Interview mit CNBC

WHEN: Today, Tuesday, May 20, 2025

WHERE: CNBC's "Power Lunch"

Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, SpaceX CEO, xAI CEO & X Owner, and CNBC's David Faber on "Power Lunch" (M-F, 2PM-3PM ET) today, Tuesday, May 20. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-confirms-tesla-plan-for-robotaxis-on-austin-roads-in-june.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-well-have-hundreds-of-thousands-of-full-self-driving-teslas-by-the-end-of-next-year.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-i-dont-follow-byd-or-think-about-competitors-i-focus-on-the-perfect-product.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-we-are-very-much-open-to-licensing-self-driving.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-we-have-seen-a-major-rebound-in-demand-post-doge.html and https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-tesla-ceo-elon-musk.html.

MANDATORY CREDIT: "CNBC"

1.    Mandatory credit to "CNBC" on first reference.

2.    The onscreen "CNBC" logo must be clearly visible and unobstructed at all times in any image, video clip or other form of media.

3.    Embedded web video must stream from the CNBC.com media player with the unobstructed credit as described above.

###

DAVID FABER: Brian, thank you. Elon Musk is here. We're in the lobby of the Gigafactory here in Austin. Last time I was here was your annual meeting a couple of years ago. So thank you for having us back.

ELON MUSK: Welcome back.

FABER: Got a robotaxi right behind you.

MUSK: We do?

FABER: Yes. Yes, you can see it right there.

MUSK: OK.

FABER: And, obviously, the meeting with the transportation secretary.

MUSK: Yes.

FABER: Are you going to have full autonomous on the roads of Austin at the end -- by the end of June?

MUSK: Yes.

FABER: You are? What gives you that confidence?

MUSK: We have cars driving 24/7 with drivers in the cars. And we see essentially no interventions. So we want to be very careful with the first introduction of unsupervised full self-driving, meaning that there's the cars driving around with no one in it.

FABER: Right.

MUSK: So we're going to be—

FABER: No one behind a driver's—

MUSK: Well, yes, and sometimes no one in it at all.

FABER: Right.

MUSK: Just going to pick someone up. So the car obviously has to be incredibly safe. So we're just being -- and we have thousands of cars that are being tested, which is creating some strange situations where we just drive -- there's just a bizarre number of Teslas driving past people's houses. They're like, what's going on?

FABER: I think we even saw one last night coming from the airport.

MUSK: Yes.

FABER: Yes, driving at night alone.

MUSK: So, just—

FABER: It looked very lonely.

MUSK: It's just -- it did look a little lonely.

FABER: Yes.

MUSK: So, yes, yes, it's looking good for Austin next month.

FABER: Some estimates have been that you're only going to have 10 to 12 of them on the road initially. I mean, it's going to be a very small amount. Is that correct?

MUSK: Yes, yes, for the first week.

FABER: First week? How do you see it ramping up?

MUSK: Well, we will have to see how well it does. But I think it's prudent for us to start with a small number, confirm that things are going well, and then scale it up proportionate to how well we see it's doing. So—

FABER: Right. And what's going to be a judge of how well it's doing?

MUSK: I mean, are there any incidents? Are there any interventions? And -- but we want to be -- we want to deliberately take it slow. I mean, we could start with 1,000 or 10,000 on day one, but I don't think that would be prudent. So we will start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40. And I think by, say -- we will probably be at 1,000 within a few months. And then we will expand to other cities, so expand to the -- San Francisco, California, Los Angeles, San Antonio.

FABER: Is that a real possibility in the not-too-distant future?

MUSK: Yes, of course.

FABER: I mean, Texas is very different, I don't need to tell you, then, California, when it comes to regulation. They don't really have much here in terms of dealing with autonomous, but it's a different story in California.

MUSK: Yes, but California has already approved -- Waymo has been doing autonomous driving for a while. So—

FABER: I know they have, right. But do you need a separate approval? Or is somehow—

MUSK: Yes, yes, right now, the approval process is very haphazard—

FABER: Yes.

MUSK: And sort of state by state and sometimes city by city.

FABER: We were talking to the secretary of transportation about that very fact a moment ago, yes.

MUSK: Right. So it's going to be important to have a unified set of national regulations for self-driving cars. Otherwise, you're going to get into this weird situation where, if you're driving from Maine to New York, you're going to go through 10 different sets of regulations. Cars are going to behave differently. It's not going to make any sense.

FABER: No.

MUSK: So, one set of regulations that -- just like there is for highway driving, that's what I think makes sense for the country as a whole. But my prediction is that probably by the end of next year we will have probably hundreds of thousands, if not—

FABER: Hundreds of thousands?

MUSK: Over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the U.S.

FABER: Those are not -- OK. What percentage of those are going to be -- well, not the Cybercab. You're just talking about on full self-driving level four?

MUSK: Unsupervised full self-driving, where you do not need to pay attention.

FABER: Right. Right. For me, if I own a Tesla and I have the software and the capability of doing it?

MUSK: Yes.

FABER: Right.

MUSK: But we will have a model which is kind of like some combination of Uber and Airbnb. So if you're a Tesla owner—

FABER: Right.

MUSK: You will be able to add or subtract your car to the fleet. So just like an Airbnb, you could like rent out your spare bedroom or rent out your house when you're not using it. And the same thing will be available for Tesla owners.

FABER: Right.

MUSK: So it's a way for Tesla owners to earn revenue. for -- instead of having your car sit in the parking lot, your car could be earning money.

FABER: We talked -- you and I talked about that a couple of years ago.

MUSK: Yes.

FABER: Which takes me back a bit, because, of course, you remember 2019, you were talking about 2020 the introduction of autonomous, and now you just introduced a fairly somewhat ambitious target. Why do you have the confidence now that in a -- what was it, in a year, there will be a million available?

MUSK: Well, by the end of next year, I think. So, it's more like 18 months.

FABER: End of next year, end of '26, OK, right.

MUSK: Yes. I think that's -- I mean, these things happen slowly but then all at once. So it's a -- Peter Thiel, "Zero to One." Once you make -- once you have a proof point, once you have it working, then scaling up is just a matter of time. So, once it's working well in Austin, then we will make sure it works well in other cities. I mean, there are obviously some unique cases like downtown New York—

FABER: Yes.

MUSK: Like if you're in -- but that's a highly unusual situation. Most cities in America are like Austin, so—

FABER: Right, although you can go on full self-driving right now in New York. I mean, you can -- obviously you have to sit there behind the wheel.

MUSK: Yes.

FABER: But -- and it'll do it.

MUSK: Oh, yes. No, it—

FABER: It'll navigate the traffic. I have seen it.

MUSK: Yes. So, even a Tesla that you buy right now and the self-driving just costs $99 a month, will give you autonomous driving anywhere in the country right now. The question is, when is it unsupervised—

FABER: Right.

MUSK: Where that's the best where we want to—

FABER: Right, where you're sitting in the back, so to speak.

MUSK: Yes, where you're like asleep, and a car -- you wake up at your destination.

FABER: Yes.

MUSK: In order for that to be the case, we want the autonomous car to be much safer than a car driven by a person.

FABER: Right. Are we -- but, again -- I will come to Waymo, because, even though they only have about 700 cars, they obviously are on the market. They're in Beverly Hills all over the place.

MUSK: Sure. It's a proof of concept.

FABER: They have got 28 cameras. They have got lidar and radar. You have had a different approach, six -- I think eight to nine cameras and the neural network. Why do you feel that is going to be the equivalent in terms of safety profile?

MUSK: Oh, I think it'll be better.

FABER: Why?

MUSK: Because the way that the road system is designed is for AI. It's basically, I should say, it's for intelligence, biological neural net, and eyes. That's how the whole road system is designed. So what will actually work best for the road system is artificial intelligence, digital neural nets, and cameras. And we also have the microphones. The car can hear emergency vehicles, that kind of thing.

FABER: Right. You are going to have the microphones to hear the—

MUSK: Yes, you need to hear—

FABER: Because that was a question. Right, you need to hear a fire engine or a police car.

MUSK: Yes, exactly.

FABER: Right.

MUSK: So -- but that's how the whole road system is designed. It's not designed for shooting lasers out of your eyes. So -- and what we found is that, when you have multiple sensors, they tend to get confused. So do you believe the camera or do you believe lidar? And if you get confused, that's where but -- that's what can lead to accidents. So we used to have, for example, radar in the car. But we found that the radar and the camera would sometimes disagree. And then you don't know which one to believe.

FABER: So it wasn't about expense? It was just about—

MUSK: No.

FABER: Yes. Are you seeing the data right—

MUSK: In fact, we turned off the radars in the cars.

FABER: You turned off the radar? Yes.

MUSK: Yes.

FABER: So, I mean, are you comfortable right now? If I were to say to you, all right, let's go, do you think that you're there in terms of the safety profile you're seeing right now?

MUSK: Yes, we could take a ride today, if you want, sure.

FABER: Yes. Well, I'm happy to take a ride with you any time you want, wherever you want. Logistics capability to operate sort of a ride hailing fleet at scale, because you mentioned obviously what's called the end of '26. Are you going to have an app? Are you there? Do you have that ability?

MUSK: I think we could figure out an app -- tells me.

FABER: You're not worried about it?

MUSK: Well, Tesla already has an app.

FABER: Yes, I know. But -- so is there -- is there going to be a ride hailing app you will introduce to—

MUSK: I think we can figure out how to write an app. That's really not the—

FABER: It's not too hard?

MUSK: No.

FABER: xAI can probably do it for you in like an hour?

MUSK: Tesla can write apps just fine..

FABER: Do you ever license -- consider licensing the technology at some point?

MUSK: Yes, yes, we're -- I mean, there are a number of major automakers that have talked to us about licensing self-driving, and we're very much open to that. So I think, the more we demonstrate the capability of self-driving, the more that they will want to license it, and we're happy to help.

FABER: You know, back to the safety profile, because it's going to obviously be something key focus. Business Insider, take it for what you want, but I saw this over the weekend. They did a test between Waymo and and Tesla, and they weren't critical at all—

MUSK: But Business Insider is not a real publication.

FABER: No, but, but it did see—

MUSK: They're a fake, they're fake.

FABER: Regardless of whether we want to have a debate about their journalistic integrity, which I don't, I the test itself. Let me just share with you and get your reaction, which was the Waymo ultimately, they said proved better in part, only because it avoided with its geofencing one very difficult intersection that the Tesla chose to go through. It stopped at a red light, but then it went through the red light. What's your reaction?

MUSK: Look, I'm not going to comment on some Business Insider article.

FABER: But is that a concern at all? Because, in a way, there's no geofencing, so it's like happy to go on the highways in a way that perhaps a Waymo is not. I guess my question is, is that a concern at all for you, in terms of it encountering things that are still sort of a crucial test and perhaps it fails?

MUSK: No. First of all that was that that actually should have been a test of supervised on self-driving, supervised self-driving, not unsupervised self-driving. So the assumption there is that you have a person who is going to take over.

FABER: Right.

MUSK: So their test made no sense.

FABER: Okay.

MUSK: For when we deploy the cars in Austin, we are actually going to play not to the entire Austin region, but only the parts of Austin that we consider to be the safest. So we will geofence it.

FABER: You will.

MUSK: Yeah, of course.

FABER: Right.

MUSK: So it's not going to take intersections, unless we are highly confident it'll, it's going to do well with that intersection or just, it'll just take a route around that intersection.

FABER: But there won't be a safety driver in the car—

MUSK: Correct.

FABER: Right? The car, it won't. There's not going to be somebody sitting there.

MUSK: Right.

FABER: But you did have ads for vehicle operator, autopilots. What was that about then? Are there going to be people who are remotely sort of monitoring the performance of the fleet?

MUSK: Yeah.

FABER: And what will they do?

MUSK: They'll just be, we're going to be extremely paranoid about the deployment as we should be. It would be foolish not to be so we'll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully. And as we find, as confidence grows, you know, less of that will be needed.

FABER: You know, again, you spoke about it, and we spoke about it a couple of years ago, and obviously your investor base, many of whom are watching right now, are interested in the revenue and profitability of this ride hailing, autopilot, auto, robotaxi and autonomous driving opportunity. BYD, I believe at this point in China is now offering levels of autonomy for free. I mean, are you confident you're going to be in a position to continue to get a premium for that particular level?

MUSK: Well, interestingly, in China, we, we're not allowed to train on videos in China, so when we released for self-driving, it was actually just trained on the rest of the world, but not in China. And the tests by local Chinese publications, I think, concluded that even without training on local Chinese roads, Tesla self-driving was the best.

FABER: It was the best.

MUSK: Yes.

FABER: But again, I mean, it's the technology—

MUSK: There's some pretty wild videos where people are like doing self-driving, which we don't recommend, obviously, on like narrow mountain roads, including one where it's there's a sharp precipice on either side and no barriers, and they're doing self-driving across that.

FABER: They may have more confidence than, perhaps they have more confidence in China.

MUSK: Yeah, we don't recommend this, but I saw the video.

FABER: Are you, are you regulated to have, where are you in China right now in terms of your ability to offer that product though?

MUSK: Well, we, we have, just get the terminology right—

FABER: Understood.

MUSK: Unsupervised. Sorry, supervised for self-driving, where there's a person in the car. It has approval in China. But as we, whenever we release a new version, we have to get an incremental approval.

FABER: Right.

MUSK: And at times we, you know, we do have to battle other car companies in China who are trying to stop us from—

FABER: It's an incredibly competitive market, isn't it?

MUSK: China is the most competitive market, yeah.

FABER: And to the extent BYD, which is neck and neck with you, I think in the EV race, I think it's fair to say worldwide, correct?

MUSK: I don't really follow that.

FABER: You don't?

MUSK: No.

FABER: Well, they're willing, again, my question is, they're willing to seemingly offer different levels of autonomy for I don't want to call it free, but part of the cost of the of the car. Do you see that as a possibility for you, or is it always going to be that add on and therefore that significant revenue stream conceivably?

MUSK: I don't really think about competitors. I just think about making the product as perfect as possible.

FABER: You don't think about competitors at all.

MUSK: I don't. I just think about making, what we want to achieve is the platonic ideal of the perfect product. And as long as you focus on that, you will have a compelling product, obviously.

FABER: Alright, well, there's a potentially compelling product right behind you, which is a robotaxi. So when are we, you know, in five years, are they going to be all over the place?

MUSK: Yes.

FABER: They will. You're confident in that.

MUSK: Yeah.

FABER: Talking about Tesla, obviously, you know, takes me to a certain extent, to what some would say is the brand damage done by your government service. I don't know if you would agree with that.

MUSK: It has some pros and cons.

FABER: There have been some pros and cons. You know, we sat here two years ago, upstairs, and you famously said when I asked you about this very subject, I don't care. I'm going to say what I want to say. And so be it. Do you regret that?

MUSK: No.

FABER: No, why not?

MUSK: I believe that we want to live in a free society where people are allowed to say what they want to say within reasonable bounds, like you know, you can't advocate for the murder of somebody, but free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. That's why it's the First Amendment.

FABER: Without a doubt. But I guess my question is more about your work at DOGE, for example, was that worth it? You know, to the extent you are now Elon, you are somewhat divisive figure two years ago, but now you really are. I mean, there are people who love you, but there are a lot of people who dislike you, some of whom were your customers. And I wonder, was it worth the undertaking at DOGE and everything else that you've done and how outspoken you've been in terms of the things you believe in to antagonize so many potential buyers and/or users of things like a robotaxi?

MUSK: Well, I mean, unfortunately, what I've learned is that legacy media propaganda is very effective at making people believe things that aren't true.

FABER: What would an example of that be?

MUSK: That I'm a Nazi, for example, and how many legacy media publications, talk shows, whatever, try to claim that I was a Nazi because of some random hand gesture gesture at a rally where all I said was that my heart goes out to you, and I was talking about space travel, and yet the legacy media promoted that as though that was a deliberate Nazi gesture, when in fact, every politician, any public speaker who's spoken for any length of time, has made the exact same gesture. And yet there's so people out there, and I've never harmed us. I've never harmed a single person.

FABER: You know what Elon. I wasn't even going to talk—

MUSK: Now you asked for an example. And that's—

FABER: I wasn't even going to talk about it because, in fact—

MUSK: It's horrible.

FABER: I showed a number of people who are close to you, and I called them afterwards, and all of them to a person were like, no way, no way.

MUSK: Of course not.

FABER: But that isn't necessarily the perception. Now, the work you've done for DOGE has also come, obviously, into the spotlight in a great deal. And you know, people are upset about USAID being put into the woodchipper. People are upset about AmeriCorps disappearing. People are upset about –this isn't even on your side – the NIH and so many other areas that they feel, rightly or wrongly, are being cut as a result of your efforts. And I just, I guess I wonder, as you start to transition now, back to Tesla in a more significant way. Was it worth it?

MUSK: Yeah, first of all, any program in USAID that had any semblance of merit was retained and folded into the State Department. So, and if there's some exception to that, we're all ears, and we'd love to look at it. We just want to see the evidence that the program was doing, actually doing good, and not just funding for after DC and warlords in some countries. Over and over again, we saw not – some sympathetic sounding programs, but when we actually said, well, please show us pictures of the recipients of the aid, we just – or let us get into contact with them. No pictures were forthcoming. They didn't give us any contact information. And we're like, look, we're not going to send money to DC grafters and warlords. That's not – that's not a good use of money. So that's not what we're going to do now, invariably, when you stop waste and fraud, it's not like the fraudsters admit their guilt. They don't say like, Oh, isn't it so great that the money we're getting, fortunately, has been stopped. They will obviously come up with a sympathetic sounding claim that, but not that – that claim has no merit.

FABER: That all may be true. I guess what I would come back to, because I talked about economics all day long, is, you know, to your point you've been making. We have a deficit that's running at about 6.7% of GDP. We have interest costs that are going to be above a trillion. It's not going down next year. You entered this thinking you could cut as much as a trillion dollars. You're nowhere near that. It's not really making the dent I think you may have thought you might have been able to achieve in terms of a true problem. Would you agree?

MUSK: Well, first of all, it would obviously be ridiculous to assume that we could achieve that on day one. So it's only been but what, four months?

FABER: Yeah.

MUSK: And we've done, by our calculations – people may disagree – improved the deficit by $160 billion. That's our –

FABER: Right. I mean, that is your number that is out there.

MUSK: Yeah.

FABER: A lot of people take issue with it and say, well, you know, taxpayers expenses, such as paid leave, that's 135 billion. That's got to come back. IRS collection may go down as a result of cuts there. I asked Grok, it said, between 5 and 32 billion is what you've actually saved.

MUSK: You need to ask – the right question to ask is, what is the bet for – the bet for the actions of DOGE, what would the incremental expenditures be in FY 26.

FABER: Yep.

MUSK: Because, for example, we offered early – we offered severance and early retirement to a lot of government employees. Many of them took us up on that. That severance went all the way through to September.

FABER: Yeah.

MUSK: So there's not going to be any savings until October, because the severance goes through September.

FABER: Understood.

MUSK: So the Delta really is, what is the spending difference FY 25 versus FY 26 as a function of DOGE's actions? That's how we calculate the number, and we'll see if that number, if that turns out to be true or not.

FABER: Aren't there more effective ways we ultimately could have gotten at it? I mean, by changing the retirement age or really going after some other parts of the budget?

MUSK: We're trying to go after every part of the budget. That's just – some parts are more boring than others.

FABER: You're about efficiency. I mean, that would take an act of Congress, obviously, to really make a change in the significance I'm talking about.

MUSK: Yeah. First of all. So I think the, in our opinion, we've created $160 billion Delta, FY 25 to FY 26. Very significant. That's 16% of the way towards a trillion in five months. And in order to make progress, we need the consent, obviously, of the not just the executive branch, but also the legislative branch and the judicial branch. So if we, you know, and we are advisors, we are not – we're not kings, here.

FABER: No. I get it.

MUSK: So why are you attacking this, given that we've made so much progress?

FABER: You mean the – not me.

MUSK: Okay.

FABER: Not me. I'm not attacking. I'm just asking questions. In fact, I want to ask a lot more about Tesla. I'm told you have a call at 1:30 I don't know if you'll be able to come back or but –

MUSK: I might be able to come back.

FABER: Let me – well, that would be great, because I do want to talk about Tesla. I mean, I was talking about brand damage, and what you're seeing in the market. You did an interview earlier this morning, where you seem to indicate you're starting to see a rebound.

MUSK: Yes.

FABER: But automotive revenue was down 20% last quarter. I think 50,000 fewer units were sold in the Q1 versus Q1 a year ago. What is giving you confidence in the automotive business? Or is it all about robotaxis, as you've been saying, and people can't quite see them behind me, the robots as well.

MUSK: Well, really, the only things that matter in long term are autonomy and Optimus. Those overwhelmingly dominate the future of financial success of the company. As for Q1, we had a global factory change over for the Model Y, so there's a new version of the Model Y that came out, which required a factory shutdown across the world. Model Y is the number one selling car of any kind –

FABER: Number one in the world.

MUSK: Number one in the world.

FABER: I watched your presentation during your last – right here, I think during your last –

MUSK: Right. It's number one, number one selling car in the world. So, you know, we can't – we have eight cars the factories are retooling. So we – three – and the right time to retool is the first quarter, since, generally, that's when the least amount occurs. But we've seen a major rebound in demand at this point. I feel comfortable with –

FABER: You have seen a major rebound in demand.

MUSK: Oh yeah.

FABER: You really believe – you have seen that?

MUSK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look for most people, I mean, when you buy a product, I mean, how much do you care about the political views of the CEO? Or do even know what they are?

FABER: No, you don't, but you've made it – you know, frustratingly, Elon, I know you have a 1:30 call we promised to get you out in time for it. I hope you'll come back, perhaps if you can afterwards. I'm happy to wait here.

MUSK: Sure.

FABER: And sit and and talk to you some more. But I want to let you go because I know that's an important call.

MUSK: All right, sounds good.

FABER: Thank you for taking this time. I hope we get to talk some more on the other side, about this very issue. Elon Musk, obviously joining us, hosting us here at the gigafactory and perhaps he will come back as well, in a little bit but I will end it there for now. Kelly.