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Back in 2009, Elon Musk Interview by Michael Malone!!! #ElonMusk · Elon Musk Thinking

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: If you like this episode, just like. Share and follow
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: this podcast. Thank you. Back to the show.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Good evening, everybody. Looks like we have a pretty full house.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: I recognize a lot of faces. And I promise not
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: to or try not to use that 12-letter word tonight.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Elon might, but I'll try not to. I hope all
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: of you had a chance to take a look at
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: the Tesla Roadster sitting out there in the parking lot.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: It was the one behind the orange cones. that look
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: very different from all the rest of the cars out there.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: If you didn't get a chance, try to beat Elon
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: out of here tonight and go take a look at,
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: or at least watch him tear out of the parking
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  Speaker 2: lot silently. So, allow me to do an introduction, sir.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: We've known each other a long time.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: We have. The Nutritional Club is 12 letters. Oh, yes,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: it is.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness. I was just thinking, it was 20,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: it's hard to believe it was 28 years ago that
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Rich Cargarten, Tony Perkins, showed me a plan for this.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: And it was about just a few years before I
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: was shown the plan for eBay. And in both cases,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: I said, I just don't think it's going to work.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: No, it's just crazy. So let me introduce you. 37-year-old
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Elon Musk was born and raised in South Africa, but
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: left home at age 17 to make his way in
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: the world. Living on as little as $ 1 per day,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: he eventually made his way to the Wharton School at
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned bachelor's degrees in
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: economics and physics. Musk then attended Stanford's graduate program in
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  Speaker 2: high energy physics, where he lasted exactly two days before
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: dropping out to form a company with his brother. That company, Zip2,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: was sold for $ 300 million. Musk then founded X.com, an
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  Speaker 2: online financial services company. It eventually became PayPal, of which
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Elon was the largest shareholder. PayPal, as we all know,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: was purchased by eBay for $ 1. 5 billion in 2002. When
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: he graduated from Wharton, Elon determined the three important areas
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: where he wanted to make a contribution was the internet,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: clean energy, and space. And with PayPal, Tesla Motors, SpaceX,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: and SolarCity, he has done just that. And in the process,
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  Speaker 2: made himself one of the most celebrated entrepreneurs on the planet.
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  Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Elon Musk. So let's begin with the
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  Speaker 2: topic of greatest interest to the audience here tonight, I assume.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Tesla Motors.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: Where's the company at right now? Where do orders stand?
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  Speaker 1: Oh, Mike, I don't know what to tell you. It's
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: been rough. No, I'm just kidding. It's actually been pretty good.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: In fact, really quite a contrast to the rest of
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: the auto business. We're sold out, first of all, for
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the Tesla Roadster, the sports car. We're sold out through
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the end of October. And I think probably within two
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: or three months, we'll be actually sold out of all
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: 2009 production for the Roadster.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Is this for the standard Roadster or the advanced version?
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Well, we do have a Roadster Sport coming out, which
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: is for those for whom the Roadster isn't fast enough. Right.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: There's the Roadster Sport.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how fast is that one now?
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: That'll do 0 to 16, 3.7 seconds. It's faster than
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: almost any car.
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  Speaker 2: It's like an ICBM laid over on its side.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's ridiculously fast.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Now, how are the orders for that?
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Good, actually.
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  Speaker 1: I haven't looked at the latest orders for Roadster Sport,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and people actually have an opportunity to upgrade their car
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: to the Roadster Sport that are getting their car after,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I think, late June or July. And what we're finding
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: is a lot of people are choosing to upgrade their
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: car to the Sport package. So I actually don't have
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: an exact number for you, but anecdotally it seems to
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: be doing very well.
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  Speaker 2: Now, the Roadster is $ 109, 000?
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  Speaker 1: Is that right?
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  Speaker 2: And the Rocha Sport is $ 139, 000? Do I have that right?
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  Speaker 1: Well, the price to customers is actually, in terms of
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: a comparison price that's relevant for comparing it to a
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  Speaker 1: Porsche or something like that, is actually about $ 98, 000. And
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  Speaker 1: the reason for that is if you buy an electric car,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: you get a $ 7, 500 federal tax rebate, even if you're
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: an AMT.
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  Speaker 3: It applies to everyone.
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  Speaker 1: And then you don't pay the gas guzzler tax, which
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  Speaker 1: is somewhere in the order of $ 3, 000. So effectively, you know,
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  Speaker 1: you're roughly, and it depends on which car you compare
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  Speaker 1: it against because the gas cost of taxes vary, but
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  Speaker 1: it's somewhere between a $ 9, 000 to $ 12, 000 discount.
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  Speaker 3: Relative to a gasoline sports car. So in effect, you're
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  Speaker 3: talking about a car.
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  Speaker 1: That's just under $ 100, 000 as a base price. And then
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  Speaker 1: the sport package is another $ 20, 000 on top of that.
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  Speaker 1: And that's equivalent to like going from like a, you know,
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  Speaker 1: a 911 to a 911 Turbo or something, you know,
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  Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
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  Speaker 2: Now, if I were to order one right now, if
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: anybody in the audience wants to order one right now,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: raise your hands. We'll take orders.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, there you go.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: If somebody out here were to order one right now,
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  Speaker 2: what would it take? What's the deposit, and what's the
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: delivery date?
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: So we're actually reducing our deposit requirements on the roads. Previously,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: we'd used the deposits to provide funding for the company,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: and that was an acknowledged thing. We said, look, we
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: call companies that are very capital-intensive, so in order to
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: make this... you know, doable or more doable.
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  Speaker 3: We're going to take deposits. They'll be at risk. People
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  Speaker 3: should recognize that.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: And then the advantage is that they get one of
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the first cars. And we actually got a lot of
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: people who signed up to that. But we don't really
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: need that anymore. So we're actually going to reduce the
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: deposit down to, I think, $ 9, 900. And then you pay
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: the balance just at start of production, which is a
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: couple months prior to delivery.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Now, did you find any impact on the orders with
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: the falling gas prices? I mean, we saw what happened
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: with Prius. I mean, you can go to Sunnyvale, and
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: entire supermarket parking lots are filled with unsold Priuses. Did
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: that affect you guys at all?
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't think that was a huge impact,
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  Speaker 1: because most people aren't buying the $ 100, 000 sports car because of,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: you know, to save money on gas. It's true.
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  Speaker 2: It's more geek love than it is cheap gas.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was more worried about how that would affect
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: sales for our sedan, which we just unveiled a few
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: weeks ago.
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  Speaker 2: We'll talk about that in a moment, but keep going, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: But I don't think that's been a key impact on
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  Speaker 1: roads to sales. I think certainly the economy as a
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: whole and the implosion of people's net worths has had
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: an effect on new roads to sales, and we're fortunate
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: that we do have a significant backlog going out six
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: months but I wouldn't say gas prices have had a
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: big effect on the road stuff.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Now, being in the car business, you have to be asked,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: are you taking any federal money?
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: You know....
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: And are you worried about your job security if you are?
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I don't have to worry about my compensation.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: My compensation currently is a dollar, so I'd be happy
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to cut that in half for the federal government if
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: they do give us a loan. But actually, we've taken
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: no government money at all thus far. Some people out
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: there think we have, and we haven't. Now, we do
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: aspire to get a government loan under what's called the
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: ATVM programs, the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program.
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  Speaker 2: That's from the DOE?
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  Speaker 3: That's from the DOE. It's not bailout money.
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  Speaker 1: And this program was done before there was a need
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: for bailout money. The legislation was written about 18 months ago.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I started writing it about 18 months ago, and it
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  Speaker 1: finally got approved by Congress last year sometime, I think
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  Speaker 1: late last year. And this is before Obama. So this
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  Speaker 1: isn't stimulus money. This isn't bailout money. This is actually
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: something that originated in the Senate Energy Committee because they
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: felt it was a matter of national security and obviously
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: environmentally important for the United States to accelerate its transition
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: away from oil and for all the obvious reasons that
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: it's obviously very damaging to the environment. And as gas
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: prices rise, as they will dramatically when we come back
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: to another boom, there's going to be a massive wealth
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: transfer out of the United States to other countries. And
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  Speaker 1: it's just kind of silly. It's cheaper for us to
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: just accelerate the move of oil.
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  Speaker 2: Now, I'm not going to ask you how much you
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: plan to get from the government or when, because I
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: think you said that publicly once and got in trouble,
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  Speaker 2: didn't you?
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  Speaker 3: I did get in trouble.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: I just said what they told me, and they didn't
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: say keep it quiet. But suffice to say, we are
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: highly optimistic that we will receive loan approval in the
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: near term. Okay.
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  Speaker 2: Let's talk about the factoring. There was an awful lot
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: of news a few months ago, groundbreaking ceremonies, a big
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: assembly plant going to be out there on 237 in
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: San Jose. Now it seems to be on hold. Is
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: something about financing delayed, or you didn't qualify for it,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: or what happened?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so the idea of using sort of the undeveloped
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: land of the 237 in San Jose occurred before the
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Section 136 or the ATVM loan program was approved by Congress.
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  Speaker 1: And one of the clauses in that ATVM loan program
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: is that it gives preference to manufacturing facilities older than
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: 20 years, which was actually sort of a quasi-Buy American
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: clause because the foreign car companies that have factories here,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: almost all their factories are younger than 20 years. So
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: it's essentially to bias the cash towards American companies that
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: that clause is put in. But nonetheless, it's there, which
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: means we can't do Greenfield. So.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I assume there's going to be a lot of
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: empty buildings in Dearborn soon. Is that where you plan
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: on going?
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: No, we'll most likely be in Southern California. We actually
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: have term sheets on two locations in Southern California that
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: We looked first in the Bay Area.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: I'd love to take over NUMI. That would be awesome.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know if there's... Maybe at some point we'll
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: have an opportunity to acquire NUMI. That would be great.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: I'll take that in a second. But that isn't available
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: right now. I don't think we can afford it, really.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Unless they give it to us.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Which, maybe they will.
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  Speaker 2: So where are the cars being manufactured right now?
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: UK?
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: At Lotus?
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  Speaker 1: Yes. Actually, the Roadster is considered a U.S. manufactured car.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: The final assembly occurs in the Bay Area in Menlo Park,
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  Speaker 1: of all places.
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  Speaker 2: That well-known auto center.
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  Speaker 1: Right. Well, bear in mind, we're talking low production for
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: the Roadster. So this is a production rate of around
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: about 25 a week. That might rise to 30 a
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: week in the summer. So it's not, I mean, when
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: you sort of add that up, that's five cars a day.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, that's. Like your average service center could be
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  Speaker 1: a lot more than that. And so we install the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: powertrain in Menlo Park. We do final vehicle verification. We
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: do the high-speed tests out at Moffett Airfield. And then
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: we manufacture the battery pack in St.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Carlos.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: So it's by value talking about something mostly done here.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Where do you do the tests at Moffett?
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: On the airfield.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: On the runway?
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: Have any of you ever seen a Tesla racing down
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: the runway at Moffett Field? Do you guys like to
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: do it at 3 o'clock in the morning or something?
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: No, there's hardly any traffic on Moffett.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Nowadays, true. Let's talk about the new car, the S.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Tell me about it.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: All right. This really is a great car. I mean,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the Roadster is a good car. I think the S
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: is a great car. And I think it's something that will...
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: It's really quite historic, or at least it aspires to be,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: in that this will be the first mass-produced, highway-capable electric car.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: And there's never been, this may sound strange, but there's
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: actually never been a mass-produced electric car outside of golf carts.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Is it the first non-internal combustion mass-produced car since the
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Stanley Steamer?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it might be.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Wow, okay.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: So, yeah. I mean, there's been hand-built things and conversions
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of gasoline cars and stuff like that, but not an
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: actual mass-produced electric car. So, of course, we have to
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: mass-produce it for that to be true. So that's why
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  Speaker 1: I say it aspires to be. But if we fulfill
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: that aspiration, then it will be very historic. The car
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: really designed to take full advantage of an electric power
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: train So the packaging is very optimized for that. The
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: battery pack is in the floor pan between the two axles.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: It's this big sort of flat battery pack. It looks
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: a lot like a giant laptop battery pack. In fact,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: it uses laptop cells.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, is it still just a
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: ton of laptop batteries?
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Well, it's half a ton of laptop batteries.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: Half a ton of laptop batteries strapped together.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, that's tricky, by the way.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Strapping is tricky.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: So you need a lot of processors, right, to manage
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: all that.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: I think we have like 30 or 32 processors or
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: something on board. A lot of them are like little
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: tiny ones.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: So you must go to bed every night praying for
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: breakthroughs in battery technology so you don't have to deal
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: with this.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: No, you know, it's not too bad, actually, having lots
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: of little cells. I mean, we keep Believe it or not,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: that is the highest energy density pack that you can make,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: is to use a large number of laptop cells. And
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: we keep pushing on the cell manufacturers. Technically, by the way,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: a battery is a collection of cells. And the cell,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: if it's just one, it's a cell. And if it's two,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: it's a battery. And the cell is a chemical engineering problem.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: The battery, the pack, the battery is... is actually a
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and software engineering problem. So there
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: are different types of expertise needed to do that. And
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: in fact, there are many makers of cells, but there
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: is only one maker of large lithium-ion battery packs, and
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: that's Tesla. So, of course, there will be others in
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the future. And that's why Daimler came to us, to
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: make the battery pack for the new electric smart. Right.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Now, you know, something I've never asked you, My laptop
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: just about sets my pants on fire. How do you
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: keep all of those from just cooking that car?
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Are you sitting on your laptop?
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: I don't even want to think about sitting on a
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: half a ton of laptop batteries.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, what's the worst that could happen? We do
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: extensive safety testing. I shouldn't laugh. This is a serious subject.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I'll break it down. We start off at the cell level.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: We use only the finest cells.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Corinthian.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Finest cells. Each one gently observed and carefully prepared. We
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: do actually use by ice quality cells, which come from Japan.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: They're carefully verified by the manufacturer. Then when we receive them,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: we check each cell. In addition to the fuse that's
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: built into the cell from the manufacturer, we double fuse
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: the cell. So it's triple fused in total at the
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: cell level. Then the cells are incorporated into modules. The
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: modules are designed to ensure that there's passive propagation resistance
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: between the cells.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: So what that means is.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Even if all active safety systems fail and a cell
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: goes into what's called thermal runaway, that energy is contained
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: and it does not spread to any neighboring cells. So
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: this involves insulating the cells, making sure you've got a
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: thermal conduction path to get rid of the heat so
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: you don't... So that's quite tricky. And then... But we
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: obviously never want to get to even losing a single
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: cell So we have an active cooling system, so the
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: battery pack is liquid cooled. And that also is a
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: tricky problem because you need to be thermally conductive but
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: electrically isolated.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: And moreover, that needs to.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Be true over 100,000 plus miles of bumpy roads. The
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: big problem in.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Real life cars.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, real life cars. Real life cars, it is hard
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: to make things last for 100,000 miles in 10 years
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. So if you hit potholes
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: and you get So you've got, you know, it's getting
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: shocks from the road. It's getting vibrations going through extremes
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: of temperature. It gets into an accident. Under all these circumstances,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: you cannot have the pack catch on fire. Very hard problem.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: And then also, it must be, you must be able
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: to make the pack inexpensively.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: It's got to be passable at regulatory requirements.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: You've got to preserve the pack so that you maximize
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: the calendar and cycle life of the chemistry within the cells.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: So you have.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: To deal with the DOT and the DOE.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: A lot of departments. Tell me more. I don't want
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: to go into too much minutiae. Tell me more about
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: the car.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: What's the experience like?
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: I should have said, yeah. I'll give you the sales
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: pitch on the Model S.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: Okay, so.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: This is a car that has a range of up
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: to 300 miles. It seats up to seven people. That's
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: five adults plus two kids. And the way we get
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the two kids is it's kind of like the old
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: station wagons where you have two rear-facing kid seats in
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the back.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: That's an option that you can order.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I remember those days.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you know, it's not great being in
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the back, but I guess it could be kind of
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: fun if you're a kid and you can sort of
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: watch all the other cars and stuff. And most people,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: you know, when you put seven people in a car, it's...
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: almost never seven adults, and it's only occasionally, rarely is
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: it seven people. So we try to make something that
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: could substitute for your SUV, so you don't have to
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: cart this gigantic seven-passenger SUV all over the place. It
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: will be five-star crash rated, and that's a very hard
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: thing to achieve. In fact, today's five-star will reduce to
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: a three-star in two years.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Right, they keep moving the bar.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they keep raising the bar on what's necessary to
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: achieve a five-star. So people might think, oh, I've got
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: a five-star day. It'll be like a five-star in two years. No,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: that's like a three-star in two years. I mean, you
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: basically have to be, you know, a Sherman tank level
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: safety to get to five stars.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: We will be at five stars. I'll have my own
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: kids in the car.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: We're not going to make something that's less than five stars.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: And you've got a castle of kids, too.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll be fully occupied in the car.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: And so the challenge then is to make it super
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: safe but not super heavy. So it is quite a
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: difficult mechanical engineering problem and mass optimization problem. And actually, arguably,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: it will be safer than an SUV because it'll have
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: such low center of gravity because the battery pack is
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: in the floor pan that you're not going to have
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the tip-over risk.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: It's going to stay on the ground.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, if you're going on like some
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: mountain path or something and you go off the side,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't matter how many airbags you got,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: you know, you're toast. So you want to make sure
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: you don't have tip-over risk. And then that sort of
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: On tip-overs, you'd actually win against an SUV. Tell me a.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Little about the ergonomics. I hear you have some innovations
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: on the dashboard.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: And that sort of thing.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: So for the interior approach, you can think of it
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: like a giant iPhone. Okay, that's the center console. Imagine
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: a 17-inch diameter iPhone, and that's the basic thought there,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: and 3G wireless connected.
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: Really?
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, so it'll have your controls, your
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: standard controls for stereo, HVAC, But it's also going to
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: be able to connect to the internet. So you want
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: to do Pandora Radio, if you want to do YouTube,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: whatever you want to do. It'll have a browser. So
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: it's just Linux running a browser.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: So if you want to look at your email while
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: you're not driving.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: And in fact, there's some sort of interesting ideas who
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: have thought of, well, maybe you could have it read
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: out your email to you while you're driving. And do
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: voice commands on the computer. It would be nice to
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: allow people to develop applications that could run on the computer,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: because this is a full-fledged computer. It's not some sort
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: of dumbed-down car thing. And also, you should be able
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: to theme the display. So there's a 17-inch display in front,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: and there's about an 11-inch display in front of you.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: So it's a user-modified display.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So there's a read-only display right in front
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: of you, and then a big 17-inch touchscreen in the
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: center console. And you can theme your cell phone and
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: customize it to your interests and needs, well, why can't
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: you do that with a car you should build? It
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: seems like a reasonable thing. So if you want to
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: see different instruments on the front, like you care about
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: seeing this readout, that readout, you want it to sort
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: of have a heavy metal look, you want it to
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: look like country and western, whatever, make it feel like
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: it's more your car, not just something that rolled off
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: an assembly line.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: So you could have the dashboard of a 67 GTO. Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Steward Warner gauges if you wanted to.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: You could have it look like steam gauges if you
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: wanted to.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So this is your 5 Series killer.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: You know, we're not going to kill... We're looking at 20,000
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: units a year, so we're not going to kill anything.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: We'll impinge on.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: The market share of several cars out there. Lexus, Mercedes, BMW, Audi... Infiniti,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: but really it'll be a small, I mean, hardly noticeable
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: impact on total sales. I mean, you know, at least
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: there were 17 million cars sold in the U.S. a year.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: I think it's around about, you know, not much, like
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: 9 million cars a year at the current run rate.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: So even at my 9 million cars a year, yeah,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: and that 20,000 is 10,000 domestic, 10,000 international.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: So we're talking, you know, 0.01% of the.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Car market.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, so give me some performance specs. Give me some
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: performance specs on this thing. Price.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Starting price, $ 49, 900. $ 49, 000? $ 900. Well, yeah, okay.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Gosh, that's less than $.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: 50, 000. Yes, that's right.
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: It is.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: That's right. Only $ 50, 000.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: That's half the price. It is half the price.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: That's what you're selling the register for. Yes.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: That's quite impressive.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: Thanks.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Now, that is after the $ 7, 500, remember that federal tax rebate?
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: That's after the $ 7, 500, although I haven't taken into account
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the gas guzzler tax. So in effect, for an apples-to-apples comparison,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: it would be a little bit less than that, maybe $ 47, 000
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: or something like that.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: And you said distance was on a charge?
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: It can go up to 300 miles, but now the $ 49, 900
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: one will do 160 miles. But there will be a
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: 300-mile range pack available. And one of the things we're
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: thinking of doing is perhaps making that something you can rent.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: So if you can't afford the more expensive 300-mile range
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: pack or don't want it, then that's fine. Get the
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: 160-mile pack, rent the bigger one when you need it.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Some other ways we've addressed the range issue is a
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: 45-minute fast charge capability, which is about the limit of
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the battery chemistry. And then we're designing the battery pack
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: such that it can be switched out fast and you
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: can fill a gas tank. Which, in principle, if you
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: think about it, this is basically a big laptop on wheels.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: And if you can switch out your laptop battery you know,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: in 30 seconds.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: Well, why can't you do that with a big one?
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: You just need something that can simulate a hand at
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: a large scale.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Well, because when you hit that, there's two little clips
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: and that 500-pound battery pack falls out.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Yes. That's something you can do by hand. Right. So
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: you do need special equipment at sort of a battery
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: pack swap station. And there's companies out there that are
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: looking to do swap stations.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Now, weren't you talking about your solar company? Weren't you
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: talking about having solar panels that people could put on, like,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: the roof of their house?
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: And do home charging? for a quick 75 miles or
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: whatever it was?
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Well, the most efficient thing to do is to actually
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: put solar panels on the roof of your house and
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: just have them basically power your house, particularly during the day,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: because during the day is when you encounter peak load,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: and they have to put the least efficient power stations
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: online during the day. And then at night, it's actually
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: better to charge your car at night So it's better to, like,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: decouple it effectively. So if you want to be truly green,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: then you just need to say, okay, well, I'm going
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: to generate more energy via solar than I consume in
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: my car. Although the Model S will have a solar
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: panel option, so you can put solar panels on the.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: Roof of the car itself.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: On the car itself, okay.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's some interesting ideas to potentially have solar
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: carports and... If you want to get some really sort
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: of crazier ideas, try to coat the whole car with
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: some sort of amorphous photovoltaic coating and have the whole
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: thing be.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: On big solar panels.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Now, there was talk for a while, and I guess
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: you've abandoned it, of even putting a gasoline engine in.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Is that gone?
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: It is gone.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: We looked closely at the whole plug-in hybrid thing, and.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: You know, I guess about a week ago or so,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: there was a guy who asked me to send me
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: an email. He runs like a Bolt site or a
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: GM Bolt site or something. He's not working for GM,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: but he just said, you know, so why isn't Tesla
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: doing the range-extended electric vehicle approach, the plug-in hybrid thing?
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: And I just sort of gave him kind of a
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: matter of fact. This is why we chose this strategy
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: or another. And then, you know, It's all over the place, like,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I'm trashing the vault. I'm not trashing the vault. I
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: hope the vault is successful. And I've said so many times.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: But I'm just explaining, why did we not do that?
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: So I'll explain here. I mean, basically, what it comes
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: down to is, it's a technical point. Because we had
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: to sort of drill into it quite deeply to appreciate
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: why it wouldn't, be ideal, in our opinion, to have
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: a plug-in hybrid. If you go from, say, if you
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: consider a 200-mile range pack versus, say, a 40-mile range pack,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: it sounds like you'd have a pack that is one-fifth
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: the size, right, for the 40-mile pack.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: But that's actually not true.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Because what happens is the 40-mile pack has to generate,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: particularly if it's a range-extended electric, so you're not, you know,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the 40-mile pack has to generate five times the power. Well,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: technically you could have the motor running, and so maybe
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: it only has to generate two and a half.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Times the power.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: But then you're running both simultaneously, and you're not really
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: being electric if you're doing that. So if you just
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: consider the pure electric case, you've got to generate five
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: times the power. But the way it works in battery
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: chemistry is that power and energy work at opposites. You
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: can either have a high power pack or a high
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: energy pack. Energy is total mileage. Power is the rate
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: at which you can consume that energy. And so in effect,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: you then push to a low energy density chemistry in
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: a plug-in hybrid case.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: And because you're hitting the pack.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So hard, it's working so much harder than the bigger
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: pack that you have to de-rate the pack, de-rate the
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: energy content. So you end up with something which is
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: close to half the size, maybe 40% to 50% of
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: the size of the 200-mile pack. And then you've got
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to add in the cost and weight of the engine,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: the generator, all the cross-connects between the two. You've got
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: to factor in that there's servicing of two complete drivetrains.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: You still have to deal with all the EPA stuff
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: for emissions. And then when you've consumed your 40 miles...
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: which we'll do reasonably, not every day, but maybe every,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: call it every third day. You're then going to have
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: something which is massive, an engine which is super, really underpowered. Right.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: It's going to push this heavy car down.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's going to feel like I've got a lawnmower
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: engine trying to power my sedan. And so it's going
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: to be running at very high RPM. It's going to
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: be working really, really hard.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: It's not going to make that 100,000 miles.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: It's going to be tough. Yeah. And so... so you really,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: it's going to feel very anemic on the highway. And
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: so it's just, it's problematic. You're neither fish nor fowl.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: And it stands to reason that if you've got a
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: given mass and cost, and you say to an engineer,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: make the best electric car for a fixed mass and cost,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: or you say to an engineer, make the best gasoline car,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: fixed matching cost, it's going to be a better gasoline
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: car or a better electric car than if you split
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the baby.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: So you're not trashing hybrids, but you just did a
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: pretty good job of trashing hybrids.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I could be wrong, you know.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying that's the reasoning that caused us to
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: focus on electrics and continue to focus on electrics.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Let me ask you a Silicon Valley question.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: Your vice chairman, and for a long time the CEO
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: of the firm, is a name out of the Silicon
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Valley past. Zev Drury, a guy that we haven't seen
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: around here for 30 years, who ran Monolithic Memories way
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: back when. Kind of a legendary figure, kind of a
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: swashbuckling guy. I seem to remember he was running Monolithic Memories,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: and the Yom Kippur War broke out, and he literally
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: called into the office and said, I'll be in Israel
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: until the war is over. and volunteered and went off
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: to battle. Unique guy, but he's been missing from action
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: around here for a long, long time. Where did you
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: find him? And why would you get a chip guy
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: in a battery business, in a car business?
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Sure. How did we find him? Actually, it was through
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: one of the investors at Tesla. Zev is a car guy.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, he went into sort of racing, did a
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: lot of racing, and... he was very, very competitive, you know, obviously,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: you know, great entrepreneur, strong track record, um, and, I think,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: very importantly, he was someone who was, he was not
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: afraid of, of danger, as evidenced by his running off
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: to the Yom Kippur War, uh, Yom Kippur War, um, so,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: you know, towards the end of 2007, uh, we needed
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: to find a CEO for, for Tesla, and we didn't
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: have a lot of takers, um, Because it was a
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: very difficult situation. And there weren't very many people with
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the guts of Zev. And anyway, so Zev, I thought,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: was somebody who could help get us out of a
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: pickle and who wasn't afraid to try to do that.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: And it's hard to describe. Tesla was in a really
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: dire situation at the end of 2007. It had come
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: to light that the car's cost was $ 140, 000. We'd been
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: selling it for $ 92, 000. You can make it up in volume. Right.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: And not only that, we couldn't... I mean, there were
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: several things broken about the car technically, transmission being the
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: most notable item, but there were a lot of other
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: issues Um, and, uh, you know, so, so we, it
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: really wasn't a car that could even, even, even if
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: we said, okay, well, we'll, we'll, we'll accept the $ 140, 000.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: This isn't a car that would have passed safety and
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: reliability and endurance tests. Um, and so it was just, wow.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: And we were sort of out of money or close
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: to being out of money. Um, so this is a,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, like 18 months ago. Um, In a
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: situation like that, you've got to be pretty bold if
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: you want to come in and help run the company.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: He was willing to do that.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Like I said, he'd taken things from very tough situations before.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: He joined as CEO.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: In fact, he and I were kind of the co-CEOs
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: of the company because he was coming in cold and
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: didn't know any of the background. Although I'd been at
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: sort of a fairly high level up to that point,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: and not in the nitty-gritty, at least I had the
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: contextual background. So he and I basically ran the company
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: together for about 18 months. And then when the financial
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: crisis hit, I guess it was about, well, when the
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: financial crisis hit, and I was like, oh, man, okay.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: So I got to up my time in the company
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: and go from being kind of the half CEO to
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: the full CEO, because I also had to up the ante,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: in terms of my investment in the company financially. So
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: it's like, all right, if I'm going to do that,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: then I've got to.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: Be the full CEO, not the half CEO.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Well, now, bold is the ultimate entrepreneurial trait, and you
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: obviously have it. I want to go back. Let's talk
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: about your upbringing. But before we do that, real quick,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: how much for the S?
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: $ 49, 900. $ 49, 900. Okay, how fast? It's zero to 60 in
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: about five and a half seconds. And top speed, 130
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: miles per hour, electronically limited. We will have sport versions
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: of the S that will go, have a zero to
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: 60 in under five seconds. But five and a half
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: seconds in a sedan is plenty fast.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking about those kids in the back seat facing backwards.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: It's not 3.9 seconds like the Roadster, but it's pretty fast.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, real fast. All right, let's talk about your upbringing.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: You leave home at 17. And you wanted to get
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: to the States, right? Was that your dream?
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: First of all, you didn't want to be in the Army.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: That didn't seem like a good use of time.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Being conscripted in the South African Army just didn't seem
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: like a great way to spend time.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: So without your parents' approval, you take off and you
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: end up in Canada first?
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Well, so I was trying to figure out how to
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: get to the U.S. to try to convince my parents
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: to move there. My parents were divorced, so at least
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: one of them could move there and I could move
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: there with them. And But I wasn't successful in convincing them.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: But then I found out my mother had been born
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: in Canada. So I kind of walked her through the
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: process of getting her Canadian citizenship, which allowed me to
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: get my Canadian citizenship, which meant I could go to Canada.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: And my grandfather was American, actually.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: But because my mother hadn't gotten her American citizenship before
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: he died and before certain age restrictions, I wasn't able
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: to get American citizenship, unfortunately, directly. So I went to
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Canada initially. Canada's a great country. I was there for
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: about three years and then came down to the States
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: to continue going to school at UPenn.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: And you live on a book a day.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Well, briefly.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but how do you do that? I mean, there's
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: several times in your life when you're basically well below
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: the poverty line.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Right? And this was one of them.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: Oh, Buccadet, that was 20 years ago.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: So that's like two bucks a day.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Two bucks a day.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Well, there's all the difference. It is all the difference.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: It does make a big difference. Yeah, well, I wasn't
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: quite sure how much money, you know, how hard it
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: would be to get a job or anything like that.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: So I hadn't really had a real.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Job because I was only 17. So I'd done like
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: paper routes and stuff like that.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: So I thought, well, just.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: In case, It takes me a long time to get
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: a job. I better make sure that my tiny stash
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: of money lasts a long time. So I only had
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: a few thousand dollars. So I thought, well, let me
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: see if I can live for under.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: A buck a day.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: And you can do it. I mean, just buy, like,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: hot dogs in bulk and oranges in bulk and scurvy
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: is bad, so you can have an orange, throw an
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: orange in there.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: When the blisters start forming on your tongue, it's.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Time to get an orange. An orange every couple of
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: days will... you know, keep scurvy away. And hot dogs are,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: you know, it's just sort of like pasta and pasta sauce.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: You know, just buy the stuff in bulk and get,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: at least at the time, you can get to.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: Under a buck a day.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: So now you pick up two degrees.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: You get a little monotonous after a while.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can imagine the 14th day in a row
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: of spaghetti.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: A lot of people pick up econ degrees. A lot
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: of people pick up physics degrees. But not many people
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: pick up both of those.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Those are two different worlds. I thought it was relatively unique,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: and then I found out that actually somebody else did it. But, yeah,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: it was, yeah, just, I mean, I'm more an engineer
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: than anything else. You know, engineering and design is my interest.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: But I figured if I don't learn the business stuff,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: then somebody else is going to make me do things
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: I don't want to do.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: So I better learn, you know, the secrets of business.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: And so that's why I did the, the physics degree
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: as well as the board and finance degree.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Finance stuff was easy, by the way.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I'd say all my business courses, like in the final year,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: all my business courses together were not as hard as
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: quantum mechanics.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'll buy that. So now, this is the mythical
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: moment in your career. You get accepted to grad school
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: at Stanford. That alone is a pretty big deal. You're in.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Well, to be precise, actually, my initial department was material
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: science department. And you use the word high-energy physics, and
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: that's actually a defined term in physics. Technically, I would
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: have actually been in kind of the quantum mechanics more
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: than high energy physics because the area I was going
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: to be researching was sort of an intersection of applied
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: physics and material science. And basically trying to figure out,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: can you create a capacitor with enough energy density to
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: replace a battery? Now, capacitors are very common components in
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: circuit boards, and they're occasionally used to store limited amounts
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: of energy, but the problem is that the energy density
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: is not compared to what a battery can do. But
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: if you could get a capacitor to approach the interchangeable battery,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: then things like charging could be done in minutes or seconds, technically.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: You wouldn't have a recharge time issue. And then also
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: cycle life and calendar life would be measured in decades.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: But, Elon, you were there for two days. You were
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: there for 48 hours. I've been in meetings that lasted
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: longer than 48 hours. I've been drunk longer than 48 hours.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Me too.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: Two days? How do you do two days? I mean,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: that's not even long enough to, like, get the books.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Well, it was a tough decision, actually. I was trying
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: to figure out, okay, should I do grad studies or...
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: started a company doing some internet stuff. And this was
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: in 95.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: It was before.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Before the bubble. Just before.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Before Netscape, you were in public.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, in fact, when I started Zip2, it was
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: not with the expectation that I would make a large
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: sum of money. It was like, okay, can I make
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: enough money to live and buy food and stuff? That
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: was really the threshold. It was a very low threshold.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: And Netscape had not gone public yet. Somebody wrote something
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: about me that said, oh, I saw Netscape go public,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: and that's why I decided to start Zip2. I started
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Zip2 in the summer of 95, and before Netscape had
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: gone public. I tried to get a job at Netscape, actually,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: and didn't hear back from them.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Now, see, reading your biography, I would have thought you
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: were the wild man, the black sheep of the family.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: But now I've come to the conclusion it has to
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: be your brother, because you come out planning to get
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: a Ph.D., and 48 hours later, Your brother has convinced
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: you to drop out of school and join his new company.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Not quite.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: No, actually, I convinced my brother to come from Canada.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Oh. Yeah. My brother's a convincing guy. Maybe it was, well,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: he was in Canada at the time. And, but, you know,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: I always wanted to do something with my brother and
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: he wanted to do something with me.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: And, The $ 300 million shared gift is a pretty good
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: gift for you.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but at the time, the expectations were really tiny.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Now, is this when you were sleeping on the floor
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: in your office?
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Actually, I was sleeping on a futon, which turned into
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: a couch during the day.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Well, you held your meetings.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Yes. Right, exactly. True.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: So you were renting an office, but you didn't have
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: a place to live, right?
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Right. The apartment cost more than the office. So we,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: so then my brother and I just got two futons, um,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: which turned into couches, you know, and then during the day,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: and then we'd have our meeting, we'd have a table
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: and have meetings there. And then at night there'd be,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: unbeknownst to the people that we'd have meetings with that,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: where we slept. Um, and then we shouted the YMCA
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: on page mill and El Camino. Uh, so, uh, and
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: then you could work out as well. So I was
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: in great shape.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: Um, and, um, yeah, it was, it was, it was
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: actually fine.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Um, So all you guys sitting in peats with your
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: business plans, you guys think you have it tough. Any
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: questions from the audience right now? We're going to get
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: into space in a minute here, but I want to,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: as long as we're on cars, let's take car questions first.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: Yes, sir.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Congratulations on your success. It was very impressive.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Please wait for the mic.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: I don't need it.
• 43:14
  Speaker 6: We do need it because we're recording this.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, yes, of course. I'll call and I have to say,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: where's the mic? It's coming.
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: Thank you. I'm very interested in your idea about email
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: being built into your next car. Now, the question I
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: have for you is, say I'm sending you an email
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: with this voice. Is that what you're going to hear
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: while you're driving? My voice reading my email to you,
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: and when you respond to me, I'll hear your voice
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: responding to me. It's just an idea, so you got
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: it from me. Just keep it in mind. You don't
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: have to respond right now, yes or no.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Everybody sign an NDA on the way in?
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Why did you name the car Tesla? Well, the company's
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: named after Nikola Tesla, who's actually very well known in
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: physics because units of magnetism are actually units of Tesla.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: And he came up with a number of innovations. He
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: also went crazy, so hopefully that's no indication of the
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: future of Tesla. But he was a great man and
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: didn't get... I think the popular... side of things, hasn't
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: gotten quite the recognition that he deserves. So it was
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: a choice between Tesla or maybe Faraday, after Michael Faraday.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: So capacitance is measured in farads, by the way, in farads.
• 44:52
  Speaker 6: Could you give us your perspective on the future of Detroit?
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Future of Detroit, wow. Well, Clearly, the companies are going
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: to be smaller than they used to be. I'm not
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: sure I could shed any light that people don't already
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: know about Detroit and that it's going to be a
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: much smaller industry than before. I think there's a good
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: chance it will emerge healthier from this process than it's
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: been in recent years. I mean, GM and Chrysler in particular,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: and to some degree Ford, This was inevitable.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: It was only a question of when.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: And so the financial crisis kind of accelerated the inevitable,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: but it.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: Didn't, it would have happened anyway.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: So, you know, there need to be substantial reforms in
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: the management side and on the labor side. And, you know,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: I think really they need to get back to, they
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: need to focus on producing great products. That's what it
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: really comes down to. You know, if you say, who
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: makes great cars, how many people in this room would
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: say GM? It's kind of unusual for.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: People to say that.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: If you said, tell me who makes the best cars
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: in the world, it might be a Toyota or a
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Daimler or a BMW or an Audi or something like that. So,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's really what great companies are both in
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: great products. Hopefully.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: But now, once you prove mass production of an electric car,
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: why wouldn't the M & A guys from General Motors
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: and Ford come knock on your door?
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I point out that there needs to be some
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: currency for that acquisition. You know, and the stock isn't
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: worth a lot, and they don't have any cash.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: You're not going to take equity in General Motors?
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: No, well.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: So, I mean... I made this comment actually several months ago.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I was a little more flippant when I say, well,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: what if General Motors calls up and says, he'd like
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: to acquire Tesla. What would be your response to that?
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: I'd say, well, you can't afford it. And that's just true.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think they can afford much of anything. They
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: just don't have the cash and the equity is not
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: worth anything.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: One more car question out there and then we'll go
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: to space.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: One last question.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: How would you compare a Tesla with Fisker Automotive?
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: So, well... Fisker is producing a plug-in hybrid. So Fisker
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: is producing a plug-in hybrid. As we were talking about earlier,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: we're pursuing a different strategy for the reasons I articulated.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: They're producing a four-door sedan, but it's a sportier sedan
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: than ours. Our sedan is intended to really be very
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: functional and have a lot of cargo space, carry five
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: adults in comfort, plus potentially two kids, and still have.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: Room for luggage. And we're at sort of the roughly.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: $ 50, 000 price point there, I think at around $ 80, 000 starting
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: price after tax rebates.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: I think that's probably a fair characterization of the differences.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about space. We literally don't have enough time
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: interviewing you to cover everything you do. We could do
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: three different events on three different activities. Let's do space
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: real quick. Where does SpaceX stand right now? What's the
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: status of things? And what's the status of the XPRIZE, too?
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Let's get into that.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Okay. Well, SpaceX is doing really well, thankfully. Otherwise, I
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: would be in real trouble. I mean, particularly in terms
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: of the time that it takes, the time that I
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: have to dedicate to the companies. On average, I'm sort
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: of roughly 50-50 between SpaceX and Tesla. although as there
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: are issues that crop up that need to be addressed,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: that could swing it to as much as 80% SpaceX
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: or 80% Tesla in a given week. But SpaceX is profitable.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: It's been cash flow positive and profitable for the last
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: two and a half years.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: We got to orbit last year.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: In December, just before Christmas, NASA awarded SpaceX a $ 1. 6
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: billion contract to resupply the space station with cargo.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: When does that begin?
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: That begins at the end of next year. Okay. Okay.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: So the first operational mission after the demonstration missions is
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: December of next year.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: And at what point do you take over completely? Don't
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: you have exclusivity for a while as the space shuttle retires?
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Well, the space shuttle is supposed to retire at the
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: end of next year, and then we'd follow our COGA
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: missions immediately thereafter. Although if the space shuttle ends up
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: running a little longer, then there may be some overlap.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Are you going to hit those milestones?
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: I think. We have a decent chance of doing it.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: It's not entirely.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: You have guys waiting up there for civil.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: Well, NASA isn't... I don't think NASA's counting on us
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: being there exactly on time. They do have some contingencies.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: We're certainly going to do our best to meet those timelines.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: I think we can. We don't have... It's not fully
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: within our power because there's NASA as well. We've got
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: to meet all the NASA safety requirements and If they
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: levy requirements on us that we don't yet understand or
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: appreciate or they're new requirements, then that could push out
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: the effective date of the first operational mission. But I
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: don't think it's going to be much beyond the end
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: of next year.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: I'm curious. I've always wondered about this about you. You know,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: space exploration, rockets are the stuff of governments, large countries.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: Did you have an epiphany one day where you just said,
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: to hell with it, I'm going to actually do this myself?
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: I'm going to have to create a commercial space company?
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: Who comes up with that idea?
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: The shower? It is out of left field, yeah. Well,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: you mentioned the areas of interest that I had in college.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: One of them was space travel, in particular the extension
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: of life beyond Earth, making life multi-planetary.
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: I actually, when I was in college, I didn't think
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: I would actually be a part of space.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, you're the only guy who
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: thought of this stuff that actually did it. I mean,
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: there are millions of people that think, oh, I'm going
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: to do this. I'm going to be an astronaut when
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: I grow up. Not many people actually build rockets when
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: they're 35 years old.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: Right. And actually, when I was in college, it wasn't
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: these are the three areas I want to be involved in.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: It's these are the three areas that I think will
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: most affect the future of humanity. I didn't, if you'd
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: asked me in college, do I, do you think I'd
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: be involved in space?
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: The answer would have been almost certainly not. Um, I
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: thought it would be highly.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: Unlikely because you need billions of dollars, you know, you
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: need to be a government and actually it's only like
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: a handful of governments that can even do that. So, um,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: so it wasn't with the expectation that I'd expect to
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: be involved in space. Um, But as a result of PayPal,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: the capital I got from that, I.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: Could do something in space.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: And it actually, the space stuff, well, it actually came
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: from a conversation Adeo and I, where is Adeo?
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there he is.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: So we were coming back from Adeo's parents' place in
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Long Island, and.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: Adeo asked me, like, what am I going to do
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: after PayPal?
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, you know, I, I thought maybe
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: there'd be something philanthropic that could be done in space
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: that would get the public more excited about space travel,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: and in particular, sending people to Mars. And I said,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: but I'm sure NASA's got that covered. And, you know,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: so I'll go look on the NASA website for when
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: are we going to Mars, because, of course, it should
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: be on the website. Like, we're going to Mars in
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: this year, and this is how we're going to do it.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: But there was nothing, nothing at all. about people going
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: to Mars. I was like, I just don't understand why
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: there's nothing about people going to Mars. Because if you
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: look at the literature in the 70s, it was all about, well,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: we went to the moon, now we're going to go
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: to Mars. And so what happened? There was a space shuttle,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: and the space shuttle turned out to be a really
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: big mistake. And it could barely get to low-Earth orbit.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Forget about moon or Mars or anything like that. So
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, geez, maybe I can do something that's
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: going to, get the public excited about Mars. And that
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: will generate congressional support, which will turn into funding for
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: NASA to go do this. And looked at a few
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: different options. Actually, Adeo and I did a couple of
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: trips to Russia to look at buying some refurbished Russian ICBMs.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: And that's Just change the telemetry a little bit, yeah. Yeah,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: make sure you shift the payload. Like, which button do
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: we press?
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: And meanwhile, NASA lost the blueprints for the Saturn V rocket, right?
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: So you couldn't rebuild that.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Right. The Saturn V was a great rocket. It's just
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: too bad that we should just rebuild that rocket and
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: make it better, like just improve on that rocket. It
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: was a good design. It's so much better than the
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: space shuttle.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: So are you going to put a man on Mars?
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: It's not even comparable.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: Are you going to put a man on Mars? You
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: and I have a bet. I haven't forgotten the bet.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: We were in a plane flying over the North Pole
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: under the Aurora Borealis, as a matter of fact, and
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: we made a bet. You believe that you would put
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: a man on the moon by.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: 20... Not on the moon.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, on Mars.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: By 20... 2020, maybe?
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: I think it was 2020 or 2025. Okay.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: You going to make it?
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: We'll try.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: What's the next milestone for SpaceX?
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Well, the next big milestone will be launching Falcon 9,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: our big rocket, which hopefully will occur around the end
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: of summer. And that's the rocket that will be used
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: to carry our Dragon spacecraft to orbit, and Dragon spacecraft
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: is what will service the space station. So Falcon 9
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: is a pretty good-sized rocket. It's actually the most powerful
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: single-core rocket in the U.S. fleet, more powerful than because
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: of what blowing a lock you'd make, before considering side boosters.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: How much each one of these cost?
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: On a per flight of Falcon 9, about $ 40 million.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: Those are big bets.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then if you add a Dragon spacecraft on
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: top of that, it's about the same.
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: And then there's various NASA overhead.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: So you're making a $ 100 million bet when you light
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: the fuse on that thing.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's a deal in the rocket world, by the way.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: For only $ 100 million, we will carry some cargo to orbit. So, yeah.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: So that launching Falcon 9 will be the next big one.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: There's a sort of smaller milestone, which is an upcoming
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: Falcon 1 flight, maybe as soon as the end of
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: this month. That'll deliver our first operational satellite to orbit,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: which is a Malaysian satellite. It's intended to do Earth observation,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: you know, for, like, natural disasters and stuff like that. And, yeah.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: And then... At the end of this year, hopefully we'll
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: launch our first Dragon spacecraft from Falcon 9. It won't
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: go to the space station. We'll do sort of basic
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: orbital maneuvering and reentry. And then next year we go
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: to the space station for the first time. Okay.
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: How long is the contract for the space station?
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: How long? How long?
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: How long? How long?
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: It runs through approximately 2015. Okay. And I think it
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: will be extended beyond that. Right. It's just that the
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: operational plan for the space station kind of only goes
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: to 2015.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Frankly, in theory, if you get this right, do we
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: need NASA anymore?
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Well, absolutely. Well, NASA, we aren't a customer to NASA. Right.
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: NASA is our customer, I should say. So they're our
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: biggest customer.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: And, in fact, when NASA does developments, although in all
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: circumstances prior to this, NASA has had these sort of–
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: made the design decisions, the implementation of those design decisions
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: has been done by aerospace contractors. So the novel thing
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: here is that for the first time, NASA isn't dictating
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: the design. They're simply saying, we need cargo delivered.
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: We're willing to pay.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: Giving you a performance contract and letting you do the rest.
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: Right, right.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: It's sort of more like FedEx. Yeah. SpaceX.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: We deliver.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: Any questions about space, guys? Got one down here. We
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: have a Homestead High School junior asking a question. Is
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: this on?
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 58:14
  Speaker 7: So for your Falcon series, you decided to use the
• 58:18
  Speaker 7: Merlin engine, right?
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: We developed the Merlin engine.
• 58:22
  Speaker 7: My question for you is, Why did you go for
• 58:24
  Speaker 7: the single or one type of engine and then use
• 58:28
  Speaker 7: nine of them on the Falcon 9?
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: How many is it?
• 58:31
  Speaker 7: Because I've seen a lot of other in the history
• 58:34
  Speaker 7: of space. It's like everyone, you know, above five, you're like, oh,
• 58:37
  Speaker 7: my God, the turbo pumps are all going to blow
• 58:39
  Speaker 7: up or something. So why did you choose that instead
• 58:42
  Speaker 7: of developing a larger engine?
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Well, the Saturn V, although it had five engines on
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: the first stage, also had five engines on the second stage,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: and then one engine on the third stage. So it
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: was actually an 11-engine rocket. Falcon 9 has nine engines
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: on the first stage, one on the second stage. So
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: it's actually a total of ten, so one less than
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: a Saturn V. And the advantage of the nine engines
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: is that you can lose an engine at any point,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: including immediately after liftoff. and still complete your mission, which
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: was not true of the Saturn V. The thrust away
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: of the Saturn V was about 1.15, so you actually
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: had a very dangerous point immediately after liftoff where you
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: could potentially subside if you had an engine failure within
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: the first few seconds. With With rockets, because you're taking
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: it vertically, for the first stage, the initial boost stage
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: points you towards having more engines, if you want true
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: engine capability, because you always have to have a thrust
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: weight greater than one otherwise you're coming back. Whereas an aircraft,
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: you can have a thrust weight of much less than
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: one and still be okay. because you can sort of
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: glide and reduce your climb rate and that kind of
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: thing and still be okay. So actually, it does push
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: you to have more than, say, 747's got four engines,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: but the equivalent for a rocket would be some number
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: greater than four. And maybe it's not as high as nine,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: but we needed nine to achieve the payload requirements that
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: our customers wanted. And as long as you're very careful
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: about ensuring that... the problem with one engine cannot cascade
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: into problems with another engine.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: More is actually better.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: And Google operates with tens of thousands of computers rather
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: than a few giant mainframes.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: It also fits with the Tesla model of having 8,000
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: little batteries.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: You think nine engines is bad?
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: Try 6,831 cells.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: Next question.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 6: So, Elon, with the Dragon spaceship, spacecraft, Is that going
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 6: to also be a man's craft?
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 7: And if so, are you going to be shuttling the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 7: astronauts back and forth to the space station?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Dragon is designed to meet the NASA man rating requirements.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: There's a few key documents there regarding structural safety margins
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: and redundancy. It's designed to meet those requirements. There's, you know, G-loading,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: max G-loading, and dealing with worst-case abort conditions and that
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. All those things were designed to meet.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: There's one key development item that we need to finish,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: which is the escape tower. We have a launch escape system.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: In case something goes wrong with the core booster, it
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: can carry the capsule to safety. It's also something they
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: had during the Apollo era, but they don't have that
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: for the space shuttle.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: Really, the two weak areas of the space shuttle.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: and the two most dangerous periods for a manned vehicle
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: are during the ascent phase and the descent phase.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: There are two, there are.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Fundamental architectural flaws with the shuttle approach. One is on
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: the ascent phase, there is no escape system. They decided
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: they didn't need an escape system because the shuttle would
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: never fail. Really? We're like, wow, okay. So there's no
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: escape system. If anything goes wrong on the ascent, it's curtains.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: And then on reentry, particularly the initial part of reentry,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: which is the high heating point, because it's not a
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: nationally stable vehicle, you've got to have control surfaces and wings.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: So it has control surfaces and wings. So If anything
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: happens with the control system, so any electronics that don't
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: work malfunction or there's a hinge that isn't working properly
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: in one of the control surfaces, that's at your toast.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: It's not naturally stable. It has to be controlled. And
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: then the heating rate goes with the square of the
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: radius of whatever you're doing. So if you've got a
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: wing leading edge that's effectively got a sharp radius, you
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: have a very concentrated heat. which limits the material choice
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: to some very brittle materials.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: In fact, it'll only work for Earth orbit reentry.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: If you come in at a higher velocity than low
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: Earth orbit velocity, there's no material known to man that
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: can withstand it. So actually, for like the moon, you
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: couldn't use a winged vehicle.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: It's impossible.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, it's not like, if you think of
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Apollo era, okay, they had airplanes back then.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: It's not like, oh, wow, wings, what are those things?
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: You know, the designers of Apollo, Von Braun and the others,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: were very familiar with aircraft. If they thought wings made sense,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: they would have said, let's put wings on this thing.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: They don't.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: When it comes to space, wings are dumb, just as
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: you don't make an airplane look like a boat.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 7: So when they retire the space shuttle, how are they
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 7: going to bring the astronauts back until you're able to
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 7: do that?
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: The Soyuz. Okay.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 6: The Russians will do it.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the Soyuz is a good, I mean, I
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: would definitely prefer to ride on the Soyuz than the
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: space shuttle.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: You have an escape system on the Soyuz.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, and then, of course, on reentry, a capsule, a
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: blunt body reentry capsule, it can be designed to be
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: naturally stable. So that even if all the control systems fail,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: that it, you know, and you're just lights out dark, everything's,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: you know, it's naturally, it's like a shuttlecock. It's naturally
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: stable on reentry. Um, and you don't have to, you know, um,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: do anything there and you can just.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: Manually pull the chutes or something like that.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: So in fact, that's happened on a couple of Soyuz
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: flights where they've had control system failures. If that had
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: been a shuttle, it would have been curtains. Um, but
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: because it's, because it's naturally stable, you don't have to
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: worry about that. And then because you've got that blunt
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: body reentry, um, the heat shield is much more robust, uh,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: cause you've got this really big radius heat shield instead
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: of these sharp radius wings. Um, so it's really much
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: safer design. Um, And I believe there's never been a
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: fatality on the Soyuz, which has been going much longer
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: than the shuttle. Made many, many more flights. So... Elon,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: how do.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: You keep these two different things separate in your mind?
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're dealing with two massive industries, very distinct worlds.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, do you have to, like, literally say, oh,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, I'm doing rockets right now. No, I'm
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: doing cars right now. And how do you segregate those
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: two things Because they're both competing for your attention 24
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: hours a day.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: Right. And I have kids.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: My kids, actually. I spend a lot of time with
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: my kids, by the way.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: And four kids.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: Five kids, yeah.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: Five kids.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: How do you manage that?
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that is tricky.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no kidding.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: Well, actually, it's okay most of the time.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: But, you know, when a crisis flares up in either kids...
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: or one of the businesses, then it can be quite
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: a little bit overwhelming.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: So it's like triage all the time.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: It is kind of like triage.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, the rocket business and the car business are
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: pretty hard in the best of times.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: And these are not the best of times.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: Next question.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: You don't like wings.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: I don't like wings for things that go to space
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: where there is no air.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: I think I mean, my.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: Understanding of the reason the wings were on the space
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: shuttle was so they could land where they wanted to.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 5: Oh, okay.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: So let me correct a misconception then. A blunt body
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: sort of a capsule, you know, gumdrop style thing is
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: a controlled landing. In fact, because you still have a
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: lift vector, so you use offset center of mass to
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: create sort of a tilt in the capsule, and that
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: actually creates a lift vector. And that lift vector would
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: typically be a lift of a drag of 0.2 to 0.3.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: But that's plenty enough to steer you where you want
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: to go.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: And in fact, even at Apollo, when they didn't have.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: GPS and they were really dealing with very primitive electronics,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: their landing accuracy was a one-mile radius. And of course,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: if you can get much better than that with GPS
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: and all that other stuff. In fact, the only error
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: is the wind drift. that's really the only meaningful error.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: And if you do steerable chutes or put some little
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: propeller that popped out or something like that, you could
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: drop the capsule on the numbers on the runway. Just
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: like a parachutist can steer their flight down to a
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: very accurate location. And then you sort of like flare
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: it just before you get to the bottom, just like
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: a parachutist, and there you are.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: Next question in the back.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: I was there several years ago in the Mojave Desert
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: when Space Flight 1 took off for the maiden voyage.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: I was wondering, first of all, what.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 4: Was SpaceX's involvement in that program? And do you guys
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: have any plans for taking up civilians into space?
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: We didn't have any involvement, uh, with, with the, um,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: Bird Returns, Spaceship One, um, except that I'm on, I'm
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: a trustee of the XPRIZE Foundation and I, I provided
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit of the funding to, um, to, to that, to,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: to the Ansari XPRIZE that they won. And I was
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: there for one of the flights. So, and it's actually,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: you know, it's great that it was won. But it
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: is worth pointing out that there's a significant difference between
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: a suborbital flight and an orbital flight because space kind
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: of seems like, well, space is all the same thing.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: But if you look at the energy required to get
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: to space versus the energy required to get to orbit...
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: they're very different orders of magnitude. You need an ideal
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: velocity of roughly Mach 25 to get to orbit Mach
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: 3 to get to space. If you define space as, say,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: 50 miles up. And so that's a pretty big differential,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: but it's bigger than that because the kinetic energy goes
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: with the square of the velocity. So you need 625
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: units of energy to get to orbit, 9 units of
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: energy to get to space. So about 1.5% of the energy,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: one versus the other. So the requirements are really way,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: way different. Yeah, so you need, in fact, it's only
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: just barely possible to escape Earth's gravity well, just barely.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: If you look at the size of Saturn V, for example,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: and that ultimately took two people to the surface of
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: the moon, plus one who was orbiting the moon, that
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: was a really gigantic vehicle, I mean, It's like the.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: Size of an office building. And it got two people
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: to surface the moon.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: Next question.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: Why do you think multi-planetary existence is important?
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: Excellent question.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: So, okay, so you have to say, well, how do
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: you decide that anything is important?
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: So there's... I think the lens of history is a
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: helpful way to distinguish more from less important things.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: And the further out.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: You zoom, the more you can distinguish the less important
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: from the more important. And if you take a look
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: at the whole four-billion-year history of Earth and the evolution
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: of life itself and say, well, what are the really
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: big milestones in the evolution of life itself? And you
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: can point to, obviously, single-celled life and multicellular life, differentiation
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: into plants and animals, movement of life from the oceans
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: to land, the mammals, consciousness, you know, sort of those
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: are the biggies. And those stand above, I think, the
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: parochial concerns of humanity. But I think on that scale
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: would also fit life becoming multi-planetary. I think it would
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: be at least comparable to life going from the oceans
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: to land, arguably more so, because at least the ocean's
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: land could be a gradual affair. If you get uncomfortable,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: you hop back in the ocean. It's a lot harder
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: to travel a billion miles over irradiated space.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: And then land in a.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: Hostile environment and create a self-sustaining and growing.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: Life, ecology, That's really, really hard.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: And, in fact, this is the first time in the
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: four-billion-year history of life itself that it is even within
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: the realm of possibility. So I think, therefore, if something
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: is important enough to figure on the scale of the
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: evolution of life itself, it should be at least considered, say,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: worth about as much money as we spend on a lipstick.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe not as much money as we spend
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: on health care.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: That's a lot.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: But enough, you know, maybe north of cosmetics or something. And, yeah, so,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: you know, I think we should spend a little bit
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: of our resources doing that, and that's just a wise
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: bet for life as we know it. And, yeah, so
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: it just seems like that should make it important enough
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: for a little bit of money, like maybe a half
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: a percent of our GDP or something like that. And
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: that would be enough to do it.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: Anything you want to say on SolarCity?
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: SolarCity is doing great. Thank goodness.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: Tell the audience what it is.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: Sure. SolarCity is the country's largest provider of solar power
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: systems to homes and small businesses. So outside of the
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: utility scale solar activity.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: And it was co-founded and run by.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: Peter and Lyndon Rive, who are my cousins and are
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: interested in full disclosure. So I serve as the chairman
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: there and I provide some advice strategically and on the
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: product side.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: But thankfully, it requires almost none of.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: My effort, and those guys are just awesome in terms
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: of their execution of SolarCity, having grown into a leadership
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: position in the course of three years. So if anyone's
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: thinking of getting solar, call 1-800-SOLAR-CITY, something like that, or
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: 888 if I'm sure.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: Any questions? Next question.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 6: So so how does that work I mean you've convinced
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 6: the NASA to give you like a huge contract how
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 6: can I imagine that what story is behind that can
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 6: you tell us can you share us that story a
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 6: little bit that's the one question that I have and
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 6: the other is you've been working on solar you've been
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 6: working on clean tech or on cars you've been working
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 6: on space so you're transforming society in all those projects
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 6: and then there's PayPal so how does that fit that's
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 6: the two questions.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: Well, definitely PayPal. I mean, I was completely out of PayPal. Well,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: almost completely out of PayPal when I started SpaceX. And then,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: you know, from a business standpoint, my time is really
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: split between SpaceX and Tesla. I spend almost no time
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: on SolarCity because it's just running so well by itself.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: And the guys there are just doing a great job.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: There's really not much I can add to what they're doing.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: So going to the NASA question, it took us a
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: long time and a lot of effort to convince NASA
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: to rely on us. And when we won that CAGA
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: resupply services contract, it was basically value ranging from $ 1.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: 6 to $ 3. 1 billion.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: We competed against Boeing, Lockheed, and Align Tech Systems. or
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: actually all three of them together against us. So there's
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: a sort of a partnership called Planet Space, which is basically,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: it was just a, it was following Lockheed and Line
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: Tech Systems against SpaceX.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: And we won.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: So, or at least NASA felt confident enough to give
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: us that deal. So, and preceding that, It had been
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: sort of six years of working to gain their confidence.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: And we'd won a preceding contract, which was called the
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: COTS contract, Commercial Overall Transportation Services, to demonstrate progress in
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: that direction. But I have to give NASA a lot
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: of credit here because without that COTS contract, it would
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: have been very difficult for us to compete for the
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: cargo resupply services contract. They've been helpful in our advisory
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: capacity and our financial capacity. So I think we're very
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: grateful to NASA and appreciative of everything that they've done
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: because we wouldn't be in a position to have won
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: that Cogger East flight contract without their help.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: During that microsecond each day that you actually have to
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: contemplate other activities, what are you dreaming of now?
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I really, you know, my mind is full.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Just dealing with SpaceX and Tesla and then family matters. Um, but, um,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, there are a few areas. I mean, I
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: have some, I think at some point in future, it'd
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: be interesting to take a look at fusion.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: Um, that, that's a tough problem.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: And, um, it's something that I think we could solve,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: but it would, you know, I'd say me, I mean,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: I think humanity could solve that problem. Um, but it
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: is a very tough one. Um, and maybe there's something
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: I could, where I could be helpful there. Um, But
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: that's just completely speculative.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, it could be totally wrong. Success may not
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: be one of the possible outcomes.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: Hey, if you can get me to sit on 3,000
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: laptop batteries, you can get me to sit on a
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: fusion reactor.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, fusion, yeah, fusion, I think some scale is
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: needed for fusion, probably. Although there's some ideas for having
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: smaller-scale fusion. I'm not talking about cold fusion, but sort
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: of fusion at sort of a, nanoscale, if you will,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: like basically very small amounts of fusion in a little container.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: But it is a very hard problem. And then I
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: have an idea for create double-deckering highways, which I think
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: I thought a lot about when I'm driving to work
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: in LA. The highways, I mean, it would just be,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: I think if you create prefabricated sections of highway and
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: did very efficient kind of metallic structure that could withstand
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: the worst earthquakes and the trick would be making it
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: light and very strong and inexpensive.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: But I think I know how to do that.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: And it's that sort of relatively mundane, but it would
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: have a big effect on people's lives. And I have
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: this sort of idea for an electric plane, which I
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: think could be pretty cool. And Yeah, electric supersonic plane.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of batteries.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of batteries. It is. It is a
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: lot of batteries.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: Next question.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: By the way, I haven't heard any of this stuff before.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: This may be in print tomorrow.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: So nobody says that's what I'm doing.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: You asked me what I'd, in a nanosecond, a split second.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: Of like, okay.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot about the plane one, more
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: than I should.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: Actually, I try to ban that from my mind. I'll
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: talk to you about.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: It. I've got to stop myself from thinking about that
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: one because that's a very exciting one. I don't think
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: you covered the X Prize, the status of the X Prize,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: and two-part question. What do you think about a bigger
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: X Prize for battery technology in the U.S.? Sorry, a
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: bigger X Prize for what? Oh, battery, battery. Yeah, I
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: think an X Prize for battery technology would be great
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: if there's a sponsor... like the federal government or anyone,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: I think it's great to incent outcomes rather than... You know,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: it's great to make bets on approaches, but it's also
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: good to incent outcomes.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: And ultimately, you care about the outcome, not the approach.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: And that's the good thing about prizes, is they don't
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: try to rely on some panel of experts to figure
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: out what the approach is that's going to work, because
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: often those panels of experts are not the people who
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: are going to figure out the innovations that result in
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: the outcome you want.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: And that's basically why you have prizes.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: So as far as the XPRIZE is concerned, there's an
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: automotive XPRIZE, there's a genomics XPRIZE for low-cost sequencing of genes.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: There's the Google Lunar XPRIZE, which SpaceX is trying to
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: help with a little bit by offering... The only discounted
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: launches we offer are for the Google Lunar XPRIZE, actually.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: And....
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's a bunch of stuff happening there, and
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: I think it's a good model.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 3: It should be emulated more.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: DARPA did a great example of a prize thing with
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: the DARPA Grand Challenge. That was the DARPA Grand Challenge,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: DARPA Urban Challenge for autonomous vehicles. That's got to be
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: one of the highest bang for buck items that DARPA
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: has ever done. Because I guarantee if you made that
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: like a DOD contractor and had like, you know, Lockheed
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: and Raytheon and all the usual suspects put on it,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: it would have been like $ 2 billion, and they'd still
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: be working on it. So anyway, I think there's a
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: lot of room for prizes, and there should be more
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: of them.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: One more question, then I have one.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: Given the range of technologies and areas you've touched, I'm
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: curious what your take on robotics is. On robotics? On robotics, exactly.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: It seems close enough to what you've done, but I
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: haven't heard you talk about it. Well, you know, Tesla
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: does use robotics to a limited extent in its production today,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: particularly on the battery pack side.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: Because you've got so many cells, almost 7,000 cells that.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: So some robotic assistance is important in making the battery pack.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: And we'll certainly see a lot more of that as
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: Tesla scales up. So robotics is great for mass manufacturing.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: For space exploration, obviously we've seen great dividends paid by
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: robotics as well with the Mars exploration rovers. And there's
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: a really big rover going called Mars Science Laboratory, and
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: that was supposed to launch soon but it's going to
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: be a couple years before that goes. That's about the
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: size of like a Volkswagen. So I think there's a
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: lot of room for robotics in a lot of fields
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: and that'll increase and continue in both automotive and space
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: and other areas. But at the end of the day,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: you know, I think we still need to make life multi-planetary.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: It can't just be sort of sending droids out there.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: I'm pro-life.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: In that sense. So I think robotic exploration, robotic preparation.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: But we also need life going beyond Earth as well.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: I was just curious from the perspective of making people's
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: lives better. Yeah. I haven't really thought about robotics personally,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: but just not to say that I don't think there
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: are lots of things that could be automated and where
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: there could be robots that help people in their daily lives.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there will be a continued expansion of the
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: whole iRobot type thing beyond vacuum cleaning. So, yeah, I
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: think it's a great area.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: I have one last question for you. I've followed your
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: career for a long time, known you for a long time.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: You know, for many, many years, you were very successful,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: but largely anonymous.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: You were a cult figure for a long time.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: I was underground.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, you could walk the streets of Oxford and
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: nobody knew who you were. I saw you do that.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: I think I can still do that, by the way.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: No, but less and less. In the last couple years,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: you've become increasingly a public figure, a celebrity. And your
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: name starts popping up now in gossip. pages and websites
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: and that sort of thing. How are you dealing with that?
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: Is it interfering with your ability to do what you do?
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: Um, it, I think I, I don't like, I don't
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: like it when people think wrong things. I mean, I'm
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: like far from flawless, so I'm like, but I don't
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: like when people think wrong things about me.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: Um, and I guess the, the, um, Yeah, I.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: Must say I don't really like the sort of celebrity element.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: I don't like when people sort of try to write
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: things that are sort of trivialities that don't actually, like,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: why write about that? You know, obviously people find that
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: kind of interesting, or some people do, hopefully not many.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, sometimes people say, like, wrong things that,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: you know, concern that, well, what if my kids read that?
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: You know, because they're five and they're starting to read
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: And that's probably the most concerning thing. I'm not too
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: worried about it from a business standpoint, because most people
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: that I interact with, particularly if they've known me for
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: a while, they know what's true and what's not true.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: And in.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: A lot of cases, they don't care. Even if it
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: was true, they don't care.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: But it does concern me if my kids were to
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: read something that was just not true.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, you understand, as Tesla continues to be successful...
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: And as SpaceX begins to assume the role of the
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: space shuttle, you begin to become something like Henry Ford
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: and Wernher von Braun combined. And that's a level of
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: celebrity few people ever know. And are you ready for that?
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: I'm probably not ready for that. I'm not a naturally
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: extroverted person. In fact, I used to be horrendous at public.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not that great as it is, but
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: I used to be really horrendous and just sort of
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: shake and be unable to speak. But I kind of
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: learned not to do that. So, I mean, I'd much
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: rather just be, you know, doing engineering and stuff and design.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: So that's really what I like to do.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: But, you know, I'm happy to, and I like doing
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: things like this, which are fine. But, you know, if
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: you're in the car business, you've got to sell cars
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: and stuff. So I've got to go out there and
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: be promotional. Um, but there are other people at Tesla
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: that actually are much better speakers and sellers of the
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: car than, than I am, I think.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's hard to believe. Anything else you want to
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: tell these folks out here?
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: Uh, he's talked about a lot. Um, I thought there
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: was some really good questions from the.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: Audience, actually. Uh, Put your money down now. I mean,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: Wish us luck. I don't know, something like that.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I'm not superstitious, but you
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: never know. I mean, there could be some divine entity
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: that sort of there is, and I hope.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: That entity is favorable.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: And worst comes to worst, you already know how to
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: live on a dollar a day.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, the uber entrepreneur, Elon Musk.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.