BBC Interview

Elon Musk what's their Vision here what are you trying to do to the car industry well I'm trying to accelerate the Advent of sustainable transport so try to get uh try to get the econ industry to move towards um electrification um faster than they would otherwise move so the the the fundamental value long-term value that I see for Tesla is serving as a catalyst to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport why electric cars what why why is that important well electric car is um are zero emission at the car level so they're not um producing CO2 or nitrous oxide or sulfur oxides or any of the um sort of the noxious gases that uh any kind of combustion engine car would produce um and so if if we can have sustainable energy production and combine

that with electric cars we have a long-term sustainable future and how how's that going I mean you've made made a deal of progress but do you see us all having electric cars in 10 years time or is it going to be always a minority Pursuit no I think uh All Transport with the exception of rockets will go fully electric um so that's why I mean I see the the value of of Tesla um as an as an accelerant as a catalyst in that transition um I think Tesla maybe when one looks back on it from an historical perspective it it might accelerate that transition by a decade maybe maybe more now this is a a great car it's an exciting drive but at the moment it's just for the rich isn't it is this really going to mean anything for the mass Market yeah I mean the the the

Tesla strategy from the beginning has been to start off with a low volume high- price car that was the sports car that we first uh did in partnership with lotus um and then we have the model S which is kind of a mid-priced mid volume C car um and and actually when you when you look at the the price of the model S um inclusive of the cost of petrol uh it it actually is a lot more competitive than it would than you'd think I'm not going to be able to afford one of these and nobody I know is um well I think um uh it's it's certainly not um a low pric car U I'm just saying that if you were to lease or Finance the car and compare the the lease or Finance cost with a much lower cost of operation of an electric car your monthly cost of Transport um is a lot

more competitive than it may seem at first glance just looking at the price of the car but are you on the road to producing a model that far more people could uh so the the model 3 uh that's the third part of our strategy uh which is produce a high volume uh lowcost car and uh we expect to be in production with that at the end of next year is that all on schedule and what what are the Ambitions for that car is is that the one that will really make this revolution that you've been talking about happen I no question in in order to um have a a substantial effect on on transportation we have to make the cars affordable um so I think the model 3 is extremely important as part of that strategy um unless there's an affordable car um we will as you alluded to

earlier only have a small impact on the world so it it needs we need to make a car that most people can afford in order to have um a really substantial impact how important is it for you that people's lives are changed in this way obviously it's important for this business because you've lost a lot of money so far you need to have a mass market car but is it important for you uh as a thinker that that people have electric cars that that that sustainable Vision comes true yeah absolutely mean the like I said the whole point of Tesla is to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport um if we could have made an affordable car right off the the bat we definitely would have um it's just that it takes time to refine the technology when you think of any

new technology it takes multiple versions um and economies of scale in order to make the technology um accessible to the general public you can look at say cell phones when the early days of cell phones they were very big and heavy and very expensive um but with successive uh design iterations and scaling up the production um we've brought it to the point where um for $100 you can buy um basically a supercomputer in your pocket how soon will most people have an electric car is this a very long-term Vision or is it going to happen soon well I think it's going to happen um sooner than people think I mean the typical curve of new technology adoption um it it's is like an S curve so it starts off quite slow um and uh generally people tend to predict to base

their predictions on a straight line as opposed to a curve fit um and but when you have an an S curve of adoption if you make a straight line extrapolation at the beginning of that S curve it's always going to underestimate the actual adoption rate um so um but if you look at say what Tesla is doing um every year we are doubling our total cumulative production so um at the of last year we had 50,000 cars in total on the roads worldwide and then last year we produced another 50,000 cars so the total Fleet of Tesla vehicles doubled last year it will approximately double again this year meanwhile Detroit the traditional motor makers seem to have woken up um is is it not true that the likes of BMW are eventually more likely to bring electric vehicles to the

masses than Tesla well I say say more power to them if they I mean I would certainly encourage uh their actions on electric vehicles um and and for all um all manufacturers I hope they uh produce as many electric vehicles as soon as possible that's the the right thing for the world what do you think their record has been like so far has has has Detroit and the traditional motor industry been caught napping well they they didn't really believe in electric cars they didn't think that it was technologically possible to create a a compelling electric car and they felt that even if um even if someone did create an electric car with long range and high performance that people wouldn't want to buy it because they have some deep love of gasoline um and and that

it's vital to be able to refuel in 5 minutes um so with with Tesla we were able to disprove those um axiomatic errors um so with the the Tesla Roadster we're able to show that you can in fact create uh a very fast attractive high performance um great handling electric car um and that if you made such a car with with long range and if you were if you make such a car people would buy it um so with with the um with the Tesla roader in fact the that's really what got General Motors to do the Chevy Vault um and Nissan to do the leaf um so we we announced the uh Tesla rooster in mid2 2007 um and blah BL um he's told the story many times uh took the took out press release to his engineers and said if a little company in California can do this why can't we um

and that's what got General Motors to do their electric vehicle program which in turn encouraged the other manufacturers to do through electric vehicle programs as well um but uh but those programs for the most part have been uh or really I'd say almost entirely with the exception of maybe the leaf um have been of quite low volume um and uh more more more inclined towards um uh satisfying Regulators um um but but now I think we are seeing a change because people are seeing that Tesla is able to sell quite a few um quite a few electric cars in a normal car segment in in in the premium sedan segment um in in fact we were the the bestselling car in the in our segments in the United States last year so more than you know I miss more than Mercedes or BMW or

Audi in in our segment the technology industry generally suddenly seems incredibly enthusiastic about getting into the motor industry we've obviously had Google with it self-driving car do you see uh that continuing and do you do you see apple building a car and that maybe being a threat to you well um I I think I I I would encourage uh more participation um by whoever it is to create electric vehicles um it it's it's quite hard to do um but I think uh companies like apple will probably make a compelling electric car it seems like the obvious thing to do are you betting that that's going to happen have you heard anything well it's pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand Engineers to do it so you think apple is serious about it yeah I

do this is an Open Secret and will that be a threat to you or will that just expand the industry I I think that I mean I think it will expand the industry um certainly Tesla would aspire to still make the most compelling electric vehicles and that would be our goal um while at the same time trying to help other companies make electric cars as well um so for example last year we open sourced all of our patents so anyone can use any of our patents for free you've also been a leader in autonomous driving in this road to the self-driving car how far do you think that's going to go I mean I think the two biggest Revolutions in transport are electrification and autonomy th those are the and it's you those are the two biggest Innovations since the moving production

line and they're both happening at about the same time um I think autonomy is extremely important um and I think in the long term nobody will buy a car unless it is autonomous it would be like having a manually operated uh elevator or something like that so it's a strange agonism in 10 years time what will I be driving or will I be driving at all will I just be pressing a button on an app uh a car will drive up and and take me where I want it yeah you will you will only drive if you you want to drive um it'll be like owning a owning a car that is not self-driving in in the long term um will be like owning a horse you would own it for and you would use it for sentimental reasons but not for you know not for daily use really unlikely now you uh you've taken

a lot of interest in artificial intelligence uh H this is becoming an artificially intelligent car well I would quote narrowly narrow artificial intelligence um you've also expressed concern about where that's heading is that because you've looked at what that car can do and have thought what happens if it develops a mind of its own why why are you wor we don't need to be concerned about the cars the car this is I mean car a car is not deep AI it's a it's a narrow use case um you know we're not trying to build sentients into the car um it's just trying to look at the lines on the road and steer correct um and I would consider that to be essentially a solved problem um it's just a question of um refining the details of the technology and bringing that

to Market um and then improving um the nines of reliability so um in order to have a self-driving car you really have to have many nines of reliability so it's 99.

9999% something like that is is is how good it needs to be um or you know if let's say to First approximation um you would want a self-driving car to be in order of magnitude uh safer than a human driven car and if if if you're like okay it's 10 times safer than it's like there's no more doubt there's no more debate um about which one is safer um but it's it's still a narrow use case um the the cars not going to develop uh Consciousness um or decide that they want to take over the world or something like that um I think we really need to be more concerned about uh D yeah and why do we need to be concerned about that well I mean because there are I think scenarios where um if there's some vast intelligence that um uh either develops the will of its own

or is subject to the will of a small number of people um then we could have an undesirable future if you want to read a real scary one I'd say uh uh Haren Ellison's I have no mouth and I must scream we'll give you nightmares you read a lot of Science Fiction is it giving you nightmares at the moment this it has given me nightmares yeah and are you genuinely what when you you've been one of the Prime movers about AI I interviewed Steven Hawking last year right had similar concerns um is that a a short-term concern or is it something way off that we don't need to worry about for a long time it's going to come faster than anyone appreciates I think it's with with each passing year the sophistication of of computer intelligence is is growing dramatically

I I mean I really think we're on an exponential uh Improvement path of um artificial intelligence and and the number of smart humans that are developing AI is also increasing dramatically I mean if you look at like the attendance at the um AI conferences they're they're doubling every year um they're getting full um I have a a sort of a young cousin of mine who's graduating from Berkeley um in computer science and physics and I asked him like well how many of the smart smart students are studying AI in computer science and the answer is all of them now you're in three extraordinary Industries you're in electric cars you're in uh Rockets uh and you're in uh solar energy what unites you uh what unites those those three interests well the what I'm trying

to do is to um um minimize uh existent future existential threats or to take whatever action I can to ensure the future is good um I didn't expect these companies to succeed uh I thought they would most likely fail uh particularly Tesla and facex I thought Sol City had a higher probability of success um but um I in the beginning I thought SpaceX and Tesla maybe had a 10% chance of success um and so I'm quite surprised really to see that they're not that we're alive um it's great I wasn't expecting that and are you now more confident that they each of them will be a success I I I do feel it's though they've reached um a level of progress that makes it unlikely that they will unlikely that will they will die in the near term um both Tesla and SpaceX have

a lot of customers um sort of built really earn the trust of a large number of customers and um and these are really solid organization or or like really you know I think thoughtful end customers for the car and um I and I think like whenever your customers really want you to succeed then you then you you will succeed finally uh you're obviously a very competitive person you're competing with the likes of Jeff Bezos uh in uh Jeff who in rocket you're competing with Detroit in the motor industry you're competing with regulator when ites to Solar City uh what drives you is it just I am right and they're all wrong um well no I mean I I actually really take the position that I'm always to some degree wrong um and the aspiration is to be less wrong we're always

to some degree wrong all it doesn't matter who you are um and I think Trying to minimize um the wrongheadedness over time is that I believe in that philosophy um and um and I mean I I I think these there's some things that are important for the future sustainable energy obviously sustainable transport um ultimately ultimately becoming a multi-planet species and um and traveling out there Among the Stars I think those are those are great things those are things that make me like the future and or be inspired about the future um whereas if those things don't happen the future I think looks quite dim um and um and I I just feel quite fortunate that we've made the progress that we have on on those fronts and we'll aspire to make more progress in the future

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