I'd like to start by, I mean, you're involved in several really cutting edge kinds of things that are cool. But let's talk for a minute about this, the electric car, which is really an old concept in the car industry, right it is, actually and but you know there's a modern take on it. Why are you in that business? And do you agree with what has been written about you that it's fair to say that you have proven this is this can be sold at a profit in market conditions.
Sure, so the reason for Tesla was not because I thought that there was some huge opportunity in electric cars, or that I thought it was some rank order best way to get a return on investment or something like that. In fact, I think so a car company, particular electric car company, would have to rank as one of the dumbest things you could possibly do on that scale. And it may seem like, I mean, today, obviously we've we've got quite a quite a high market gap, just call
it that. And so it may seem, oh, well, this is sort of obviously a good thing to have done.
But for for many years people would people regarded this.
In fact, most people, almost all people regarded it as stupid or insane or both you know to have done that, so it's not so the reason for doing it was was not because I thought it was some great opportunity. The easiest thing for me to have done after people would have been to start a new internet company. That would have been like falling off LUG, I mean, quite
really easy. And and so the the reason it was because it clear that we were not going to see electric cars from the incumbent manufacturers.
For for a while that I thought that we potentially.
Would, because you had the E V one from General Motors, for example, and it seemed like the obvious thing to do would then be do the e B two EV three.
Frankly, if Jeral Motives had done that, they would be in a far better position today.
And but then instead, what what Gero Motives did was as soon as California changed the regulations, they recalled the e V ones and just to make sure that nobody could get them back, they took them to a junkyard and crushed them and h and and if you've seen the movie Who Killed the Electric Car, you'll see that they actually those customers tried the best to keep the cars, and.
When the cars were taken to the junk yard and crushed. They held a candle at vigil.
Yeah, because the cars were leased, they were not ever sold out right, Yeah.
They held the candle at vigil as though it was someone dying. And I think that should be a pretty big wake up hall.
If people are holding a candle a visual for your product, maybe you shouldn't cancel it. Yeah, maybe you shouldn't cancel it, you know, and yeah, so but but they did, and so they can't all people activities. So the reason for Forteesla was to show that it actually is possible to create a compelling electric car or you know, a long range car electric car, and if you did that that people would buy it because the condosary is operating on
what I believe to be two false premises. One was that you could not make a compelling electric car, one that was esthetically appealing, long range, higher formance, all these things, and that even if you did all those things, the Conisstry's opinion was that people would still not buy it because it was electric and they had some bardaners for burning gasoling.
People had moved you into it?
What was the starting you said, Internet company was like falling off a log, easy to do why that area.
Then why electric cars? Oh?
So, because I think it's I think it's important that we transition to sustainable transport. If we don't transition to
sustainable transport, obviously totologically it's not sustainable. And even if there were not an environmental issue, in fact, even if you were to say hypothetically that emitting cobbon was good for the environment, because of the scarcity of of oil and natural gas and support, the would eventually face extremely high gasoline costs and the economy would grind into a halt if we did not find some sustainable means of transport.
Do you worry that the electricity that is generated and used when the cars are recharged and plugged in is a lot of it is generated from coal?
Does that? Yeah?
I mean, depending on where you are in the country, you know, say roughly half of it is it is not colled, but so roughly half of it is hydrocarbon based. And however, that's that's There are two obs rebuttals. That one is that if you take the same source fuel and you burn it at the power plant level, you will get two to three times the efficiency.
Then if you burnt it in the car itself, because.
At the power plant level you're not constrained by mass and volume, so you can have something that's big and heavy, and you can also take the waste heat and generate a steam and a user turn of steam turbine, so.
You get what's called cogeneration.
To your maximum extractful energy, it is much greater for the stationary power plant than if you burned that same fuel in a mobile transfer. We have formal constraints. And then the other factor is that we have to find sustainable means of electricity production anyway, So if you believe in that predicate, you can write that predicate and say, given that we must have sustainable electricity production, the obvious move for transport is electric.
So when you're talking about these ideas of getting doing this particular thing, one of the things that's I think struck a lot of people about you is the scale of the vision. That it's not one that it's very difficult, two that it's a little crazy going along with city sex. At the same time, what what do you imagine is that you've had many years doing this, many critics, You're going.
To make it. You're getting a lot of what was going about subsidies.
I think that you talk about that what is the why these kind of projects?
And this is sort of a bigger question, I want to think you but the idea of the bigness.
Of the project, because there's been this The industry has been littered with electric car funerals, essentially, and not as many candle like vigils obviously, but right.
Yeah, that there have been many car company failures, not just electric of course. And honestly, I've had like a dollar for every time somebody brought up Glorian or Tucker. I wouldn't need an IPO, you know, it would have been perfectly financed just on that alone. So when I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that I thought would affect the world, and there were three areas that I thought would most affect the world, and one of them was the Internet.
So did a couple of companies in that. But then it seemed like after payfo hours, like there's a lot of really.
Talented entrepreneurs and a lot of capital doing Internet ventures. So it didn't seem like I could necessarily be all that incrementally useful in the Internet arena, and so it was times to then go to two other the other two areas which were sustainable energy and space exploration, in particular developing a technology necessary to make life multiplanetary.
So multiplanetary life is it might be more interesting than cars. We'll get into that surely, but I do have to ask you know, the this is it's an important it's very important that you've made an attractive car with longer range than I think than you're right, than people thought possible. That's electric, all electric, but it's fairly expensive, I think, at least upfront. And what does it cost your most successful one.
Well, before text credits, it's about seventy thousand dollars. After tax credits is like sixty.
Now we're getting a tax credits, so there's like a there's some kind of federal tax credit right for buying a pure election. And then you were telling me backstage, a whole bunch of states, fifteen states or something have these.
Right, there's different types of credits.
So the the first thing I should say is that.
People think of like electric cars.
As receiving a subsidy, but but in fact what's occurring is that they are receiving less of a subsidy than gasoline cars if you would actually look at the subsidy of gasolete gasoline cars, and particularly if you're priced in the economic oil the inventory of the environmental damages. The what's really occurring is that every time you buy a gasoline.
Car that there are huge subsidies occurring.
And you can actually tell that these subsidies are are higher than they than than than the substituce for electric cars, because people are not buying electric cars except I mean ours, and not huge.
These are upstream subsidies to the oil companies and so forth. For the they're both direct whole the whole tax.
It's there's some normals, some of it's like half a trillion dollars in substys too.
Okay, but you do get you also get some federal and state subsidies, right, yes, And then there's this these credits that you are able to sell to the other car companies. Can you explain what that is?
Sure? Sure?
Although just to emphasize game, it's it's pretty obvious that the credit, whatever substes are occurring for electric cars are are less than for gasing cars. Otherwise things like the Chovy Vault or the nis On Leaf would sell in large quantities, but they are not, and so that's like an obvious test. Then with respect to zerium mission vehicle credits, so ZEV credits, these apply to about forty percent.
Of the viewers population and they were.
Actually put in place quite a while ago to deal with pollution and evolution in in places like LA and the Bay Area in New York and so so whenever you're driving cars in the dense an area, you're essentially emitting a bunch of toxic gases that negatively affect people's health and obviously the quality of the air.
And it's pretty obvious in LA during the summer.
So in order to motivate manufacturers to move away from that, the States enacted the ZEV credit mandate, which was that a small number of electric or zero mission vehicles have to be made by all large scale manufacturers, and if they don't make those vehicles, then they have to purchase ZEV credits.
From someone who has. But when we sell a ZEV credit, we sell.
It at sixty five cents on the dollar. So the best thing that another.
Manufacturer could make would be electric.
Cars, because then they get one hundred cents on the dollar for every tax credit.
So why don't they.
Well, I'm hopeful that they will. I think to some degree at least, some of the manufacturers were hoping that.
No one would come up with an electric vehicle that anyone wanted to buy, and that California the other ZEV states would repeal their ZERV mandate because they've lobbied for that outcome many times and have less well been unsuccessful if Tesla. If Tesla was unsuccessful, then I think they would have been able to repeal ZEV mandates.
So when you're getting into the concept of these cars, these prices are still along with subsidies and everything else is still a high price tag. What is your goal is to bring in I mean you have there's lots of people here who owned Tesla's.
Yeah, thank you everyone.
Thank you for Brian Tesla by the way, so to say, all of you guys who bought Tesla's.
You guys are some significant percentage of your your customers are here. But but what there.
Is there's a larger country, far sighted awesome individuals and board Tesla's.
Where do I actually I'd.
Like to say a special shout out to Tony Say who has the largest what made the largest number of Tesla orders in the US of one.
Hundred cars for his project in downtown Vegas.
Yes, yeah, so thanks Tony.
H So that's a very it's a super interesting project.
How do you get it down to levels that Tony of Zappos, We don't have to be twenty of Zappos five.
So Tesla, you know, when we first started out, I actually wrote.
A blog piece to outlining the Tesla strategy, and it's been out there for a long time.
It really just outlined the sort of three step.
Process that Tesla's going through to get to mass market compelling electric cars. And step one was making the tels the roads, so high price low volume, then mid price mid volume, and then low price high volume.
So there's a you know, we'd step two. The price of the model is actually less than it may.
Seem at first because the cost of gasoline is so much more than the cost of electricity that you save a lot of money.
Yeah, exactly.
And you know that that depending upon how you counted, as you know, somewhere in the fifteen to twenty thousand dollar region over.
The lifetime of the car, over the of a sort of seven years figure, it's been roughly two thousand dollars a year, depending upon what you assumption is for gas prices are Yeah, but.
When will there be a thirty thousand or thirty five thousand dollars tesla?
Yeah, So step three I'm expecting in about three to four years.
And what's required to get you from here to there is it got to do with design and technology.
It's one of the scale or what well the.
I think any new technology needs at least three major iterations to get to the mass market. I mean, certainly cell phones have gone through many more than that, and I'm sure people remember like the Wall Street one where he's walking down the beach from the giant break of a cell phone on his ear, and that thing was super expensive and like lasted for thirty minutes. You can't evenity this audio quality was terrible. And now you can have a supercomputer in your pocket for one hundred bucks.
And so with electric vehicles similar you're trying to compete with gasline cars that have had one hundred and fifty years and trillions of dollars spent on them. So I think if we can make it there by our third generation, that's pretty awesome. So I think there's certainly design optimization is one factor, and then the.
Other is the call will be a little bit smaller, so maybe twenty percent smaller than the model less, and we will have an.
Order of magnitude greater production, so we have the economy's scale.
To help us out. I think those three factors will take us to fifty percent.
And and when will you be at a point where if even if you didn't have subsidies or and credit sales, you would be profitable?
Yeah, so I think.
We're anticipating being profitable or I should say even better, will better than slightly profitable in the fourth quarter of this year. We're projecting twenty five percent gross margins absence of credits as absolute.
Credits, so not getting this extra subs money, but not absent the texts.
Right, Yeah, and there's a consumer sort of tax credit, which is effectively something that improves the level of demand for the product, but doesn't directly affect our gross margins. And so we don't get that Tesla doesn't get the tax credit the consumers.
Why haven't many companies raised to you and you're showing that there are cars people, there is an audience for this.
Where are the rest of these companies now.
Well, I'm hopeful that our results from the first quarter world cause the other car companies to answer the electric car in a significant way. But until now, they didn't really have a good basis for that because they would look at you, say, what are the examples of successful electric cars. I mean, we did have our Tesla roads are out there, but they wrote that off as being something that's really low volume, kind of a niche product for techno geeks type of thing.
And so they they wrote that off right, And yeah, it's actually funny.
Because before we were able to get the roads round, then they'd say, well, you couldn't possibly make that car work. And then we made the car work, they'd say, well, nobody's gonna buy it, and then people bought it, and then we announced the models and.
So many people called bullshit on that. It was ridiculous.
And and yet actually the we're able to bring it to market, and then we brought it to market. They said, well, you're never going to be able to produced volume and did that, and then they said you will never be able to make a profit, and then we did that in Q one. So I'm hopeful that there's a you know, people will observe that there's a trend here, and and if so, now that we have been profitable, I think other manufacturers are more likely to embark on electric vehicle projects.
And and it's also be mentioned that we do make electric.
Power trains for Daimler and Toyota, so for.
The electric graph for we make the battery pack and power train for the Mercedes Beak classes coming out later this year, we'll be making that whole.
Are they open to that? Do you feel that they're open?
I mean a lot of the you know, you can paint the car company what we want, but are they Do you feel as if they're open or thinking about that?
Yeah? I think so.
The challenge is to convince them that it should be more than just a little niche.
Product or a hybrid or something like that.
Yeah, well they may, I mean turn it off was gonna make just quite big on hybrids. But the to convince them that electric cars should be a mainstream item. There's a little bit of work to do on that front.
And until they're a mainstream item in terms of having enough of an infrastructure of charging, obviously you've done a lot to help that problem with range, but still people want to feel like they're not going to be stranded, that there are going to be charging stations, and I know, yeah.
Yeah, we've got an announcement about that.
To my advice, you do yeah here, now, well, uh.
You you just sort of let the cat out of the back.
Might as well just well.
Hm hmm, because you're so quiet and retiring mostly exactly you never do anything, just mouth off at a New York Times reporter for example.
Right yeah, exactly.
All right, well, so so wait, something called the supercharger, right because which is an advanced charging technology that we developed, and uh yeah, I guess I might as.
Well let the cat out of the back. Why not?
The so the super charge of technology. Super charging technology is so we developed because obviously traditional charging has been way too slow and it's not been effected. It's effective for long distance travel, so it's it is very important to address this issue of long distance travel because when when people buy a car that there's they're also buying something which is a sense of freedom and ability to
go anywhere that they want and not feel fettered. So we had to make something that was really quick to charge. So so that were we developed and there are actually a bunch of them out there now in California and on the East Coast from allowing you to go from Boston to d.
C and travel throughout California and Nevada.
And what we're what we were going to announce tomorrow is that there's there's going to be a dramatic acceleration of the supercharging network.
And by the end of next month.
We will triple the supercharger coverage area.
Where where is it going?
So it'll it'll be uh, there's actually a map that will be go live tomorrow obviously, but people will be quest priced learn learn this. But at Tesla.
Uh, blame it on the CEO of SpaceX, yeah exactly, or if you want, you can blame it on me.
All right, blame it on its Waltz boy, because you know you like tangling with reviewers.
Reviewers, but you do good reviews.
I haven't reviewed your car.
Well, I mean I should say accurate reviews.
Thank you all.
So, the Supercharge Network, by the end of this year will will have covered most of the major metro areas of the US and southern Canada, and in fact, you'll be able to drive all the way from l A to New York just using the supercharge.
Network and does that?
Does that? Also does that includes not only putting it in places where it doesn't exist today, but also increasing the density on the two coasts.
Absolutely exactly good point. The density is not quite as good as it should be.
So we're both improving the density of the supercharges stations along well traveled routes as well as increasing the geographic.
Scope of the network.
That's usually important.
It is absolutely because even tell.
Me if you think I'm nuts, but I think that. It's like in the old days, people would go and buy a desktop tower computer and they would not buy one unless it had five slots for cards in it. Never opened the computer and put a card in it. Well, I yeah you did, But I mean a lot of people would be told by their techy friend, you have to have you know, three empty slots or five euntry slots,
but they never opened it put the slots in. Even if you only drive your car commuting to work, well within the range of the car and a few errands and stuff, you always want that sense of freedom. If I had joy, could get in this car exactly and go from Boston, DC or something.
Yep, that's right.
I mean psychologically it's really very very important.
It's extremely important and so on. Because all testas are wirelessly.
Updated by the cell networks, we actually update the supercharger locations in the car.
So on the Tesla map, if you just tap the little.
Lightning button, it'll actually direct you to the nearest supercharger. So as you're driving, you can go wherever you want. And with the release later this year, you'll be able to navigate anywhere in the country in the car will automatically route you to the supercharger along the way.
Fantastic.
So one question is that why you hit back so hard at the times? I mean, we joke about it and stuff like that, but many people don't do that. What was the reasoning? And I know you've said a lot about this, brother, Yeah, what was your reasoning?
It's like you're not going to take this or you Yeah, well, I mean I thought about it a fair a bit before actually responding, so it wasn't sort of just totally off the cuff thing.
But but when the articles was published, we saw a significant decrease in sales, particularly in the New York Times sort of main readership area in sort of the North Northeast, particularly in cold areas, and the the article that really sort of played to people's biggest fear about electric cars, that that that you're right out and that they don't work in the cold, which is actually completely false.
They do work really well in the cold.
In fact, our highest sales per capita are in Norway, and the single person who's bought the single largest number as an individual of Tesla's literally lives above the Arctic Circle. Why he is an ophthalmologist in it against Crotholms is his name is great guy.
Wait, he's an ophtthalmologist. He lives above the artist circle and he has a whole bunch of electric cars. Yeah, I just wanted.
To get I mean, one of the I just wanted to get the scenario.
But true, it's amazing. Yeah, any and every day takes an electronic pill also.
Yeah exactly, but driving through like the you know winner which is Pomany midnight and so obviously they.
Work pretty well. And in fact, after that article, we had.
Since it was still sort of winter Norway, we actually had someone do it a modeless test drive from I think almost near the Artic circle uh to Oslo Okay.
But you know, as I'm a reviewer. Yeah, we've already discussed and some people in the room now. But ah, so part of a review is factual. This is actually what part of the review is that factual? No? No, no, which okay, no, let me let me explain. Part of the a review is opinion. Y yeah, sure so, but you have to state if you're doing specs, if you're doing like in my case, it's it's a battery test on something. I have to think, this is how I did the battery test. This is what the result is.
I can then have an opinion. You might have a different but you might say, well, even if I accept Mossburg's battery tests, I don't agree with him that this is good enough battery life. I need better battery life. So I think he's too easy on this product, or the other way around, you know whatever. So part of it is the facts, and part of it is what opinions you draw from that. Sure, you know, the screen is this big, the camera has this those are facts.
So was it was it just for the guys? There was?
It was?
It was a fact thing in fact in fact. So when when we got the call back, we looked at the at the data logues as compared to the article that that was written. And the article is factually incorrect and in multiple places and in fact, and one could perhaps subscribe that to to error on his part, but by the tenth mistake in a row that is interpreted in the wrong direction, that that lacks credibility.
And so you know, if we it's like if you did that battery test.
On something and and you and you you said factual information that was it was untrue in a very important way.
I mean that that that's that's a big deal.
And so if we didn't speak out against that, that article would live forever and people would have this this really wrong impression of the car, and they would think.
That what he said if we did not oppose it.
Times didn't back down, did they?
Actually?
The public editor of the Times did an investigation and concluded that that he that the article was was wrong.
We disagree.
I agree with the public editor over the motivation in the words, the public editor said the article was wrong, but didn't agree that it was intentional, whereas in my opinion, it's difficult to interpret that as anything but intentional.
And then what then, just to close this up up, wasn't there some controversy about the fact that you had put sensors on the car that aren't normally sold on the car.
No, it's the same sensors.
Okay, so this is really important, but space the final frontier. Sure, are you what is your ultimate plan or goal for SpaceX? What is it you want to do with it? Is it just to prove that a private company can deliver stuff to the space station or.
What is Like I said, it's the goal with SpaceX is to.
Improve rocket technology and spacecraft technology and keep improving it every year until ultimately we're able to send people to Mars and estellish a self sustaining base on Mars.
That's Mars.
Yeah, to make make a life multiplanetary, as I's saying, as long as I expect that this will necessary. Cur mean, I agree that this is an unlikely outcome, but if we do not keep improving space technology every year, then that that will never happen.
Didn't George W. Bush want to go to Mars?
He did? Actually, how many of people know that?
Yeah, so that's kind of put you in George W. Bush in the same category as George is his dad h one of them not wanted a space program. First get us to Mars?
Right, Yeah, Actually George H. W.
Bush, shortly after gaining office, actually asked NASA to come up with a plan in ninety days for sending people to Mars, and NASA did come up.
With that plan, but it was habit trillion dollars.
So he decided that maybe it wasn't such a great idea. And that was obviously twenty years ago, whatever it was, you know.
So why why Mars?
Explained meant, what what what's the track mark? That was? That was really was a hapatrille?
That's cheap, right, I know, it's well the fence budgets bigger than that.
So why Mars? Why Mars? Over now? Just purposes?
Elon went to space Camp many years ago with the Serge Larry Meghan, James, Joaquin Pierra Medio or a bunch of you very strange people SpaceX right, Yeah.
What why and you know, were you in a star trek mode or what.
Was the what was the space camp?
I know you guys did that, but but what they had out.
What was interest?
Because you said a few minutes ago that that there were three things that you were you know, and what was the Internet? When was the electric car and the other was space. So why what got you into space?
Right?
So, if if you mean about the future of humanity, it's going to fundamentally bafecate in two directions old life as we know it. Either it's going to become multiplanetary or it's going to be confined to one planet until some eventual extinction events. So I think it's much more to put.
It that way. Let's go to Mark.
And by the way, I'm optimistic about life on it if as long as though I'm.
Like, I think we'reise, but you're convinced there will be an extinction event, Well, I.
Mean that's pretty obvious from the Fussil record.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean it's for sure we.
Face dangers that the dinosaurs didn't face because it could be yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah we could.
Yeah, we do ourselves in the.
Actually I had better diets Theynosty exactly.
So so the I just think, you know, we want to have a future ultimately where humanity is out there exploring the stars or space. Frank civilization and the things that we read about in science fiction books and and seeing movies becomes true. We don't want that always to be a fiction of the future. So if we don't improve space technology every year, we're never going to get there.
And so the gold of SpaceX is to make as much improvement as possible and and hopefully we'll we'll see people land on us in our lifetime.
I have to ask, I just have to ask you. Have you literally looked into or had someone look into or are they still looking at you for you whether you could do warp drive? I mean, really actually.
Is a well, you know this, there actually seems to be oddly enough some breakthrough on the whole wolf drive thing, because you can't exceed the speed of light, but technically it is possible, theoretically possible to wolf space itself.
So that even on your in your in your local space time.
Continuing, you're not traveling faster than the speed of light, but you're you're warping space such that space is moving.
And and that's what got that? Is that A Now, wait a minute, I actually kind of.
Like he goes to the Star Trek Museum in Las Vegas, So let's not.
Is is that like in the fourth quarter or next year?
Well, I'm not sure warp drives ultimately, I mean, warp drive may or may not come to come to fruition.
But I think if we at least.
Have a base on Mars, that's going to create a forcing function for the improvement in space transport technology and gives us the best chance of ever achieving something like a wolf drive that would enable to travel easily.
But listen, Scottie Spock, let's talk about now.
Okay, all right, right, second, good.
Movie by the way, Yeah, it's it's recommend seeing the New Start movie.
By the way, Larry Elson's son produced it, which is right, only enough, what's happening now? What's available now for us? Not warp drive, not transporter beams or whatever.
The big breakthrough that's needed in rocketry is to achieve a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, and.
It's important to have those. Those are important qualifications because.
If you think of any other motor transport like a plane or bike, car anything, of course that they are reusable. Yeah, and you can very reasonable quickly and you know, fairly completely apart from maintenance schedules.
And the only one we have the United States at least built, or anybody built, I think, was the Shuttle, right, and that was partly usable, but not quickly.
And it was only partly reusable. So the main tank, the big orange thing, was not reusable. I was guaranteed to be expendable every time. There wasn't just a tank that that big arch thing was actually the primary airframe to which the orbit of the plane pot and the side boost is attached. So even in the best case scenario, it would not have been reusable in a substantial way. And then it took an army of ten thousand people nine months to refurbish a shuttle for flight, which is
obviously not rapidly reusable. So in order to have a breakthrough, you have to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, and we're making progress in that direction, and I'm hopeful that sometime in the next couple of years we'll be able to achieve full and rapid usability of the first stage, which is about three quarters of the cost of the rocket, and then with a future design architecture, achieve full reusability.
And how long does it take to get to Mars with whatever the technologies you.
Play with With relatively sort of standard rockets, a low energy trajectory would be about six months. Well, you can compress it down to three months without too.
Much trouble and you're now and there's no You're talking about a humans on this rocket going to Mars. So are there any dangers? I have read that there are radius possibly go wrong. That's ridiculous.
Come on, I don't even like to drive with you. I mean, yeah, a vice versa.
Yeah, So it's it's uh, there's probably some challenges along the way, but but I think.
It's I think it's possible. I think we can make it work like this way.
There's no if we're not violating any laws of physics, it's all.
It's all.
It's difficult but achievable, and and I think we should really try our hardest to make it happen. And why Mars wells is the only place where we could really create a self sustaining civilization of on on a planet scale?
Can you explain these people who don't know like myself?
Okay, well, so.
If you look at you know, various planets we've got Mercury is too close to the sun, Venus is yeah, yeah, I mean the rock smells on Mercury, so yeah, toasty.
And then and then Venus is still pretty pretty hot.
It's several hundred degrees and it's hype, and the atmosphere is high pressure and it's acidic, so it's a high pressure, hot acid bath.
So we actually thought of having a de conference on Venus.
Going to work say that Venus would be very challenging.
And then Mars obviously is on the other side of Earth, and it's it's it's colder than Earth, but it's it's uh, the temperature on Mars actually gets above room temperature on Earth on a hot day in the summer.
And you could warm Mars.
Up over time with greenhouse gases and kind of the opposite of what.
We're doing on Earth. Yeah, this is great export our greenhouse gas and we're good at that.
You can bring all the gas covering all the.
All the GM cars there.
Yeah, but Mars' atmosphere is primarily common dix side, which shows you how long, I mean, it's been there for four billion years, shows you how long common dox side lasts.
It hangs around slowly, it warms up a planet.
Yeah, it was quite a thin common dox that atmosphere. But if you would but we could bucket.
Up, we could buck it up.
We know, we have practice exactly.
So mas Is, you know, is a sort of it's a fixed rupper of the planet. But we could we could make it work. We can make it work.
Do you do you do you want to go there yourself?
I know you said you didn't want to die in a rocket accident rather just impact.
Yeah, right, impact, But you don't mind dying there?
Yeah, I think, I mean, all things considered, I mean, if one's gonna die anywhere, kind of cool, you know, cool to die in Mazan.
I'm going with Hawaii. But yeah, so.
I think I think that, yeah, that'll be that'll be neat.
But I just think the the things that kind of get me going are like, I think it's just really important to to me to and I think to a part of the other people in this room that if.
You look to the future, that it's an inspiring, exciting thing.
You know, the future is a better better than the present, or this has a good chance of being better than the present. And I think that's that's the main driver for me. It's it's it's like, okay, what we have what would.
Be a space frank civilization.
Or what we've be confined to point, I think it would be so much better if it was the former.
Right now, your rocketsto are for doing payloads, and it's a you're trying to make a business out of it too, correct.
I mean, yeah, yeah, absolutely, So we've got to keep SpaceX. We've got to pay the Bose, right, And so the what SpaceX does is is launch satellites for commercial customers and do space station servicing. Cool NASA, So we won the primary contract to do space station transport of cargo to and from the space station, in fact with the only craft capable of bringing significant cargo.
Back from the space station.
But it's not readily reusable yet, correct, it's not. It's so you're in. Your breakthrough in a sense has been to do what NASA and the Soviets used to do or still do to some extent.
Soviets still do it.
But to do it in a via a private company.
Yeah, I'd say you breakthroughs thus far on the SpaceX side are are incremental in nature, not revolutionary, and the aspiration is to to have a revolutionary breakthrough. And I should point out that the cost of the propellant in the rocket is only about zero point three percent of the cost of the of the vehicle, so it's maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars to refuel the rocket, and
where's costs of sixty million dollars? And which it makes sense if you think about planes, like how much does a plane cost versus refueling a plane?
Right, big, big difference.
Nobody would be flying if you had to buy a new plane every flight.
Now, although although United should.
Right exactly that this come of time, we.
Have some of those United flights.
Yeah, just lim along in the tooth.
When you're thinking of these things, you're doing a lot of stuff. Kind of busy fella. Who were your heroes? Who are you? What inspired you to be this?
Sure?
Well think uh, generally a lot of people that ad mind in history, certainly scientists and engineers and technologists in general. Obviously I'm a big admier of Tesla, Nicola, Tesla, and and and you know many others huh, I mean on the obvious people you can imagine saying I like I like Tesla, Edison too. Other people sometimes are surprised to hear that since we were company called Tesla. And uh, you know Einstein Newton, Uh, just like Darwin A big
fan of Ben Franklin. I think he's just you know, some example of a great human being in history, you know, so that I'd say that people like that.
And are are there. Obviously you, uh were one of the pioneers of an important Internet company, PayPal. Did anybody else in the kind of IT t area inspire you? I mean obvious, See, all those people you mentioned are really great geniuses, but they were kind of well before the There are more scientists and theyre and inventors well before the IT era or is it just too early in the It?
Absolutely amy anyone who's who's worked hard to accomplish some great thing, I mean, it's it's worthy of admiration. So you know, obviously it's hard not to admry someone like Steve Jobs, you know, Bill Gates or you know sort of present day big fan of Larry Page is a good friend of mine, you know what him and said I give on there is pretty awesome.
So yeah, and then probably many many journalists.
I'm not against journalist. Look you're here, yeah exactly.
But when you talk about the Internet of today, how do you look at it? You were in a very clear part of the Internet that was you know, and I remember you and you were mister Web one point zero like they were, right, you know, and you did infect pose in front of cars.
I remember there was some car picture.
These Yeah, yeah, por mclareneff one, right exactly, So.
You weren't close, no, no.
Well, yeah, so you know what that is. And I shall tell you here. I actually do have I haven't told me was.
In a while, but I do actually still own one gasoline car, which is a sixty seven Series one E type jagh.
I don't know which great, I know exactly what it says. I have a Master five. I love a lot.
But when I when I was sort of in college, there were I was reading about the mclareneff one and it's just an insuring work of art. I mean, it's really really done right, and and so I thought, if I haven't made a plenty that i'd buy them mclareneff one. So I'm actually living in an apartment in Pola Walter that that costs.
Significantly less than the car.
I remember that picture.
Yeah, And it was either upgrade to a house or buy the car. And I bought the car.
Yeah.
And were you married at the time.
I was, actually, Yeah, you posed in front of it. It was quite a symbol of the time, you know.
Yeah, exactly.
I wasn't really it probably wasn't the best idea, but there was an impact. It was was kind of funny. It was this show which was like if there was ever sort of a show in Hubris who probably was called Silicon Valley gold Rush and it was literally filmed in ninety nine, in nineteen ninety nine, and and so they filled me and getting the McLaren and and a.
Number of other people as well.
Unfortunately PayPal worked out, otherwise it would have been extremely embarrassing.
Did you go like, ooh, I go one or something.
I know how to do that, but I was pretty excited about getting it.
So why when you look at the Internet of today when the we're gonna get to questions from lots of questions from the audience, I'm sure, what do you think of the rest of the space the photo sharing? Is it meaningless because given you're going to Mars and everything, or is it.
What I mean?
People are like Vine, like, you know, you a selfie just animated. A lot of people you know, are kind of excited about I love them. Carriage had some great ones, absolutely, but it's not going It's not to planetary habitats. It's like a different thing, you know, or even being able to drive from New York to la on electric power on electric power.
What do you think of when you look at the Internet right now, what do you about what's developing and what's happening.
Well, I mean I think I actually I'm not dismissive of things like like photo sharing apps and that kind of thing.
I think the.
I mean, there's a lot of things where it provides say a small amount of value to a lot of people, and that you know, sums up to some large value.
And that's that's still good.
I mean, people able to share photos of their friends and family in a better way.
I think that makes their lives better.
And if if that puts a high value on the company, so be it.
I think that's not that bad.
And I mean, I think we've got an enormously a lot of talents and people, a lot of talent, entrepreneurs, Finnish capitalists and now those in the Internet arena, and I think it'd be great if some of those people would would actually go to other arenas that that could use their talent.
I mean, that's the only thing that I.
Would say, Well, there is this concept someone someone the other day when I was asking what's going.
On in Silicon Valley and he said, very smart guy.
He said, you know, there's a lot of big minds chasing small ideas, right, and I sometimes you know the ninth kind.
Of silly little thing.
You're like, Wow, these are fantastic and yet like everyone's making twinkies, right kind of thing.
So yeah, and I think that's there's probably I mean, i'd recommend that that people consider arenas outside of the Internet, because there's there's there's a lot of like I said, there's a lot of industries that could use that entrepreneurial talent and the skills that people have learned in creating companies.
And you know, then there's actually a lot of.
Opportunity, uh in these industries, particularly once where they've been kind of dominated by an oligobalistic set of companies for a long time. Oligopolies are not diopolism. Monopolies are not
great at innovation. Innovation comes from new entrants to an arena, and so when an industry has had the absence of new entrants, it tends to have very limited innovation, which also means that if you do get a break on through the other side, then you, there is a lot of opportunity for a company that's that's created there.
So what are you doing next?
Because you're you know, we're kind of bored with these last two.
Well, I think I'll be occupied with Teslim and SpaceX for a long time.
But is there one other?
Don't you have a solar thing?
Yeah? In fact, But I should clarify that a lot of.
Times people ascribe the success of Soul City to me, but I surely should be ascribed to the my cousins, the co founders, Leonard and Peter Rive. I mean, I provide some strategic advice and I suggested that they do a company in the solar arena. But but they deserve the vast majority of the credit for for that outcome, and it should simply shouldn't be ascribed to me.
Okay, all right, well we're going to take thanks you.
And by the way, Elon said to me, he wasn't why would we want him here? He's not a technologist, just so you know, well, and I just was like, I don't know.
What you're talking.
Well, I'm a technologist, but I'm not on Internet, so I'm not like digital.
That's the thing.
It's like, I was like, okay, well things digital, Well nothing digital's not exactly digital.
There's nothing digital in the Tesla.
There are digital things, but it's yeah, it's in sale things digital and physical.
All right, let's get to the question. Sure, just be called old Things. That's our new name.
You want to serve there?
Okay, all right, Surevan picturevar from Sharp Howlan. I've been coming here for many years, and all of us so who have been here for many years of we're always inspired to see see jobs here and obviously we all miss him deeply, but somehow your presence here and your inspiration really eases that pain. So thank you for coming. I say, Elan, there there is one idea you have that we've discussed before, which is hyper loop, and I would love for you to tell this audience what that
is and how it could change our world. Again, thank you.
Yeah, I would actually love to to answer that question.
But if I do it, will that will be the news tomorrow it whereas I need to do the test of news. You did that, yeah, so so.
Yeah, I think probably'll.
Be able to talk about the Hyperloupe idea and maybe pretty soon there's there's a Tesla announcement We've got next month or so, around June twentieth or so, and I think.
I think at some point.
After that would I took that should hopefully that that that will be a good time to talk about the Hyperloupe idea.
But for those that aren't aware, the basic.
Thought is is is there a better way to travel quickly from uh say, downtown LA to downtown San Francisco or Eli to San Francisco that's better than the high speed rail that's being proposed, because the high speed rail that that's what it originally got to me to.
Think about, you is there some better way to do it?
Because the high speed rail that's being proposed would actually be the slowest of the slowest bull training in the world and the most expensive for a mile in the world, which is not the suppoters we're.
Looking for black our Internet, but it's you know, I think this it's all depressing to sort of have something.
That's like the slowest bulletrain in the world in California at enormous cost.
And isn't this something better that we could come.
Up with that's something better as the hyper loop? Well? I think so probably, but I don't know what that is.
Yeah, I want to ride on it.
Yeah, I think.
You know, even even if even if I'm sort of wrong about the economic assumptions behind the hyper loop, it would still be a really fun ride.
Even if only one of it ever existed. It would be a really.
Fun run.
A plane, automobile.
It's it's a transporter machine. It's a cross between a concord and a rail gun.
A concord and a rail gun. Okay, but you're not you know, I don't want.
To hear something else in there, just to make it sound even more even more bizarre, since crusts me to concord, a rail gun.
And an air hockey table. But a baby, somehow.
You wouldn't want to go a little bit beyond that.
Oh my god, Okay, let's go. Let's go San Francisco. Is in you blaying a baby? We love it? Thank you, and THATX will help.
Since since you're feeling so loquacious to okay, when are you planning to.
Take the first people up into orbit?
Whether it's the space station or Bigelow or whatever she wants to go?
Yeaheah, absolutely well, we're actually we're working on working in version two about Dragon spacecraft and in partnership with with with.
NASA, so this is uh NASA's.
NASA is our biggest customer, although we also expect to transport UH private citizens and we think we'll probably see the first flights of people in two to three years.
So thank you nice knowing.
No, no, I'm retiring on Mars, but not yet. Okay, Yes we're here Allison Sheridan from Raythan and I am behind the camera. Now I know why everybody's been saying that looking right through the camera.
Thanks for your presence at all things to you.
A couple of years ago, I did get a chance to drive the Tesla roadster.
That was so much fun.
Cool.
I scared the guy though, he got a little nervous. But what I actually wanted to ask you about was we've talked a lot here about the importance of STEM education and trying to.
Encourage that, and it's been suggested that.
Part of our strategy really should be immigrant STEM type people. And I'm just guessing that with your background, maybe you have some interesting perspective on that.
Oh I forgot that question.
Yeah, Oh you're welcome, great question.
But I did think, yeah, I did think we should be I mean, if there's some really talented grad students at American colleges. It's easy to send them home or force them to go home.
In a lot of cases.
So I think we should have some reform of immigration policy that actually has has us, you know, arguably recruiting.
I mean you should think of.
Like like if you if if this was a company, if the United States a company, You'll be working hard to recruit top people and you certainly wouldn't be expelling them.
That would be that would be crazy.
So we should definitely have some reform on that front. And it doesn a near to the benefit of other countries.
But but but we should try to have them stay here, I think.
And but with respect to to STEM in general, I think to agree that there are exciting technology projects that kids in school can read about and and and say, Okay, I'd like to be I'd like to work work on that or be part of that.
That is what craws people into the science and technology.
And like the biggest thing I think in history that is on on that front has been there was their poll or programs. I think there's probably not been any single thing that's been more powerful in enjoying kids in because they're like like, wow, we send something, I want to help make that happen or or you know, and and and go beyond that. So I think I think it's it's really important to.
Have those projects that their kids.
Can can read about and want to be part of in school and.
And that will really draw them.
Since we just touched on immigration, can you explain what happened with the uh political lobbying effort started by Mark Soberg you were, you were supporter of, but then you withdrew along with some others. What was that all about?
Yeah, So initially when I was, uh, you know, I don't agree to be part of Forward US because the I do believe in immigration reform.
I think we need to you know, we've got some really auntecreated laws and.
Change them and and there's you know, other things that that also need to be on on the agenda.
So I thought, okay, I'll support that, and.
But but I think that the methods that were employed, I mean there was a little too much of the sort of Kissinger esque reality politic, you know, and that wasn't I mean, I think we should try to make things happen for like the right reason and and and and we shouldn't We shouldn't give into the cynicism of politics.
I mean, we should be we should.
Fight the cynicism and if we if we don't, if we do anything to encourage that, then we'll get the political system that we deserve.
Okay, uh I think maybe Okay, Dan Simon with CNN Elon, given the runaway success and reviews of the Model Less, you have to believe that the other carmakers are going to be gunning for you.
So I'm wondering how the company is going to keep its competitive edge because you know that success can be a fleeting moment. Also, when do you think that electric vehicles will overtake gasoline vehicles? And finally wondering if you have a message for the nation's oil companies.
Sure well, I really hope that the large car companies make a considered effort to create electric vehicles.
And ultimately, if Tesla makes competitive.
Electric cars, then will deserve to be around. And if we don't, then we don't deserve to be around. I mean, you know, I'm optimistic that we'll be able to make good products and so far from being concerned about other car companies coming in, we're actually doing our best to convince them to make electric cars and in fact to make powertrains for them.
You know, where they will allow us to do so. So I hope they.
I hope they look at the success the model less and that encourages them to make a big move into electric cars.
And all the oil companies. You know, the tricky thing is.
The way the system is set up because we have an unpriced externality, We have the strategy of the commons problem with the c O two capacity of the oceans and atmosphere.
The incentive structure is such that the the the the oil companies have.
You know, it's hard to ask ask the CEO of an oil company to act against their best interests that that's the thing. In fact, if they do that, they might get fired by their by their shareholders. So the right thing for us to do is to change the rules of the game so that it incense the right behavior. And that's why I'm a big believer of a.
Cobbon tax is the right way to go.
And uh, we don't even have to necessarily change the amount of money that that that we collect from from from the tax space, but I do think it's it's sensible to disproportionately tax things that at.
Least have a likelihood of being bad.
So just as we on a personal level will tax to bacco and alcohol, it's back up particularly is bad and that's well established fact. We should disproportionately tax co two emissions and uh and then I think the right behavior will occur.
So, I mean, I.
Have a hard time condemning the oil and gas companies because the current system incensed them to do bad behavior.
That tax.
That tax gets passed along though to consumers and ultimately hurts the economy.
No.
See, if if the amount of revenue being generated is the same, it's it's not going to the You know that we need to collect a certain amount of money to pay for the federal government, and how we collect that is, you know, just you can correct collect that in a wide range of wide range of ways. But but effectively, what we're doing is we're saying a portion of somebody's labor has to go to federal government activities, and it doesn't you know, it's not going to negatively
affect the economy. Really, how how we collect that money. You may think it has negative effect, but it really doesn't. It's it's the same it's a certain amount of money collected to pay for the federal government. It's like I said, we don't actually need to change the amount of money raised, but we need to wait it towards the things that are more likely to be bad than things are more
likely to be good. I guess I mean we're I have an issue with oil and gas guys is when they, you know, sometimes engaged in the various tactics and all things that are sort of somewhat somewhere insidious, like like funding academic studies that people can then point to as though they have some credibility.
And and and it's.
Some prominent professor somewhere, but but that person is actually has been paid off by the by the oil industry to write that that study. It's so that kind of thing obviously should be condemned, condemned in the strongest words. And and I'd recommend people read a book called Merchants of Doubt that that actually spells it out in detail how some of these things are going on. Where I mean it's oil gas industry. Is all they need to is to create doubt, and that that's that's what they've done.
In fact, they've actually employed a lot of people of individuals and firms that were employed by the tobacco industry, like literally.
The same people. Like surprised that some of these people are still.
Around because they're, like, you know, they're quite old. But in some cases, literally the same people have been employed by the oil and gas industry.
Okay, get to this, Thanks, We only have a couple more questions.
Hi, Jared from SCRIBB, Thank you so much for coming elon. My question is about SpaceX. So, even without a fully and rapidly reasonable rocket, you've still managed to reduce the cost to orbit by an order of magnitude or more, just with more incremental improvements. And so, firstly, at what point did you realize that such an opportunity existed in
the space field? And secondly, are there other parallel opportunities in other areas that you wish somebody else would chase, even if you don't personally have time to do them all?
Sure?
So when I started SpaceX, it was actually I thought the most likely outcome was that we would fail. In fact, I thought that was really very likely that SpaceX would fail. So it wasn't really with the expectation of success that I started the company.
Obviously, the.
But what gave me a clue that we could make a significant breakthrough was looking at the cost of a rocket, and instead of looking at it with reference to what other rockets had cost in the past, I said.
Okay, well, what is a rocket made of? What are the material constituents?
What what metals you know, common cliber, what what are the beariest materials that coused you a rocket?
And if you had a pile.
Of those materials array before you and you could wave magic wand what would that rocket cost to build?
And that is a remarkably small number, you.
Know, was maybe a few percent or one or two percent of what rockets actually cost. So clearly people were doing something silly in how they were putting those materials together. And so just by eliminating those those sort of foolish things, were able to make a rocket for much less. And and then I wasn't It wasn't obviously that one could achieve full and rapid reusability.
Because Earth's gravity is right on the cusp of where that's possible and not possible.
And in order to achieve that, really everything has got to be done super super.
Well, every aspect of the vehicle. So there's only maybe two or three years ago.
For maybe three years ago that I thought it was actually achievable, and now I'm fairly certain it's achievable. But there's still a long way to go between here and there, and as mentioned before, we've not yet recovered a single rocket stage, so we have a long way to go.
Okay, I think this has to be the last question.
Yeah, hi, Elan greg Tar from Cross Spacific Capital up in Palo Alto, a question for you. I used to work for Toyota's US headquarters and when we in nineteen ninety scale up the Lexus dealership network, it was pretty tough, and I wanted to get an understanding of what kind of innovation you're going to bring in terms of.
The service area.
It generally takes three hundred dealerships to support about one hundred thousand units, and you're doing a tremendous job, which I admire, and I want to understand what your plans are because eventually the middle part of the country will begin to understand the revolution happening on the East and West coast.
How will you.
Make it happen in the dealership network and service?
Yeah?
Well, service in fact, for the last three or four months has been my main focus at Tesla, And it was three or four months ago it was our service was okay and.
In some cases quite bad.
In particularly and asked me about that, the weird service of Tesla, But.
Go ahead, Yeah, I'd say we had some pretty nightmarriage service situations probably in the January of every time frame. Things have goten steadily better and and but like for example, La was a problem pretty huge for a really long time because we were supposed to have three service centers open and permits would laid on two of them, so we're operating at one third capacity.
So as long as you're.
Your modelis didn't break down, your awsome experience.
If it broke down, it was brutal.
So now we've got all three open, things are a lot better, but it is going to take enormus amount of work to scale service across the country and then
internationally we start delivering in Europe in July. So yeah, I don't know if we've got any I've got any brilliant insights that you probably you probably know all the things that I would I would say, but you've got to have really good diagnostics tools and we do have the advantage in that the car has so much intelligence center you can do a lot of self diagnostics and we can query you know, what what parts need to be fixed on the car before it even comes in,
so that so we can be more efficient in our service.
And then something we're announced.
Recently was that we're building this fleet and largely have built at this point this fleet of the service loaners so that when if your car breaks down, what we'll do is and we also have ballet service, so if your car breaks down or you need service, we will go to wherever your car is and replace it with one of our top of the line cars. So our service loners are not sort of the standard cars, they're
actually the top of the line cars. And so we'll just ballet a service loaners to wherever you are, pick your car up, take it, get serviced, and then and then we will turn your car when it's done.
So the experience should be really seamless.
And you should really feel like like you should you've got to actually an even better car than the one that you had serviced for some period of time and it was no interruption to your life.
I mean, that's the most important thing. Lexus did did this to some degree.
I'm not sure if Lexister does the full valet thing or not, but certainly did the Service Learner program, which was done done really well, actually