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Back in The Past 15 Years Ago, Interview Of Elon Musk in 2009!!! · Elon Musk Thinking

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, it is. Oh my goodness, I was just
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: thinking it was twenty it's hard to leave. Was twenty
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: eight years ago that rich Carlgard and Tony Perkins showed
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: me a plan for this, and it was about this
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: just a few years before I was shown the plan
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: for eBay, and in both cases I said, I just
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: don't think it's going to work.
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  Speaker 2: Crazy.
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  Speaker 1: No, it's just crazy. So let me introduce you. Thirty
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: seven year old Elon Musk was born and raised in
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  Speaker 1: South Africa, but left home at age seventeen to make
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  Speaker 1: his way in the world, living on as little as
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  Speaker 1: one dollar per day. He eventually made his way to
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  Speaker 1: the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he
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  Speaker 1: earned bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. Musk then attended
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  Speaker 1: Stamford's graduate program in High energy physics, where he lasted
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  Speaker 1: exactly two days before dropping out to form a company
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  Speaker 1: with his brother. That company, zip II, was sold for
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  Speaker 1: three hundred million dollars. Musk then found at x dot com,
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  Speaker 1: an online financial services company. It eventually became PayPal, of
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  Speaker 1: which Elon was the largest shareholder. PayPal, as we all know,
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  Speaker 1: was purchased by eBay for one point five billion dollars.
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  Speaker 1: In two thousand and two, when he graduated from Wharton,
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  Speaker 1: Elon determined the three important areas where he wanted to
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  Speaker 1: make a contribution was the Internet, clean energy, and space
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  Speaker 1: and with PayPal, Tesla motors SpaceX, and Solar City. He
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  Speaker 1: has done just that and in the process made himself
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  Speaker 1: one of the most celebrated entrepreneurs on the planet. Ladies
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  Speaker 1: and gentlemen. Elon Muskin O, Right, so let's begin with
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  Speaker 1: the topic of greatest interest to the audience here tonight.
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  Speaker 1: I assume Tesla Motorsky. Where's the company at right now?
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  Speaker 1: Where to orders stand?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? My god, I don't know what to tell you.
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  Speaker 2: It's it's been rough. Now, I'm just kidding. It's actually
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  Speaker 2: it's actually been it's been pretty good. In fact, really
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  Speaker 2: quite a country. As to the rest of the order business,
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  Speaker 2: we're sold out. First of all, for the Tesla Roads
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  Speaker 2: to the sports car. We're sold out through the end
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  Speaker 2: of October, and within it, I think probably within two
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  Speaker 2: or three months, will be actually sold out of all
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  Speaker 2: two thousand and nine production for the Roads to.
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  Speaker 1: So is this for the standard roaster or the or
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  Speaker 1: the advanced version?
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  Speaker 2: Well, we are. We do have a Roads to Sport
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  Speaker 2: coming out, which is a you know, for those for
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  Speaker 2: whom the roads says the roads isn't fast enough. There's
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  Speaker 2: the Roads for Sport.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, how fast is that one?
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  Speaker 2: Now? That that'll do zero to sixteen three point seven seconds,
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  Speaker 2: So it's fast than almost any any It's.
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  Speaker 1: Like a nice CBM laid over on its side.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's ridiculously fast.
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  Speaker 1: How are the orders for that good?
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  Speaker 2: Actually, you know, I haven't look at the latest orders
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  Speaker 2: for the Roads to Sport, and people actually have an
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  Speaker 2: opportunity to upgrade their car to the Roads to Sport
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  Speaker 2: that are getting their car after I think late June
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  Speaker 2: or July, and what we're finding is a lot of
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  Speaker 2: people choosing to upgrade their car to the Sport package.
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  Speaker 2: So I actually don't have an exact number before you,
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  Speaker 2: but anecdotally it seems to be doing very well.
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  Speaker 1: The roaster is one hundred and nine thousand, is that right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and actually Sports one hundred and thirty nine thousand.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, right. Well, the price to customers is actually in
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  Speaker 2: terms of a comparison price that that's relevant for comparing
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  Speaker 2: it to a Porsche or something like that. Is actually
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  Speaker 2: about ninety eight thousand dollars, and the reason for that
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  Speaker 2: is if you buy an electric car, you get a
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  Speaker 2: seventy five hund dollar pederal tax rebate, even if you're
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  Speaker 2: even if you're an AMT it it applies to everyone, okay,
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  Speaker 2: and then you don't pay the gas cos of the tax,
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  Speaker 2: which is somewhere in the order of three thousand dollars.
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  Speaker 2: So effectively, you know, you're a dousand discount. Yeah, you're roughly.
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  Speaker 2: And it depends on which which car you compare against,
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  Speaker 2: because the gas colus of text does vary, but it's
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  Speaker 2: somewhere between a nine to twelve thousand dollars discount and
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  Speaker 2: a relative to a guessing and sports car. So in effect,
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  Speaker 2: you're talking about a car that's just under one hundred
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  Speaker 2: thousand dollars as a base price, and then the sport
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  Speaker 2: package is another twenty thousand dollars on the top of that.
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  Speaker 2: And that's equivalent to like going from like a you know,
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  Speaker 2: a nine to eleven to a nine eleven Turbo, you know
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  Speaker 2: that that kind of thing.
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  Speaker 1: Now, if I were to order one right now, if
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  Speaker 1: anybody the audience wants wants to order one right now,
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  Speaker 1: raise your hands. I will take orders. If somebody out
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  Speaker 1: here were to order one right now, what would it take?
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  Speaker 1: What's the deposit and what's the delivery date.
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  Speaker 2: So we're actually reducing our out deposit requirements on the
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  Speaker 2: roads to previously we'd use the deposits to provide funding
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  Speaker 2: for the company, and that was an acknowledged thing. We said, look,
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  Speaker 2: we car companies are very capital intensive, so in order
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: to make this, you know, doable or more doable, we're
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  Speaker 2: gonna take posits. There will be at risk. People should
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  Speaker 2: recognize that and then the advantages that they get one
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  Speaker 2: of the first cars. And we actually got a lot
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  Speaker 2: of people who signed after that, but we don't really
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  Speaker 2: need that anymore. So we're actually going to reduce the
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  Speaker 2: the deposit down to ninety nine hundred dollars and then
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  Speaker 2: you pay the balance just at start of production, which
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  Speaker 2: is a couple of months prior to delivery.
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  Speaker 1: Now, did you find any impact on the orders because
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  Speaker 1: with the falling gas prices, we saw a prius. I
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  Speaker 1: mean you can go to Cyriderdale and entire supermarket parking
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  Speaker 1: lots are filled with unsold priuses. Did that affect you
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  Speaker 1: guys at all?
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  Speaker 2: You know, I don't think that was a huge impact
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  Speaker 2: because most people aren't buying the one hundred thousand of
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  Speaker 2: those sports car because of you know, to save money
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  Speaker 2: on gas.
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  Speaker 1: It's more geek love than it is cheap gas.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was more worried about how that would affect
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  Speaker 2: sales for us to Day, which we just unveiled a
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  Speaker 2: few weeks ago.
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  Speaker 1: So we'll talk about that in the moment.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, But I don't think that's been a key
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  Speaker 2: impact on roads to sales. I think certainly the economy
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  Speaker 2: as a whole and the the implosion of people's net
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  Speaker 2: worths has had an effect on new roads to sales.
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  Speaker 2: And we're fortunate that we do have a significant backlog,
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  Speaker 2: you know, going out six months. But I wouldn't say
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  Speaker 2: gas prices have had a big effect on the roads.
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  Speaker 1: Stuff now being in the car basins, you have to
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: be asked, are you taking any federal money?
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  Speaker 2: You know.
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  Speaker 1: When are you worried about your job security? If you are.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I don't have to worry about my compensation.
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  Speaker 2: My compensation currently is a dollar, so I'd be happy
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  Speaker 2: to cut that in half of the federal government if
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  Speaker 2: they do give us a loan. But actually we've taken
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  Speaker 2: no government money at all thus far. If some people
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: out there think we have, and we haven't. Now we
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  Speaker 2: do aspire to get a government loan under the what's
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: called the ATVM programs, the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program.
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  Speaker 1: That's from the DOE.
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  Speaker 2: That's from the DOE. It's not bailout money. And it
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  Speaker 2: was this was this program was done before there was
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  Speaker 2: a need for bailed money. That this legislation was written
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  Speaker 2: about about eighteen I started writing it about eighteen months
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  Speaker 2: ago and it got it finally got approved by Congress
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  Speaker 2: last year sometime I think late last year. So uh,
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  Speaker 2: and this is before a vomit. So this isn't stimulus money.
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  Speaker 2: This doesn't bailout money. This is actually something that originated
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  Speaker 2: in the Senate Energy Committee because they they felt it
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  Speaker 2: was a matter of national security for UH and environmental
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  Speaker 2: obviously environmentally important for the United States to to accelerate
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  Speaker 2: its transition away from from from oil for all the
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  Speaker 2: obvious reasons that UH, the you know, it's it's damaging
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  Speaker 2: to the it's obviously very damaging to the environment, and
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  Speaker 2: UH as gas prices rise, if you know, because as
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  Speaker 2: they will dramatically when we come back to another booms,
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  Speaker 2: there's going to be a massive wealth transfer out of
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  Speaker 2: the United States right to other countries. And it's just
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  Speaker 2: it's just it's just kind of silly, you know, for that.
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  Speaker 2: Why why why it's it's cheaper for us to just
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  Speaker 2: accelerate the move of oil.
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  Speaker 1: So now I'm not going to ask you how much
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  Speaker 1: you plan to get from the government or win, because
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: I think you said that publicly once and got in trouble.
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  Speaker 2: Didn't sure I did get in trouble. I just said
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  Speaker 2: what they told me and they didn't say keep it quiet.
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  Speaker 2: So but I suffice to say, we are highly optimistic
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  Speaker 2: that we will receive approval loan approval in the near term.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the factory that was. There was
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  Speaker 1: an awful lot of news a few months ago, groundbreaking ceremonies,
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  Speaker 1: big assembly plant going to be out there on two
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  Speaker 1: thirty seven in San Jose. Now it seems to be
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  Speaker 1: on hold and something about financing delayed or you couldn't
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  Speaker 1: you didn't qualify for it, or what happened.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Santase the idea of using the sort
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  Speaker 2: of the the undeveloped land of the two thirty seven
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  Speaker 2: in San Jose occurred before the Section one thirty six
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  Speaker 2: or the ATVM loan program was approved by Congress. So,
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  Speaker 2: and one of the clauses in that ATVM loan program
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  Speaker 2: is that you have to it gives preference to manufacturing
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  Speaker 2: facilities older than twenty years, which was actually it's sort
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  Speaker 2: of a quasi buy American clause because the the the
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  Speaker 2: foreign car companies that are factories here, almost all their
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  Speaker 2: factories are younger than twenty years. So it's it's essentially
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  Speaker 2: to bias the cash towards American companies that that that
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  Speaker 2: clause is put in. But nonetheless it's there, which means
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  Speaker 2: we can't do Greenfield.
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  Speaker 1: So well, I assume there's gonna be a lot of
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  Speaker 1: empty buildings in Deerborn soon. Does that what you plan
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  Speaker 1: on going?
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  Speaker 2: No, we'll most likely be in southern California. We actually
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  Speaker 2: have term sheets on two locations in southern California. We'd
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: look first in the Bay Area. I'd love to take
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: over New Me. That'd be awesome. Yeah, I don't know
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  Speaker 2: if there's maybe at some point, well we'll have an
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: opportunity to acquire New Me that would be that'd be great.
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  Speaker 2: I take that in a second. But but that isn't
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: available right now, and the Greek we can't afford it
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  Speaker 2: really unless they give it to us, which maybe they will.
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  Speaker 1: So where the cars being manufactured right now UK at Lotus.
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  Speaker 2: Actually the roadster is it is considered a US manufactured car.
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  Speaker 2: The final assembly occurs in the Barrier and Menlo Park.
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  Speaker 1: Of all places, well known auto center.
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  Speaker 2: Right. Well, bear in mind we're talking low production for
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  Speaker 2: the for the roads test. So this is a production
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  Speaker 2: rate of around about twenty five a week that might
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: rise to thirty a week in the summer. So it's
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  Speaker 2: not it's not. I mean when you sort of add
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  Speaker 2: that up, that's five cars a day, I mean it's
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  Speaker 2: like your average service center could do a lot more
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: than that. And and so we install the powertrain in
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: in Menlo Park, we do final vehicle verification, we do
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  Speaker 2: the high speed tests out of Moffat Airfield, and yeah,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: and that's and then we may facture the power the
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: battery pack in Saint Carlos. So it's by value talking
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  Speaker 2: about something mostly done here.
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  Speaker 1: Where do you do the tests of maffitt on on
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  Speaker 1: the airfield on the runway? Yeah, is a have any
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  Speaker 1: of you ever seen it a Tessa racing down the runway.
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  Speaker 1: I'm off at field, so you guys like to do
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  Speaker 1: at three o'clock.
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  Speaker 2: In the morning or no, is there's hardly any traffic.
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  Speaker 1: I'm mopping nowadays. True, let's talk about the new car. Sure, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the S tell me about it, alright.
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  Speaker 2: Th this is this is a This really is a
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  Speaker 2: great car. I mean, the the Roaster is a good car.
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  Speaker 2: I think the S is a great car, and I
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  Speaker 2: think it's something that will it's really quite historic, or
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  Speaker 2: at least it's aspires to be in that this will
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  Speaker 2: be the first mass produced highway cable electric car, and
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: that that's never there's never been. This may sound strange,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: but there's actually never been a mass produced electric car
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  Speaker 2: outside of golf carts.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: And uh, is it the first non internal combustion mass
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  Speaker 1: produced car since the Stanley Steamer.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah it might be wow, Okay, so yeah, I mean
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  Speaker 3: there's been handbuilt things and conversions of gas clean cars
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that, but but not an actual mass
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  Speaker 3: mass produced electric car.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: So now, of course we have to mass produce it
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  Speaker 2: for that to be true. So that's why I say
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  Speaker 2: it aspires to be. This is this as aspiration is that,
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: and but if we fulfill that aspiration, then it'll be
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  Speaker 2: very historic. And this is a car really designed to
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: take full advantage of an electric power train. So the
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: packaging is very optimized that the battery pack is in
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: the floorpan between the two axles. It's this big sort
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: of flat battery pack looks a lot like a giant
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: laptop battery pack in fact uses laptop sell.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, is it is it still just
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: a ton of laptop batteries.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Well, it's hap a ton of laptop laptop.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Strapped together.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Now that's tricky, by the way, So really so
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: in advanced strapping is tricky?
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: So you need a lot of micro You need a
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: lot of processors right to manage all that.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, I think we're like thirty or thirty two
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: processors or something board. There's a lot of them are
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: like a little tiny ones.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: So you must be got up every night praying for
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: breakthroughs in battery technology so you don't have to deal
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: with this.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: No, you know, it's not too bad actually having a
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: lot the lots of little cells, I mean, we keep
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: believe it or not that that is the highest energy
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: density pack that you can make is to use a
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: large number of laftop cells, and we we keep pushing
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: on the cell manufacturers. And technically, by the way, a
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: battery is a collection of cells and the cell. If
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: it's just one, it's a cell, and if it's two,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: it's a battery. So uh so the cell produce and
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: the cell is a chemical engineering problem. The battery, the pack,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: the battery is uh is actually a mechanical insuring, electrical insuring,
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: and software engineering problem, so that there are different types
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: of you know, expertise needed to do to do to
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: do that, and in fact that there are there are
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: many makers of cells, but there is only one maker
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: of large lithium battery packs, and that's Tesla. So uh
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: of course the we there will be others in the future,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: and that's why Diamonda came to us to make the
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: battery pack for the new electric smart.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Now you know something I've never asked you. My laptop
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: just about sets my pants on fire. How do you
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: keep all of those from just cooking that car?
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Are you? Are you sitting on your laptop?
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I don't even want to think about of laptop batteries.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, what's the worst that could happen. I mean, uh,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: we do extensive safety testing. I mean I shouldn't laugh.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: This is a serious subject. The so I'll break it down, Okay,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: So we start off at the cell level. We use
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: only the finest cells uh Corinthian fe as cells, each
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: one gently observed and carefully prepared. We we used, we
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: do actually use as quality cells, which which comes from Japan.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: They're they're they're they're carefully verified by the manufacturer. Then
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: when we receive them, we we check each cell. We uh.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: In addition to the fuse that's that's built into the
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: cell from the manufacturer, we we double fuse the cell,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: so it's triple fused in total. At the cell level.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Then the cells incorporated into modules. The modules are designed
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: to ensure that there's passive propagation resistance between the cells.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: So that's what that means is even if all active
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: safety systems fail and a cell goes into what's called
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: thermal runaway, that energy is contained and it does not
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: spread to any neighboring cells. So this involves insulating the cells,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: making sure you've got a thermal conduction path to get
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: rid of the heat. So so you don't essentiusly have
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: a chain reaction. So then that that's quite tricky. And
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: and then but we also never want to get to that,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: to to to even losing a single cell. So we
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: have an active cooling system, which is so the battery
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: pack is liquid cooled. And and that that also is
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: a tricky problem because you need to be thermally conductive
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: but electrically isolated. And moreover, you need that needs to
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: be true over one hundred thousand plus miles of bumpy, bumpy.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Road problem and real life cars, yeah.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Real life cars, real of cars are It is a
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: hard It is hard to make things last for one
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: hundred thousand miles and you know ten years and that
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: kind of thing. So if you hit potholes and you
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: get so you've got you know, it's getting shot, you know,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: wrote shocks from the road, it's getting vibrations, going through
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: extremes of temperature, it gets into an accident. Under all
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: these circumstances, you cannot have the pack catch on fire.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Very hard problem. And then also it must be you
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: must be able to make the pack inexpensively. Uh, it's
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: got to be pass regulatory requirements. You've got to preserve
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: the pack so that you maximize the calendar and cycle
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: life of the chemistry within the cells.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Charging to deal with the do O T and the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: DOE yeah departments. Yeah, tell me, I don't want to
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: go into too much money shape. Tell me more about
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the car.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, you know, should I should I should have?
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: I should have. Yeah, I'll give the sales pitch on
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: the model as Okay, So this is a car that
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: has ranged up to three hundred miles. It seats up
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: to seven people. That's five adults plus two kids. And
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: the way we get the two kids is it's kind
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: of like the old station wagons. We have two rare
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: facing kids seats in the back. That's an option that
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: you can that you can order.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: I remember those days.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not great being in
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: the back, being in the back, but I guess it
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: could be kind of fun if you're a kid and
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: you can sort of watch all the other cars and stuff.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: And most people, you know, you put seven people in
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: a car, it's almost never seven adults and it's only
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: occasionally rarely is at seven people. So we try to
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: make something that could substitute for your SUV so you
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: don't have to have caught this gigantic seven passenger suv
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: all over the place. It will be five star crash rated,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: and that that's a very hard thing to achieve. In fact,
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: today's five star will reduce to a three star.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: In two years, where they keep moving the bar.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: They keep raising the bar on onto what necessary to
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: achieve a five star. So people might think, oh, I've
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: got a five star a day, it'll be like a
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: five store in two years. No, that's like a three
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: star in two years. I mean you basically have to
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: be you know, a Sherman tank level safety to get
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: to five stars. We will be at five stars. I'll
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: have my own kids in the car. We're not gonna
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: make something. Yeah, we fully occupied in the car. And
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: and so the challenge then is to make it, make
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: it super safe but not super heavy. So it's quite
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: a difficult mechanical engineering problem and mass optimization problem. And
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: and actually arguably it will be safer than an suv
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: because it'll have such a low center of gravity because
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: the battery pack is in the floor pan that you're
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: not gonna have the tip over risk.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: It's gonna stay on the ground.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I mean, if you cause if you're going
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: on like some mountain path or something and you go
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: off the side. I mean, it doesn't matter how many
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: ebags you've got. You know you're you're toast. So you
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: want to make sure you don't have tipover risk. And
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: then that that's sort of on tip oversk you'd actually
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: wren't against the suv and talk a.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Little about the ergonomics. So here you have some innovations
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: on the dashboard.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, so for the interior approach, you can think of
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: it like like a giant iPhone. Okay, that's the center consoles.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Imagine a seventeen instameter iPhone and that's the basic thought there.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: And three gu wireless connected. Yeah, absolutely, in fact, so
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: it'll have your controls, your standard controls for stereo, HVAC,
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: but it's also going to be able to do connect
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: to the interne so you want to do Pandora radio,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: if you want to do YouTube, whatever you want to do.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: It'll have a browser. It's just Linux, Linux running running
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: running a browser. So if you want to look at
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: your email, not while you're not driving. And uh, in fact,
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: there's some sort of interesting ideas who will sort of
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: well like maybe you could have it read out your
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: email to you while you're driving, and you know, do
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: voice commands on on the on the computer. So and
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: and nice to allow people to develop applications that that
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: could run on the on the computer because it's a
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: full fledged computer, it's not some sort of dumbed down
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: car car thing. And and also you should be able
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: to theme the display. So so it seventeen inch displaying
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: in front and a batter the eleven inches display in front.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Of you, so it's user modified display.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so there's a read only displayed right in
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: front of you, and then a big seventeen inch touch
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: screen on in the center console. And uh, you know
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: you can theme your cell phone, you know, and and
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: customize it to your interests and and needs. Well, why
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: can't you do that with a car? You should field,
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: you know, it seems like a reasonable thing. So if
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: you want to see different instruments on the front, like
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: you care about seeing this readout, that readout you wanted
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: to sort of look have a heavy metal look you
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: wanted to you know, wanted to look like country and
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: western whatever, you know, make it more feel like it's
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: more your car, not just something that rolled off an
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: assembly line.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: So you can have the dashboard of a sixty seven gto Yeah,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Warner gauges if you want to.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: You can I look like Steam gauges if you want to. Yeah.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, So this is your this is your five series killer.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: You know, we're not gonna kill We're twenty we're looking
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: at twenty thousand units a year, so we're not gonna
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: kill anything. And we'll we'll impinge on the market share
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: of several cars out there. Lex custmer State says BMW,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: you know, Audi Infinity. But but really it'll be a small,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, a hardly noticeable impact on total set. I
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: mean you know this, at least there were seventeen seventeen
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: million cars sold in the US of year. I think
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: it's not about you know, not much like nine nine
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: million cars a year at kind of run rate. So
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: even even at nine even at my nine million cars
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: a year a year, yeah, and at that twenty thousand
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: is ten thousand domestic, ten thousand internationals. So we're talking,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: you know, zero point one percent of the car market.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, So give me some performance, give me some performance
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: spects on this thing.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Price starting price forty nine thousand, nine hundred forty nine thousand,
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: nine hundred. Oh yeah, okay, and.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Gosh, that's less than fifty Yes, that's right, it is.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: That's right, fifty grand. That's half the price.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: It is, it is price.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's quite impressive.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Thanks. And now that is after there's a seventy five
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: hundred dollars we have that federal text thorbate. That's after
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: the seventy five dollars. Although I haven't taken into account
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: the Gascars attack. So in effect for an apples to
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: apples comparison will be a little bit less than that,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: maybe forty seven thousand or something like that.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: And you said distance was on a charge.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: It can go up to three hundre miles, but now
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: the forty nine nine hundred one will do one hundred
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: and sixty miles. But that there will be a three
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: mile range pack available, And one of the things you're
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: thinking of doing is pass making. That's something you can rent.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: So if you can, if you can't afford the more
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: expensive three and a mile range pack or don't want it,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: then that's fine. Get a hundred and sixty miles pack,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: rent the bigger one when you need it. Some other ways,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: we've addressed the range issue is a forty five minute
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: fast charge capability, which is about the limit of the
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: battery chemistry, and then designing the battery pack touch that
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: it can be switched out past then you can fill
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: a gas tank, which in principle you think about it,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: I mean this is this is basically a big laptop
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: on wheels. And if you can switch out your your
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: laptop battery, you know, in thirty seconds, why can't you
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: do that with a big one? You just need somebody
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: that can simulate a head because when it.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Goes two little clips and that five hundred pound battery
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: pack falls.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Out, yes, you know, not something you can do by hand, right,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: So you need you do need special equipment at sort
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: of a battery pack swap station.
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: And this you know companies out there that are looking
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: to do swap stations.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Now, once you talk about what at your your solar company,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: why don't you talking about having solar panels that people
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: could put on like the roof of their house. Yeah,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: and the loan charging for a quick seventy five miles
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: or whatever it was.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Well, the most efficient thing to do is to actually
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: put solar panels on the roof of your house and
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: and just have them basically power your house, particularly during
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: the day because during the day is when you encounter
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: peak load and they have to put the least efficient
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: power stations online h during the day and uh and
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: then at night that at night, it's actually better charge
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: your car at night. So it's better to like decouple
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: it effectively. So if you want to if you want
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: to be truly green, then you just need to say, Okay,
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: well I'm going to generate more energy via solar than
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: I consume in my car. Although the models will have
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: a solar panel options, you can put solar panels on
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: the on the roof of.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: The car itself.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and and there's some interesting ideas to potentially have
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: solo solo car ports. And if you want to get
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: some some really sort of crazier ideas, or try to
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: coat the whole car uh with some sort of amorphous
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: uh photobo take coating and and you have the whole
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: thing be big solar panels. Yeah.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was taught for a while, and I guess
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: you've abandoned it of even putting a gasoline engine in.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, is that gone? It is gone. We looked closely
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: at the whole plug and hybrid thing. And you know,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: I guess about a week ago or so, there was
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: a guy who asked me some asked me send me email.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: He's like he runs like a bolt side or gim
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: bolt side or something. He's not he's not working for Jim.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: But he just said, you know, so why didn't Why
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: isn't Tesla doing during the rage extended elector vehicle approach
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: the plug and hybrid thing? And I just sort of
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: gave him a kind of a matter of fact, this
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: is why we chose the strategy or another. And then
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: you know it's all over the place like I'm trashing
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: the Vault. I'm not trashing the Vault. I hope the
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Vault is successful. And I've said so many times, but
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: I'm just explaining why did we not do that? So
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: I'll explain here. I mean, basically, what it comes down
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: to is it's a technical point because we had to
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: sort of drill into it quite deeply to appreciate why
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: it wouldn't be ideal in our opinion to have a
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: plug in hybrid. If you go from say, if you
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: consider a two hundred mile range pack versus say a
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: forty mile range pack, it sounds like you've got you
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: have a pack that is one fifth beside, right for
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: the quarter mile pack, But that's actually not true, so
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: because what happens is that the forty mile pack has
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: to generate if it's a range extended electric, so you're
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: not the fourty mile pack has to generate five times
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: the power. Right, Well, technically you can have the motor
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: running and so it maybe it only has to generate
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: two and a half times the power, but then you're
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: you're running both simultaneously, and that you're not really being
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: electric if you're doing that. So if you just consider
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: the pure electric case, you've got to generate five times
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: the power. But the way it works in battery chemistry
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: is that power and energy work work at work at opposites.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: So you can either have a high power pack or
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: a high energy pack. Energy is total mileage. Power is
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: the rate of wish you can take you the rate
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: of which you can consume that energy. And so in
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: effect you then push to a low energy nicety chemistry
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: and a plug and hybrid case. And because you're hitting
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: the pack so hard, so it's doing it's it's working
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: so much harder than the bigger. The bigger pack that
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: you have to de rate the pack, you derate the
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: energy content, so you up with something which is close
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: to half the size maybe eight maybe forty fifty percent
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: of the size of the two hundred mile pack. So
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: so so, and then you've got to add in the
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: cost of costant weight of the UH, the engine, the generator,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: all the cross connects between the two. You've got a
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: factory in that there's servicing of two complete drive trains.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: You still have to deal with all the EPA stuff
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: for emissions. And and then when you when you've consumed
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: you're forty miles, which will do reasonably for not every day,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: but maybe every set, every call, every third day. You
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: you're then gonna have something which is massive, an engine
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: which is super really underpowered. It's gonna stunt a heavy car. Yeah,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: it's kind like it. You feel like I've got a
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: lawnmower engine trying to power my sedan. And it's so
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: it's gonna be running at very high rpm. It's gonna
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: be working really, really hard.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: It's not gonna make that one hundred thousand miles.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: It's gonna be tough. Yeah, and so so you really
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: it's gonna feel very anemic on the on the highway
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: and uh uh so it's it's just it's it's it's problematic.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: You need a fictional foul and a sense of reason
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: that if you've got a given mass and cost and
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: you say to an engineer, make the best electric car
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: for for a fixed mass and cost, or you say, engineer,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: make the best gasoline car fixed massing cost, it's going
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: to be a better gasoline car or a better electric
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: car than if you split the baby.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: So you're not trashing hybrids, but you just did a
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: pretty good job at trashing hybrids.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Well that could be wrong, you know. I'm just saying
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: that's the reasoning that that caused us to put to
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: focus on electrics and continue the folks and electrics.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you a Silicon Valley question. Yeah, you're
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: vice chairman and for a long time the CEO of
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the firm is a name out of Silicon the Silicon
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Valley pasted zeb Drewry that we haven't seen around here
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: for thirty years, who ran Monolithic Memories way back when.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Kind of a legendary figure, kind of a swashbuckling guy.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I soon remember he rent He was running Monolithic memories
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: and the Yam Kapur War broke out and he literally
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: called into the office and said, I'll be in Israel
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: until the war is over, and volunteered and went off
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: to battle. Unique guy, but he's been missing from action,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: right him for a long long time. Where did you
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: find him? And why would you get a chip guy
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: in a battery business, in a car business?
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: Sure, how do we find him? Actually was it was
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: through one of the investors at Tesla. Zev is a
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: is a car guy. I mean he was. He went
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: into sort of racing, did a lot of racing, and
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: he was very very competitive obviously, you know, great entrepreneur
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: with some strong crack record, and I think very importantly
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: he was someone who was who was not afraid of danger,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: as evidence by his running off to the Umpka war war. So,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: you know, towards the end of two thousand and seven,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: we needed to find a CEO for Tesla, and we
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: didn't have a lot of take us because it was
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: a it was a very difficult situation, and there weren't
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: there weren't very many people with the guts of zev
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: and anyway, so you know, Zev I thought with somebody
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: who could help get us out of a Pickle and
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: U and who wasn't afraid to try to do that.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: And I mean it's hard to describe. Tesla was in
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: a really dire situation at at the end of two
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: thousand and seven, it had come to light that the
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: car's cost was one hundred and forty thousand dollars. We've
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: been selling it for ninety two thousand dollars. You can
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: make it up on volume, right, yeah, And and not
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: only that, we we couldn't. I mean, there were several
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: broke things broken about the car technically, transmission being the
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: most notable item, but there were a lot of other issues,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: and you know, so so we it really wasn't a
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: car that could even even even if we said, okay,
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: well we'll we'll, we'll accept the forty one hundred and
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: forty thousand dollars, this isn't a car that would have
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: passed safety and reliability and endurance tests. And so it
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: was just wow. And we were sort of out of money,
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: or close to being out of money. So this is
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: a you know, yeah, like eighteen months ago. You know,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: in your situation like that, you've got to be pretty
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: bold if you want to come in and run them,
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: you know, help help run the company. So and he
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: he was willing to do that. And and he'd he'd
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: sort of like I said, he'd he'd taken taken things
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: from very tough situations uh before, and so he yeah,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: he joined his CEO and I. In fact, he and
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: I were kind of the co CEOs of the company
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: because he was coming in cold and didn't know any
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: of the any of the background. And although I'd been
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: at sort of a fairly high level up to that
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: point and not in the nitty gritty, at least I
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: had the contextual background. So he and I basically ran
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: the company together for about eighteen months, and then when
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: the financial crisis hit. I guess it was about well,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: I mean the financial crisis hit and I was like,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: oh man, okay, so I gotta up my time in
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: the company and and s and go from being kind
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: of the half CEO to the full CEO because I
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: also had to up up the ante in terms of
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: my my investment in the company financially. So it's like,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: all right, I'm gonna do that. Then I I I
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: gotta you know, be the full the full year, not
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: the half CEO.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Well, now Bold is you know, the ultimate entrepreneurial trade
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and you obviously have it. I want to go back.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about your upbring but before we do that,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: real quick, forty how much for the for the s.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: D Okay? Yeah?
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: How fast?
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: It's zero to sixty and about five and a half
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: seconds and top speed one hundred and thirty miles per
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: hour electronically limited. We will have sports versions of the
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: S that will go have a zero sixty of under
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: five seconds. So, but five and a half seconds in
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Sedana' is plenty plenty fast.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'll think about those kids in the back
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: seat facing backwards.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not three point nine seconds like the roadster,
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: but it's pretty fast.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, real fast. All right, let's talk about your upbringing.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: You leave home at seventeen, and you want to get
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: to the States, right, was that your dream?
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: First one, you don't want to be in the army.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: That didn't seem like a good use of time being
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: in Yeah, being serving as a being constructed in South
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: africanomy just didn't seem like a great way to spend time.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: So without your parents' approval, you take off and you
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: end up in Cannon first.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: Well, so I was trying to figure out how to
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: get to the US. So try to convince my parents
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: to move there, or my parents would have at least
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: one of them can move there and I can move
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: there with them. But I wasn't successfully convincing them. And
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: but but then I found out my mother had been
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: born in Canada, so I kind of walked it through
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: the process of getting a Canadian getting her Canadian citizenship,
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: which allowed me to get my Canadian citizenship, which meant
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: I could go to Canada. And my grandfather was American actually,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: or because my mother hadn't gotten her American citizenship before
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: he died and before certain age restrictions, I wasn't able
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: to get American citizenship unfortunately directly. So I went to
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Canada initially. Canada's a great country. I was there for
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: about three years and then came down to the States
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: to go to continue going to school at Yupan.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: You live on a book a day? How did you?
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: But how do you do that? There's several times in
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: your life when you're basically well below the poverty line, right,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: and this is the bucket.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Day was that was twenty years ago? Yeah, so that's
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: like two bucks a DAYO bucks a day.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Well, there's there's all the difference.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: It doesn't make a difference. Yeah, Well, I wasn't quite
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: sure how much money, you know, how how hard it
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: would be to get a job or anything like that.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: So I hadn't really had a real job because I
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: was only seventeen, so I've done like paper routes and
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: stuff like that. So I thought, well, just in case
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: it takes me a long time to get a job,
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: I've better make sure that my tiny stash of money
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: lasts a long time. So I only had a few
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars. So so I thought, well, let me see
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: if I can live front of a bucket day. And
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: you can do it. I mean, you just buy like
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: hot dogs in bulk and oranges in bulk, and scurvy's bad,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: so you could have an orange to throw an orange
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: in there.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: When the blisters started forming on your tongue.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: It's probably ange an orange. Every couple of days, we'll well,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: you know, keep scovy away and hot dogs are you know,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: like it's it's just sort of like pasta and pasta source.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: You just buy the stuff in bulk and you can
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: get at least of the time, you can get to
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: under a bucket ey.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: So now you pick up two little get a little
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: monotonous for a while, but yeah, I can imagine the
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: fourteenth day in a row of spaghetti.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: A lot of people pick up econ degrees, a lot
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: of people pick up physics degrees, but not many people
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: pick up both of those, those two different worlds.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: I thought it was relatively unique, and then I found it. Actually,
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: somebody else did it, but but yeah, I was. It
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: was yeah, just I I mean, I'm more an engineer
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: than anything else. You know, engineering in design is my interest.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: But I figured if I don't learn the business stuff,
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: then somebody else is going to make me do things
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: I don't want to do. So I better learn, you know,
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: the secrets of business. And so that's why I did
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: the uh, the physics degree as well as the board
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: and finance degree.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Now, now this is the most fine.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: Stuff was easy, by the way. That was really, like
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: I say, all my business courses, like in the final year,
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: all my business courses together were not as hard as
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: quantum mechanics.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll buy that. So now this is the mythical
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: moment in your career. You get accepted to grad school
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: at Stanford, that alan's a pretty big deal. You're in physics.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Well, to be precise, actually my initial department was material
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: science department. And you use the word high energy physics
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: and and that's actually a defined term in physics. Technically,
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: I would have actually been in kind of uh, quantum
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: mechanics more than high energy physics, because the area I
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: was going to be researching was a sort of intersection
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: of applied physics and material science and basically trying to
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: figure out can you create a capacitor with enough enough
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: energy density to replace a battery. Capacitors are very common
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: components in circuit boards, and they are occasionally used to
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: store limited amounts of energy. But the problem is that
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: they that the energy density does not compared to what
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: a battery can do. But if you if you could
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: get a capacitor to approach the energy to a battery,
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: then things like charging could be done in minutes or
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: seconds technically, so you wouldn't have a recharge time issue.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: And then also cycle life and calendar life are would
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: be measured in decades.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: But you know you were there for two days, you're
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: there for forty eight hours. I've been in meetings that
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: lasted longer than forty eight hours. Right, I've been drunk
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: longer than forty eight hours.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: Me too.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Two days, how do you do two days? I mean
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: that's not even long enough to like get the books.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Well, it was a tough decision, actually, I was trying
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: to figure out, Okay, should I do grad studies or
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: start a company doing some internet stuff. And this was
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: in ninety five, it was before for the bubble, just
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: before Escape you borre in public. Yeah, So, in fact,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: when I started zip Too, it was not with the
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: expectation that I would make a large sum of money.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: It was like, okay, can I make enough money to
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: live and buy food and stuff? That's that was really
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: the threshold. It was very very low threshold. And Netscape
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: had not gone public. And somebody wrote something about me
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: that said, oh I saw a net safe go public,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: and that's why I decided to start zip too. I
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: started zip Too in the summer of ninety five, and
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: before then Escape had gone public. I tried to get
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: a job an Escape actually, and my didn't hear back
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: from them.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: See, if we do you your biography, I would have
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: thought you were the wild man, the black sheep of
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: the family. But now I've come to the conclusion it
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: has to be your brother, because you come out planning
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: to get a PhD. And forty eight hours later, your
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: brother has convinced you to drop out of school and
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: join his new company.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Not not quite No, actually I convinced my brother to
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: come from Canada. Oh yeah, my brother is a convincing guy.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Maybe it was, well, he was in Canada at the time,
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: and and uh uh, but you know, I always want
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: to do something with my brother, and he wanted to
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: do something with me, and and so.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Three hundred million dollar share gift is a pretty good
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: gift for you.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean I really at the time, it
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: was their expectations were really tiny.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Now, it's just when you were sleeping on the floor
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: in your office.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Actually, I was sleeping on a feuton, which turned into
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: a couch during the day. So that was like you
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: held your meetings, yes, right, exactly true.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: So you were you were, you were you had you
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: were running an office, but you didn't have a place
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: to live, right.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: So you fought costs more than the office. So we
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: so then my brother and I just got two fewtons
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: which turned into couches, you know, and then during the day,
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: and then we'd have our meeting, we had a table
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: and meetings there and then it might be unbeknownst to
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: people would have meetings with that where we slipped and
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: then we shouted the Y M c A on page
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Mill and al Camino. Uh so uh and then you
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: can work out as well. So it was in great
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: shape and yeah, it was, it was. It was actually fine.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: So all you guys sitting in Peetce with your business plans,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: so you think you guys think you have it tough?
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Any questions from the audience right now. We're gonna get
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: into space in a minute here, but I wanna as
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: long as we're on cars, let's take car questions first. Yes, sir,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: thank you.
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: Very interesting in your idea about email being built into
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: your next car. Now, the question I have for you is,
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: say I'm sending you an email with this. Is that
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: what you're gonna hear while you're driving my voice reading
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: my email to you, and when you respond to me,
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: I'll hear your voice responding to me. It's just an idea.
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: So you've got it from me. Just keep it in mind.
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: You don't have to respond right now, yes or no?
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: Thank you?
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, everybody signed an NDA on the way in.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: Why do you name the car Tesla? Uh? So, well,
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: the company is named after Nicola Tesla, who's actually very
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: well known in the in physics because units of magnetism
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: are actually units of Tesla. And uh and I mean
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: he came up with a number of innovation also went crazy,
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: but so hopefully that that's no indication of the future
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: of Tesla. But but but he was a great man
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: and didn't get I think the popular side of things
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: hasn't gotten quite the recognition that he deserves. So it
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: was between it's Tesla or maybe my Faraday after Michael Faraday.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: So so capacitance is measured in farrights, by the way,
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: in parades.
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: So could you give us your perspective on the future
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: of Detroit.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Future of Detroit? Wow, well, they're clearly the companies are
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: going to be smaller than they used to be. I
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: don't think actually, I'm not sure I could shed any
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: light that that people don't already know about Detroit and
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: that it's going to be a much smaller industry than before.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: There's I think there's a good chance it will emerge
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: healthier from this this process then it's been in recent years,
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: I mean GM and Christner in particular, and to some
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: degree forward this was inevitable. It was only a question
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: of when. And so this the financial crisis kind of
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: accelerated the inevitable. But it it didn't, it would have
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: happened anyway. So you know, then there need to be
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: substantial reforms in the management side and on the labor side.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: And you know, I think really they need to get
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: back to they need to focus on producing great products.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: That's what it really comes down to. You know, if
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: if you say who makes great cars, how many funerls
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: room would say GM. It's unusual people say that if
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: you said, tell me who makes the best cars in
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: the world, it might be a Toyota or a Diamler
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: or a BMW or an Audi or something like that.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: So I mean that's really what great companies are, both
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: in great products hopefully.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: But now, once you prove mass production of electric car,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: why wouldn't the M and A guys from General Motors
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: and Ford come knocking on your door?
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Well, I should point out that if if you there
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: needs to be some currency for the acquisition, you know,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: and the stock isn't worth a lot, and and they
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: don't have any cash.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna give you. You're not gonna take equity
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: in General Motors.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Well, so, I mean I made this comment actually several
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: months ago. I mean I was a little more a
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: little more flippant when I say, well, what if General
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Motors calls up? What if I bless he's along on
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: the board, calls up and says he'd like to acquire it.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: He says, like, what would you response? I say, well,
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: you can't afford it, because and that's just true, and
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: I don't think I can afford much of anything. They
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: just don't have the cash, and equity is not worth anything.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: One more, one more car question out there, and then
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: we'll go to space. How would you compare a Tesla
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: with piscar anomotive?
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Uh? So, Well, Frisco is producing a plug in hybrid,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: So Fisker is producing a plug in hybrid. It's not
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: as A were talking about earlier. It's we're presuing a
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: different strategy for the reasons I articulated. And you know,
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: if Fiscus stay, I think they're they're producing afford a sedan,
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: but it's a sportier sedan than ours. You know, our
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: sedan is intended to really be very functional and have
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: a lot of cargo space, carry five adults in comfort
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: plus potentially two kids and celebrium for luggage, and we're
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: we're sort of the roughly fifty thousand dollars price point there.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: I think at around eighty thousand dollars starting price after
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: tax rebates. I think that's probably a fair characterization of
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: the differences.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about space. We literally don't have enough time
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: interviewing you to cover everything you do. We could do
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: three different events on three different activities. Let's do space
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: real quick. Where does SpaceX stand right now? What's the
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: status of things? And where? See what stats the X
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: prize too, Let's get into that.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, SpaceX is doing really well, thankfully, otherwise that
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: would be in real trouble. I mean in terms of
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: particularly in terms of the time that it takes, the
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: time that I have to dedicate to the companies. I'm
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: on average, I'm sort of roughly fifty to fifty between
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: SpaceX and Tesla, although as there are issues that crop
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: up that need to be addressed, that may that could
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: swing it to as much as eighty percent SpaceX or
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: eighty percent Tesla in a given week. SpaceX is profitable.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: It's been casually positive for the casual positive and profitable
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: for the last two and a half years. We got
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: to orbit last year. In December, just before Christmas, NASA
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: awarded SpaceX one point six billion dollar contract to re
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: supply the space station with cargo that begins at the
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: end of next year. So the first mission first, the
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: first operational mission after the demonstration missions is December of
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: next year.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: And at what point do you take over completely? Don't
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: you have exclusivity for a while as as the Space
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Shuttle retires, well, official it's.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: Supposed to retire at the inner next year, so then
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: and then we'd follow Cogga missions immediately thereafter. Although if
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: the Space Shuttle ends up runing a little longer than
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: there may be some overlap.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: You're gonna hit those milestones.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: I think we have a decent chance of doing it.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: It's not entirely it's be guys.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: You have guys waiting up there for simple.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Well, NASA isn't. NASA isn't. I don't think that's just
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: counting on us being there exactly on time. They do
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: have some contingencies. We're selling our best to meet those
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: as timelines. I think I think we can. We don't
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: have It's not fully within our power because you know,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: there's there's NASA as well. We've got to meet all
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: the NASA safety requirements. And if they levy requirements on
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: us that we don't yet understand or appreciate, or their
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: new requirements, then that could push out the effective date
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: of the first off racial mission. But I don't think
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: it's going to be much much beyond the in next year.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm curious. I've always wondered about this about you.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: You know, space exploration rockets are the stuff of governments
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: large countries. Did you have an epiphany one day where
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: you just said, hell with it, I'm gonna actually do
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: this myself. I'm going to having to create a commercial
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: space company.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who comes up with that idea?
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Even the shower?
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Well, you know you mentioned the areas of interest that
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: I had in college. One of them was was, uh,
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: space travel, in particular the extension of life beyond Earth
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: to making life multiplanetary. No. I actually when I was
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: in college, I didn't think I would actually be a
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: part of.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, you're the only guy who had
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: who thought of this stuff that actually did it. I mean,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: there are millions of people that think, oh, I'm gonna
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: do this. I'm gonna, you know, be an astronaut when
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: I grow up. Not many people actually build rockets. Yeah,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: they're thirty five years old.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: Right, and actually one is in college. It wasn't. It wasn't.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: These are the three areas I want to be involved in.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: It's these are these are the three areas that I
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: think will most off pict the future of humanity. I
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: didn't if you'd asked me to college do it. Do
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: you think I'd be involved in space? The answer would
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: have been almost certainly not. I thought it would be
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: highly unlikely because you need billions of dollars, you know,
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: you need to be a government, and actually there's only
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: like a handful of governments that can even do that.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: So so it wasn't with the expectation that I'd expect
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: to be involved in space. But but as a result
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: of PayPal, the capitol got from that I could do
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: something in space, and it actually the space stuff well,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: it actually came from a conversation at Daoe and I there, yeah,
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: there is. So we're coming back from Adeo's parents place
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: in Long Island and and they were asking me, like,
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: what are we gonna do after PayPal? And I said, well,
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: you know, I thought maybe there'd be something philanthropic that
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: could be done in space that would get the public
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: more excited about space travel, and in particular sending people
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: to Mars. And and I said, but I'm sure NASA's
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: got that covered. And you know, so I'll go look
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: on the NASA website for when are we going to Mars?
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: Because of course it should be on the website like
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: we're going to Mars and this year and this stuff,
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: we're gonna do it. But there was nothing, nothing at
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: all about about people going to Mars. I was like,
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: this is I just don't understand why there's nothing about
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: people going to Mars, because if you look at the
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: literature in the seventies, it was all about, well we
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: went to the Moon, now we're going to go to Mars, right,
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: And so what happened and well there was a space shuttle,
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: and the space shuttles turned not to be a really
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: big mistake and it could barely get to low with orbit,
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: get about Moon or Mars or anything like that. And
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: uh so I thought, well, geez, maybe I can do
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: something that's gonna get the public excited about about Mars
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: and and and that will generate congressional support which will
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: turn into funding for NASAIC to go do this. And
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: uh looked looked at a few different options actually, and
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: I did a couple of trips to Russia to look
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: at at buying some Russian refurbish Russian I c v ms.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: That's just changed.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Its exciting a little bit. Yeah, yeah, make sure you
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: shift the payload, like which one which fund do we press?
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, NASA lost the blueprints for the Saturn five rocket, right,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: so you couldn't rebuild.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: That, right, saturnyfy was a great rocket. It's it's just
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: too bad that that we you know, we should just
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: rebuild that rocket and make it bet, like, just improve
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: on that rocket. It was. It was a good it
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: was a good design. It's so much better than than
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: the Space Shuttle.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: It's so you're you gonna put the pa Are you
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: gonna put them in on Mars? You and I have
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: a bet. I haven't forgotten the bet. Right, We were
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: in a plane flying over the North Pole under the
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Aurora borealis as a matter of fact, and we made
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: a bet. You but you believe that man would well,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: you would put a man on the moon by twenty.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: Not in the moon.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Oh my sorry, I'm mars. Yeah, by twenty twenty maybe
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: I think it was twenty twenty or twenty twenty five. Okay,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: you're gonna make it.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: We'll try.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: What's the next milestone for SpaceX.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: Well this the next big milestone would be launching Falcon nine,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: our big rocket, which hopefully will occur towards the around
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: the end of summer. And that's the rocket that'll be
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: used to carry out dragging Spacecraft two alb Bit and
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: Dragon spacecraft is will will service the space station. So
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: Falcon nine is a pretty good sized rocket that's actually
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: the most powerful single core rocket in the US fleet,
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: more powerful than what blowing the lucky you'd make before
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: considering side boosters.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: How much each one of these costs.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Put on a per perf flight to Falcon nine about
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: forty million dollars. Those are big bets, yeah all, and
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: then if you add a Dragon spacecraft on top of
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: that is about the same. And then there's various NASA
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: overhead make a hundred.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: Million dollar bet when you yeah, like the fuse on
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: that thing.
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a deal in the Rocca world by the way,
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: for only one hundred million dollars. We will carry some
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: cognitive orbit. So yeah, so that fel launching Falcon I
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: will be the next big one. There's a sort of
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: smaller milestone, which is an upcoming Falcon one flight, maybe
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: as soon as the end of this month. That'll little
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: over our first operational satellite to orbit, which is the
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: Malaysian satellite's intend to do Earth observation, you know, for
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: like natural disasters and stuff like that. And yeah, and
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: then let's see. Then at the end of this year,
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: hopefully we'll do launch out first Dragon spacecraft and Falcon nine.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: It won't go to the space station. We'll do sort
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: of basic orbital maneuvering and re entry, and then next
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: year we go to the space station for the first time.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: How long is the contract with the space station long?
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: How large A long a long? It runs through approximately
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, And although I think it'll be extended beyond that,
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: because it's just that the operational plan for the space station
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: kind of only goes to twenty fifteen.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: So frankly, in theory, if you get this right, do
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: we need NASA anymore?
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: Well, absolutely, well, NASA, we aren't a customer to NASA,
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: right right, NASA is our customer, I should say so,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: they are our biggest customer, and in fact, when NASA
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: does developments. Although in all circumstances prior to this NASA
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: has been has had these sort of made the design decisions,
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: the implementation of those design decisions has been done by
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: aerospace contractors. So the novel thing here is that for
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: the first time, isn't isn't dictating the design. They're simply saying,
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: we need cargo de livid, We're willing to pay, give.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: You a performance contract and.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah the rest right right, it's sort of more like FedEx,
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: you know, yeah, spa we deliver. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Any questions about space guys. The one down here, we
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: have a Homestead High School junior asking a question.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: Uh this song? Okay? Uh?
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: So for your Falcon series, you decide to use the
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: Merlin engine right.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: Right, We developed the Merlin engineer. Yes, yeah.
• 57:43
  Speaker 6: My question for you is why did you go for
• 57:45
  Speaker 6: the single or one type of engine and then using
• 57:49
  Speaker 6: nine of them on the Falcon nine? How many is
• 57:52
  Speaker 6: because I've seen a lot of other industry of space.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: It's like everyone knows.
• 57:56
  Speaker 6: Like above five, you're like, oh my god, the trouble
• 57:59
  Speaker 6: pumps are all going to be up or something. And
• 58:00
  Speaker 6: then so why did you choose that instead of debuilding
• 58:03
  Speaker 6: a larger.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: Engine, Well, I support up you know, Like the Saturn five,
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: although it had five engines on the first stage, also
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: had five engines on the second stage, and then one
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: engine on the third stage, there was actually an eleven
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: engine rocket. Falcon nine has got nine engines in the firstage,
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: one on the second stage. It's actually one tot total
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: of ten, so one less than a Saturn five. And
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: the the advantage of the nine engines is that you
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: can lose an engine at any point, including immediately after liftoff,
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: and still complete your mission, which was not true of
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: the Saturn five. The thrust away that Saturn five was
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: about one point one five, so you actually had a
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: very dangerous point immediately after lift off where you could
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: potentially subside, uh if if you had an engine failure
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: within the first few seconds. W with with the with rockets,
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: because you're taking a vertically you it actually point for
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: for the first stage. It actually for you know, the
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: the initial boost stage. UH points you towards having more
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: engines because if you want true engine out capability, because
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: you always have to have a thrustweight greater than one
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: otherwise you're coming back. Whereas an aircraft, you you can
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: have a thrust weight of much less than one and
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: still be okay because you can sort of glide and
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: reduce your your climb rate and that kind of thing
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: and still be okay. So so it actually it it
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: just push you to have more than then say, like
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: you know, seven forty seven has got four engines, but
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: the equivalent for a rocket would be some number greater
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: than four and so and maybe it's not as high
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: as nine, but we kind of we needed nine to
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: achieve the payload requirements that our customers wanted. And as
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: long as you're very careful about ensuring that the problem
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: with one engine cannot cascade into problems with another engine,
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: more is actually better. And you know Google operates with
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: tens of thousands of computers rather than a few giant mainframes,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: so it.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: Also fits with the Tesla model of having eight batteries.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: I think nine engines is bad tries and thirty one self.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 7: Next question, so, elon with the Dragon spaceship spacecraft, is
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 7: that going to also be a man's craft. And if
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 7: shows are you going to be shuttling the astronauts back
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 7: and forth to the space station.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a Dragon is designed to meet the NASSA man
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: rating requirements. There's a few key documents there regarding structural
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: safety margins and redundancy signed to meet those those requirements.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: There's a you know, G loading x G loading, and
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: we're dealing with vorice case aboard conditions and that kind
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: of thing. It says all those things were signed to
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: meet There's one key development item that we need to finish,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: which is the escape tower, so that we have a
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: launch escape system in case something goes wrong with the
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: core booster. It can take it can carry the capsule
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: to safety. Also something they had during the Apollo era
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: of it didn't have that. They don't have that for
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: this the Space Shuttle. And if it's so, I mean
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: really the two weak areas of the Space Shuttle and
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: then the two post dangerous periods for uh, you know,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: a manned vehicle art during this of the ascent phase
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: and the descent phase. There are two there are there
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: are fundamental architectural flaws with with the shuttle approach. One
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: is on the ascent phase, there is no escape system.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: They decided they didn't need an escape system because the
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: shuttle would would never would never fail. Really they're like, wow, okay,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: so so there's no escape system if anything goes wrong
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: on the ascent curtains and then on re entry, particularly
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: the initial part of re entry, which is the high
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: heating point. The because it's a it's really it's not
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: a naturally stable vehicle. You've got to have control surfaces
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: and wings. So it has it has control serfaces and wings.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: So if anything happens with the control system, so any
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: electronics that don't work malfunction or or there's a hinge
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: that that you know isn't working properly in one of
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: the control surfaces, that that's a your toast. It's not
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: naturally stable. It has to be controlled. And and then
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: the heating rate goes with the square of the radius
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: of whatever you're doing with. So if you've got a
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: wing leading edge that's got a very you know, effectively
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: got a sharp radius, you have a very concentrated heat,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: which limits the material choice to some very brittle materials.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: In fact, it'll only work for Earth orbit re entry
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: if you if you come in at a higher velocity
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: then lower orbit velocity. There's no material known to man
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: that can withstand it. So actually, for like the Moon,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: you could you couldn't use a wing vehicle. It just
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: it's impossible. So, I mean, it's sort of like if
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: you think of Polo era. Okay, they had aeroplanes back then,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: It's not like, oh wow, wings, what are those things?
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: You know? The designers were Apollo, Von Brown and the
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: others were very familiar with aircraft. If they thought wings
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: made sense, they would have said, let's put wings in
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: this thing. They don't. When it comes to space. Wings
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: are dumb, just as you don't make an airplane look
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: like a boat.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 8: So so if when they retire the Space Shuttle, how
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 8: are they going to bring the astronauts back until you
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 8: are and get an until you were able to do that?
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: The Sawyers okay Russian? Yeah, so the Sawyers is a
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: good I mean, if if I would definitely prefer to
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: right on the Sawyers than the Space Shuttle. You have
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: an escape system on the Sawyers. And then of course
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: on re entry, a capsule of blunt body or entry
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: capsule can be designed to be naturally stable so that
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: even if all the control systems fail that you know,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: you're just like out dark. Everything's you know, you're it's
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: it's naturally it's like a shuttlecock. It's naturally stable on
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: re entry and you don't have to, you know, do
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: anything there and you can just manually pull the shoots
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: or something like that. So, in fact, that's happened on
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: a couple of Soyu's flights where they've had control system failures.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: If that had been the Shuttle, it would have been curtains.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: But because it's because it's naturally stable, you don't have
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: to worry about that. And then because you've got that
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: blunt body re entry, the heat shield is much more
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: robust because you've got this really big radious heat shield
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: instead of these shop radius wings. So it's really much
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: safer design. And I believe there's never been a fatality
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: on the Soys, which has been going much longer than
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: this than the shuttle, made many many wolf flights.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: So how do you keep these two different things separate
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: in your mind? I mean you're dealing with two massive industries,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: very distinct worlds. I mean, do you do you have
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: to like literally say, oh wait, a minte, I'm doing
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: rockets right now. No, I'm doing cars right now. And
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: how do you how do you seg segregate those two
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: things because they're both competing for your attention twenty four
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: hours a day.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: Right, and have kids? My kids, Actually it's been a
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: lot of time, by the way, four kids, five kids?
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, how do you manage that?
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah? That is tricky? Yeah, yeah, well actually it's okay
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: most of the time. But you know, if it's when
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: when a crisis flares up and either kids or one
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: of the businesses, then then it gets can be quite
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: a little bit overwhelming.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: So it's like triage all the time.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: It is. It is kind of like treage I mean,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: and I mean the I rocky business in the car
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: business or pretty hard in the best of times, and
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: these are not the best of times.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: Next question, you don't like wings.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: I don't like wings for things that go to space
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: where there is no air, I think, I mean.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 7: My understanding of the reason the wings were on the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 7: Space Shuttle was so they could land where they wanted to.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, so well, let me let me correct the misconception.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: Then A blunt body sort of a capsule, you know,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: gum dropped style thing is a controlled landing in fact,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: because you have you still have a lift vector, so
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: you you use offset center of mass to to create
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: a sort of a tilt in the capsule, and that
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: actually creates a lift factor. And that lift factor you'd
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: typically be a lift of a drag of point two
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: two point three. But that's plenty plenty enough to steer
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: you where you want to go. And in fact, even
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: in Apollo, when they didn't have GPS and they you know,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: they were really dealing with fairly very primitive electronics, their
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: landing accuracy was a one mile radius, and of course
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: if you can get much better than that with GPS
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: and all that other stuff. In fact, the only error
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: is uh, the wind drift. That's the only that's really
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: the only meaningful error. And if you if you have
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: if you do steerable shoots or put some like little
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: like a little propeller that popped out or something like that,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: you could you could drop the capsule on the numbers
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: on the runway just like you could drop just like
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: a parachutist can can steer their their flight down to
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: a very accurate location. And then you know, I think
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: you just sort of like flare it just before you
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: get to the bottom, just like a parachutist. And they are.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: Nice question to back.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: I was there.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 9: I was there several years ago, uh in the Mahab
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 9: Mahabi Desert when space Flight one took off or the
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 9: maiden voyage. I was wondering, first of all, what was
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 9: SpaceX's involvement in that program? And do you guys have
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 9: any plans for taking up civilians into space.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: We didn't have any involvement with with the Burbertans Spaceship
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: one except that I'm a trustee of the X Prize
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: Foundation and I invited a little bit of the funding
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: to that to the I'm sorry X Prize that they won,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: and I was there for one of the flights. So
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: and it's actually, you know, it's great that it was one.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: But it is worth pointing out that there's a significant
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: difference between a suborbital flight and an orbital flight because
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: space kind of seems like, well, space is all the
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: same thing, but if you if you look at the
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: energy required to get to space versus the energy required
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: to get to orbit, it's they're very different. Autismatitude, you
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: need an ideal velosity of roughly mark twenty five to
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: get to orbit mark three to get to space if
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: you define spaces, say fifty miles up and so it's
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: pretty that's pretty big differential. But it's than that because
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: the kinetic energy goes with the square of the velocitphy.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: So you need six and twenty five units of energy
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: to get to orbit, nine units of energy to get
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: to space. So about one and a half percent of
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: the energy one versus the other. So the requirements are
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: really way way different the Yeah, so you need In fact,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: it's only just barely possible to escape as gravity, well
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: just barely. If you look at the size of Saturn
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: five for example, that that and that ultimately took two
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: people to serfce the moon, one plus one who was
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: orbiting the moon. That was a really gigantic vehicle. I
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: mean it's like the size of an office building, and
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: it got two people to serfce the moon.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 10: Nict question, why do you think multiplanetary existence is important?
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: Excellent question? So okay, so you have to say, well,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: how do you decide that anything is important? So there's
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: I think the lens of history is a helpful way
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: to just distinguish more from less important things. And the
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: further out you U zoom, the more you can distinguish
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: the less important from the more important. And if you
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: take a look at the whole four billion year history
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: of Earth and the evolution of life itself, and say, well,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: what are the what are the really big milestones and
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: the evolution of life itself, and you can point to obviously,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: you know, single cell of life and multicellular life, differentiation
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: into plants and animals, movement of life from the oceans
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: to land, the mammals, consciousness, you know, sort of those
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: the big, the biggies, and and those stand above the
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: I think the parochial things are concerns of humanity, but
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: I think on that scale would also fit life becoming multiplanetary.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: I think it would be at least comparable to life
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: going from the oceans to land, arguably more so because
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: at least the ocean's land could be a gradual affair.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: You know, we've got uncomfortable, you hop back in the ocean.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: It's it's a lot harder to go over, you know,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: to travel a billion miles over you know, irradiated space
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: and then land in a hostile environment and create a
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: self sustaining and growing you know, life ecology. That's really
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: really hard. And in fact, this is the first time
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: in the four billionaire history of life itself that it
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: is even within the realm of possibility. So I think therefore,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: if something is important to be important enough to figure
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: on the scale of the evolution of life itself, it
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: should be at least considered. Say, worth is about as
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: much money as we spend on lipstick, you know, maybe
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: not as much money as we spend on healthcare with
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: that's a lot, but but enough you know, maybe north
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: of cosmetics or something. And yeah, so you know, I
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: think we should spend a little bit of of our
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: resources doing that. And and that's just a wise bet
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: for life as we know it. And yeah, so just
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: it just seems like that that that should make it
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: important enough to for for a little bit of a
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: little bit of money, like maybe a half percent, half
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: a percent of our GDP or something like that, and
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: that'll be enough to do.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: It either you want to say.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: On Solar City, Soli City is doing great, Thank goodness,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: it is what it is. Sure. Sol City is the
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: country's largest provider of solar power systems to homes and
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: small businesses. So outside of the utility scale Siller activity,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: and it it was co founded and run by uh
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: Peter and Linnen Rive my cousins in your SIP full disclosure.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: So I serve as the chairman there and I provide
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: some advice strategically and on the product side, and thankfully
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: it requires almost none of my effort. And those guys
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: are just awesome in terms of their execution of Solar City,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: having grown into a leadership position in the course of
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: three years. So if anyone's thinking of getting SOLO cool,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: like when her solar City something like that or eight aight,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, questions nice question.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 5: So so how does that work? I mean, you've you've
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 5: convinced the NASA to give you like a huge contract.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 5: How can I imagine that? What story is behind that?
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 5: Can you tell us? Can you share us that story
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 5: a little bit? That's the one question that I have.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 5: On the other is, if you've been working on Solo,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 5: you've been working on clean tech or on cars, you've
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 5: been working on the space, so you're transforming society in
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 5: all those projects. And then there's PayPal, So how does
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 5: that fit? That's the two questions.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: Well, definitely PayPal, I mean ask you, well, we're completely
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: out of PayPal, well almost completely out of PayPal when
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: it started SpaceX and uh and then you know with
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: with I mean I from from a business standpoint, my
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: time is really split between SpaceX and Tesla. Almost no time.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: I spent almost no time on on Solar City because
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: it's it's just running so well by itself and the
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: guys that are just doing a great job, and that's
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: really not much I can I can add to what
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: they're doing. So so, but going to the d NASA question,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: it it took us a long time to and and
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: a lot of effort to convince NASA to to rely
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: on us. And when we when we won that Corgar
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: resupply services contract, you know, it's basically value ranging from
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: one point six to three point one billion dollars. We
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: competed against uh uh Boeing, Luckheaton, Aligned Tech Systems or
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: actually they were all three of them together against us,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: so that this is a sort of a partnership called
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: Planet Space, which is basically it was just a it
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: was bowing Lucky heat in Line Tech Systems against SpaceX
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: and we want so or at least NASO felt confident
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: enough to give us that that deal, so I and
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: and preceding that, it had been sort of six years
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: of working to gain their confidence, and we'd want a
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: preceding contract, which was called the COTS contract Commercial Orbital
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: Transportation Services to demonstrate progress in that direction. But I
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: have to give an ass a lot of credit here
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: because without that costs contract, it would have been very
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: difficult for us to compete for the cargo Resupply Services contract.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: They've been helpful in an advisory capacity and inner financial capacity.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: So I think we're very grateful to NASA and appreciative
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: of everything that they've they've done, cause we we wouldn't
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: be in a position to one that that Caugary Spy
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: contract without their help.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: So during that microsecond each day that you actually have
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: to contemplate other activities, what are you dreaming of now?
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: I I yeah, I mean I really am. You know,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: my mind is full just dealing with with SpaceX and
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: Tesla and and the family matters. But I mean there
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: are a few areas. I mean I have some this.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: I I think at some point in future, if you're
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: interesting to take a look at affusion that that's a
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: tough problem and it's something that I think we could
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: solve but it would you not say me. I mean,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: I think s s humanity could solve that problem. But
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: it is a very tough one. And maybe maybe there's
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: something I could where it could be helpful there, and uh,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: that's just completely speculative, I'm not I mean, it could
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: be totally wrong. Success may not be one of the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: past outcomes.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, if you can give me to sit on three
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: thousand laptop batteries, you can get me to sit on
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: a fusion reactor.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: Uh huh uh yeah, well fusion if yeah, fusion, there's
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: not I think some scale is needed for fusion. Probably
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: probably there's some ideas for we're having smaller scale fusion.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: I'm not talking about cold fusion, but but sort of
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: I kind of fusion at sort of a nano scale,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: like basically very small amounts of fusion in a little container.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: But it is a very hard problem. And then I
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: have an idea for uh, create double deckering highways, which
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: I think I thought. I thought a lot about it
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: when I'm driving to work in La. Uh, the highways.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: I mean it would just be I think if you
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: create prefabricated sections of highway and did a very efficient
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: kind of me taic structure that could withstand the worst earthquakes,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: and the trick will be making it light and very
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: strong and inexpensive. But I think I know how to
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: do that, and it's that sort of relatively mundane, but
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: we have a big effect on people's lives. And I
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: have a sort of idea for an electric plane, which
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: I think could be pretty cool. Yeah, electric supersonic plane.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of batteries.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of batteries. It is. It is a
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: lot of batteries.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: Next question, By the way, I haven't heard any of
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: this stuff before, just maybe in print tomorrow.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, so nobody says that's what I'm doing. You asked
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: me what split second of like, like, Okay, I've been
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: thinking a lot about the plane when I more than
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: I should. Actually, I try to ban that from my
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: mind talk to you about it. I got to stop
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: myself from thinking about that one, because that's sort of
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: that's a very exciting one.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 9: I don't think you covered the X Prize, the status
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 9: of the X Prize and TUPAC question.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: What do you think about a bigger X Prize for
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: battery technology in the US, Sorry, a bigger X Prize
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: for what a battery battery? Yeah, I think express for
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: battery technology would be great if there's you know, a
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: sponsor like the pederal government or anyone. I think it's
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: it's great to incent outcomes rather than that, you know,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: it's great to make best bets on approaches, but it's
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: also good to incent outcomes. And ultimately you care about
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: the outcome, not the approach. And that's the good thing
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: about prizes is they don't try to rely on some
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: panel of experts to figure out what the approach is
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: that's going to work, because often those panels of experts
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: are and other people who are going to figure out
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: the innovations that result in the out any one. And
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: that's basically why you have prizes or so, and as
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: far as the X Prize concerned, there's an Automotive X Prize,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: there's a Genomics X Prize for for low cost segnency
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: of genes. There's the Google Lunar X Prize, which SpaceX
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: is trying to help with a little bit by offering
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: the only discounted launches we offer are off for the
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: Google Lunar X Prize. Actually, and uh yeah, so there's
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a bunch of stuff happening there, and
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: I think I think it's a it's a good model
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: should be emulated more. Darper did a great you know,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: did a great example of a prize thing with the
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: Dopper Grand Challenge. That was Uh, there's the DOPA Grand
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: Challenge Urban Challenge for Autonomous Vehicles. That's got to be
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: one of the highest bankquot back items that the DARPA
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: has ever done, because I guarantee if you made that
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: like a d O D contractor and had like you know,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: Luckie and raytheon and all the usual suspects but on it,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: it would have been like two billion dollars and they
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: still be working on it, you know. So So anyway,
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: I think that there's a lot of mproprises. I should
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: be more of them.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: One more question than I have one.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 10: Given the range of technologies and areas you've touched, I'm
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 10: curious what your take on robotics is. It almost seems
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 10: like underbotics exactly. It seems close enough to what you've done,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 10: but I haven't heard you talk about it.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: Well. You know, Tesla does use robotics to limited extent
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: in its production today, particularly on the battery pack side
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: because you've got so many cells, almost seven thousand cells,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: that some robotic assistances is important making the battery pack,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: and we'll certainly see a lot more of that as
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: tests the scales up. So robotics makes makes a big
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: It's great for miss manufacturing, for space exploration, obviously, we've
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: seen great evidence played by robotics as well with the
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: Mars Exploration rovers. And there's a really big rover going
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: called Mars Science Laboratory, and that was supposed to launch soon,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: but it's gonna be a couple of years before that goes.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: That's about the size of like a Folkswagen. So so
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: I think there's there's a a lot of room for
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: robotics in a lot of fields, and that will increase
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: and continue in both automotive and space and other other areas.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, you know, I
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: think we still need to make life multiplanetary. It can't
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: just be sort of standing droids out there. I'm pro life,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: uh in that sense. So so I think you robotic
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: despiration and robotic preparation. But but uh, but we also
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: need life going beyond Earth as well, so people's lives. Yeah,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: A second n I haven't really thought about robotics personally,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: but but just not to say that I don't think
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: there are there are, There are lots of things that
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: could be automated and where there could be robots that
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: help people in their daily lives, you know, uh some
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: I'm sure there'll be a continued expansion of the whole
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: I I robot type type of thing beyond vacu and cleaning.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I think it's I think it's a
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: great area.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: So I have one last question for you. I've followed
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: your career for a long time, known you for a
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: long time. Yeah, you know, for many many years you
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: were very you were very successful, but largely anonymous.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: You know for a long time, right, I was underground.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: You walk, You can walk the streets of Oxford, nobody.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: Knew who you were. I think I can still do that,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: but less in.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: The last couple of years, You've become increasingly a public figure,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: a celebrity, and your name is starts popping up now
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: in gossip pages and websites and that sort of thing.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: How are you dealing with that? Is it interfering with
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: your ability to do what you do.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: It? I think I don't like I don't like it
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: when people think wrong things. I mean, I'm not far
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: from fluorless, so I'm like, but I don't like when
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: people think wrong things about me. And I guess the
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: the yeah, I must say, I don't. I don't. I
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: don't really like the sort of celebrity element or I
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: I don't like when people sort of try to write
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: things that are sort of trivialities that don't actually like
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: why I write about that. You know, obviously people find
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: that kind of interesting for some people do, hopefully not many.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: And I don't know. Sometimes people say like wrong things
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: that I get, you know, concerned that, well, what if
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: my kids read that, you know, because they're five and
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: they're starting to read, and and that's that. I mean,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: that's probably the most concerning thing. I'm not too worried
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: about it from a business standpoint, because most people that
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: interact with, particularly they've known me for a while, they
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: know what's true and what's not true, and and in
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: the lot cases don't care anyway, even if it was true.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: They don't care. But I do. I do could disconcern
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: me if if my kids were to read something that
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: was just not true.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, you understand As Tesla continues to be successful,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: and as SpaceX begins to assume the role of the
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: Space Shuttle, you begin to become something like Henry Ford
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: and Werner Von Brown combined. And that's a level of
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: celebrity few people ever know. And are you ready for that?
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: I'm probably not ready for that. I'm not a nationally
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: extroverted person. In fact that I would. I used to
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: be horrendous at probably. I mean, I'm not that great
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: as it is, but I used to be really horrendous
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: and just sort of shake and be unable to speak.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: But I kind of learned not to do that, so
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: I I mean, i'd mu sure rather just be, you know,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: doing engineering and stuff in design, so that that's really
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: what I like to do. Maybe, you know, I'm happy
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: to and I like doing things like this, which are
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: which are fine, fine, and but uh and you know,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: if you're in the car business, you gotta sell cars
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: and stuff, so I gotta I gotta go out there
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: and be promotional. But there are other people at Tesla
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: that actually are much better speakers than sellers of the
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: car than I am.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: I think, Oh, that's hard to believe anything else you
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: want to tell these folks out here,