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Latest Interview of Elon Musk, during visit in China!!! · Elon Musk Thinking

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  If you can translate that into a product that people can experience and that they
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  like and that delights them, then that's a good measure of the success of
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  the product. I really like the fact that when people buy a car that
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  they experience delight And for many people they've said, they've told me it's like
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  the best product they've ever bought, and it made them happy. And there
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  was one person who said, like, whenever they feel sad, they can
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  just go to the go to their garage and look at the car and it
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  makes them happy. And that's cool. That's really cool. So what actually
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  made them happier? That's what they told me? The car? Yeah,
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  what's your explanation behind this? Why this could make people happier? Pretty,
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  it's a beautiful car. It does a few things like when you approach,
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  the car senses that you're coming, and the handles extend and it prepares for
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  you to come, and it's almost like a pet. But do you still
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  have that kind of freshness when you use the car yourself or you have been
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  used to that and lost the excitement. My case, it's a little tricky
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  because I'm always looking for what's wrong in order to make the car better.
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  I always have to be thinking. I actually think very critically, and so
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  when I see the car, I see all the things that I think need
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  to be fixed to make it better. And so it's certainly it's easy to
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  lose the sense of wonder or just see the flaws, because it's a difficult
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  thing to reconcile, because if you want to make something better, then you
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  must analyze it for the flaws. Yes, but then that kind of prevents
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  the enjoyment of it. It's a difficult it's a difficult dichotomy. It seems
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  that you believe in the fact that we're all going to drive electric cars,
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  and maybe someday only by computers, not by human beings, you still believe
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  in that. I think it's fairly clear that to me, at least,
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  that all transport will go fully electric. Better for the world from an environmental
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  standpoint and from an economic standpoint. If we transition to electric transport sooner,
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  we'll help with pollution, global warming and all that stuff. And I do
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  think we're headed towards an age of autonomous transport, where you know, you
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  just summon the car with your phone or something, and then get in and
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  you just tell the where you want to go and it takes you there.
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  It's going to happen very quickly. I think maybe in four or five years.
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  Yeah, But how do you react to some the public opinions of skepticism
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  because it seems a lot of people are watching you and say, let's see
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  how far this kit can go? I suppose the skepticism about anything new that's
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  normal and not expecting that people just believe me or But I think if you
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  look at generally my predictions have they are more often correct than not. Really
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  just talking about five years will have affordable electric cars that go long ranges and
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  there will be autonomous Please, let's the slag. How do you see that
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  contradiction? How could you reconcile? Its not exactly contradiction because I always say
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  it's important for civilization to be a multiplanet species. So it's not like an
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  escape from Earth and then we all leave Earth and try to go to Mars
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  or something like that. Why don't we come now saving the planet instead of
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  having the back door open. I do think at nineteen nine percent of our
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  efforts should be focused on Earth, and really ninety nine point nine percent of
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  our effort is focused on Earth. But I do think it's it's worth saying,
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  Okay, let's take one percent and try to establish a self sustaining city
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  on Mars and make life multiplanetary. And I think there's a couple of good
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  reasons for that. First of all, there's always the possibility that there could
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  be some terrible thing that happens on Earth that we can't and that we maybe
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  don't anticipate them. If you look at the fossil record and the fact that
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  there've been five major extinction events in the last five hundred million years, and
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  what happened to the dinosaurs. They used to be here, they're not around
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  anymore. So that's the defensive argument. And then there's the what I called
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  maybe the inspiration argument or the excitement the building a city on Mars would just
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  be this incredible adventure, that there'll be things in life that are exciting and
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  inspiring that when you wake up in the morning, you're like, yes,
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  I'm glad to be alive. And I think having this great adventure would be
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  like that. So there is a proverb in Chinese called c and yotn which
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  from two thousand years ago there was a man spend the whole day worrying about
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  way of the heaven falls down. So everyone laughed at him, said,
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  why can't you be concerned about something more pragmatic. Basically, so you're the
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  guy who is worrying about maybe another millennium's way that we need to move to
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  another planet. Okay, it's not moving to another planet, it's being multiplanet.
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  We're still going to be on Earth, but we'll have Mars too,
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  and we want to become a space frank civilization and a multiplanet species and ultimately
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  be out there exploring the stars. I think that's a much more exciting future
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  than a future where we're forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.
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  You basically taught yourself a lot of things in a computer programming as a child,
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  and after taking physics and economics in college, you taught yourself auto technologies,
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  and then rocketry, battery technology, and so on and so forth.
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  What's the motivation behind all this? I just I find that I basically learn
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  whatever I need to learn to accomplish an objective. And I think actually most
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  people could do this, but they often self limit pure are capable of more
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  than they think. But what I found is if you simply read a lot
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  of books and talk to people. You can learn almost anything. But was
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  reading also an escape or rescue to you? As a boy in school?
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  I learned that you're the youngest in the class and bull it sometime, so
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  what I was reading to you at that time? This is, of course,
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  back in the days before there were video games, and TV wasn't very
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  good either, And I was actually for quite a while the youngest and the
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  smallest in the class. And my parents moved a lot, so I went
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  through six different schools, so it's difficult to make friends. And then one
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  year and then you've been in your school. The next books certainly were something
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  that I found comforting, and I would read all the time, just all
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  the time morning tonight though, the philosophers and religious texts and that kind of
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  thing, and a lot of nonfiction as well, read the encyclopedia. And
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  in fact, I remember when I was just in an elementary school, I
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  was reading about ion engines and I thought they were super cool. And now
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  we're launching satellites with ion engines. But how about real figures in history,
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  Zach Newton or Einstein, so and so forth. Did you make up your
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  mind to be someone great, someone who can leave a legacy in history for
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  all humanity. No, I never thought there were no. Actually, when
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  I was a kid, I didn't know what I would do when I grew
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  up. I just wanted to be involved in things that were on the cutting
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  edge, on things that were affecting the future of the world. But I
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  didn't think anything great would happen at all. Were you certain about what you
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  would achieve or Oh no? Was there also most like in your future?
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  No? Inpact, I expected to fail. I expected to fail it still
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  went ahead and do it. The reason I expected to fail was because most
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  companies fail. So if ninety percent plus the companies fail and I have no
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  track record of making companies work, then basically the most likely outcomings failure.
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  But I didn't think it was super risky because I talked to my professor and
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  said that I was going to try to start an internet company and that it
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  would probably not work, and would you mind if I came back to class
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  if it didn't work. He said, sure, no problem. And where
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  did the original investment come from? The own pocket money will finance by our
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  mother? Well, yeah, I had about three thousand dollars and a computer.
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  And then my brother came and joined and he had about I think five
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  thousand dollars, and then another friend of ours came he had six thousand dollars,
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  so we really, this is not a lot. And in the beginning
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  we were just we didn't have enough money to rent an apartment and an office,
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  so the office was actually cheaper. We slept in the office, and
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  we thought maybe it was more impressive to have an office. Can't have people
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  come to an apartment. But at night we would just sleep on the couch
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  in the office, and then we would go to the YMCA to shower.
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  And in the very beginning, we only had one computer, so the website
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  only worked during the day because at night I was programming software. We were
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  brother and a friend joined you, but you were ready to fail. How
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  did you convince them to join you? Oh, they thought it would fail
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  too. How did that work out? It worked out pretty well. In
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  the end. We ended up we ended up growing the business, and it
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  ended up getting sold from three hundred million dollars. So when a young man
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  someday god ten some millions and then a billion, we were blown away for
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  a while. At least, Yeah, you bet, absolutely what did you
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  do with that money? Yeah? For what was it? Like check like
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  that? Yeah, that was awesome, right. Yeah. In fact,
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  they mailed a check in. There's not a check in the mail, which
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  is crazy. It was like this giant check in the mail. Yeah,
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  that was one of the craziest things you did. Yeah, that was Yeah.
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  I was with Peter Tiele, one of the co founders of PayPal.
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  We were actually just driving up Sandy Hill Road. We're going to visit Mike
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  Moritz at Square Capital, and Peter was asked me, so what can this
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  car do? And then famous last words, I said, watch this,
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  and I flowed it and did a lane change and the black wheels broke loose
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  and the car spun around and then we hit the embankment and knocked the car
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  into the air, which continued spinning like a discus, like three feet in
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  the air. Bam landed going the original direction. It was like in a
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  movie and blew out the suspension and I drove to the side of the road
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  and I was like, Holy caw, that was crazy. After that,
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  I took driving lessons on the McLaren because it's like a difficult car to drive.
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  Are you a very prudent driver. Nowadays, I think I'm not a
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  I think I'm a fairly prudent driver. I had a tough choice there because
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  I could either provide all of the money for SpaceX or all of the money
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  for Tesla and then increase the chance that one of them would survive, or
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  I have to split the money. But if I split the money, then
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  maybe both will die. You can imagine. It's almost like if you had
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  two children and you have only so much food, what do you do?
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  So what was the choice? I split it? At those closest moment of
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  a failure, What did you say to yourself? Can I survive this?
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  No? You didn't question yourself. No, No, it's more it was
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  just the difficulty is that in those situations, there's so much responsibility that you
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  have to the employees and to the investors who have come along. So it
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  would have been extremely I would have been really disappointed if I had not been
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  able to keep my responsibility to have the company survive. You said you almost
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  had to nervous breakdown. Where did the tenacity or the resilience come from?
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  But I remember the closest I ever came to a nervous breakdown I never and
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  I never thought I was someone who I thought nervous breakdowns. That's ridiculous,
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  who could Why would people have such a thing. But I remember waking up
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  on the Sunday before Christmas in two thousand and eight and thinking, damn,
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  this is the closest I've ever gotten, you know, And it was looking
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  pretty grown because at that point we even though the fourth launch of SpaceX had
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  succeeded, we were still running out of money because we had three failures and
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  only one success, still not enough. And then the financing round for Tesla
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  had not closed, and we had only two days maybe three, I think
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  it was like two or three days maybe to close it before Christmas. I
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  was like, man, this is this could be a really bad end of
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  the year. Maybe both companies will fail screen. I didn't cry apartments,
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  no, no, I had. My sleep was difficult. I wasn't expecting
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  to call. I actually thought they were on the case because it was so
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  close to Christmas. I thought it was less than only a few days before
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  Christmas, so I thought, there's no way they're going to call them.
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  They must have gone home for the year. What they called them, They
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  said that SpaceX had won this one point four billion dollar contract. What was
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  your reaction to that piece of news. I said, I love you,
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  which I don't think is normal response for NASA contracting officers. That was good.
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  And then a few days later we closed the Tesla financing round on the
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  last hour of the last day when it was possible, which was six pm
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  Christmas Eve, two thousand and eight. So failure said not the most terrible
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  things. Whether you have to learn from it and react to it. Yeah,
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  exactly. When you're building something new, there's going to be mistakes,
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  and it's important to recognize those mistakes, acknowledge them, and take corrective action.
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  And the success of the company is very much more about how quick are
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  you to fix the mistakes, not will you make mistakes or admit mistakes.
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  Absolutely, and if you see the difference between a startup that is successful and
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  one that is not, and it's because the successful one they both made mistakes,
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  but the successful one recognize the mistakes fix them very quickly, and the
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  unsuccessful one tries to deny that the mistakes exist. Extremely smart people are sometimes
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  quite arrogant because they believe in what they believe in right, and so when
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  they face criticism less likely to admit they can make mistakes? Was that in
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  your case? I learned it when I was doing when I was studying physics.
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  In physics, you're taught to always question yourself. You're taught to always
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  assume that you're wrong, not assume that you're right, and you have to
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  prove yourself not wrong. And so I think that physics framework is really where
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  I lent it, and it's very effective for uncounterintuitive things that aren't obvious.
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  So you are very famous in saying that failure is actually an option, and
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  if you're not failing, that means you're not innovative in that. Yeah,
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  it's not like I like failure. Who likes failure? Is terrible? But
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  if you only do things that are certain to succeed, then you're only going
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  to be doing very obvious things. I know, Matacle, you can tell
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  where elect always tells you don't are touching up You're being innovative can be very
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  exciting life, but doing business sometimes persistence sometimes could be very boring. Do
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  you have the same fun from innovation as from business running a business rather to
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  be just an innovator, engineer instead of a business owner or runner. I'd
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  love to just do innovation and just do engineering. But you raise a good
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  point because a lot of life in general, in any job there is you
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  have to do your chores. There's nobody else can do that for you.
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  Yeah, I think to be successful almost anything, you can't. You have
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  to do the tough stuff and as well as the enjoyable stuff. You have
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  to do the boring stuff as well as the non boring stuff. And if
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  you don't do your chores, then bad things will happen. But if they
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  don't do the things that they don't like to do, then the company will
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  be in trouble. You have to you Basically, it's more fun to cook
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  the meal than to clean the dishes. Okay, but you need to clean
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  the dishes. You need to do both. Yes, you need to do
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  both exactly. So what are some of the ideas that excites you today?
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  Because there are so many brilliant ideas around the world, How could you keep
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  focused on the things you're doing instead of being distracted by so many other good
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  ideas. There's not a lot of opportunity and electrification of cars, of aircraft
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  and of boats, And I think there's a particular opportunity for a supersonic vertical
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  takeover and landing electric jet. That's something I'd love to do at some point
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  in the future if might time allows. Were you certain about what you would
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  achieve? Oh? No, I thought it was most likely. And also,
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  even machines are taking a lot of functions away from us, there are
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  still functions that we have to deliver ourselves. For example, fatherhood. So
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  how would you educate your five boys? Actually I created a little school.
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  Yeah, what kind of school could you describe to us? Sure, it's
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  small, it's only got fourteen kids now and it'll have twenty kids in September.
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  It's called ad Astra, which means to the stars. That's maybe a
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  bit different from most other schools is that there aren't any grades. There's no
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  like grade one, grade two, grade three type of thing, and making
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  all the children go in the same grade at the same time like an assembly
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  line. I know. Because some people love English or languages, some people
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  love math, some people love music and different abilities at different times, it
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  makes more sense to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities like That's
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  one principle. Another is that it's important to teach teach problem solving or teach
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  to the problem, not to the tools. So this would be like,
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  let's say you're trying to teach people about how engines work, or you could
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  start by a more traditional approach would be to say, we're going to teach
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  you all about screwdrivers and wrenchers, and you're going to have a course on
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  screwdrivers, a course on wrenches and all these things, and it's a very
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  difficult. A much better way would be like, here's the engine. Now
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  let's take it apart. How are we going to take it apart? Oh,
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  you need a screwdriver. That's what the screw driver's for. You need
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  a wrench, That's what the wrench is for. And then a very important
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  thing happens, which is that the relevance of the tools becomes a aren't so
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  your five boys are in that school and two when this is from school,
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  they like it. They like it? Yeah, and you want to keep
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  them away from regular schools. No, I just didn't see that the regular
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  schools. They weren't doing the things that I thought should be done those two
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  principles. They weren't adhering to those principles. I thought, let's see what
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  we can do, maybe creating a school will be better, and actually hired
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  a teacher from the school they were at who also agreed with me that there
• 16:30
  was a better way to do it. Have they surprised you in a way
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  of their innovative thinking. Yeah, it seems to be going pretty well.
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  The kids really loved going to school. I think that's a good sign.
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  I hated going to school when Isaac kid it was torture. The fact that
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  they actually think vacations are too long. They want to go back to school.
• 16:48
  Yeah, exactly. There are so many young people, the millennium generation
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  who wants to start up their own company with all these accessibility of the internet
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  and such a big market. What's your advice for them, because sometimes they
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  may easily go to the day dreaming part or the wish for thinking part.
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  What's the balance between imagination and pragmatism? Basically, I do think that in
• 17:11
  terms of creating a company, what Edison said, which was like, it's
• 17:15
  one percent inspiration nineteen nine percent perspiration, is true. A lot of it
• 17:18
  in creating a company is execution. You start off with an idea, and
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  that idea is mostly wrong, and then you adapt that idea and keep refining
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  it, and you listen to criticism. Some criticism you discard, you try
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  to discard the wrong criticism, try to listen to the correct criticism, and
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  then engage in for self improvement and constantly refining it and making it better.
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  And you have to work super hard, and that's very important. And then
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  just keep making keep iterating on a loop which says, am I doing something
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  useful for other people? Because that's what a company is supposed to do.
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  A company is just a group of people gathered together to produce a product or
• 17:57
  service, and a company should only exist if that product or service is truly
• 18:02
  useful to customers. Al Masaco, we should you come way show, But
• 18:11
  you're not going to be running Tesla all the time, or what's the next
• 18:17
  step for you? I certainly I'll be running Tesla and SpaceX into the foreseeable
• 18:21
  future. And a key goal with space with, a key go with Tesla
• 18:25
  is to be able to make an affordable, great electric car, a sort
• 18:30
  of third generation car, because you can only change the world for electric cars
• 18:33
  if people can afford to buy a great electric car. The affordable electric cars
• 18:37
  are not great, and the great electric cars not affordable. We need them
• 18:41
  great electric cars that are affordable. So that's the goal with SpaceX with Tesla.
• 18:44
  Now with SpaceX, that's a bit of a longer term goal because we
• 18:47
  need to make reusability work with rockets. That's fundamental to improving the cost of
• 18:52
  spaceflight by a factor of one hundred. And then we need to make the
• 18:56
  rockets really big and be able to send large amounts of people in cargo to
• 19:02
  Mars. And right now nobody's been to Mars. This is a very tall
• 19:06
  Hilty client. Do you want to be one of those to try the trip?
• 19:08
  I'd like to. I'll go as long as I think SpaceX will be
• 19:11
  okay without me, then I'll go to Mars. So do you feel there
• 19:15
  is a kind of destiny for you? No, I feel, but I
• 19:19
  don't know if there's any merit to that feeling. What are the rules that
• 19:25
  you want to live by? Because it seems that you have broken many rules,
• 19:29
  But what are some of the rules that you would buy by. I
• 19:30
  want to be useful and I want to be able to look back and say
• 19:34
  that my actions had a good effect on the world. Wonderful. Thank you
• 19:37
  so much for a time. Yeah, thanks for having me. I really
• 19:40
  enjoyed the conversation