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Elon Musk Just Revealed Shocking Statement! · Elon Musk Thinking

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I can't emphasize us enough. You know, if you get some digital superintelligence,
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it might be in charge of China and said, are you and I'm
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not sure you would like that. Well, it's actually gone reasonably close to
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what I would happen, which is from that point roughly a fifty percent year
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over year compound annual growth, which is a confidence that the Tales the Team
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is the fastest growing a large manufactured object ever, which I think the second
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is like the model T back in the day, so about a hundred years
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ago. So the Tales of Team are very proud to work with them.
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They they're executed incredibly well, and we anticipate something close to you know,
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percent growth to continue. So that is very exciting, and it means that
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we should expect electrication of transport, especially passenger vehicle, you know, quite
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quite quickly. It's because the normal human instinct is to extrapolate on a linear
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basis, but really, if you look at the curves, electric vehicles are
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growing exponentially. So I think that's great news for those in the room.
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You have a lot of customers, well, you have a lot of ev
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customers ready and saying you will have many more. You know, and forgive
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me for waxing on a little bit here, but sometimes asked, well,
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when will evs be most of the cars? The important thing to remember is
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that you've got two billion cars and trucks out there, so and about one
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hundred million for your new vehicle production, which kind of makes sense, so
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sort of a life of about twenty years before a vehicle finally goes to the
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scrapyard. So even if if one hundred percent elect vehicles were our new vehicle
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production was was electric today, will still take twenty years to replace the fleet.
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So it's just important to bear that in mind centers of new vehicle production
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versus versus total fleet. But I think we're moving quickly to the point where
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and probably half of all new vehicles made will be electric, and I think
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that's that's that's likely to happen, I think before the end of this decade.
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But then this still quote another twenty years beyond that, before that the
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fleet really becomes a majority EV So yeah, and it's interesting because as we've
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done the analysis for California, right, we have an executive order that calls
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for all new vehicle sales being zero emission by twenty thirty five. That's in
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mind with the forecast that we've had in our own scenario analysis that's still puts
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US at about three quarters of passenger vehicles being electric in twenty forty five when
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the stake is sent, and zero to be off by a little bit.
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But I mean, I think that the larger point is that man electricity is
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going to be extremely high. So so I I, you know, hope
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it's good news. The you know, the if just do the rough back
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the envelope math, you need to roughly triple electricity to get to equally electric
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economy. You know, roughly a third of power is electric and then uh,
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you know these are very rough nubers. Roughly a third is spent in
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transportation of various kinds with with the fossil fuels or hydrocoffins, and then roughly
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a third is heating. So even assuming the the sort of current economy economic
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usage electricity of a capita being constant, you're looking at roughly a troubling of
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electricity demand and the so it's really going to take a tremindous effort to address
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this demand. This is a sort of you know, I think, very
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very good news for those producing electricity, but also entails a treminous kind of
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work ahead in new production capacity and production capacity that is as sustainable as possible.
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Well, I mean, it very requires a whole system to be ramping
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up. It's you know, you are dealing with the storage side, and
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the vehicle side and the charging side, and we'll talk a little bit more
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about that a bit. Yeah, we have the wires, but you know
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we need we need support from all across the economy, right, absolutely,
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It's it's really, it's really very much a joint effort. I think it's
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it's a it's a very very positive future for the producers and distributors of electricity.
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Really couldn't ask for a better, you know, growing market that's going
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to grow in a better way than this. But it is a tremendous amount
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of hard work, as everyone here knows, to actually put that generation in
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place and then transport it to where where it gets used, and then dealing
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with the peaks and and and and then taking advantage of the valleys of power
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production. I mean, that's really where, like the tells, the Megapact
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that you're just alluding to is actually incredibly helpful. Is in sort of peak
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shaving the grid based basically charging up when you have excess power production and then
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and then releasing it when you have insufficient power production where you want to peak
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shave. It's the you know, I really believe that stationary battery packs are
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absolutely way to the way to go, and it is actually the fastest growing
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portion of the entire test the business. So we're so our vehicles growing in
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thirty percent a year, about our stationary storage is growing at two to three
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hundred percent a year. So it's really you know, it's it's a really
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big deal, really helpful, but it's it's like it's just a obviously it's
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a battery at scale and a buffers electricity. If you need electricity buffered,
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then it's a good product. Well and well, we'll get back to electric
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vehicles heet in a minute. But I remember where you and I spoke a
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number of years ago. You already had that vision of global electrification. Yeah,
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and I think you've positioned your company right with storage, pees with solar.
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So this integrated view of where the market is going and how Tesla fits
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into Yeah. Yeah, well there's I mean, there's pundamently three three pillars
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too, A sustainable energy future one you know, one is sustainable energy generation,
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which is solar, wind, hydro. Actually, you know a fan
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of nuclear, of good, good old vision, I think it is underrated.
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I mean, we can easily supply all of the world's like Trusty with
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vision. But people I don't know some of that. Sometimes they're understanding of
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physics is not amazing, and so they get scared of things that shouldn't be
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sed gheto so so very much pros basically any electricity we can say, okay,
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this is not going to meaningfully change the chemistry of the climate notions you
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know, the atsmart oceans and so. So you got sustainable electricity generation one
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side. Then you've got stationary batteries as the third pillar. Second pillar,
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which is needed for any kind of intermittent electricity production, and by its nature,
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solar and wind are intermittent, so batteries and solar and wind go together
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extremely well. And and then the third pillar is electric transport. So get
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all three of those pillars going and we have a sustainable futurists as long as
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the sun shiants and the wind blows, which is gave me a long time.
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Well, I think you know this idea of having a balance across these
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resources. It takes a lot of tools in the toolbox. Let me get
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back to electric vehicles though, because left to go a couple levels deeper here,
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we're talking some you know, a few minutes ago, I think that
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was more on passenger vehicles. Well, let's talk a bit about about bigger
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once. So you know, we're all excited to see the first Tesla semi
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trucks on the road in California, and that means a lot in terms of
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the viability of trucking systems in the future. We also have the us EPA,
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you know, proposed vehicle standards. It could accelerate the medium and heavy
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duty electrification. We have California doing its thing, as well as a number
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of other states. But ultimately the vehicle need to be economical for fleet operators,
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and particularly in southern California where we have all the traffic coming up from
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the ports. A lot of those truck operators are not big fleets, right,
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they're small, mom and pop owners. So absolutely so, how how
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quickly are you thinking that freight movement really goes electric and in a way that's
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affordable so that you can really serve up that mix of owners something. Yeah,
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well, I think i'd certainly encourage people to look at our semi truck
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presentations because in fact, the one of the things we emphasize with electric semi
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truck is that's it's much more energy efficient than a diesel truck, you know
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so, and I mean you get things like the genitive breaking. So like
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let's say you're going over a mountain range. Well, in diesel truck,
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you actually don't capture that the energy of high too potential energy. You have
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to actually spend a lot of money on expensive breaks going down the other side,
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so you run out of control. So whereas an electric semi truck is
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able to recapture the energy gravitational potential energy and actually when it goes down the
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other side does not overheat breaks and back puts the energy back in the pack.
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So things like that are incredibly helpful for the energy efficiency. And they
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just generally look the entire chain from electricity production to take into account the efficiency
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of the energy produced, the energy lust during transmission, energy lust during charging,
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and then see how many miles were driven. You could take the same
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diesel that is used to power a a truck, use it and burn it
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electricity and still be at least fifty harm percent better with an electric semi truck
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then with an if you put that diesel directly in the truck. I think
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that's in line. We were talking earlier in our board meeting about just the
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efficient security. It's efficiency of electric technologies, right, So it's a big
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part of the story here. Yeah, just fundamentally, combustion engines in a
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vehicle are constrained in massive volume, so you have to you're therefore limited in
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how much efficiency, how much useful energy you can extract from a fuel when
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you have a very constrained massive volume for the truck. Whereas a power plant
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does not have the constraints of mass volume. It can be heavier and bigger,
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obviously, and you can take the waste heat and run a steam turbine,
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so can your sort of Carno. Efficiency of a power plant is dramatically
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greater than if it's in a mobile application like a vehicle, And even when
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taking into account transmission losses and charging losses, that there's still don't account for
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the massive difference in efficiency of even hydrocoffins being built at a power plant versus
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being used in a car, which sets up thinking about, well, what's
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the transition there, but ultimately though looking at a future that's electric. So
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we're all we're all agreeing on the efficiency of the trucks. Let me state
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something that's plainly obvious. Bigger and more trucks, bigger and more batteries,
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right, So let's talk about the supply chain for batteries. And I want
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to say thank you because a number of the folks here were able to get
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a tour of the Giga factory here in Austin. Yes, and actually apologized
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I didn't probably answer your question with respector trucks, because so semi trucks,
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because they do use a large battery, will be toward will be later than
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than other vehicles because we need to have excess sufficient battery supply in order to
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have a battery that's you know, maybe four or five times larger than it
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would be in a passenger car have that be in in a semi truck.
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That's the reason why we haven't gone to scale production of semi truck yet is
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because they're just worn't off batteries. Now, as the battery problem is solved,
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we will go to volume production with the semi truck and I'm pretty sure
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it tells will refers on this, but we're expecting to reach volume production probably
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sometime next mute and the next year is you know what we're waiting for.
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And again, because it's not going to be overnight all the trucks become electric,
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because you have to reach a certain percent of new semi trucks built then
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replace the fleet. The fleet is you know, at least ten years old
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in the semi truck case, and so you know, but I think it
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probably gets the fifty percent of new semi trucks built within probably three or four
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years, eighty five years, and then it's another ten fifteen years before you
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see most trucks be electric. So that's I don't know, demand on on
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your perspective, that's either really soon or far away or a little bit about
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Yeah. Yeah, So that's that helps get a sense of the time scale
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here, I think a one level level deeper though, and when you think
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about the actual underlying challenges in getting that battery scale again, a gigafactor here
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seems like it's a great advancement in terms of the manufacturing side. Yeah,
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but then how do you think about the supply chain behind it the rare earth
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materials. Are you thinking about different chemistries over time or other ways to make
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sure you're getting the suppot supplier batteries you need for that kind of scale growth.
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Yeah, so the row materials are not really an issue here, especially
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when you consider iron based cathodes. So we think probably the most of the
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batteries made will be with an iron cath Iron is extremely common. It's actually
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the most common element on Earth by mass. Is is iron, second is
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oxygen. Everything else is in the remaining roughly, so we have more iron
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that we were basically a rusty well that's what Earth is, iron oxide,
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iron and oxygen, iron and oxygen and a little some silicon and a few
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other things. But it's it's funny that Earth is by mass almost two thirds
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iron and oxygen. So we're not gonna run out of iron, that's for
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sure, and especially forestationary storage where mass and volume are not that important,
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and iron based lithium ion cell. So the thinking about lithiumy itself is like
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it's a lot of torque of lithium, but actually lithium is like the salt
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on the salad. It's not the salad itself. So the costs tend to
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be predominate, and certainly the mass of the fact predominates in the cathode,
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which is it's going to be a metal, and the higher energy chemistries are
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tend to be nickel, and then the lower and lower engine des chemistry will
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be iron. So to use nickel for kind of long range stuff where where
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mass and volume really matter and you'd use ironware it's less important. So medium
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range cars, stationary storage, iron long range cars and aircraft would definitely be
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nickel. Well, let's let's talk about how we actually charge all those batteries.
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And back in twenty fifteen you describe the need for fast charging to help
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long distance travel work, even as most of the charging, we think it
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ends up happening at home. So you built a supercharger network. I think
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it's still the benchmark in terms of public ev charging out there. You've made
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some really big announcements recently. You've been fun to watch with Forward and more
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recently with GM. Just curiously, you know, why are you opening up
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the network? You know, how do you see this creating competitive advan they've
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been working with with others. Well, I don't know if it is a
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competitive advantage but it might be actually competitive disadvantage. But the the purpose of
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Talesla from the beginning has been to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy, and
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so you know, we're and I've been very clear with that. Even when
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we went to IPO, I said, hey, look, some of the
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things we do may not be you know, super profit maximizing, so don't
17:29
invest if that's a problem. Cars tool to sell our stock. If that's
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a problem. On the other hand, we'll make up for it with some
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epic products. So I think on balance will be okay. And we were
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in public at I think one point roughly just over one and a half billion
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dollars, so improve since then, Yeah, you know, I made some
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progress. You know some of the things that maybe we could have done that
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were not totally profit optimizing. I mean, we've open sourced all of our
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patents, so anyone can use our patents, which is pretty unusual. So
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you know, it's and I mean mostly do the patents just to stop like
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patent trolls and people people are doing blocking actions. So we'll do a patent
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and then make it open so that there's because like patents are like a minefield,
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you know, it's just like you don't want those a clear path to
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the future of sustainability. And then you know, as far as opening up
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our network, I actually don't even know if this is actually, you know,
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a good thing for treasure or a bad thing. I mean, I
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think it's morally right, but it's whether it's financially smart race to be seen.
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But it was it would you know it was something that that would help
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the rest of the industry go electric, So we opened it up. And
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so we don't want to use it as kind of a world garden or competitive
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weapon. It's if it's something that would help advance sustainable energy, will do
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it. Let's say powerful statement about the commitment to sustainability exchanges. I'm curious
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salon and doing and taking that step. Might it also influence how you think
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about the evolution of your own charging networks? So for example, I think
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some of the other charging networks might have higher U voltages for fast charging.
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Is that something that you think would then lead you to migrators at or do
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you think you're in the right suite spot? Well, it depends on which
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cars. If we're talking about here, there's there's a maximum rate of which
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you can charge a pack. So you know, if you want to see
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that rate, it's not it's not relevant to that particular vehicle. You know,
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our latest superchargers will do of a three hundred Yeah fair to kill abots
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each other, we had to go back to some more planning. If yeah,
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exactly, so big big cable or very high voltage, we just crank
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it up to a million volts. Look at the same cables, electuisity joke.
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Yeah. So yeah, if you I mean that our squared our heating
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is real can really get you, but you just crank up the vaultage.
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So yeah, I mean it's three fifty kilobots. I mean you really are
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exceeding the rate which almost any battery can it can take an actually charge without
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damaging the battery. So I think we're will be found on out front.
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Our voltage for a long time has been roughly four hundred volts plus NINUS thirty
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and with the next generation, we're doubling that to the eight hundred volts.
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So I mean, there's there's it's it's not it's not as big a game
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as it may seem, but it's you know, it's slightly better. So
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our our super chargers will be able to operate it either four hundred or eight
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hundred volts and just you know, impedence matched to whatever the vehicles that's once
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be charged. Well again, it's a really fascinating move and it will be
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interesting to see how other OEMs you know, approach the Ford and GM announcements.
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Yeah. Like I said, we're you know, really just trying to
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do the right thing here, and you know it's there with gym Folly and
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very arter that you know, we will support GM and Ford cars on an
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equal footing note you know, special status for test the vehicles and that kind
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of thing. It's got to be fair. Sots talk about more will stick
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to it. It sounds like it's in line with making your patents open source,
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right Yeah. Yeah, Well all of those chargers are going to drive
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the need for a lot of infrastructure on our side of the grid. Yes.
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Actually, I can't emphasize enough. We need more electricity. How much
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electricity you think you need is more than that is needed. I show you
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if you're thinking traveled this incremental production capacity of electricity, Yes, definitely.
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You have as rooms fast as possible. Amen, So you have a room
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full of folks here. Some of folks are you members of EI regulated utility
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folks. There's suppliers here, vendors. It's a whole community that's that's needed
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here to make this happen. We also need to support of government, right
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and so it's been exciting to see the IRA funding. We're talking about this
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earlier today. Irai j a transformational for the US. Yeah, but we
22:56
still need more help, right than getting permitting, inciting reform for example,
22:59
to get the steal in the ground. I feel I feel the same way
23:03
like it's it's man. I mean, we're like practically leaking construction illegal in
23:07
this country, especially in California. I mean, you know, no offense.
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I lived there for a long time and I still I still spend I
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still spend a lot of time in California, FI and I am still pro
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California. Not easy sometimes, remember I am a California And I mean it's
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you know, even then, you know what I'm talking about that being recorded.
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I mean, I mean, try getting a permit to radio kitchen in
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LA. I mean it's a forget no deal, but but you know what
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that is. It is really something we're all dealing with. The Crosshill States
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it's federal permitting. At state levels, it's like we're just like you know,
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gullibus travels and each one of those regulations by themselves maybe not so bad,
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but it's like a like you've got a thousand, ten thousand little strings,
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you know, holding the Giant of America down, frankly from a regulatory
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standpoint. So that so that it's one part that we need to solve and
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appreciate testless engagement and policy space what you've done. Yeah, there's another part
24:06
of this, which is the collaboration between utilities and our customers, whether it's
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Tesla or somebody else. I was out in in Barstow, California recently,
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See territory, and I was seeing the upgrades that our team was making to
24:21
accommodate the large super charger station because you know, Barstow, for those of
24:23
you who don't know, smack between the drive between La and Las Vegas,
24:29
right so popular spot for charging. I've charged there, So I think this
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one's going to open, you know, right right following weekend or something something.
24:37
Charges are like major power, droll serious and so so they are,
24:45
and that means we need good collaboration. One of the things that EI has
24:48
done is reach out to the customer community, whether it's charging companies, whether
24:52
it's large fleet operators, to get that collaboration. But I'm curious, from
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your perspective, what more do we to be doing to collaborate better with you
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and with the OEMs and you know with frankly, you're charging competitors because we
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need everybody to get this ecosystem going. Well, I guess anything we can
25:11
do to make me grow faster would be would be great, and obvious is
25:18
not all in your hands. There's there's a lot of permitting and whatnot that
25:22
has to happen. But but I really can empasize enough. We're at,
25:26
like I think, a very exciting juncture for electricity providers, which is that
25:32
the demand for electricity is going to go, is going exponential and well,
25:37
like I said, roughly roughly trouble where it is today to get to a
25:41
fully sustainable economy. So so I think I would just be courtious about extrapolating
25:49
from the past, because the future is not like the past. The future
25:52
is is a massive increase in electricity demand and it's going to take everything we've
26:00
got to just keep up with it. So I think speed, like just
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figure out like how do we move faster, how do we have fast deployment
26:10
of electricity? And that's the whole everything matters, from generation to transmission to
26:15
the local substation. And I understand there's like like quite a long lead time
26:21
on like stepped down transformers. So man, I hope tells doesn't have to
26:26
make those too, but look forward to it. We need more of them.
26:34
Yeah. Well, well, I mean, my my my challenge to
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this the Megapact team is like, okay, guys, look, let's try
26:41
to get it to where you just take the big cables, the power cables
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and you just blogging in you know, no substation. You know that'd be
26:51
sweet. You know, you just just take the big metal wire and climb
26:56
it down here and you're done. Engineers talked a little bit about that.
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I mean, it's it's totally doable. You know, if you don't go
27:06
too crazy on the voltage, it's totally doable. You know, you do
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start having these like you know, can't have the wires too close together because
27:12
we're arking limits and stuff. But but but generally, like if they look
27:18
at MEGAPAC deployments, one of the limiting factors is the substation equipment to do
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voltage step up, you know, And and so we're just looking at like,
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okay, how can we make what are all the things that slow us
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down to getting to a sustainable energy economy and then we just tackle whatever appears
27:38
to be the biggest issue. And and I think, as we'll know,
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we also have these sort of consumer side of power wall which is obviously it's
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very tiny compared to the megapac, but it's also very can be very helpful
27:53
in a neighborhood for balancing power and offer having having the power walls operate collectively
28:00
to smooth out the power in a neighborhood, which we've got working quite well
28:03
in Australia at this point. And I believe we've got some test efforts in
28:08
California as well. I thank you we do with sc virtual power plant efforts.
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PGNA has m as well. That's a good transition tour I wanted to
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go next, or just when you think about that interaction with the customer,
28:22
Clearly we are interesting interacting with the customer. You are as well. It
28:26
can be through virtual power plants. I'll throw in by directional charging into the
28:30
equation too, right, So you put all these things together, technologies enabling
28:34
some different relationships with the customer. What's your vision for you know, how
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how that evolved server that experience. Well, like I can empsize enough that
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we're just going to hit constraints on electricity production and transmission on mass across the
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boards. That's why I'm like, I know, obviously it takes time to
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plant, form and permit and build a new power generation plant, but I
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that's why I'm encouraging important to start now. I'm not sure what your plans
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are for future electricity demand, but it's going to be I'm pretty sure it's
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gonna be much higher than what what what you currently think electricity man is going
29:21
to be. Well, I mean necessarily must be three times what it is
29:26
today in order of us to have a sustainable energy future. So that means
29:30
power plants, transmission. I mean there's obviously some I think that's not this
29:34
this to some degree, we can improve the power throughput of some of the
29:38
lines by jacking up the voltage. You know, make me requires separating cables
29:45
a bit more, but I obviously need to step up to step down transformers
29:52
different cables too. So just we have an area here called the hub with
29:56
a number of companies that have different technologies. We had Gates join us yesterday,
30:00
and you know, with a number of the companies that breakthrough, energy
30:04
of interest is supporting. One of those was a company that's making a cable
30:10
that can carry a lot more capacity. Right, So I agree that all
30:15
those technologies will be important. By the way, as we do the analysis
30:18
for California wide, we do see a future where California gets in at zero
30:22
and twenty five and it's not quite fully electrified. It's mostly electrified because other
30:30
other tools in the toolbox. And that's that's at least a sixty percent increasing
30:33
load, whereas it has been flat for decades now. So it's coming,
30:37
we agree, Okay, So I like, I think that's that's basically that's
30:42
it will be much more low than that maybe, yeah, by like a
30:48
lot like yeah, we're doing in our head are it's just everything's gonna be
31:00
electric. And I think the actually the average power users for a person is
31:04
going to increase, affair. But I means an interesting thing to consider it
31:10
is like he is total power used by humans on average over time, you
31:18
know, and you say, like you go from not that long ago when
31:22
the best we could do is kind of make a campfire. So you say,
31:26
and I'm talking like electricity and thermal energy per human was extremely tiny.
31:33
If you even go back two hundred years, we literally had to you know,
31:38
burn what are called locally to gain heat. There was no electricity,
31:47
you know. So and even if you take all of the like all the
31:52
steam engines to everything, and divide that by total number of humans, power
31:56
usage per human thermal electrical otherwise was a minuscule two hundred years ago and even
32:01
less three hundred years ago. Now it is incredibly high, and it is
32:07
rising. And this is and you're going to see I think a lot of
32:14
electricity usage by the sort of neural net data centers as well. There's a
32:20
heavy power draws. So in fact, I think one of the scaling constraints
32:28
for AI is going to be power availability. That there are quite power hungry.
32:36
So you've got you've got basically average energy usage for a person increasing dramatically
32:45
and a transition from burning hydrocobbins to things that are more sustainable. Anyways,
32:52
the point is it's going to be three x current, and I think that
32:55
three x number is probably probably have around fish. So this is the thing
33:05
about exponential growth, is it really it's counterintuitive and well you know, actually
33:14
exponentials are to tend to be kind of sort of underestimated, just you know
33:23
it just there's a long tradition of that. It's cell phones, other technologies
33:29
that yes, you know, humans have not been able to see escalating.
33:32
You know, this this brings up a different question area around some of the
33:37
other places where electrification is going to play a role. So we know,
33:40
we spent a long time talking a lot cars, but you know, building
33:44
electrification maybe another important tool to help reduce emissions over time. You know,
33:51
again, California different from other states, but we think that we're going to
33:53
see something like, you know, thirty percent of all buildings needing heat bumps
33:59
to get to the twenty already targets of the state has yet by twenty five.
34:05
How much focus are you putting on the building side of electrification right now?
34:09
And is that a place where you think testam I go, uh,
34:14
well, we have the power wall, which is but that's that's somewhat more
34:16
of a support. Yeah, that's like a for homes, homes and small
34:22
businesses. Its powerwall. I would certainly appreciate support from utilities with bringing powerwalls
34:30
online. And one of the you know, selling points of a power wall
34:36
is to give the homes like some amount of protection against brown out, blackout
34:44
type of thing. But sometimes we we we do get some up pushback from
34:49
utilities about enabling a sort of cut off switch because if if you don't if
34:54
if you don't cuttle power to if you if the grid loses power, then
34:59
point you just send up say if you've got, if you've got, you're
35:01
approaching electricity you know, back onto the grid, and it's kind of pointless.
35:06
It doesn't doesn't work. So we would appreciate some support in approving and
35:13
installing the backups, which which really just enables homeowners to have power for whatever
35:19
reason. There's there's the grids down for some reason. So that would be
35:24
most most appreciated and we'll continue to engage in that. Also from the utility
35:31
side, I want to make sure we're managing you know, safety reliability issues,
35:35
but you know, it's making sure we're understanding the technology and engaging with
35:38
your team to work through the details. Yeah, so but I maybe it's
35:44
it could be pretty helpful. And then like I said, the powerbls,
35:47
you know, operating collectively and help to stay alize the grid in a particular
35:52
neighborhood. I do think like local power generation, uh, you know,
35:58
basically rooftop solar and and with an accompanying battery pack is a helpful part of
36:05
solving the energy problem because there's a lot of neighborhoods where it's hard to get
36:10
incremental power to that neighborhood because you need like more substations, you need more
36:15
you know, overhead wires, and then you know, in a lot of
36:21
places that can be extremely difficult to achieve, you know because just from opposition
36:25
from people not wanting additional electricity wires overhead and not wanting to expand substations.
36:34
So there's a sort of a solution to there's where where local solar and local
36:39
storage helps alleviate some some very thorny situations where you just can't it's extremely difficult
36:47
to get more power to that neighborhood. So a little bit of local power
36:52
generation is pretty helpful. In fact, when when we do our analysis for
36:57
California, we see the state needing to add something like eighty giggle, what's
37:00
the bolt power renewables and thirty giggle what's of boll power storage? We're also
37:05
counting on thirty giggle what's it distributed renewables and ten gigs distributed storage. We
37:10
see, we need all the tools in the toolbox for what for it's coming
37:13
out exactly. Yeah, well, you know, one other touch points you've
37:16
had with our sector has been the work that you're doing here in Texas.
37:22
Where as I understand it, your you announced an energy retail business with a
37:28
subscription program right that allows powerable customers to I think it's a thirty dollars monthly
37:32
flat feet. Yeah, I mean, we're trying different experiments, so we
37:38
don't know what actually makes sense, but we're trying different experiments and see what
37:44
what might work. So yeah, for sure, trying to figuet like power
37:49
walls or working together help stabilize the grid, which they can reflect on that
37:55
many times now, and some megapact which is great at the sort of utility
38:04
or heavy industry level. So yeah, it seems, you know, we're
38:12
just trying to help foster or sustainable energy future, and it's going to take
38:17
many, many, many different technology solutions and different arenas to solve this kind
38:25
of tripling of electricity demand and provision problem. Well, let me let me
38:35
shift topics a little bit. And you mentioned AI earlier in the context of
38:38
being one of those drivers of electricity load increases, but you've also been pretty
38:46
outspoken about both the potential and the risk of AI. I think a number
38:51
of us are moving really quickly right now with use cases and how we use
38:55
it. I'll given one example at Edison. Last year, we did almost
39:00
two hundred thousand asset inspections and high wildfire risk areas using drones, just generating
39:05
terabytes of data, you know, a great ability to capture images all around.
39:07
There's no way humans could process all those images. So we've been using
39:10
an AI enabled tool to down select the images that we're going to look at.
39:15
Looking at other use cases right now, but we recognize ours risk too,
39:19
So love your thoughts about you know, broadly across the industry, and
39:22
then if you think about our sector, how should we be thinking about AI
39:27
from your perspective and both the opportunities in the risks there? Well, I
39:34
mean I've had many stupiless nights thinking about AI, So I am worried about
39:40
AI. On the downside, you know, I just it's sort of a
39:45
technology like like nuclear It's extremely powerful, but it could get out of hand.
39:53
And so I have been struggling with this question for a long time of
39:59
what do mitigate AI existential risk? And I've been a big proponent actually a
40:08
regulation of at least some having some oversight by the government, you know,
40:15
acting as kind of a referee to make sure that AI companies don't go do
40:21
super dangerous things and nobody's even watching them, or there's there's no there's no
40:25
sort of agent of the public, which is really you know, regulation when
40:31
it's done done right, is they're trying to oversee the good of the public
40:37
and make sure that companies don't kind of cut corners or break rules or do
40:42
things that would endanger the public. And this is the origin of the FAA,
40:46
and it's various regulatory organizations that exist. And now those regulatory agencies only
40:54
came into being after a lot of people died, you know, a lot
40:58
of things went wrong. So with AI, I don't think we can afford
41:01
luxury of like waiting until it goes wrong, you know, so I think
41:07
we need to be preemptive on this front. So I've had had a number
41:14
of conversations with world leaders, you know, including you know, personior people
41:22
in China, and it's around the world Europe. I'm actually heading to Europe
41:27
tomorrow have some AI safety conversations with with some of the country leaders there.
41:37
Is because I think, I think this is the kind of thing where the
41:39
world needs to work together on AI Safety's it's a really big deal. I
41:46
can't emphasize this enough. So I was someone encouraged by China's willingness to engage
42:00
AI regulation. And I did point out that you know, if you get
42:05
some digital superintelligence, it might be in charge of China and said, are
42:08
you and I'm not sure you would like that that that that argument seemed to
42:16
resonate. Well, you know, since you're bringing out of China, you
42:23
know, you're very active there, also active with government leaders. A little
42:30
ass script here, but as you think about US China relationship and how it
42:36
helps navigate or hurts, and as we don't trying to navigate whether it's AI,
42:38
whether it's a competitiveness for your products both in the US and Chinese markets,
42:45
how are you thinking about how that evolves and what's the endgame here in
42:50
terms of being able to work at both markets. I don't know what the
42:58
endgame is, but I can say the mid game is going to be spicy.
43:09
Have you with your operations in China? Have you do you feel like
43:15
we've enjoyed good support and are you comfortable with that in virtual property? Yeah,
43:22
we've actually gotten very good support in China. Tells it has the only
43:28
fully barn owned car factory in China, and we do very well in the
43:35
domestic market in China, and our you know, our shang Hi factory is
43:40
our highest per pointing factory globally. So it's a it's very impressive team that
43:45
tells it has in China. The work ethic there is incredible, so,
43:52
you know, I think it very interesting future the you know, we aren't
44:01
entering a phase where US will not be the biggest economy in the world.
44:07
And there's nobody alive today who can remember when the United States was not the
44:10
biggest economy in the world. So it is it's gary a little probably discomforting
44:16
at first to a lot of people to have China be probably you know,
44:23
two or three times the size of the US economy. So it's already higher
44:30
than the industrial output. Manufactual output is already significantly higher than the US,
44:35
and that will increase. And they've had a significant investment focus in electric vehicles.
44:40
Yes, China is actually, of any large country, the most board
44:45
leading with sustainable energy. So they have massive solar projects when projects and have
44:52
done the most with respect to electric vehicles of any large country. Of smaller
44:58
countries, norways leader, but for any logic for a large economy, it's
45:04
China set far the most forward leaning for sustainability. Well, let me pull
45:08
up from Tesla and you do have a few other places where you spend your
45:12
time. Yeah, so so you know, and I mentioned introducing you with
45:20
SpaceX, Twitter boring company Neuralink, which is really exciting. I saw you
45:23
at some approvals recently offering free brand shipping. As you leave the conference,
45:30
can I suggest a few folks to go first app here. You won't feel
45:35
a thing, you know, joking aside, you're making a personal choice to
45:43
spend time across these is there is there a common thread in terms of mission
45:47
across all of these And you know, and what what excites you most of
45:52
about your portfolio? Well, I mean the aspiration with these various things is
45:57
to maximize the probi The future is good for civilization. So it's, you
46:04
know, the future is just a set of probabilities, like we don't know,
46:07
you know, for sure what's going to happen, but degree we can
46:09
check the probabilities towards a positive future for civilization. I think we want to
46:15
do that. And me, this is really just you know, if you're
46:22
sort of long term thinker at all, it's this is naturally what one should
46:29
want to do, because you know, how can we really exist in the
46:30
absence of civilization. I mean, you can see what it's like just watch
46:35
you know, Naked and afraid is what it is when you don't have civilization.
46:43
It's a civilization pretty great. So I think we want to keep it
46:50
going and you know, and and keep advancing civilization. So I think we
46:58
can we should try to expand the scope and scale consciousness such that we are
47:02
better able to understand the universe and now places in it. So I would
47:07
call, you know, my philosophy of phlosophy of curiosity. And while we
47:15
will all die as individuals civilization and continue very poor, very very long time
47:22
billions of years or more, so we should try to make sure that happens.
47:28
So these various things that are doing, are trying to shift the probability
47:31
of future being good. Now, I hope that's It may turn out that
47:36
some of these things. The road to hell is paved with good intentions,
47:39
so hopefully, you know, those good intentions to not translate to something bad.
47:45
But I think the road to hell is is mostly paved by bad intentions.
47:49
And you know, once in a while there's a good intention of paving
47:52
stone in there, but the intent is to maximize probably the future is good
47:57
for civilization. So with in a case, so say your link it's like,
48:00
well, how does that affect things? It's like, well, if
48:05
we are to link the sort of the path of the AI too human,
48:14
well then what are the what what could act to impair that that linkage?
48:19
And we're getting pretty esoteric here, but one of the issues is the bandwidth
48:24
between your cortex and your computer or your AI, the AI extensive extension of
48:30
yourself. And if that bandwidth is too low, then the computer will simply
48:37
be bored. You will you know, as bandwidth I guess very low,
48:44
you effectively have a very thin stroll between yourself and the AI extension of yourself.
48:52
Now, now we're already cybulks when you think about the fact that your
48:55
phone and your computer are an extension of yourself, and probably you know,
49:00
I think most people if you forget your phone somewhere, it's like having missing
49:06
limb syndrome, you know, and you're like patting your pockets, and it's
49:09
like the phone is basically an extension of yourself, starting with you don't know
49:14
anybody's phone number anymore? Yes, right, exactly. I had just like
49:19
nightmare like where I was stuck at a party and someone else was taking my
49:23
phone and and and so I had their phone, but I can't use it.
49:29
And then they were like, so, well, well who should recall
49:35
I'm like, I don't know anyone's number, so you don't even know who
49:40
to call. How do you it's supposed to happen to what's happen a lot,
49:44
you know, It's like you don't know anyone's number, and you have
49:46
they've put your phone, and you can't call whatever, anuver or anything,
49:52
and you're just Stuckcause I like that idea of increasing the bandwidth between the computer
50:01
assistant and the brain, but apparently we also need a safety lock to make
50:05
sure we don't lose the computer in the process. Elon, this has been
50:08
terrific and I hope that it's not another eight years before we see her here.
50:15
Appreciate all the efforts you have and frankly the symptom and you provided around
50:19
trying to improve humanity and recognizing that the collaboration that we have between our sector
50:24
and your company it's critical to helping humanity deal with climates help. Thank you
50:30
so much for doing and please know we're all stand ready to continue to partner
50:35
to make this transition a real thing. Everybody, let's thank Elon very much
50:44
and thank you so much