汽车的未来：马斯克主题访谈

0:002022. We're very glad you can be with us whether you're here in the room in Central London

0:04or joining us on our global live stream. My name is Peter Campbell, I'm the global motor industry

0:09correspondent at the FT and it is a great pleasure to introduce and chair this session for you.

0:15Let me tell you how this is going to work. In a few minutes we're going to have Jamie

0:18Strabble back on stage and Elon Musk joining us remotely. But it's going to spend the first 10 to

0:2415 minutes of the session talking about the history of Tesla. Now these two guys were central

0:30to the company and its growth and everything it has achieved to date and they have never

0:33before appeared on stage together to talk about the origins of the business.

0:37So this is a unique chance to ask them about that and hear about that.

0:42And then for the rest of the session, we're going to have time just with Elon on his own

0:46where we'll have questions about Tesla today and tomorrow and maybe one or two questions

0:51about some other projects he has going on.

0:54Just a reminder to you, please do ask your questions on the chat box or if you're in the

0:57room using Slither. But with no further ado, because of all our guests here's the

1:02one who needs least introduction, I'd like you to welcome back to the stage

1:05Jamie Strabble and joining us remotely Elon Musk. Good evening, thank you so much

1:20for being with us, both of you. I want to go back to something that was alluded to

1:25earlier in the session and the lunch that changed the world, as Patrick called us,

1:30when the two of you sat down and came up with a plan that led to Tesla. Take us

1:35through that? Who started it? Whose idea was the lunch? Where did it go? Elon, we'd love

1:42you to start.

1:44I'm sure. Well, actually, and JB, I completely, I think we could hear maybe speaking back to

1:52But yeah, I got a call someone out of the blue from JB and

2:03Rosen and I

2:07Think what I'm not sure exactly what the survey matter was but it was it's something involving space or maybe hydrogen airplanes or something and

2:15so we got together for lunch and at some point the conversation turned to electric vehicles and

2:22JB and Rose and I both worked on an electric vehicle company that I guess ultimately wasn't

2:33successful.

2:34And I mentioned that I actually had a strong interest in electric vehicles for a long time

2:41and I thought electric vehicles were the future of transport.

2:46And in fact, I had worked at a company developing high-energy density capacitors, super-altrow

2:53capacitors for potential use in electric vehicles.

2:57And that was going to be my area of study during graduate studies at Stanford, which I ultimately

3:04dropped out of.

3:05But anyway, that led to JB suggesting that I get a test drive in the T-zero prototype from

3:13AC Propaul short is a small company in Southern California.

3:17And because that sort of had a proof of concept electric sports car.

3:24And I said that would be great.

3:26I'd love to get a test drive.

3:27And that was in 2003.

3:31And then I did get a test drive in the T0.

3:37And I tried to convince them to commercialize the T0.

3:41I tried very hard actually to get AC propulsion to commercialize the T0 electric sports car.

3:50And then after they said they really did not want to do that, I said, well do you mind

3:58if then I do that?

4:00If you mind if I create a commercial electric sports car and they said, yeah, no problem.

4:08And so that my intent was to basically create a company to commercialize the T0 with JB.

4:20And then Tom Gage, AC propulsion said, well, you know, there's some other groups that also

4:27want to commercialize the T0 concept.

4:31And what do you think about teaming up with them?

4:35And one of the groups that was introduced to me was mock-topening in Wright and Martin

4:43Eberhard.

4:44But it's very important to emphasize that there was no actual company that existed in any meaningful

4:52form at that point.

4:55So it was really just three guys and then JB and me and then we decided to team up and

5:03create a commercialized, create a commercial version of the T-Zero electric sports car.

5:11Yeah, I mean, JV, what's your perspective?

5:16No, that's a pretty close history of how I remember it as well.

5:22My perspective on the thing was us trying to chat with you about this electric hydrogen airplane

5:27concept that we were, you know, I was at the time trying to work on and I

5:32drew a call that knack going extremely well actually for the first part of the

5:35lunch. I think, can't remember the colorful

5:39adjectives you used but they weren't very, you weren't very excited about the

5:42hydrogen airplane for good reason. So yeah then I think our topics, our

5:48conversation completely turned to talking about lithium ion batteries, you

5:52know, state-of-the-art of lithium ion batteries and what was possible, potentially

5:56possible, stringing together at the time, large numbers of small lithium ion

6:02batteries, which were not very mature in those days, but could be potentially

6:07connected into really big battery packs to make an EV that could potentially have

6:11hundreds of miles of range, which today seems kind of commonplace, but in 2003

6:16was absolutely unheard of, it would literally set world records for range.

6:22And yeah, you understood that concept, I think, of the potential of it, better than anyone else that we'd ever talked to about it, and were immediately enthused about it and excited.

6:32So that was, I mean, shortly after, as you said, we met up with AC propulsion, and kind of we're off to the races.

6:40And there were a lot of early rejections when you talked to some car makers, obviously you settled on Lotus for the first Roadster,

6:47but you went around some others, was there ever a point between the lunch and getting the

6:52road straw for the ground where you almost gave up?

6:54You thought that actually you couldn't make it work, not from a chemistry point of view

6:58but commercially?

6:59Yeah, I can jump in maybe first on that.

7:04There were a lot of challenges in those early days.

7:07I mean, the technology was not a sure thing that all those pieces would work together,

7:13and some of the safety aspects around the battery were pretty thorny in the early days.

7:19And it was before, I think most people had figured out how to manage that.

7:23And I think in Tesla, I think we had an early chance to really figure that out in a very

7:28robust way and make them far safer than internal combustion actually has proved out to be through

7:34the statistics and through data.

7:37But that was not the common perception.

7:39So that was hard and that was risky.

7:42Obviously, there were a lot of financial turns and tribulations.

7:45It wasn't exactly smooth sailing from idea of an electric roadster

7:49through into commercialization.

7:51It was an insane nightmare, basically.

7:54And we screwed the pooch six ways to Sunday

8:00and made so many mistakes.

8:01It's embarrassing.

8:04Basically, the almost everything about the first design

8:09of the Tesla Roadster was wrong and wouldn't work.

8:15And the, first of all, we had no idea how to build a car.

8:21So, and then no one really knew how to build a,

8:25you know, a commercial lithium-ion battery car.

8:30No one had ever done it.

8:32So, like the original idea, sort of,

8:37it was sounds appealing, but was fundamentally flawed,

8:41was to use the Lotus Elise chassis,

8:47and then combine that with AC Propulsions drivetrain technology.

8:52And boom, you've got like,

8:54bury the two pieces necessary to create a car.

8:56It should be straightforward.

8:59And just do that, and great.

9:04Unfortunately, those were two fundamentally

9:08floor premises, the Lotus lease chassis did not work, meaning that the car ended up being

9:1540% heavier and we couldn't fit the battery pack in the lease because it was a very tiny

9:20car.

9:21So we had to change basically everything about the lease.

9:25I think we kept maybe 6% of the parts were in common.

9:29All crash tests were invalidated, the structure was invalidated because of the greater mass

9:35and the mass distribution being fundamentally different

9:37from a gasoline car.

9:39And yeah, in retrospect, it would have actually been

9:46much smarter to start with a clean sheet design

9:50and not try to modify the Elise,

9:53because we ended up with a lot of the limitations

9:56of the Elise, but almost nothing to gain

9:59in terms of reuse of parts.

10:01So that was a staggeringly dumb decision.

10:04And then on the drive-free inside, it turned out that I think almost none of the AC propulsion

10:14technologies were viable in a production car.

10:21I mean, JB, did we end up using any of the AC propulsion stuff?

10:25I think pretty much nothing by the time it went to the first customer.

10:31Yes.

10:32It was a very helpful first proof of concept that maybe pointed the way that what might

10:39be possible, but none of it was commercializing all of it as Elon said.

10:44It was a lot of mistakes and trials and tribulations and it was very hard to build more than two

10:50of those motor controllers and the first days with analog components.

10:53Those were still analog motor control.

10:55I mean, it would get hot and the motor would perform differently.

10:58The throttle would respond differently and the hot day versus the cold day.

11:01So yeah, everything pretty much had to be redone from scratch.

11:05So go on.

11:08So what we're saying is that we're huge idiots.

11:14And we're totally wrong about the fundamental premises

11:19of creating the Tesla Roadster.

11:24And you ended up not being able to use any of the AC propulsion

11:27by trade technology using essentially almost none of the original Lotus lease, but we're

11:33still left with a lot of limitations of the lease being a car that was a bit too small,

11:38very difficult to get in and out of and very bare bones and independent on Lotus to make

11:45it and that every time Lotus would have financial difficulties, they would increase the price

11:50on us and charge us more money.

11:54So that made it very difficult to control the price

11:59of the car.

12:03And then the supply chain was also a complete mess.

12:06The initial idea was to basically outsource everything

12:09and then almost none of the companies to which we outsourced

12:14the various parts of the cars were able to succeed

12:18in making those parts.

12:20So we had to find a new supplier for the car body,

12:24because the supplier is just a supplier,

12:26isn't expect was flat out unable to do it.

12:31This is not a decision that I was building,

12:33but we had outsourced making the battery

12:36to a barbecue company in Thailand.

12:41This is a bit silly to say,

12:44okay, we're gonna make the most sophisticated battery ever made.

12:48And the barbecue company is going to make it.

12:52Obviously, they did not know how to make a company.

12:56It was supposed to be.

12:59It was pretty silly.

13:02So we had to insource battery production to California.

13:06We made it basically in our making the battery ourselves.

13:11Yeah, it's one thing after another, basically.

13:14Just a flat out burning dumpster fire of stupidity,

13:19I would say was the beginning of the company.

13:22And then we had to recover from there,

13:25and it was very difficult.

13:26So there are lots of other EV startups out there,

13:30potentially in the hundreds today,

13:32all wanting to do what you did.

13:35You guys, you blazed the trail 10 years before

13:38the industry really caught up with you.

13:40You had the advantage of having no one else playing

13:43in the same area, but the disadvantage that all the time you

13:46were trying to break through Virgin Snow,

13:48was it more difficult to do it 10 years ago

13:51than you think it is today?

13:53And if there's one piece of advice

13:54that you could offer to the various EV startups,

13:57what would it be?

14:00Well, I think most of them just completely forget

14:03about the first eight to 10 years of tussle.

14:05That's the kind of amazing part to me.

14:07They kind of see success.

14:09And then they're like, oh, that looks good.

14:10Let's do that.

14:11Let's do, you know, copy that.

14:13But, I mean, it was brutal confusion and tons of mistakes

14:18and a lot of money invested for a lot of years.

14:22I personally think it's a lot, actually harder today,

14:25even still, for a startup to compete

14:28because the first question is,

14:30what is the niche that even makes sense

14:32to have a new startup EV company

14:34relative to all the products from other OEMs or to Tesla?

14:38What are they gonna do better than Tesla?

14:40Tesla didn't exist. There was no Tesla in the world 17 years ago. So that was sort of the imperative and gave a runway to make a lot of mistakes and still make it work.

14:51You know, what might have been making?

14:53I think just, we're important to emphasize here, but you know, I think,

14:59I mean, the JBI, well, certainly I wouldn't have thought

15:04that JB would have wanted to go through the extreme pain

15:07of creating an electric car company

15:09if the traditional automakers were going to make electric cars.

15:14And, you know, it's just an important thing for the world

15:18that needs to happen to move to a sustainable technology future.

15:21And, but if at the time that we're created Tesla,

15:25There were no startups doing electric cars, and the big car companies had really no electric

15:34car programs going, and the few tiny, tiny electric car programs they had going, they

15:38were shutting down.

15:42So therefore, unless we tried to create an electric car, there was not one going to be

15:47created.

15:48It's not from the standpoint of thinking, hey, here's a super lucrative idea.

15:54makes Donner Cart Company. The history of Cart Company startups is horrific. They're almost

16:03all gone bankrupt. It's an incredibly big graveyard of car startups that all died. You've

16:10only heard a tiny number of them, sort of the tacos and the lorians of the world, but

16:16there are hundreds of others that people didn't hear about. So at this point in the United

16:22States, the only two American card companies that have not gone bankrupt are Ford and Tesla.

16:28And Tesla went back, almost went back, so many times I lost count.

16:33So basically it's a world of hurt.

16:35To start a card company is mega pain.

16:38It is not easy money.

16:39It's the furthest thing for easy money you can possibly imagine.

16:44So and what I see with some of these new card companies is that they are the jumping in

16:52at the deep end and trying to create a high volume vehicle

16:57that when they've never made a vehicle before.

17:00This is like, you know, not practicing your athletic sport

17:08and then going to the Olympics.

17:10You're not going to win.

17:12This is crazy.

17:14You really need to start out small,

17:16make your mistakes at a small scale,

17:19make sure you've got a lot of resolute capital

17:21and then gradually build up from the dumb things

17:25that you're at the beginning and be less dumb over time.

17:30Otherwise, what will happen is vast losses of money.

17:35The car industry is very competitive.

17:38It's the opposite of a natural monopoly.

17:42You have sort of natural monopolies

17:43in things like social media or say Google search.

17:46I'm going to get my card companies are naturally unnotable.

17:51They're hyper-competitive and they're used to being

17:55hyper-competitive throughout the world.

17:59They have entrenched customers, dealers,

18:03service, factories, existing expertise.

18:07These are veteran armies in fortresses.

18:12So, yeah, I mean, it's extremely difficult.

18:19Now, you happen to mention in that answer the word social media, which brings us very neatly

18:26onto the question of Twitter.

18:27So, JB, I'm going to say thank you so much.

18:29That was fascinating, a brief history there of Tesla in the early years and the mistakes

18:34that you made.

18:35So, thank you very much for being with us on stage.

18:37Thank you.

18:43Twitter front is not a lot that I can say because this is a Twitter's publicly traded company and

18:51you know, there are a lot of constraints in what I can say so I'm not sure what you would like to ask but most of the

18:58Questions like the answer is gonna be no comment. That's all right. I can have a go

19:03Let me ask you to put your product development hat on and if you pair Twitter all the way back

19:09What is it and what do you think it can be in 10 years time?

19:21Well, what I said is that I think Twitter is currently the best or looked at another way, the least bad public square.

19:32A forum for the exchange of ideas nationally and internationally.

19:38And I think it could be a lot better at that.

19:43In order to be better at that, it needs to really get rid

19:47of the bots and the scams and spammers.

19:51And basically, anyone tried to create

19:57sort of fake influence on the side

19:59by where one person or one entity operating 100,000

20:03accounts or obviously scammers are not good.

20:08And Twitter really needs to do a much better job at that.

20:13It also needs to build trust, more trust with users.

20:18I think the way to do that is by open sourcing the algorithms

20:21so everyone can see how the algorithm works

20:23and can suggest improvements and changes.

20:27I would literally just put the Twitter algorithm on GitHub

20:32and say, hey, anyone want to suggest changes to this, please go ahead.

20:37And just really want transparency to both trust.

20:41And then any sort of adjustments to tweets

20:45or any human intervention with any account,

20:51a Twitter should be highlighted as a Twitter person

20:54took the following action with your account

20:56or with this tweet so that you're not sort of sitting

20:59then the doc wondering why did this tweet not get

21:02any attention or why did this one get a lot of attention?

21:05It's far too random.

21:09And then I think Twitter needs to be much more even-handed.

21:13It currently has a strong left bias

21:17because it's based in San Francisco.

21:19I don't think people that they're necessarily in 10,

21:21I would just have some of them don't attend,

21:24to have a left bias.

21:26They're just from their perspective,

21:28it seems moderate, but they're just coming at it

21:31from an environment that is very far left.

21:36So, but then this fails to build trust

21:40in the rest of the United States

21:42and also perhaps not the parts of the world

21:45because it sort of needs to be even handed

21:48and I think as I said publicly,

21:53it victory would be that the most far right 10%

21:58and the most bought off 10% are equally upset.

22:03I don't think this is a situation

22:05where you're gonna get necessarily a lot of praise.

22:07You're just gonna balance the anger.

22:11So how do you,

22:12because people will automatically associate you with Tesla

22:17and you with Twitter,

22:19is there any risk in your mind

22:20that the actions that you're gonna take at Twitter,

22:22which you've admitted freely, will upset some people,

22:25potentially lead to a commercial impact on Tesla?

22:32I'm confident that we will be able to sell all the cars we can make.

22:41I mean, currently the lead time for ordering a Tesla is ridiculously long.

22:46So our issue is not demand, it is production.

22:51But that's at the moment because of the global supply chains and the chip shortages.

22:55That's less around electric cardamom, which we are expecting to go absolutely through

23:00the roof and you obviously have very ambitious targets for that at Tesla.

23:04Yeah, I mean even before there was the supply chain issues Tesla demand exceeded production.

23:15So now it's demand is exceeding production to a ridiculous degree.

23:22We're actually probably going to limit just off taking orders for anything beyond a certain

23:29period of time because some of the timing is like a year away.

23:35So anyway, the frustration that we're seeing customers

23:41is under being able to get them a car,

23:46not are they willing to or interested in buying a car.

23:51So basically, I think zero about demand generation

23:57and a light about production and engineering and supply chain.

24:01I have two more questions on Twitter for me

24:03before we turn for the rest of the session to Tesla.

24:07How confident are you the deal will happen?

24:10And is there a risk?

24:11This is all one question.

24:12And is there a risk?

24:14Because you're putting a lot of your personal stake up

24:17for this to fund it.

24:19Is there a risk that if it all goes south,

24:21you're impereling your stake in Tesla,

24:23potentially hurting Tesla financially and maybe even

24:25SpaceX if it all goes to pod. That's the technical term.

24:33Yeah, sure. So I mean, I think there's still a lot of things that need to get down before the

24:41still concludes. Obviously, there's not yet even been a shareholder vote. And Twitter has not yet

24:47filed the proxy for a shareholder vote. So there are still some outstanding questions that

24:54needs to be resolved. And so it is certainly not a done deal. Just objectively it is not

25:07a done deal. The best case scenario is that this would be, I think, perhaps done in two

25:16or three months. Yeah.

25:21And the final question, and this is really the two-paid elephant in the room, are you planning

25:27to let Donald Trump back on?

25:32Well, I think there's a general question of should, what does it have, permanent bans?

25:42And I've talked with Jack Dosey about this, and he and I are of the same mind, which is

25:49that permanent bans should be extremely rare

25:54and really reserved for people where they're trying to,

25:59for accounts that are bots or spam scam accounts,

26:05where there's just no legitimacy to the accountable.

26:09I do think that it was not correct to ban Donald Trump.

26:17I think that was a mistake.

26:19because it alienated a large part of the country

26:25and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump

26:27not having a voice.

26:28He is not going to be on truth social

26:31as will a large part of the sort of the right

26:36in the United States.

26:38And so I think this could end up being frankly worse

26:42than having a single forum where everyone can debate.

26:45So I guess the answer is that I would reverse the

26:50Poma Band.

26:52Oh, say I'm not, I don't own Twitter yet.

26:54So this is not like a thing that will definitely happen

26:56because what if I don't own Twitter.

26:58But my opinion, and Jack Dorsey, I want to be clear,

27:01shares this opinion, is that we should not have Poma

27:04Band's.

27:05Now, that doesn't mean that somebody gets to say

27:08whatever they want to say.

27:10If they say something that is illegal or otherwise

27:14Otherwise, just destructors the world,

27:19then that should be perhaps a timeout,

27:23a temporary suspension, or that particular tweet

27:26should be made invisible or have very limited traction.

27:35But I think pro-avans just fundamentally

27:38undermine trust in Twitter as a town square,

27:43where everyone can voice their opinion.

27:51It was a fun, I think it was a morally bad decision

27:54to be clear and foolish in the extreme.

27:58Even after he egged on the crowd

28:04who went to the US Capitol, some of them carrying nooses,

28:08you still think it was a mistake to remove him.

28:11I think the if there are tweets that are wrong, they should and bad, those should be

28:19either deleted or made invisible and a suspension, a temporary suspension is appropriate, but

28:29not a permanent ban.

28:34So if the deal completes, he might potentially come back on but with the understanding that

28:38if he does something similar again, he'll be back in the simpen.

28:43He has publicly stated that he will not be coming back to Twitter and that he will only

28:49be on truth social.

28:52And this is the point that I'm trying to make, which is perhaps not getting a cross, is that

28:58banning Trump from Twitter didn't end Trump's voice.

29:02It will amplify it among the right.

29:05And this is why it is morally wrong and flat out stupid.

29:09Okay.

29:13Thank you.

29:14Let's turn to Tesla again.

29:18I'd like to ask you about your ambitions for the future.

29:23You've said you want the company to be able to make

29:2420 million cars a year by 2030,

29:27which would make it the same size as Toyota and Volkswagen

29:29combined today.

29:32Give us a sense.

29:33What does the business look like by 2030

29:37to make 20 million cars?

29:41Plants, footprints, models.

29:44Yes, well, this is not a foreign for announcing new products,

29:49new Tesla products.

29:51The $20 million by 2030 is an aspiration, not a promise.

29:58And the reason for anything from something like that

30:01is there are approximately 2 billion cars and trucks

30:05in the world.

30:06And for us to really make a dent in sustainable energy

30:11and electrification, I think we need

30:14to replace at least 1% of the fleet per year to really be meaningful.

30:20And that's where the 20 million units come from,

30:24is let's try to replace 1% of the global fleet of 2 billion cars and trucks per year.

30:30And that's our aspiration.

30:35It's not a promise, it's an aspiration.

30:37I think we've got a good chance of getting there.

30:40and people will see based on the products that we unveil,

30:46it will be able to judge for themselves whether that's realistic or not.

30:50Now you've gone from zero plants to four plants,

30:53that would require you to get to possibly about 20 plants,

30:57depending how they're ramped up.

30:59Is that phase more difficult, what you've got ahead of you by 2030,

31:03than what's gone behind, given you've already done it,

31:06or do you still think it's more difficult to ramp to that level?

31:17I think it's close.

31:19It's roughly, the share amount of stuff that Tesla's done

31:24is I think quite mind boggling.

31:28We've been an incredible team at Tesla

31:30and executing very well and our annual growth rates

31:35are faster than any large manufacturer product

31:38in the history of Earth.

31:40But I think the next fastest was the growth of Model T

31:43and we're faster than Model T.

31:45So, you know, if that growth rate continues, then obviously we will reach 20 million vehicles

31:52a year.

31:53But we may stumble and not reach that goal.

31:59So, but I'd say it's roughly equally difficult to have gotten to this point as we'll be to

32:11get to 20 million.

32:13And what's the biggest uncertainty with getting to 2030?

32:15Is it manufacturing ramping?

32:17Is it the raw materials?

32:19Is it something else?

32:29There are some raw material constraints that we see coming

32:36in the production probably in about three years.

32:39And in cathode production,

32:42the cathode, the two main cathode choices are nickel

32:45and iron phosphate.

32:49Obviously, iron is extremely plentiful.

32:51The earth is 32% iron by composition.

32:56So a little bit of trivia, if someone says,

33:01what is earth made of?

33:03The single biggest element that earth is made of is iron.

33:07The second biggest element that earth is made of

33:10is oxygen, which is about 30% of earth mass.

33:13So clearly, iron is not much in short supply.

33:16The phosphate is slightly more of a challenge,

33:22but still quite common.

33:25So I do not see any fundamental scaling constraints,

33:27and lithium is also quite common.

33:29So lithium is practically everywhere.

33:32So this is not a question of a shortage of like,

33:35as though it's some rare element,

33:37it's really just that the lithium mining,

33:43and especially the refining capacity,

33:45and that of taking iron and phosphorus and turning it into battery grade iron phosphate

33:52or nickel and turning it into battery grade nickel is, it's really the equipment,

34:01I think the single-axis trait would be the equipment necessary to convert the ore into battery grade materials.

34:07And we're working on that with suppliers, so I'm not saying that this is an impossible thing to address.

34:12it is simply a one of the problems along the way to getting 20 million vehicles.

34:17LFP batteries are much less recyclable than the other batteries you use.

34:22How much of that is an issue in terms of overall environmental impact of what the company does

34:28if you end up using lots and lots of them?

34:31No, that's not true.

34:33Iron phosphate batteries are fully recycled.

34:36Good.

34:37Well, that's easy.

34:38And so our nickel paste.

34:39I'm not sure we're getting your information, but Ironfoss fate is a really recyclable and

34:44so is a historical base matrix.

34:48Thank you.

34:49I stand corrected.

34:50Can I ask why you think Tesla needs to grow so much by 2030?

34:54Because what you set out when you in the early years was that you wanted Tesla to help tilt

34:59the world away from fossil fuels.

35:02And to some extent, it looks like it's already succeeded.

35:10Yes, I think you're sort of putting too much emphasis on this 20 million vehicles by 2030 as though this is some grand promise

35:17Some hill upon which we will die

35:20That is it is simply an aspiration and we may we may achieve it or we may not

35:27We our goal is to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy and

35:33and so

35:34That's why we want to make a lot of cars and also a lot of stationary battery packs because the three pillars of a sustainable energy future are

35:43electric transport

35:45stationary battery packs and

35:47solar and wind and

35:49Geothermal and hydro basically sustainable energy sources with solar and wind particularly are intermittent

35:54And so you need stationary battery packs to store the energy when the Sun doesn't shine

36:00So, you know, you have you constant

36:02electricity provision or when the wind doesn't blow.

36:06So, but you can have a, you can completely convert or be very clear about this.

36:11All of Earth, all of Earth can easily be powered by solar and wind, stationary battery packs,

36:20and electric transport.

36:24Well, you could power several, even if it goes to economy, you could do 10 times what Earth's

36:31economies with solar wind batteries and electric transport.

36:36It's not a close thing.

36:39I think most people just have not done the basic math of just how much energy hits the

36:44earth from the sun.

36:45It's a kilowatt per square meter or set another way, a gigawatt per square kilometer.

36:50So if you have a 20 cent efficient solar system, that's 200 megawatts per square kilometer.

36:57It's a lot, basically.

37:00You could power all of Europe with a section of Spain,

37:03a relatively electrified section of Spain.

37:06You could power all of the United States

37:10with a corner of Utah or Texas.

37:13Now, obviously, it would make more sense to spread this out.

37:16And I'm just using this as a figure of speech,

37:18or to show that it is a small amount of area that

37:21is necessary to power the United States or Europe.

37:26It is not some vast area.

37:30And I invite anyone to do the basic math.

37:32It's not hard.

37:34200 megawatts per square kilometer.

37:37Okay, so how many square...

37:39What's the power needed?

37:42How many...

37:43That'll tell you how many square kilometers.

37:44Then you will need batteries to store that.

37:51I think our calculation of the amount area of the batteries

37:55needed to store only energy to probably the United States

37:58was roughly one square mile.

38:02Literally.

38:04So do you think Tesla has succeeded in its goal then?

38:10Or do you think there's still much more to do?

38:15No, I think that we've not succeeded in the goal.

38:19If you consider the goal to be getting the automotive

38:23industry to move strongly towards electric vehicles,

38:27I think that part of the goal we have succeeded in.

38:30And that was explicitly by our goal is to get the industry

38:34moving towards electric vehicles,

38:35because they were doing nothing in that direction

38:38when we started.

38:40And for longest time, they were dismissing the concept

38:44of electric vehicles.

38:46And then Tesla started taking market share away from them.

38:50And that changed their mind.

38:53How long do you think you're likely to stay at Tesla?

38:58As long as they can be useful.

39:02And what else is there in terms of potential future projects

39:06that piques your interest?

39:07You're obviously going to be quite involved in Twitter

39:09if the deal goes through.

39:11But you've got Tesla, you've got SpaceX,

39:13you've got boring, you've got Neuralink.

39:15As you're looking around thinking you potentially

39:18have capacity, what else is there in terms

39:22of the kind of, I don't know, betterment of the human condition

39:24or improving Earth that you feel you might want to turn

39:27your attention to in the future?

39:32Well, I'm trying to take this out of actions

39:34that I think most likely make the future good.

39:38And hopefully not pave the road to hell with good intentions.

39:42So I think Tesla's about accelerating sustainable energy

39:47because we're already near sustainable energy future

39:49on Earth, for Earth to be good.

39:52Then SpaceX is about extending life beyond Earth

39:57so that we may become a multi-planetary species

39:59and with Starlink providing internet coverage

40:03to the least served in the world.

40:06Those are the rural communities or places

40:10that just don't have good internet, or it's very expensive.

40:14And I think it's important that we become a multi-toned species

40:19and a space-brained civilization,

40:22because eventually the sun will expand and destroy

40:25all life on Earth.

40:26So if one is a true environmentalist

40:29or cares about the future of life, it

40:31is obviously important that life become multi-planetary

40:34and ultimately a multi-stellar.

40:37So we must make that first step.

40:43What do you think the next goals are then for SpaceX?

40:49And do you have a date in mind for when you think

40:51they will get to Mars?

41:00I think we should be able to,

41:03I don't know, maybe get Starship to Mars uncrewed in three to five years.

41:15And then I think if that's accessible, then we may be able to send a crew admission to Mars

41:23before the end of the decade.

41:29The windows for going to Mars occur every two years.

41:32of the planets align for a total transfer every 26 months. So that's, you get a kick at the

41:43can every 26 months. So we're making a lot of progress with Starship. We will hopefully

41:50have our first launch attempt in the summer or the next two or three months. And we're

42:00We're building up the factory for scholarships.

42:03So there's a whole bunch of startups coming behind the one

42:06that will attempt launch soon.

42:08So if that one doesn't work, we'll have many more behind that.

42:13And we're continuously improving the design.

42:15So each one is better than the last.

42:21And a game changer to an extraordinary degree

42:26with respect to access to space,

42:27because it's the first orbital rocket

42:31that is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

42:35There's never been a fully reusable orbital rocket.

42:39Falcon 9 is the most reusable rocket

42:42since we're able to fairly rapidly reuse the blue stage

42:46and the ferrying, and that's maybe 70% of the other cost

42:53a permission is saved.

42:55But we still lose the upper stage on every mission.

43:00So with Starship, both the booster and the upper stage, both the ship and the booster

43:08will be recovered.

43:10And they'll be recovered very rapidly.

43:13And in theory, you could launch the booster 10 or 12 times a day and the ship, because of

43:21orbital limitations, maybe you could launch it three times a day.

43:28And it's also a very big vehicle.

43:29So on the order of roughly 100 tons, 100 tons of useful out-to-orbit.

43:34So it's Saturn V scale payload to orbit, but fully reusable.

43:40If it was expandable, it would probably do under 250 tons to orbit.

43:48And I think with further improvements, even with full reusability, you can probably get

43:51to 150 tons to orbit. To put this into perspective, if you have a fleet of starships, launching

44:00with the ability to launch every day or multiple times a day, Starship will do more than a thousand

44:09times the payload to orbit of all other rockets on Earth combined.

44:17Can I thank you, that was fascinating. Can I bring us down to Earth gently and ask you

44:24about China in relation to Tesla.

44:26How important is the market for you?

44:29Do you think China contributes most of your growth in the future?

44:36No, I think China is obviously a very significant market,

44:39but it is probably 25% to 30% of our market long term.

44:49The rest of the world is probably three quarters of it.

44:53Do you see, I promise I didn't have any more Twitter questions,

44:56but this is sort of a Twitter question.

44:58Do you see any risk at all

45:01that China uses your ownership of Twitter,

45:05potentially to interfere or block Tesla's operations

45:07in the country, because obviously China has banned Twitter.

45:13I've seen no indications that effect.

45:17Okay, how close would you say you are personally

45:22to the Chinese government?

45:23Because when you set up the factory in Shanghai,

45:25the wolves were rewritten around joint ventures

45:27to allow you to do that?

45:31Well, yeah, I was suddenly asked many times

45:36by the government of China to do a factory in China.

45:39And I said, well, we're not going to do one, which is 51%

45:42locally owned.

45:44And so if they're willing to change the rules,

45:47not just for us, but for everyone, then we would move forward.

45:51And so they did.

45:54And I think it's been very successful so far.

45:56And the government's very happy about it.

45:59And so I don't know if things are proceeding fairly well.

46:02How many other plants are you expecting

46:04to open in China in the near future?

46:09Well, we're not expecting to open any additional plants

46:14in China in the near future.

46:16We will be expanding our Shanghai factory,

46:21but our focus on production is gonna be on the two new factories

46:26that we've recently completed in Berlin

46:29and in Austin, Texas, and getting those to high volume production is the near-term challenge.

46:38We had Herbert Deese, Volkswagen chief executive, who you know well at the summit yesterday.

46:43We asked him what his big question was for you, and it was how do you scale production

46:49in China, Germany and Texas simultaneously because for any experienced area, and even

46:54the ones with 100 years of doing this, that's a challenge.

46:58Yes, I think generally the difficulty of manufacturing and scaling-age factoring is very much under-appreciated.

47:08I've said many times that prototypes are easy, production is hard.

47:14We can easily whip out a prototype of any kind of card you could possibly imagine with a small team in six months.

47:20Now, we have a team of 100 people in six months.

47:24Now to bring that to fruition with high volume production is 10,000 people in two years and

47:31that's three times faster than the rest of industry.

47:35So overwhelmingly the problem with cars is production.

47:43Overwhelmingly it's 99% of the difficulty.

47:49So he's certainly correct that the difficulty is scaling.

47:55But if you look at our track record thus far in scaling production, we've scaled production

48:01at, like I said, a rate faster than any card company on the history of Earth or any company

48:06making a large sophisticated product of any kind.

48:10So provided we continue to execute at that rate, we'll do fine.

48:16even if that rates slows down a little,

48:18it'll still be faster than any other company on earth.

48:22Now I want to ask you about two specific rumors

48:25that have swirled around future production plants for you.

48:29Are you gonna build a plant in Indonesia?

48:34As I said, this is not the foreign price

48:36to make major company announcements.

48:39And finally, have you looked at building a plant in the UK?

48:42Do you think you might ever build a plant in the UK in the future?

48:46I would throw it back to my prior answer.

48:49It was worth a try, right?

48:53Can I ask?

48:56Can I ask about autonomy, right?

48:57So you have this way that you think about autonomy using cameras on the vehicles and

49:03you want to get to almost a kind of human level AI to get the cars to drive themselves

49:09fully in the real world.

49:11But a lot of people who work in AI think human level AI is a long, long, long way off.

49:18How do you square that circle about the approach that you're taking and the speed at which

49:23you want to deploy full self-driving technology?

49:26Well, I don't think you need full human level intelligence driver car.

49:33You need sufficient human level intelligence to drive a car, but not, you don't need like

49:40deep conceptual understanding of esoteric concepts or anything like that.

49:47need sufficient intelligence to match what human neural nets do when driving a car.

49:54And I think, you know, anyone who's driven a car for any length of time, once you know

50:01once you have some years of experience driving a car, the cognitive load on driving a car

50:06is not high.

50:07You're able to think about other things, listen to music, have a conversation, and still drive

50:12safely.

50:13So it's not like matching everything a human does.

50:18But it is still matching enough of the neural nets

50:23to what, you know, the silicon neural nets

50:27need to at least be on par with the biological neural nets

50:30to enable safe driving.

50:32And I think we're quite close to achieving that.

50:37But I recommend that, don't take my word for it,

50:40just sign up for our beta program and try it out.

50:43Or look at the videos that people are posting who are in our beta program.

50:49We have like, I think at this point about 100,000 people in our beta program.

50:52So it's not exactly top secret.

50:53How hard is it as a problem to solve?

50:58Because you've made predictions in the past about autonomy.

51:00And, you know, some of those haven't come to fruition at the same time.

51:04Has your understanding of the problem of autonomy changed over the last few years?

51:12Yes, I've seen that self-driving is one of those things where there are a lot of full stones,

51:21or where you think you're getting there, but then you end up asymptoting, your progress is

51:30initially linear and then looks logarithmic and sort of tapers off because you're in a local

51:38maximum that you did not realize you were in. Now at this point I think we are no longer

51:42in a trapped in a local maximum and obviously I could be wrong but I think we are actually

51:53quite close to achieving self-driving at a safety level that is better than human and

52:02It appears, my best guess is that we will get there this year.

52:08But we're really not far from it.

52:11And like I said, the best way to assess this

52:14is to be in our beta program.

52:15We'll look at the videos of those

52:16who are in the beta program and look at the progress

52:21that has occurred and the progress is dramatic.

52:26And I'm confident we will not really get

52:28to the safety level of human.

52:30will get far in excess of the safety level of human.

52:34So I think ultimately probably a factor of 10

52:37is safer than a human, as measured

52:39by the probability of injury.

52:42Given where you're trying to get to with this,

52:44the factor above human driving, the potential lives that

52:48could be saved with that, I need to ask

52:50you about some of the accidents and fatalities

52:53that have happened with vehicles previously.

52:57the people who died, do you consider that that was a price worth paying to get to the

53:04level where we want to be to save more human lives in the future?

53:10Well, it is important to note that we have never said ever that Tesla autopilot does

53:19not require attention.

53:21We have always made that extremely clear repeatedly.

53:25You can't even turn it on without acknowledging that it requires a supervision.

53:31We remind you of that every time you turn it on to ad nauseam.

53:37So this was not a case of setting expectations that the car could simply drive itself in the

53:41past and then not meeting those expectations.

53:45That is completely untrue.

53:49Now, it is also the case, however, and I knew this would be true from the beginning, that

53:56people don't, the people whose lives are saved with autopilot or autonomy don't know that

54:06the lives were saved.

54:09And so, you know, if you look at, say, deaths, annual automotive deaths every year, it's

54:15around a million people per year die from automotive accidents,

54:18maybe 10 million per year are severely injured.

54:24And so with autonomy,

54:30the cause of driving, it's assisted driving right now,

54:32but it will be fully autonomous in the future.

54:35Like I said, those who didn't realize they would have crashed

54:39or hit a pedestrian or cyclist, they don't know that.

54:42So basically even if you, let's say, save 90% of the people that otherwise have died,

54:55the remaining 10% who did die will still sue you.

55:01Now, but I think in the grand scheme of things, what is the morally right decision?

55:08And I am a strong believer in doing the reality of good over the perception of good.

55:15And I have utter contempt for those who prefer the perception of good over the reality of

55:21it.

55:23And so we're just going to take the heat.

55:28But if we believe that the polity of injury is reduced, and we are very confident with

55:37that and but we also know that we're going to be sued despite doing the right thing, we

55:42will do the right thing and get sued. Thank you. We have, it will not necessarily surprise

55:49you to hear a lot of audience questions that have come in. In the last few minutes I'm going

55:53to try and rattle through as many as we can. What is Tesla's approach to smaller and more

55:58affordable end of the market? You're going to go smaller than the Model 3 but could you

56:03get into a scooter micro mobility something else? Scooters are very

56:10dangerous I would not recommend anyone drive a scooter if there's ever an

56:15argument between a scooter and a car the scooter will release. What about smaller

56:21than a Model 3? How far can you go down the entry level of the market?

56:26Well like I said this is not some forum around about the product

56:33announcements, no matter how, no matter how cleverly the question is asked. So, you know,

56:41will we, there's some probability that Tesla will do a smaller called the Model 3. I don't

56:47know what's in one note. Okay, that's fine. That wasn't my question. That was an audience question.

56:57Would you ever consider licensing your platform to other OEMs? Presumably that would help switch

57:02the industry towards electric mobility in your opinion?

57:06Well, we've already opened source oil patents.

57:10Anywhere can you use patents for free?

57:14We only patent things in order to prevent others from creating this minefield of patents

57:21that inhibit progress with electric vehicles.

57:24But several years ago, I came from the conclusion, we're never going to really prosecute anyone

57:30for using a patent. So let's just say you can use any Tesla patents for free. So I think

57:38hopefully that's helpful to others. But I think the regular car industry, the traditional

57:45car makers, will solve electrification. It's not fundamentally difficult at this point to

57:51make electric cars. The thing that I think they may be interested in licensing is Tesla

57:58the autopilot full self driving.

58:04And I think that would save a lot of lives.

58:07But I think we still have, we have to prove ourselves

58:11for I don't know maybe another year or so.

58:14And then perhaps there will be some other comicers

58:18who may wish to license Tesla autopilot.

58:24It would be very open to that.

58:26Thank you.

58:27Of all the other EV startups,

58:28which one has impressed you the most?

58:38Well, I think the company making the most progress

58:40besides Tesla is actually VW, which is not a startup,

58:43but could be viewed in some ways as a startup

58:46from an electric vehicle standpoint.

58:48So VW is doing the most on the electric vehicle front.

58:56I think there will be some very strong companies

58:59coming out of China.

59:00There's just a lot of super talented, hardworking people in China that are strongly believe in

59:10manufacturing and they won't just be burning the men out at all, they'll be burning the

59:163 a.m.

59:18So they won't even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America, people are trying

59:24to avoid going to work at all.

59:29We've got a question on the cyber truck.

59:32Is there a risk that you lose the pickup segment to Ford, GM and Rivian, if you don't launch

59:39the cyber truck or get it to market soon?

59:43No.

59:44Good.

59:45We've had another question come in.

59:48What orders the first cyber truck then we could possibly fulfill for three years after

59:52start of production?

59:53Okay, thank you.

59:55We've had a question coming about China.

59:58been critical of lockdowns in the past, particularly when it happened in the US, Shanghai is

1:00:04currently locked down. Most of the Western world is able to carry on functioning at the

1:00:10moment because of vaccines, but China is going towards a zero-covid approach. What do you make

1:00:16of the Chinese government's actions? Well, we've had some conversations with the Chinese government

1:00:24in recent days and it's clear that the lockdowns

1:00:30are being lifted rapidly.

1:00:32So I would not expect this to be a significant issue

1:00:36in the coming weeks.

1:00:41In the past where I was sort of upset with lockdowns

1:00:44is where those lockdowns

1:00:45deferentially affected Tesla but not others.

1:00:49So in the case of California and the Bay Area County

1:00:53specifically, every other car factory in North America was allowed to start, but not to Tesla.

1:01:00Even though there was no basis for that, it was simply because we were located in Alameda

1:01:05County in California.

1:01:07And but they had no rush.

1:01:09It was arbitrary and unfair.

1:01:13And that's the reason for why we're quite upset about Tesla being singled out as the

1:01:22only car company in America that was allowed to start even though I think our health care

1:01:27practices are probably better than anyone else.

1:01:30Thank you.

1:01:31We've had a question on software.

1:01:32What point did you realize that software was going to be key to Tesla's success and

1:01:36particularly as others are coming into software, how do you maintain leadership in it?

1:01:43Well, Tesla is, I think as much a software company as it is a hardware company.

1:01:49I personally wrote software for 20 years.

1:01:52So I have great respect and admiration for software engineering.

1:01:59I think it's incredibly important.

1:02:01And I think that's why Tesla's been able to recruit some of the world's best software

1:02:08engineers is because we value software engineering so highly and do not regard it as an afterthought.

1:02:18So our autopilot, full self-driving AI team is incredibly talented and some of the smartest

1:02:29software engineers in the world.

1:02:34And I do not give compliments lightly.

1:02:36So we have an incredible team.

1:02:39We have the best real world AI team on Earth.

1:02:46And we're seeing more and more incredibly talented people join our team.

1:02:52So, and we're really not seeing anyone else being close to solving real world AI.

1:03:02They may exist, but if so, they're being very subtle about it.

1:03:06And I periodically poll our team and say, like, do we know anyone who is doing this because

1:03:12We know who a lot of the top people are in AI and what they're doing and we just don't

1:03:18see anyone else that we're aware of making any significant progress in real world AI apart

1:03:26from Tesla.

1:03:28So yeah, I am quite confident that we'll not merely maintain our software lead, but it

1:03:37can increase it.

1:03:40Thank you.

1:03:41We've had a question come in on the Supercharger network.

1:03:43What are your thoughts about opening it to other motorists who don't drive Teslas?

1:03:48And doesn't that risk what is currently one of your great competitive advantages?

1:03:54We've already opened Tesla supercharges to other electric cars in Europe, and we intend

1:04:02to roll that out worldwide.

1:04:07It's a little trickier in the US because we have a different connector than the rest of

1:04:11industry, but we will be adding the rest of industry connectors as an option to superchargers

1:04:17in the US. So we'll be fully, we're trying as best as possible to do the right thing

1:04:23for the advancement of electrification, even if that diminishes our competitive advantage.

1:04:31Do you think you'll ever wrap all your various operations, Tesla, SpaceX, etc., under one umbrella

1:04:38group or do you want to keep them separate for the time being? I think there's sort of

1:04:45separate objectives with different shareholders of ACES and I think you know I don't see a ton

1:04:54of merits in combining them. At times there are people you know where we have some very

1:05:04talented people who actually are willing to join but they want to do things both at SpaceX

1:05:10and Tesla. So for example, we've got one of the best advanced materials teams in the world.

1:05:19It might be the best, but it's certainly one of the best. And a lot of people on that team

1:05:27were willing to join, but only if they could work on both rockets and cars. And so it was

1:05:32like, great, let's do that. And so we can share some of the ideas between rockets and

1:05:38cars with trust, you know, they're not different competitive segments. So, you know, if somebody's

1:05:47a really incredible technologist, innovator, engineer, they want to work on interesting things.

1:05:55So the more interesting, you know, like, sure, like, monies, you know, they can get money

1:06:01from, you know, anyone would hire them for a lot of money. So then it's not a money thing,

1:06:07really just how interesting are the projects. And so there are just a few cases where we

1:06:15can recruit some of the smartest, you know, engineers, scientists, technologists in the

1:06:22world, but they want to work on both rockets and cars. And there's a few cases like that.

1:06:26Thank you. I know we've run over time, but one more I'm going to try and get in and then

1:06:31if you need to go, go. But if you're happy to keep talking, we'll keep you. What is the

1:06:37What do you think is the next big innovation in personal transportation?

1:06:45Well, I think tunnels are underrated.

1:06:47I'm underappreciated.

1:06:49Tunnels are never let you down.

1:06:52Oh, well, there.

1:06:54Here's the question on tunnels, right?

1:06:56So if you look at, say for instance, Robert Moses in New York built loads of highways,

1:07:01they were supposed to solve congestion, and all they did was lead to more congestion.

1:07:05How do you avoid tunnels doing exactly the same but just being very expensive in the

1:07:09process. I have to say this this notion of induced demand is one of the single

1:07:18dumbest notions I've ever heard my entire life. If if if you know if adding roads

1:07:24just increases traffic why don't we delete them and decrease traffic and I

1:07:31think you'd have an uproar if you did that. The the real problem is that we have

1:07:35not if you take say congested cities, which really almost all large cities are congested,

1:07:42you have a fundamental dimensional problem. You have say these 12 buildings or multi-level

1:07:47buildings where you've got people living in 3D and then you want to take them in and out

1:07:55of those buildings on a 2D road network. Like how would you possibly expect that to work?

1:08:03So especially if they want to all arrive and depart at roughly the same time.

1:08:08This is just a recipe for traffic, obviously.

1:08:11So now if you go 3D, which you go 3D up or you go 3D down, now you have, you're matching

1:08:17the dimensionality of the buildings.

1:08:20The buildings are 3D and if the road network or you could potentially have flying cars,

1:08:26if 3D then you will completely alleviate the traffic problem.

1:08:30So think of tunnels not as a single layer of tunnels,

1:08:32but as many layers as you want.

1:08:35And whatever layer count is necessary to drop traffic

1:08:41to play mind that people wouldn't think it would work.

1:08:44And we've already, we have a proof of concept

1:08:47of this in Las Vegas with the tunnel going from

1:08:50the Convention Center to the Strip.

1:08:53And that we'll soon be connecting all of the hotels

1:08:55and the airport in Las Vegas.

1:08:59and people just try it out for themselves.

1:09:02It's working really well already in Vegas.

1:09:06And there was some skepticism among the county

1:09:10and the city as to whether it would be effective.

1:09:13And I think the test tunnel just barely succeeded

1:09:16in a vote with the local government in Clark County

1:09:22and Las Vegas.

1:09:23But once they saw the initial test tunnel

1:09:26and wrote it themselves, we got a unanimous vote

1:09:31in favor of expanding it to the whole city.

1:09:34So that should tell you something.

1:09:36Could you ever potentially go in the other direction

1:09:40three-dimensionally and look at

1:09:42V-Tolls and potentially flying vehicles?

1:09:47Well, I like the idea of V-Tolls,

1:09:49but we already had V-Tolls in the form of a helicopter.

1:09:54helicopter. So the problem with going 3D in the air is that you now have things that

1:10:06make a lot of noise and the wind force that they generate when taking off landing is very

1:10:14high. I mean, if you just say like look at a little drone and say, and I imagine that

1:10:20that thing was big, what a record it would make

1:10:23and how much wind force would it generate.

1:10:24And now they're going all over the place,

1:10:26like a giant beehive of super noisy bees.

1:10:34I don't think people, this is what people want.

1:10:35And most cities, helicopters are actually banned

1:10:38except for emergency purposes because of the reason.

1:10:42So then there's also the weather dependency.

1:10:46So if there are high winds or heavy snow, rain, sleet,

1:10:52now you can't fly.

1:10:56So now you're shut down and can't go anywhere.

1:11:01Then there's the probability of something falling on your head

1:11:04is much higher if there are all these, you know,

1:11:08beetles flying all over the city.

1:11:11I mean, I think people's comfort level

1:11:13be quite reduced. Should someone have perhaps not properly serviced their flying car and

1:11:21drops a wheel on your head? I know that I think would be discomforting to most people. And

1:11:29also having them fly over your backyard and having strangers stare at you all day is

1:11:33probably also discomforting. So I think these are all reasons why I think

1:11:38details will not succeed. I deliberately avoided calling them flying cars because most of them

1:11:44don't drive on the road but no you're right but apart from that they're great. You told

1:11:48Cara Swisher in 2020 that if Tesla investors knew what you knew they would panic about the

1:11:55state of the company that was two years ago so what were you referring to at the time?

1:12:00I'm not sure what I was referring to at the time.

1:12:082020.

1:12:13I mean, I think it's not that Tesla investor should panic.

1:12:18It's just that the sheer number of problems being sold

1:12:21behind the scenes, I think, would blow their minds.

1:12:25And it's like that analogy of you see that the duck

1:12:31is serenely moving along the pond.

1:12:34the, meanwhile, the legs are patting like crazy underneath.

1:12:38This is really what's happening pretty much all the time.

1:12:41So there are a nonstop series of issues

1:12:47that need to be solved with Tesla, or with SpaceX,

1:12:51or really with most companies, I suspect.

1:12:54And now we do solve them.

1:12:58But I think it would be very scary to most people

1:13:01to realize just how many things have to get solved

1:13:03on a real time basis of the company to function well.

1:13:06Is that it?

1:13:07Just last night, I basically got no sleep.

1:13:11I was up on Sunday night until, well, I really just didn't get any sleep until last night.

1:13:21So what is...

1:13:22I was socially working all night just Sunday through Monday.

1:13:30What is paddling under the water at the moment?

1:13:34something going on that makes you worry about the future of Tesla? Do you think the company

1:13:38is now completely secure? No, I think the future of Tesla is extremely strong. So Tesla

1:13:49has no debt, it has a lot of cash, and there's a short term pick up with the COVID restrictions

1:14:03in Shanghai. But as for the best of my knowledge, the future of Tesla is incredibly bright.

1:14:11And I think we will throw off a tremendous amount of free cash flow.

1:14:18Do you think with your cash and obviously your market cap at the moment,

1:14:22you would ever consider buying another car maker, whether an established area more in new business?

1:14:27Well, I think it's highly unlikely now.

1:14:32Great.

1:14:34Finally, we've had a couple of questions coming on supercapacitors.

1:14:37Do you think they might be potential, have potential as an alternative energy storage solution

1:14:44to lithium ion batteries?

1:14:45Well, it's interesting.

1:14:47Supercapacitors or ultracapacitors are oddly enough.

1:14:53I did research in that for a couple of years while doing my physics degree.

1:14:58out of company in Silicon Valley called Pinnacle Research, which at the time at least made the

1:15:07highest energy density capacitors in the world.

1:15:11Now they used a rhe opinion tantalum alloy which is very rare, rhe opinion especially

1:15:18is very rare.

1:15:19So that would not scale to high volume.

1:15:26This simply isn't not enough refi-fennium.

1:15:30So, but I thought about the problem quite a lot

1:15:33and in fact, my primary goal had I continued

1:15:37as a graduate student and done at PhD at Stanford,

1:15:41would have been to try to figure out

1:15:45how to build ultra high-energy SD capacitors

1:15:49And the sort of theory I had at the time was to use

1:15:54advanced chip making equipment to build solid state

1:15:59capacitors that would be accurate at the molecular level.

1:16:05And this is a little bit of,

1:16:12not new physics, but exploring some areas of quantum mechanics

1:16:17quantum mechanics because you have to minimize the probability that electrons can sort of tunnel from

1:16:24one, you know, essentially tunnel across the insulator from the conductor to the insulator. So

1:16:33I guess things get quite complicated and rather weird at the sort of single

1:16:39or when you're getting to get to a small number of atoms.

1:16:42But anyway, along to kind of long story short, I think the capacitors are not needed at all

1:16:52for electrification of the entire auto industry.

1:16:56Thank you.

1:16:57We've had a question on mining again.

1:16:58I know what I'm talking about.

1:17:03I know that.

1:17:04Don't worry.

1:17:05Kurt, we've had a question on mining.

1:17:08So obviously, you've done a number of mining deals,

1:17:10trying to secure raw materials.

1:17:12Do you think you could ever go a step further

1:17:14and actually buy a mining company in the future?

1:17:20It's not out of the question.

1:17:22We will address whatever the limitations are

1:17:26on accelerating the world's transition

1:17:30to sustainable energy.

1:17:32It's not that we wish to buy mining companies,

1:17:33but if that's the only way to accelerate the transition,

1:17:40And then we will do that.

1:17:43There are no arbitrary limitations

1:17:45on what's needed to accelerate sustainable energy.

1:17:49We'll just tackle whatever set of things

1:17:52are needed to accelerate sustainable energy.

1:17:55And doing mining and refining or mining company,

1:18:00provided we think we can change that mining company's trajectory

1:18:05significantly are possibilities.

1:18:08Yeah.

1:18:09Do you, this is a slightly personal one.

1:18:12Do you ever think your children could end up working

1:18:15at Tesla, obviously not the new one.

1:18:18She's only a few months old, but the older ones.

1:18:21Yeah.

1:18:24Well, my older children have said that they wish

1:18:28to do their own thing, which I support.

1:18:31That none of them has said that they wish to work

1:18:33at Tesla or at SpaceX.

1:18:35They want to do their own thing,

1:18:37and obviously I support them doing that.

1:18:42I think they wanna do something for themselves

1:18:44and make their own way in the world and that's fine.

1:18:48And it's possible at some point in the future

1:18:50that perhaps they do something of themselves

1:18:54and then decide that they'd like to do something

1:18:57at Tesla SpaceX or that, but currently

1:19:01they wanna do their own thing.

1:19:02I would judge by a little act.

1:19:07I know he's seen a kid love rockets more than he does.

1:19:10It's next level.

1:19:11He likes it.

1:19:12I mean, it's really next level.

1:19:14So if his love of rockets continues from age two to when he's older than he may be interested,

1:19:23he will be interested in working on rockets.

1:19:25Perfect.

1:19:26Thank you.

1:19:27Do you have time for one more question?

1:19:30Sure.

1:19:31Excellent, good. You talked earlier about things that are abundant in the world, iron's

1:19:39abundant, oxygen's abundant, and hydrogen's also very abundant in the universe.

1:19:45In the universe, but not on Earth.

1:19:48Not on Earth. Have you ever considered, do you think that it has a role to play if

1:19:54we really want to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels?

1:20:01No.

1:20:02I really can't emphasize this stuff.

1:20:05The number of times I've been asked about hydrogen,

1:20:08it might be like, it's well over 100 times,

1:20:10maybe 200 times.

1:20:13It's important to understand that if you want,

1:20:16a means of energy storage,

1:20:19hydrogen is a bad choice.

1:20:21It is as extremely low energy density.

1:20:24Sorry, it's extremely low density.

1:20:27And so it's actually, it's volume metric energy density

1:20:30is poor.