. I mean, there's a lot. So yeah, I mean in the US alone, there are four, I think maybe five China-funded EV startups

24:20at the billion dollar plus level, like, serious funding. And there's a bunch of startups and then of course the car industry as a whole seems to be moving in that direction. Volkswagen just I think announced a huge battery factory that they're going to build. And I think these are all good.

24:41It's good for the industry to be moving towards sustainable transport as quickly as possible. We open-source our patents to try to be helpful in that regard. And it's encouraging to see all this activity. From a Tesla standpoint, we want to take the set of actions that are likely to accelerate

25:06the event of sustainable energy. So scale up production as fast as we can. So we accelerated plans for the Model 3 by two years. So we want to try to get to half a million cars in total in kind of the 2018 timeframe, which is an aggressive schedule, but I think achievable. And there may be a million cars a year by 2020.

25:34And, you know, I can see it, like I think a pretty clear path to get there. Autonomy is obviously extremely important. People are going to want to autonomy. It's going to be odd to have a car without autonomy in the future. So I think that's where it's scaling up. How do you look at all these efforts, not your mother?

26:00But she's not going to do it. She may do a rocket situation. But how do you look at each of them? Let's go through them. What Google is doing? How do you assess what they're doing when you're looking at it? Because there'll be competitors at some point. These are all eventual competitors.

26:17What Google's done a great job of showing the potential of autonomous transport. But they're not a car company, so they would potentially license their technology to other car companies. And I think they announced something with the Fiat. And so I wouldn't say, you know, Google's a competitor,

26:40because they're not a car company. We would compete with somebody, perhaps, with their license technology, too, but not to them directly. Apple? Yeah, that'll be more direct. That'll be more direct? Yeah. You can tell by the hiring pattern and that kind of stuff. So what are you, OK, so they're going to be more direct.

27:00I'm going to hire a lot of people. How do you assess it? I mean, I say like, I think it's great that they're doing this. And I hope they have a work style. What's the time frame from them, do you think? I don't know. I think they should have embarked on this project sooner, actually.

27:38But I don't know when they have, they don't share with me the details of their production plans. But I don't think it's going to be, I don't think there'll be an evolving production sooner than maybe 2020. I don't be like the soonest. And that's, is that too late? We say they should have embarked sooner.

27:58Is that because 2020 would be too late to stop you or beat you or beat with you? What? It's just like it's a missed opportunity. It's just that they, it's, it'll be over by 2022. No, no, it's just like it's a couple of years. I think they'll probably make a good car and probably be successful.

28:19The car industry is very big. So it's not as though there's, you know, one company to the exclusion of others, and there's like a dozen car companies in the world of significance. So the most that any company has is approximately 10% market share. So it's not like somebody comes up with a car and they're suddenly like, they kill everyone else.

28:44It's not that way. And the sheer scale of automotive manufacturing is just hard to appreciate until you see the plants. I mean, they're gigantic. Yeah, I have seen the plants. Yeah, I mean, the sheer size of the industrial infrastructure is staggered. Not just the assembly plant, but everything else that goes.

29:05Yeah, the supply chain, exactly. The assembly plant is just a little tip of the iceberg, really. The assembly plant is literally a tip of the iceberg. Phenomenal. The supply chain is, once you go to tier two, tier three, two or four suppliers. That's probably an order of magnitude more than the final assembly.

29:24So you think Google will not be a competitor after probably will be a direct competitor? Yeah, sure. What about the car companies? I think they'll be competitors. Yeah, sure. Who do you see out there that has done a nice job so far? Mercedes or a flop? G&M? Of what? A competitive car.

29:44Of the incumbents. potentially competitive car. I mean, I don't think anyone's, any of the car companies thus far have made a really great electric car. I mean, you tell me if you disagree. But I don't think yet that any of them have made a great electric car. They presumably will continue to improve on what they've done so far.

30:10And then at some point, they may make a car that's a great car. They haven't done that yet. Can I ask you about batteries for a second? Oh, yeah sure. So you're building this gigafactory, right? It's built. Well, it's not completely built. OK, but part of it's up and running. A big truck of it's built, yeah.

30:30Part of it's up and running. It's a really gigantic thing. Like when the gigafactory's done, it'll be the largest footprint building of any kind in the world. Of any kind, not just factories, it literally of any kind. What is this? The largest rocket, the largest building. I mean, I think it's not scale for scale sake.

30:46It's just like if you say, well, we want to accomplish these goals, then you kind of have to make a big thing. Okay. You've got this big thing. It's this big giant building. It's going to make batteries. The batteries is going to make our lithium. We're going to have an opening.

31:04Well, it's not taking an opening party since it's been operating for a little while, but we're going to have a party soon. You guys maybe want to come. Okay. All right. It's good. We'll come to the battery party. I love it. Right just this is crazy. No, this is like an alien dreadnought. It's really nutty because I love a battery party, but yeah

31:22Right, but but but talk about where it's got these lithium ion batteries. Yeah, sure so they're the same batteries that's in our phone. No Explain please explain. Yes So let me have you made a battery breakthrough is something I'm interested in Yeah, I mean generally the I mean there's there's so much nonsense out there about batteries like about you can believe about 1% of what you

31:44read on a, you know, maybe. Lithium ion covers a very broad range of technologies. And you can have an enormous difference in the power density and the energy density and the cycle life between one chemistry and another. They can be really enormously different. So what you really actually want to ask is what is the cathode cathode and what is the anode?

32:14Right. So in our case... That's right. Okay. I just put it in the... The lithium is actually 2% of the cell mass. So it's like the salt in the salad. It's a very small amount of the cell mass and a fairly small amount of the cost. It sounds like it's big because it's called lithium ion, but it really...

32:37Our battery should be called nickel graphite, because it's mostly nickel and graphite. OK. It's nickel, cobalt, aluminum. But battery. You know the little things in graphite with a silicon oxide layer. Battery efficiency or power, the power that you can store in a certain mass seems to be moved very slowly, at least compared to where used to be Moore's law pushing.

33:02Integrated circuits faster. Batteries kind of are always in our consumer devices, always lagging behind. In your, you've built this giant thing, the biggest building in the world has ever seen. It's not fully built, but yes, it's. You're building it. Pretty big chunk is built, though, yeah.

33:17The biggest building in the world, yeah, yeah. To make batteries. Your whole business depends on batteries in these cars. Have you figured out a way to do some significant increase in the yield of energy from a given amount of space in the battery? Well, yeah, I mean, the energy density is increasing,

33:41sort of maybe on the order of like 5ish percent per year. And it doesn't sound like much, but you add that up over a number of years with compound interest, it ends up being quite a significant number. And a lot of people sort of think that, oh, we just sort of cobbled together some laptop batteries and somehow made a great car.

34:02And if it was that easy, then I think we would have quite a few competitors who did the same thing. But it's really quite a lot harder than that. It's a cylindrical form factor, but the internals of the battery are quite different from what you would find in Lata. And it will be increasingly different with what's built at the gigafactory, which is highly optimized for automotive and has improved energy density.

34:31But mostly, it's not the energy density that's the issue. You know, you can buy, if you buy a model yesterday, the range is around 300 miles. And that's quite a lot. So it's pretty rare that people really need to go more than 300 miles at a time without stopping. Right. So I don't think we really have a range issue.

34:56And we could make a 400 mile range car today. Like that wouldn't be too big of a deal. What really matters is decreasing the cost per unit of energy of the battery packs so you can make the car affordable. That's actually the important thing. So, there's really two main dimensions along which cost optimization and making something

35:21available to the National Market can be achieved. One is design iteration, going through multiple versions of something, and then the other is economies of scale. You kind of need both of those things in order to make a compelling mass market product. You look at cell phones and how many design iterations have we gone through with cell phones.

35:40And look at the scale at which they're made, which is enormous. And that's what enables everyone to have a supercomputer in their pocket. So speaking of that, the sales, when we're talking about the sales, you have booked how many orders for? It's on the order of 400,000. 400,000.

35:59So obviously, consumer interest and a promise. A lot of it around you, around the idea of you and Tesla and the excitement. They're not booking. It was quite surprising actually. We didn't do any advertising or there was no guerrilla marketing or anything. It was just basically like, yeah, we're going to have this webcast.

36:19There were only about 1,000 people in the audience. And it really caught us by surprise. I think when you have a product that really resonates with customers, the word of mouth grows like wildfire. And that seems to be what it is. Yeah, but it's a little bit. I mean, honestly, in some groups, especially men in Silicon Valley, if you show up in red, like a label of a peanut jar, they'd be thrilled with the situation.

36:44So I mean, a lot of this does base around you, like the idea of you and the excitement around this exciting entrepreneur, is that enough to get it to this massive company you've been hoping to, the idea of this is the Elon promise? Well, I think actually it's not too much. I mean, I sort of, I'm not sure, I think I deserve less

37:10credit than that actually. The, I mean, what Tesla's done, we have a phenomenal team. It was like 15,000 people at the company, worked super hard to create compelling products, to create great cars. And we set up with the Roadster, and then the Model S. And the Model S was rated by Consumer Reports as the best car ever.

37:31The Model X, which has had some teething issues. But I think it's now at the point where it's really starting to, I think it's really, I think, quite sublime at this point. And so people look at that and say, OK, well, If Tesla's made these cars, then probably the next car they make is going to be, you know,

37:54the less expensive one. Also a great car. And yeah, so it'll be a great car but it'll be affordable and it's like great, okay, that sounds like something I want. So this car, this next car, the price is, the- It's starting at $35,000. Okay, affordable. Okay, when is- If you're eligible to this- When do you get to the point of- When do you get to the really affordable, the way down much lower than that?

38:15Yeah, I mean, it's important to point out that $35,000, particularly when factoring the lower cost of electricity versus gasoline, and that the maintenance cost is much less. You don't have to have oil changes. You never need to replace your brakes, because the car uses regenerative braking, so the brakes last as long as the car is.

38:32Basically, you just need to replace the tires, like that's about all. So the operational cost of the car is much lower fundamentally than a gasoline car. And so, and I think the average price for cars for guessing cars is around 30, 32, something like that. Yeah. I mean, there's starting prices that are lower, but when people pick options, I believe it's in around 32 or so in the US.

38:59So we're pretty close to that. But that's your base price, right? I mean, that would be a great car. It would be not be the ASP for the car. No, but it's going to be a great car, even at 35. So even if you order nothing, no options at all, it'll be great. But you're likely to have a mix where the average car

39:17that you actually sell, sells for a little more than that? Yes, probably, it's probably gonna be, yes, probably probably gonna be some higher number. But it's really important to have size like 35, if somebody orders a 35,000 car, they'll be very happy. Like it's not like you need to order a bunch of options in order without which the car is, you know, not good.

39:35That car will have autonomous for 35? I have a, I'm gonna do another Tesla event, Maybe at the end of the year, talk more about that. And say it. Well, so you could start here. It will be real big news if I start here. We don't mind that. Let me just say that we're going to do the obvious thing.

40:06OK. Got it. It's really obvious. So cup holders, good. OK. Brilliant. Those things are nuanced. Absolutely. Let's talk about two more things. I want to talk about AI because we've been talking about it a lot here. Which, I want to get it clear what your thoughts are. Because it's mostly Elon scared of robots.

40:32I mean, that kind of thing. How do you? I don't scared of robots. Artificial intelligence. Can you like clarify exactly what the issue you have now? You deserve the background. We've been talking to Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai. We talked to Mark Fields from Ford about it. My chat for you.

40:55Yeah, the Facebook folks. There certainly seems to be, in the tech companies, a big, tremendous new drive or interest to believing there will be all competing for intelligent assistance. It'll make your life better. It's going to suddenly get smart. Microsoft's one is going to get smart.

41:19Google is going to cream them all. It's largely a happy version of this. Sometimes technology hurts you, but not as much as it helps you. That's really. Yeah. So there's been a lot of conversation here about that. And you've staked out a slightly different position. So can you talk about that?

41:35Well, I think my full position would require quite a long explanation. I am concerned about certain directions that AI could take that would be not good for the future.

41:55I think it would be fair to say that not all AI futures are benign. And so if you have something, if we create some digital super intelligence that exceeds us in every way by a lot, it's very important that we have been in. So actually with a few others, I created OpenAI, which is an AI, it's a nonprofit actually.

42:29there's no, I think the governance structure here is important. So you want to make sure that there was not some fiduciary duty to generate profit off of the AI technology that's developed. So we created this 501c3. But it's quite different from a lot of 501c3s are, you know, they don't have a high sense of urgency.

43:00Like they're not like, you know, they're not really sort of developing technology at a fast pace. But OpenAI is. So OpenAI has a very high sense of urgency. I think that the people that have joined are really, really amazing. And the intent with OpenAI is to democratize AI power.

43:30There's a quote that I love from Lord Acton. He was the guy that came up with power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, which is that freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism in its concentration. And so I think it's important, if we have this incredible power of AI that it not be concentrated in the hands a few and potentially lead to a world that we don't want.

43:53And what world is that? What do you see for see that when you sit? It's difficult, I mean it's called the singularity because it's difficult to predict what, exactly what future that might be except I don't know a lot of people who love the idea of living under a despot. You know I don't think people generally choose live in a democracy over a dictatorship.

44:16And the despot would be the computer? people controlling the computer. And do you worry specifically about any of these companies I mentioned, who've all seem to now be pivoting toward this? Is the battleground in the next 10 years? I wouldn't name a name, but there is only one.

44:37There's only one you're worried about. And they're not preoccupied with making a car that will compete with you, I assume. There's only one. And what is an interesting thing? It's not about competing. This is sort of like what we put at the point of competing for mutual destruction.

45:01It's not about competing. It's really just about trying to increase the probability that the future will be good. That's all. So the goal of OpenAI is really just to take the set of actions that are most likely to improve the positive futures. You can think of the future as a set of probability streams that branch out and then converge, collapse down to a particular event, and then branch out again.

45:30And there's a certain set of probability associated with the future being positive, and different type of believers of that. And at OpenAI, we want to try to do whatever we can to guide, to increase the probability of the good futures happening. I think that's really what we're trying to do there.

45:46worry that by making this open, some bad actors may use some of what has been developed to do bad stuff with the power of AI. Yeah, I mean that is certainly the good rebuttal to that. However, I think if AI power is widely distributed, then, and there is not, say, one entity that

46:10has some super AI that is a million times smarter than anything else. If instead the AI power is broadly distributed and to the degree that we can link AI power to each individual's will, it's like you would have your AI agent, you would, like everybody would have their sort of AI agent.

46:33Then if somebody did try to do something really terrible, well then the collective will of others could overcome that bad actor. Which you can't do if there's one AI that's a million times better than ever. And it's proprietary. And it's, yeah, it either has its own will or more likely at least in the beginning is

46:54controlled by some small set of people. So I think that's really the risk. I mean, you know, those are those means arguments. Like what's the best form of government? You know, big fan of, I think it was Churchill, like, you know, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.

47:13Right. So speaking of that, this election, you are from? Oh, no. No, no, yes, yes. How does that strike you what's happening now? You come to this country, you're naturally so. You know, I think I'm glad that the framework is the Constitution so fit to ensure that the president was

47:34someone who was captain of a large ship with a small rudder. OK. And? There's a limit to how much harm can you give him, President? Are you sure about that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not worried about are you backing in either of the candidates at this point? Try to stay out of this situation.

47:54Because? I don't think that's the finest moment in our democracy. Well, given that it's not the finest moment in our democracy, do you think the best thing is to stay out? Or to get in? I'm not sure what I could do to the worst. I'm not sure how much influence I could have as one person on the outcome.

48:19I mean, if I think I could make a difference, I would probably do something. But like I said, I think I'm just glad that being the US president is like being captain of a large ship with a small rudder. And so that's just a limit to how much good or bad a president can actually do.

48:38Obviously, if a president could make the economy great, and there was a button he could press, they're repressing that button at the speed of light. But they can't. They can't just magically make the economy good. No president wants the economy bad ever. but they, you know, like there's just a limit to how much they can do.

49:03And yeah, I guess there is the nuclear thing, which is the nuclear thing. Yeah, the nuclear thing. I guess there is the nuclear thing. Yeah, but I don't know, I think you'll, I think I don't think we would like just arbitrarily long nuclear missiles. Yeah, one would help. President can do that.

49:22I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, I think that. He's, no, he's the commander chief. I still don't think that means you can just launch nuclear missiles whenever you want. I think Congress would be quite upset about that. And they might not be consulted. Yeah, but I think the military would be like, yeah, we really think Congress should be consulted on before you launch a...

49:43That might happen. We have to be a strike. Are you willing? You're basing your faith in that, though. I'm quite confident that the military would not just, you know, randomly agree to launching your glen muscles at somebody. Well, that's calming. This is fine. Yeah. So we're going to put up just very quickly and on hyperloop.

50:03You've been involved with it. Your level involvement is what at this point? Yeah. Yeah. I know it's a bit confusing because I am. You talked about it when you were here last time. Yeah. I actually came up with the idea. I came up with an initial idea which would turn out to be wrong, it wouldn't work several years ago.

50:25And then, but I sort of shot my mouth off and said, I click, I have an idea that would work. And turned out that didn't work, but with a lot of iteration I was able to come up with something that where the physics hangs together. And then published the paper and just said, look, anyone who wants to do this is great.

50:43Be my guest. Because I sort of have a plateful running Tesla and SpaceX. Yeah, yeah. And so I think it'd be great to have any interesting new transport solutions, anything that gets people to their destination in a way that's safer, cost less, it's more convenient. That'd be great.

51:07And so I think probably the most valuable thing that the high-blue paper that I published has done is to spur thinking in terms of new transportation systems. So it's not just, oh, let's have a fast train. OK, that's not even as fast as what Japan did in the 80s. OK, well, why don't see what the point of that is?

51:35Like, we should really be trying to think of something that's, particularly in California, like we should be like saying, hey, what is the best? Let's invent something new that's way better than anything else. Do you want to shoot your mouth off about that? So I'm not an investor in any of the companies that are working on it.

51:57I've tried to be neutral because I'm trying not to favor one company over another. But just to encourage anyone that is interested to say that, try to give them moral support. And I hope they succeed. The only thing that I am doing at the HAPLU Fund is that we're holding a student competition

52:18and the student competition is really just aimed towards encouraging students to think about exciting new transport methods. And it's totally cool if they want to do some architecture that's different from what I propose in HAPLU. In fact, the winning team at the student competition that we held earlier this year used a different

52:40suspension mechanism than what I propose, which is I propose using essentially taking the air that pulls up on the nose from the compressor and flowing that through air skis. So you simultaneously remove the drag from the nose and provide a means of suspending the pod. And that's also something that works well even at super

53:08supersonic velocities, you can go, it's been demonstrated up to Mach 1.1 in terms of using air bearings as- But they use something different. Yeah, basically, electromagnetic suspension. And the reason I didn't suggest any kind of magnetic system suspension is that it's very important that the cost of the tube be minimized.

53:36Like you really want, because the pod is cheap, the tube is expensive. So if you want to go say 400 miles and tune two directions, so you've got 800 miles of tube, the critical economic optimization parameter is the cost of the tube. So you want that tube to be as low cost as possible.

53:55And so if you do anything that requires action on the tube side, it's going to make that too much more expensive. So if you use air bearings, it doesn't change. Like that's real cheap. And yeah. So. You think this is going to happen? Yeah, I think something like that. I think something will happen in the future. You know,

54:24I think if the companies that are trying to make it happen now, if for whatever reason that doesn't work out, then you know, I think I'll, you know, I might do something like in the future. I don't want to do something, I don't want to sort of front run them, you know, and say here's this free idea and then meanwhile I go and do it myself, you know, that wouldn't be nice.

54:49So but if they, if much of the companies don't try and it doesn't work out, then I think, I think I'll try to just at least do a demonstration system, yeah. Okay, last question. Do you think tech has gotten more serious? How do you look at the tech landscape as someone who's well known?

55:09You probably qualify as a visionary. The concept, what do you imagine we are right now in the tech space? And then we'll get to questions from the audience. I think there's a lot of innovation happening in many different areas. The advancements in AI are quite astonishing. The advancements in genetics are amazing.

55:34So I think that there is a lot of innovation going on. I think that there's probably a few too many talented entrepreneurs in kind of the internet space and I think their talent actually would be better served in some other industries. But I do think that, I mean I don't think we're like facing some sort

56:00of low innovation period or anything like that. I think there's a lot of innovation going on. they need to move to other. I just think that if you had some ideal distribution, it would probably be fewer. Like there's just a lot of talent focused on the internet, and probably some of that talent would be better

56:20to have some of that talent in other industries. That's about all. But there's a tremendous amount of innovation that's happening. It's something that I think is going to be quite important. And I don't know if a company that's working on it seriously is a neural lace. So going back to the AI situation,

56:53this is quite an important debate. If you assume any rate of advancement in AI, we will be left behind by a lot. And so then we could be in a benign situation. If you have ultra-intelligent AI, so far below the main intelligence that it would be like a pet. Like a cat. Like a cat.

57:27Like a cat. Like a cat. Like a cat. Like a cat. Like a cat. Yeah, we like the house cat. Right. And yeah, that's the end of the world. You know, sort of. Well, you've seen the movie. It could be. It could be. Could be. You know, so that, honestly, that would be the benign scenario.

57:45So house cat is okay. I mean, I don't love the idea of being a house cat. Okay. But what's the solution? Yeah, so I think it's two, essentially, I think one of the solutions. The solution that seems maybe the best one is to have an AI layer. If you think of your limbic system, your cortex, and then a digital layer,

58:19sort of a third layer above the cortex that could work well and symbiotically with you. I mean, just as your cortex works symbiotically with the olympic system, your sort of a third digital layer could work symbiotically with the rest. This is something that's surgically inserted or bred into the species or what?

58:44The fundamental limitation is input output. So we already have, we're already a cyborg. It's just that, I mean, you have a digital version of yourself, a partial version of yourself online in the form of your emails and your social media and all the things that you do. And you have basically superpowers in that with your computer and your phone and the applications that are there.

59:11You have more power than the president of the United States had 20 years ago. you can add to any question, you can video conference with anyone anywhere, you can send a message to millions of people instantly, you know, you just do incredible things. And, but the constraint is input output.

59:36So we're IO bound. Particularly output bound. I mean, like your output level is so low, it's like particularly on a phone, like you're two thumbs just sort of tapping away. This is ridiculously slow. Our input is much better because we have a high bandwidth visual interface to the brain.

59:56Like our eyes are taking a lot of data. So there's many orders of magnitude difference between input and output. So, mostly, effectively, merging in a symbiotic way with digital intelligence revolves around

1:00:18eliminating the I.O. constraint. So it's some sort of direct cortical interface. And you called it a neural... Neural-lace, yeah. It's totally not go over glass, right? No. I'm talking about something which... But did you wear it? No. I mean, it would be... I mean, there are a few ways to

1:00:46approach this, but some sort of interface directly with your cortical neurons, particularly. But doesn't that apply surgical insertion? Not necessarily. You could go through the veins and arteries because that provides a complete roadway to all of your neurons. Your neurons are very heavy users of energy, so they need high blood flow.

1:01:06So you automatically with your beans and arteries have a road network to your neurons. Still some kind of surgery, right? Yes, but you could insert something basically into the jugular and have... It gets in the car, but... It sounds really easy and... It doesn't involve, it doesn't involve, you know, like, chopping your skull off or anything like that.

1:01:32Yeah, and plus you're not a house cat anymore. Not a house cat, so. I mean, essentially, if we can figure out how to establish a high band with neural interface. With ourselves. With your digital self, effectively. Then you're no longer a house cat. All right. No, I just one closing thing.

1:01:59I mean, I think that's probably the best outcome, I think. Are you interested in exploring this possibility that you have just laid out? Somebody's got to do it. I'm not saying that I will, but somebody's got to do it. I mean, somebody should do it. And if somebody doesn't do it, then I think I should probably do it.

1:02:22And the goal of this is to prevent there being an external AI, particularly one controlled by a small group of people that could be so much more powerful and intelligent than we are that they have to get. It would be a god-like situation. Situition. This has been really cheerful.

1:02:41Thank you. But if we can establish that. I was worried about asteroids at the beginning of this. I mean asteroids are a low probability existential threat on the time scale that's relevant to us. Okay. Okay, this is different. This requires urgency. So what do you do for fun? Yes, this is much more energy.

1:02:59What do you do for fun, fun? What do you do, anything? I play video games with my kids. All right, that sounds good. Let's get some questions. Elon, Elon the house cat. Much movies, you know, I think. Almost like that. Why don't we start over here? Yeah, hi. I think this last question just did that.

1:03:18I want to know how do you live through this stress that kind of conversations we just heard that you went through and kind of ambitions that you carry and then how do you adjust to the everyday work, life, balance, et cetera, things that in your life. So a little bit of your personal side, actually.

1:03:35You're very busy. How does that work? Yeah, I mean, I am sort of in kind of work triage mode a lot of the time. So I know it seems to be, as long as there's not like a crisis simultaneously at SpaceX and Tesla, it's OK. But companies are, I mean, the situation in any given company,

1:03:56particularly if it's sort of growing fast and sort of quasi-startup, it's somewhat sinusoidal. So I mean, it's okay if the waves don't crest together. When that does happen, then that's a huge strain. Right now things are like, you know, motoring along okay. And I have like the context loaded for both companies, and I can look sort of see a path to a good outcome.

1:04:23So I feel pretty good right now. But they've been super stressful times in the past. And then I always try to reserve time for my kids because I love hanging out with them. Like, I mean, kids are really great. I mean, they're like the 99% of the time they make you happier. Their kids are awesome.

1:04:47Yeah. Then there's that 1%. 1%, you know, like, yeah, 1%. But like, it's of anything in my life, I would say kids by far make me the happiest. I don't know. I agree. Yeah, that's great. I agree. Yeah. That's true. So hang out with them. So like, no, like things like, a lot of times kids are kind of in their own world, so you don't need to like, they don't want to like talk to their dad for hours and end, generally.

1:05:12I've noticed that. Yeah. So like, so I can be in the same room with them. They can talk to me from time to time. But I can get some emails done, get some work done, and then whenever they want to talk to me, they can. And then we try to do things like travel places. And actually, we play video games together.

1:05:36Or actually, on Monday, we went to the new Harry Potter land at Universal, which was quite fun. So I think that that- Nobody from the university just clap. Yeah. Whoever was in charge of Harry Puddland did a great job. It's really good. Yeah, it is good. I highly recommend it. Yeah.

1:05:55The Butterbeer is amazing. Yeah, I was just saying the Butterbeer is amazing. Yeah. Okay. Right here. Over here. Hi, my name is Evan Burns and the founder of Odyssey. And I hope into the future to be in something in the space industry. And my curiosity is you've talked about SpaceX getting in many different businesses.

1:06:11For example, Global Wi-Fi, through launching many satellites. Do you hope SpaceX becomes a platform for others to launch businesses, or do you see SpaceX being a business that launches many business lines? Well, I mean the general strategy of SpaceX is to, like we clearly need a lot of money

1:06:30in order to develop the transport system to establish a city on Mars. So we're like kind of gathering revenue, like Earth-based revenue that's, we're trying to maximize Earth. Is there some other revenues? Well, right now it's only Earth. So we've got to maximize Earth revenue as it relates to space, as it relates to rockets

1:06:55and spacecraft. But I think what, assuming SpaceX is able to transport large numbers of people and goods to Mars. an enormous enabler for entrepreneurial activity on Mars because there's going to be so much to do. Everything from creating the first iron ore refinery to the first pizza joint to something

1:07:18that doesn't even exist on Earth. It's kind of like when the Union Pacific crossed, everybody thought, what a stupid idea. There's nobody living in California. Well, okay, now there's quite a lot of people living in California. So just having, you need the transport link. And so what SpaceX is trying to do is establish a transport link and then try to create a fertile

1:07:45environment for entrepreneurs on Mars to flourish. And I think that will be an amazing expansion of entrepreneurial life. How long would it take to deliver a pizza from Mars? Well, it's going to be a little cold, I think. But, I mean, we can certainly see a way to get to Mars in under three months.

1:08:07And I think ultimately you'll be able to get to Mars in under a month. It does get exponentially difficult as you reduce the time. But three months is a way to think of it. And I think that's probably, you know, that's really where SpaceX will, I think, create a a great environment for entrepreneurial potential.

1:08:27Thanks. Nila? I hope Domino's does not get to Mars. Please don't let it. But I was going to fill up special Mars. I said what it would be. I'm assuming you're the king of Mars. Nila. So you're obviously very ambitious. That's led to some really ambitious deadlines that have been missed.

1:08:47So Falcon Heavy was originally 2012. The Model X was a little bit delayed. the Model 3, the Model X was delayed, the Model 3 seems to be stretching, but the Model 3 in particular is a consumer product. You're taking money from people against a really aggressive production schedule and

1:09:05a huge amount of orders. What are you going to do to hit your deadlines on that because it's real consumers this time in a big class of people? I think the biggest thing is just designing the car for manufacturing. So in the case of Model S, like the Model S was the first time we'd really built a car,

1:09:29a whole car. Like with the roads to Lotus, to the body and chassis, we did the powertrain, then we did the sort of final installation of the powertrain to the chassis. But the Model S was the first time we made a car. So we were just trying to make a great car, but we had no idea what it meant to design

1:09:44something to be manufacturable. So the Model S is super hard to make and then the Model X is both of the Model S platform except it's got a bunch of other WIS bank technologies that make it even harder to build. So, you know, so, like, I mean, definitely we want to do the opposite of what we do with the X, which is make something that is going to

1:10:08be a lot simpler but still a car that people will love and where every design decision is factoring in the manufacturability and making sure that when we design something that you can manufacture at volume at an affordable price on the schedule that we're targeting. One of the things that makes a car very difficult particularly if it's a new car is that it's

1:10:37an integrated product with several thousand unique components. So we are somewhat at the mercy of whatever the slowest component is, whatever basically, if you say go to tier two and three suppliers, they end up being several thousand suppliers. So things move as fast as the least lucky and least competent supplier. But just, and you can think of

1:11:01like any natural disaster you care to name, all of those things have happened to our suppliers. If factory has burnt down, there's been an earthquake, there's been a tsunami, there's been massive hail, there's been a tornado, the ship sank, there was a shoot out of the Mexican border, no kidding, that's laid trunk carpet at one point.

1:11:27And we couldn't get in like the border patrol wouldn't give us the truck, because it had a bullet holes in it. We just wanted our trunk carpet. Like it's pretty safe. It's like no cocaine or anything. It's good. But you know, that's shut down the brush line as an example for several days.

1:11:48So that's the biggest issue. Like the supply chain stuff is really tricky. We're trying to anticipate as much of that as possible, increase our optionality so that there's more internal capability at Tesla. that we want to do things internally, but if a supplier is unwilling to deliver the part,

1:12:10we can quickly make that internally. So I think the whole company is geared for that. And I mean, right now it looks like we should be able to do that. We expect to, I mean, almost all of the Model 3 design is done, and we're aiming for pencils down basically in about six weeks, complete pencils down.

1:12:42And we're tabling all, you know, like if there are ideas for future cool things, we'll have it in version 2, version 3, in our future years type of thing. So overall, I feel pretty good about it. And I particularly am major. So a lot of partners have been very supportive and are on board.

1:13:08I mean, I should say, when I sort of cite a schedule, it is actually the schedule I think is true. It's not some fake schedule that I don't think is true. So, I mean, you know, it's never, you know, it's maybe delusional. That is entirely, you know, possible news happen from time to time.

1:13:36But it's never, you know, some knowingly fake deadline ever. So, is there an event in six weeks where you're going to announce autonomous driving is included in the pencils down plan for the Model 3? not expecting any event in six weeks. Josh. Hi. This is kind of a weird question.

1:14:04I feel like you would be the guy with the right answer for it. There's sort of a philosophic concept that a sufficiently advanced civilization will be able to create a simulation. Yeah, maybe you've answered this before? A simulation. I've had so many simulation discussions. It's crazy.

1:14:22OK. Because in fact, it got to the point where basically every conversation was the AI slash simulation conversation. And my brother and I finally agreed that we would ban such conversations if we were ever in a hot tub. That was like, because that really kills the matter. Or not a tub.

1:14:41So the idea is, right, any sufficiently advanced civilization could create a simulation that's like our existence. And so the theory follows that maybe we're in the simulation. Have you thought about this and a lot? Are we? Are we? Even in hot tub. So much so it had to be banned from a hot tub.

1:15:04Okay. It's not the sexiest conversation. Are we in? Are we in? I think here's, in my mind, the strongest argument for us being in a simulation, probably being in a simulation, I think is the following. But 40 years ago, we had Pong, like two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were.

1:15:31Now 40 years later, we have photo-realistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it's getting better every year. And soon we'll have virtual reality, augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable

1:15:52from reality. Just instinctable. Even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is right now, then you just say, okay, well, let's imagine it's a ten thousand years in the future, which is nothing in the evolutionary scale. So, given that we're clearly on our trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality and those games could be played on any set-top box or on a PC or whatever and they would probably

1:16:23be billions of such computers or set-top boxes, it would seem to follow that the odds that we're

1:16:36in base reality is one in billions. Tell me what's wrong with that argument. Is the answer yes. The argument is probably. I mean, I just like, is there a flaw in that argument? I mean, but someone, I'm not sure what the error is. No, no, the argument makes sense. So the assumption then is that somebody beat us to it.

1:16:56And this is a game. No, no, there's a one in billions chance that this is based reality. Oh, OK. What do you think? Well, I think it's one in billions. OK. That seems to be clearly what it suggests. And actually, arguably we should hope that that's true, because otherwise if civilization

1:17:21stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamities event that erase the civilization. So maybe we should be hopeful that this is a simulation, because otherwise... Because they could reboot it. Otherwise, either we're going to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality or civilizational cease to exist.

1:17:42Those are the two options. I like those odds. Okay. It's unlikely to go into some multimillionaire stasis. So it's either going to increase or decrease. Hi, I'm G.T.Patel from Box. Two part question for you. One is, if you think about fully autonomous vehicles, of pass through regulatory approvals, have passed through in-city driving and traffic

1:18:10conditions, how far do you think from a time frame perspective we are for that becoming reality? And number two would be the second part of that question is how far before, how long before you think it's either illegal or extremely prohibitively expensive for humans to drive on the road?

1:18:31Well, I mean, I think I really would consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem. Even in cities like Beijing and... Yeah, yeah, actually this... There's really only one area where it's like a little dodgy, and that's basically if you're at roughly 30 to 40 miles an hour

1:18:56in open environments, which is that's difficult to achieve in Beijing. It's like heavy traffic. In dense traffic situations, autonomy is really easy, because you can just maintain a set distance from various cars. It's actually quite, quite easy. You aren't very unlikely to run anyone over.

1:19:15You're just not moving fast enough, and you can break in time. On highways, particularly highways that are barriers, so that you don't have pedestrians. That's also relatively easy, and like a Model S and Model X, at this point, can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person right now.

1:19:34That's a question. My point is when does it get to be where you don't need to be sitting behind a vehicle, and actually the way that society starts expecting this is? I can have my 75-year-old mother, who doesn't speak any English or doesn't drive, be able to be transported from point A to point B by just sitting in a car by herself and being taken.

1:19:53I know it's technically possible, But how far do you think the regulatory approvals are for that happening? I think we're basically less than two years away from a complete autonomy. Well, that. Complete. Safely than a human. However, regulators will take, I think, at least another year,

1:20:15at least another year. And to pick, is it going to depend on which part of the world you're in? Because they will want to see billions of miles of data to show that it is statistically true that there is a substantial improvement in safety if something's autonomous versus not autonomous.

1:20:33I don't think that regulators will accept something that's close to, that's sort of approximately as good as a person. I think they'll have to be at least twice as good as a person, maybe five or 10 times, you know, better in terms of safety. And that will have to be a statistically relevant data set. So like billions of miles over widely differing roads and

1:21:00situations. So yeah, you know, I think it's like probably three years before it's from a regulatory standpoint but less than two before it is technically possible. And do you think there's a day when it's illegal to drive for humans or, you know? Well I mean we live in a democracy so presumably that would be a function of of the population deciding.

1:21:29I mean, I'm not in favor of banning people from driving cars, like I'm in favor of freedom and not restricting what people do. Yeah, but maybe the requirements for a license will get more stringent. I think that seems like maybe a good move, so you have to demonstrate a higher level of skill to drive in order to be allowed to manually drive.

1:21:56Very last question. This is the last question. I'll make it a good one. But Elon has to go. I'm going to make it a great question. Thinking about life on Mars again, how do you think about cultural unification, systems of government, rules of law, establishing those very early on?

1:22:15Well, I think I just declared King of Ma's a moment ago. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Take it. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So I think most likely the form of government en masse would be a direct democracy, not representative. So it would be people voting directly on issues. And I think that's probably better because the potential for corruption is substantially diminished in a direct versus a representative of democracy.

1:22:51So I think that's probably what will occur. I think that some, I think, I would recommend like some adjustment for the inertia of laws is what would be wise in that it should probably be easier to remove a law than create one. I think, you know, this is, I would just be like, let's just, I mean, I think that's probably

1:23:17good because just laws have infinite life unless they're taken away. So I think my recommendation would be like something like, let's say, 60% of people need to vote in a law, but at any point greater than 40% of people can remove it. And any law should come with a built-in sunset provision.

1:23:37If it's not good enough to be voted back in, maybe it shouldn't be there. So that's the framework for the government on Mars. I mean, those would be my recommendations. is a direct democracy where it's slightly harder to put laws in place than to take them away and where laws don't just automatically live forever.

1:24:00You'll be a good king. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.