FT Future of the Car Summit

2022 we're very glad you can be with us whether you're here in the room in central London or joining us on our Global live stream my name is Peter Campbell I'm the Global Motor industry correspondent at the ft and it is a great pleasure to introduce and share this session for you let me tell you how this is going to work in a few minutes we're going to have JB Straubel back on stage and Elon Musk joining us remotely but it's going to spend the first 10 to 15 minutes of the session talking about the history of Tesla now these two guys were Central to the company and its growth and everything it has achieved to date and they have never before appeared on stage together to talk about the origins of the business so this is a unique chance to ask them about

that and hear about that and then for the rest of the session we're going to have time just with Elon on his own where we'll have questions about Tesla today and tomorrow and maybe one or two questions about some other projects He has going on just a reminder to you please do ask your questions on the chat box or if you're in the room using slido but with no further Ado because of all our guests here's the one who needs least introduction I'd like you to welcome back to the stage JB straable and joining us remotely Elon Musk thank you good evening thank you so much for being with us both of you I want to go back to something that was alluded to earlier in the session and the lunch that changed the world as Patrick called us when the two of you sat down

and came up with a plan that led to Tesla take us through that who started it whose idea was the lunch where did it go Elon we'd love you to start I'm sure well actually and JB uh completely I think we could hear maybe his perspective as well um but uh uh yeah I got a call uh someone out of the blue uh from uh JV and um uh Rosen um uh and I I think once I'm not sure exactly what the subject matter was but it was it's something involving space or maybe hydrogen airplanes or something and um so we got together for lunch and at some point the conversation turned to electric vehicles and um uh had uh JB and and Rosner both worked on an electric vehicle company um that I guess ultimately wasn't successful and I mentioned that uh the I I'd actually had a strong

interest in electric vehicles for a long time and I thought electric vehicles were the future of transport and um and in fact I had worked at a company developing high-ended density capacitors uh Ultra capacitors for potential use in electric vehicles and that was going to be my area of study during Graduate Studies at Stanford which ultimately uh dropped out of but um anyway that led to jba suggesting that I get a test drive in the the t0 Prototype from AC propulsion which is a small company in Southern California and um because that sort of had a proof of concept uh electric sports car and um I said that'd be great I'd love to get a test drive and that was in 2003 and um and and then I I did I get it got a test drive in the the t0 um and I tried to

convince them to commercialize the t0 I tried very hard actually to to get AC propulsion to commercialize the the t0 electric sports car um and then after they um they they said they really did not want to do that um I I said well do you mind if uh then I do that if you mind if I I create a commercial uh electric sports car and they said yeah no problem and so uh my you know that my intent was to basically create and uh company to commercialize the the t0 with JB um and uh and then the uh to engage AC propulsion said well you know there's some other uh groups that also want to commercialize the t0 uh concept and uh what do you what do you think about teaming up with them and um and one of the groups that was introduced to me uh was uh uh Mark toppening

at Ian Wright and what never had uh that but but it's very important to emphasize that there was no actual company of the that existed in any meaningful form at that point so it was really just three guys and then JB and me and and then we decided to team up and create a an exploration create a commercial version of the t0 electric sports car um yeah I mean JB at any uh what's what's your perspective no that that's a pretty uh pretty close history of how I remember it as well and and uh I mean my perspective on the thing was us trying to to chat with you about this electric hydrogen airplane concept that we were uh you know I was at the time trying to work on and and uh I do recall that not going extremely well actually for the first part of the lunch

I think uh I can't remember the color colorful adjectives you used but they weren't they weren't very uh you weren't very excited about the hydrogen airplane for good reason um so yeah then I think our our topics our conversation completely turned to talking about Lithium-ion batteries you know state of the art of Lithium-ion batteries and what was possible potentially possible you know stringing together you know at the time large numbers of small Lithium-ion batteries which were you know not very mature in those days but but could be potentially connected into really big battery packs to make make an EV that could potentially have hundreds of miles of range which you know today seems kind of you know commonplace but in 2003 it was absolutely unheard

of it would literally set World Records you know for range and uh yeah I mean you you uh you understood that concept I think in the potential of it better than anyone else that uh that we'd ever talk to about it and were immediately enthused about it and excited so that was I mean shortly after as you said you know we met up with AC propulsion and uh uh kind of We're Off to the Races and then what there were a lot of early rejections when you talked to some car makers obviously you settled on Lotus for the first Roadster um but you went around some others was there ever a point you know between the lunch and and getting the Roadster off the ground where you almost gave up you thought that actually you couldn't make it work not from a chemistry point of

view but commercially I mean I can jump in maybe first on that you know there were a lot of challenges in those early days I mean the the technology was not um it was not a sure thing that all those pieces would work together and and uh you know some of the the safety aspects around the battery were pretty thorny in the early days and uh it was before I think most people had figured out how to you know manage that and um I think in at Tesla I think we had an early you know chance to really you know figure that out in a very robust way and you know make them far far safer than internal combustion actually has proved out to be through the statistics and through data um but that was not the common perception so so that was that was hard and that was risky

uh obviously there were a lot of financial turns and tribulations it wasn't exactly smooth sailing from idea of an electric Roadster through into commercialization uh it was it was a insane nightmare basically um and uh we screwed the pooch six ways to Sunday um and made so many mistakes it's embarrassing um basically the almost everything about the first design of the Tesla Roadster was wrong um and wouldn't work um but uh and the we didn't first of all we had no idea how to build a car uh so uh and and then no one really knew how to build a you know a a commercial uh lithium-ion battery car uh no one had ever done it um so um so like the original idea sort of uh which sounds appealing but was fundamentally flawed was to um use the Lotus Elise chassis

um and then combine that with AC propulsions drivetrain technology and and boom you've got like very the two pieces necessary to create a car it should be straightforward uh and um just do that and and and uh great uh unfortunately uh those were uh two fundamentally flawed uh premises the um the Lotus Elise chassis did not work uh meaning that so the car ended up being 40 heavier and we couldn't fit the battery pack in the Elise it was a very tiny car so we had to change basically everything about the Elise I think we kept maybe six percent of the parts were in common uh all crash tests were invalidated the structure was invalidated because of the the the greater mass and the mass distribution being fundamentally different from a gasoline car and um yeah

uh if right it in retrospect it would have actually been much smarter to start from with a clean sheet design and not try to modify the Elise because we ended up with a lot of the limitations of the Elise but almost nothing to gain in terms of reuse of parts so that was a staggeringly dumb decision um and then uh on the on the drivetrain side it turned out that I think almost none of the AC propulsion Technologies were viable in a uh production car um I mean JB did we end up using any of the AC propulsion stuff pretty much nothing by the time it went to the first customer yes it was a very it was a very helpful first proof of concept that uh maybe pointed the way that was what might be possible but none of it was uh I mean the commercial commercializing

all of it as Elon said was uh was a lot of mistakes and trials and tribulations and uh it was very hard to build more than two of those motor controllers in the first days with analog components those were still analog motor control I mean it would get hot and the motor would perform differently you know the throttle would respond differently in a hot day versus a cold day so yeah everything pretty much had to be redone from scratch So Gone so so what we're saying is that we're huge idiots and we're totally wrong about the the fundamental premises of creating the Tesla Roadster um uh uh and you ended up not being able to use any of the AC propulsion drivetrain technology uh using essentially almost none of the original Lotus lease um but we're still left

with a lot of the limitations of the Elise being a car that was a bit too small very difficult to get in and out of um and very Bare Bones um and an independent on Lotus to make it and then every time Lotus would have financial difficulties they would increase the price on us and uh and charge us more money um so uh that made it very difficult to um control the price of the car uh so um and then the supply chain was also a complete mess the initial idea was to basically Outsource everything and uh then uh almost none of the companies to which we outsourced the various parts of the cars were able to succeed in making those parts so we had to find a new supplier for the car body um because or Cyrus Supply originally picked was flat out unable to do it um

this was not a decision that I was building but the we had outsourced making the battery to a barbecue uh company in in Thailand um this is a bit silly uh to say okay we're going to make the most sophisticated battery ever made um and the Barbecue Company is going to make it um that obviously they did not know how to make uh um it was pretty silly um so we're at the end Source battery production to California we made it basically ended up making the battery ourselves um uh yeah it's one thing after another basically uh just a flat out uh running dumpster fire of stupidity I would say was the beginning of the company um and uh and then we had to recover from there and it was very difficult so there are lots of other EV startups out there potentially in

the hundreds today all wanting to do what you did you guys uh you blazed the trail 10 years before the industry really caught up with you you had the advantage of having no one else playing in the same area but the disadvantage that all the time you were trying to break through Virgin Snow was it more difficult to do it 10 years ago than you think it is today and if if there's one piece of advice that you could offer to the various EV startups what would it be well I I mean I I think most of them just completely forget about the first like eight to ten years of Tesla that's the kind of amazing part to me you know they kind of see success and then they're like oh that looks good let's do that let's let's be one let's do you know copy that but um I mean

it was it was brutal confusion and tons of mistakes and a lot of money invested for a lot of years um I personally think it's a lot actually harder today even still for a startup to compete because the first question is so what is the niche that even makes sense to have a new startup EV company relative to all the products from other oems or to Tesla you know what are they going to do better than Tesla Tesla didn't exist there was no Tesla in the world 17 years ago so that that was sort of the imperative and gave a Runway to to make a lot of mistakes and still make it work you know yeah I think just it's very important to uh emphasize here the you know I think um something I wouldn't uh JB would have wanted to go through the extreme pain of creating electric

an electric car company if the traditional automakers were going to make an electric make electric cars um and you know just an important thing for the world that needs to happen to move to a sustainable technology future and but but if at the time that we created Tesla uh the there were no startups doing electric cars and the uh the big car companies had uh really no electric car programs going and the few tiny tiny electric car programs the head guard they were shutting down so therefore unless we try to create an electric car there was not one going to be created um it's not from the standpoint of thinking hey uh here's a super lucrative idea let's make start a car company the history of Cart Company startups is horrific um that and they've almost

all gone bankrupt it's an incredibly big grave Rock great graveyard of car startups that all died um you've only heard a tiny number of them you know sort of the tacos and Deloreans of the world but there are hundreds of others that people didn't hear about um so and and at this point in the United States the only two American card companies that have not gone bankrupt are Ford and Tesla and Tesla went back almost went bankrupt so many times I lost count so basically it's a world of hurt to start a car company is Mega pain it is not easy money it's the furthest thing for easy money you could possibly imagine um so uh and what I see with some of these new car companies is that they are they're jumping in at the defend and trying to create a high volume

vehicle that when they have never made a vehicle before this is um but you know not practicing your athletic Sport and then going to the Olympics you're not going to win this is crazy um you really need to start out small make your mistakes at a small scale um and make sure you've got a lot of reserved capital and then gradually build up from the dumb things that you do at the beginning and be less dumb over time otherwise what will happen is a vast uh losses of money um the car industry is very competitive it's it's it's the opposite of a natural monopoly you have sort of national monopolies in things like social media or say Google search um by card companies so naturally uh I'm not monopolies they're hyper competitive and they're used to being hyper

competitive uh throughout the world they have entrenched customers dealers service actories uh existing expertise these are these are veteran veteran armies like in in fortresses so it's like it's yeah I mean it's extremely difficult now you happen to mention in that answer the word social media which brings us very neatly onto the question of uh Twitter so JB I'm going to say thank you so much that was fascinating a brief history there of Tesla and the early years and the mistakes that you made um so thank you very much for being with us on stage thank you well the Twitter friend is not a lot that I can say uh because you know this is that Twitter's publicly traded company and um you know there are a lot of constraints in what I can say so not sure what

you would like to ask but most of the questions the answer is going to be no comment that's all right I can have a go let me ask you to put your product development hat on and if you pair Twitter all the way back what is it and what do you think it can be in 10 years time well what I said is that I think Twitter um is currently the the best or looked at another way the least bad uh Public Square um if a forum for the exchange of ideas uh nationally and internationally and and but I think it could be a lot better at that in order to be better at that it needs to really get rid of the the Bots and the the scams and spammers and you know basically and and anyone trying to uh create sort of fake influence on the side pipe whereas one person or one entity

operating 100 000 accounts um or you know obviously scammers are not good um and and Twitter really uh at least do a much better job at that um the it also needs to build trust more trust with users I think the way to do that is by open sourcing the algorithm so everyone can see how the algorithm works and can uh suggest improvements and changes I would literally literally just put the uh the Twitter algorithm on on GitHub and say like hey anyone want to suggest changes to this please go ahead um and and just you really want transparency to build trust and then any any change any sort of adjustments to tweets or uh in any human intervention uh with any account on Twitter should be highlighted as a Twitter person took of the following action with your

account or with this tweet so that you're not sort of sitting there in the dock wondering why did this tweet not get any attention or why did this one get a lot of attention um it's far too random um and um you know and then I think Twitter needs to be much more even-handed it currently has a strong left bias uh because it's based in San Francisco I don't think people that they're necessarily intent I or at least have some of them don't attend to to have a left bias they're just from their perspective uh it seems moderate but they're just coming at it from an environment that is that is very far left so uh but but then this this fails to build trust into in the rest of the United States and and also perhaps in other parts of the world uh because uh Twitter

needs to be even-handed and and be um you know I think I said publicly uh Victory would be that the um the most far right 10 and the most part left 10 percent are equally upset um like I don't think this is a situation where you're going to get necessarily of Praise you're just gonna you're just gonna balance the anger so how how do you because people well people and will automatically associate you with Tesla and you with Twitter is there any risk in your mind that the actions that you're going to take at Twitter which you've admitted freely will upset some people um potentially lead to a commercial impact on Tesla um I'm confident that we will be able to sell all the cars we can make I mean currently the the lead time for ordering a Tesla is ridiculously

so our issue is not demand it is production but that's at the moment because of the global Supply chains and the chip shortages that's less around electric car demand which we are expecting to go absolutely through the roof and you obviously have very ambitious targets for that at Tesla yeah I mean even before there was uh the supply chain issues Tesla uh demand exceeded production so um now now it's Advantage exceeding production to a ridiculous degree um uh we're actually probably going to limit uh just stop taking orders for for anything beyond uh a certain period of time because you know some of the timing is like a year away uh so um anyway uh the the frustration that we're seeing from customers is uh under being unable to to get them a car um not

uh are they willing or interested in buying a car um so our basically I think zero about demand generation and a lot about production and engineering and supply chain I I have two more questions on Twitter if I may before we turn for the rest of the session um to Tesla how confident are you the deal will happen and is there a risk this is all one question and is there a risk um because you're putting a lot of your personal stake up for this to fund it is there a risk that if it all goes south you're imperiling your stake in Tesla potentially hurting Tesla financially and maybe even SpaceX um if it all goes to pod that's the technical term sure um so I mean I think there's still a lot of things that need to get done before the steal concludes obviously

there's not yet even been a shareholder vote um and and Twitter has not yet filed the proxy for a shareholder vote um so there are still you know some outstanding questions that need to be resolved um and uh so it is certainly not a done deal that just objectively it is not a gonna deal um you know the best case scenario is that this would be yeah I think perhaps done in in uh two or three months um yeah and the final question and this is this is really the two paid elephant in the room are you planning to let Donald Trump back on well I I think there's there's a general question of should was it Twitter have women at bands um and you know I've talked with Jack Dorsey about this and uh he and I are of the same mind which is that uh permanent fans should

be uh extremely rare and really reserved for uh people where they're trying to uh for for accounts that are uh Bots or spam scam accounts where there's just no legitimacy to the account at all um I I do think that uh it was not correct to ban Donald Trump I think that was that was a mistake um because it uh it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice he is not going to be on Truth social um as will a large part of the sort of the the right in the in the United States um and so I think this could end up being frankly worse than having a you know a single form where everyone can debate um so um I guess the answer is that I I I would reverse the Perma ban I would say I'm not I don't own Twitter

yet so this is not like a thing that will definitely happen because what if I don't own Twitter uh but my opinion and Jack Dorsey I want to be clear shares this opinion uh is that we should not have permabads um now now that doesn't mean that somebody gets to say whatever they wanted to say if they say something that is uh illegal or um otherwise you know uh just you know just destructive to the world then then that there should be perhaps a timeout a temporary suspension or that particular tweet uh should be uh uh made invisible or or have very limited uh traction um but I think pro events just fundamentally undermine trust in Twitter as a Town Square uh where everyone can voice their opinion it was a fun I think it was a morally bad decision to be clear

and and foolish in the extreme even even after he egged on the crowd who went to the U.

S Capitol some of them carrying nooses you still think it was a mistake to remove him I think the if there are tweets that are wrong they should and bad those should be uh uh either deleted or made it visible and a suspension uh a temporary suspension is appropriate but not a permanent ban so if the deal completes he might potentially come back on but with the understanding that if he does something similar again he'll be back in the Simpson uh he has publicly stated that he will not be coming back to Twitter and that he will only be on true social and this is the point that I'm trying to make which is perhaps not getting across is that there is that banning Trump from Twitter didn't end Trump's voice it will amplify it among the rights and this is why

it is morally wrong and flat out stupid okay thank you we will um let's turn uh to Tesla again I'd like to ask you about your Ambitions for the future you've said you want the company to be able to make 20 million cars a year by 2030 which would make it the same size as Toyota and Volkswagen combined today um give us a sense what does the business look like by 2030 to make 20 million cars plants for prints models yes well this is not a form for announcing new product is new Tesla products um the uh the 20 million by 2030 is an aspiration not a promise um and the the reason for uh aiming for something like that is there are approximately two billion uh cars and trucks in the world and for us to really make a dent in sustainable energy and electrification

uh I think we need to to replace at least one percent of the fleet per year uh to really be meaningful um and and that's that's where the 20 million units comes from uh is is let's let's try to replace one percent of the global wage of two billion cars and trucks per year and um that's our aspiration it's not a promise it's an aspiration uh I think we've got a good chance of getting there and uh people will see based on the products that we unveil uh we'll be able to judge for themselves whether that goal is realistic or not now you've gone from zero plants to four plants that would require you to get to possibly about 20 plants depending how they're wrapped up is that phase more difficult what you've got ahead of you by 2030 than what's gone behind given

you've already done it or do you still think it's more difficult to ramp to that level foreign I think it's close it's roughly [Music] um the sheer amount of stuff that tails is done is I think quite mind-boggling uh we have an incredible team at Tesla and um executing very well and our annual growth rates are faster than any large manufacturer product in the history of Earth but I think the next fastest was the growth of the Model T and we're faster than the Model T so you know if that growth rate continues then obviously we will reach 20 million Vehicles a year but we may stumble and and uh and uh not reach that goal so um but I'd say on roughly it's roughly equally difficult to have gotten to this point as will be to get to 20 million and what's the

biggest uncertainty with getting to 2030 is it manufacturing ramping is it the raw materials is it something else um there are some raw material constraints that we see coming um in the theme production probably in about three years um and in cathode production the cathode the two main cathode choices are nickel and uh iron phosphate um obviously iron is extremely plentiful the Earth is uh 32 Iron by composition so uh if a little bit of trivia if someone says what is Earth made of the single biggest element that Earth is made of is iron the second biggest element that Earth is made of is oxygen which is about 30 30 of Earth Mass so clearly is not not in short supply um uh the the phosphate is slightly more of a challenge but still quite common um so I

do not see any fundamental scaling constraints and lithium is also quite common so lithium is practically everywhere uh the so so this is not a question of a shortage of of like as though it's some Rare Element it's really just that the um the lithium Mining and especially the refining capacity and and that of the of taking iron or phosphorus and turning it into battery grade iron phosphate um or or nickel and turning it into battery grade nickel uh is it's really the the equipment I think this the single exist right would be the equipment necessary to convert the ore into battery grade materials we're working on that with suppliers so I'm not saying that this is an impossible thing to address it is simply uh one of the problems along the way to getting

20 million vehicles lfp batteries are much less recyclable than the other batteries you use how much of that is an issue in terms of overall environmental impact of what the company does if you end up using lots and lots of them uh no the word she said is not true uh iron phosphate batteries are fully recyclable I'm not sure we're getting your information but iron phosphate is equally recyclable and so is that store nickel base batteries um thank you I stand corrected um can I ask why you think Tesla needs to grow so much by 2030 because the what you set out when you in the early years was that you wanted Tesla to help um tilt the world away from fossil fuels and to some extent it looks like it's already succeeded um yes I I think you're sort of putting

too much emphasis on this 20 million Vehicles by 20 30 as though this is some Grand promise uh some heal upon which we will die um that is it is simply an aspiration um and we may we may achieve it or we may not um uh we our goal is to accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy and and so that's why we want to make a lot of cars and also a lot of stationary battery packs because the three pillars of a sustainable energy future are electric transport uh stationary battery packs and solar and wind and geothermal and hydro basically sustainable energy sources but solar and wind particularly are intermittent and so you need stationary battery packs to store the energy when the sun doesn't shine as you you know you have your constant uh electricity provision

or when the wind doesn't blow so um but you can have a you can completely convert I want to be very clear about this all of Earth all of Earth can can easily be powered by solar and wind stationary battery packs and electric transport well you could power several if even if Earth's economy were to you could you could do 10 times what Earth economy is with with solar wind batteries and early transport not it's not a close thing that that I think most people just have not done the basic math of just how much energy hits the earth from the sun it's a kilowatt per square meter or is it another way a gigawatt per square kilometer so if you have a 20 efficient solar system uh that's 200 megawatts per square kilometer um it's a lot basically uh you could power

all of Europe with a section of Spain uh section of Spain um you could uh Power all of um the United States with a a corner of Utah or Texas now obviously it would make more sense to spread this out and not I'm just using this as a figure of speech or to show that it is a small amount of area that is necessary uh to power the United States or or Europe uh it is not some vast area um and I invite anyone to do the basic math it's it's not hard um 200 megawatts per square kilometer okay so how many what's the power needed um how many that'll tell you how many square kilometers uh then you will need uh batteries to store that um the um I think our calculation of the automatic area of the batteries needed to store all the energy to power the United States

was roughly one square mile literally so do you think do you think Tesla has succeeded in its goal then or do you think there's still much more to do you know I think you know we we've not succeeded in the goal if you consider the goal to be uh getting the automotive industry to move strongly towards electric vehicles I think that part of the goal we have succeeded in that and that was explicitly part of our goal is to to get the industry moving towards electric vehicles because they they were doing nothing in that direction when we started um and for the longest time they were uh dismissing the concept of electric vehicles um and then uh Tesla started taking market share away from them and that changed their mind how long do you think you're likely to

stay at Tesla as long as they can be useful and what are the what else is there in terms of potential future projects that piques your interest you're obviously going to be quite involved in Twitter if the deal goes through but you've got Tesla you've got SpaceX you've got boring you've got neuralink as you're looking around thinking you potentially have capacity um what else is there in terms of the kind of I don't know betterment of The Human Condition or improving Earth that you feel you might want to turn your attention to in future well I I'm trying to take the set of actions that I think most likely make the future good um and hopefully you know pave the road to hell with good intentions so um so I think Tesla's about accelerating sustainable energy

because we're obviously a sustainable energy future on Earth for us to be good then SpaceX is about extending life beyond Earth to so that we may become a multi-planetary species and with starlink providing internet coverage to the the least served in the world um that those are that they're into rural communities or places that just don't have good internet or it's very expensive um and um but I think it's important that we become a multi-flatant species and a space-faring civilization um because eventually the sun will expand and destroy our life on Earth so if if one is an environment a true environmentalist or cares about the future of life it is obviously important that life become multi-planetary and ultimately a multi-stellar so we must make that

first step um what do you think the next goals are then for SpaceX and do you have a date in mind for when you think they will get to Mars foreign I think I think we should be able to [Music] maybe get Starship to Mars uh on crude in um three to five years um and then I think if that successful then we may be able to send a crude Mission to Mars uh before the end of the decade um the the the windows for going tomorrow as a career every two years so the planets are align for a orbital transfer uh every every 26 months so that that's you get a a kick at the can every 20 seconds so we're making a lot of progress with Starship We will hopefully have our first uh launch attempt uh this summer um or it basically the next next two or three months um and we're

building up the we've got a factory for selling ships so there's a whole bunch of Starships coming behind the one that will attempt launch uh soon so if that one doesn't work we have um we'll have many more behind that and we're continuously improving the design so each one is better than the last um and Starship really is a a game changer to an extraordinary degree with respect to access to space because it will be it's the first a little rocket that is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable um there's never been a fully reusable over the rocket um Falcon 9 is the most reusable rocket since we're able to fairly rapidly reuse the Boost stage and the fairing um and that's maybe 70 percent of the other cost a permission is saved um but we still lose

the upper stage on every Mission so with with Starship both the booster and the upper stage both the ship and the booster will be recovered um and they'll be recovered very rapidly and uh in theory you could launch the booster I don't know 10 or 12 times a day and the ship because of over the limitations maybe you could launch it three times a day um and it's also a very big vehicle so on the order of roughly 100 tons 100 tons of useful Earth to orbits so it's Saturn V scale uh payload orbit but fully reusable um if it was Expendable it would probably do I don't know 250 tons to orbit um and I think with further improvements even with full reusability we can probably get it to 150 tons two of it um but to put this into perspective if you have a fleet

of Starships uh launching with the ability to launch uh every day or multiple times a day um Starship will do more than a thousand times the payload to orbit of all other rockets on Earth combined can I thank you that was fascinating can I bring us down to earth gently um and ask you about China in relation to Tesla where do you how important is the market for you do you think China contributes most of your growth in the future um no I think China is obviously a very significant Market that it is um you know it says probably 25 to 30 of our Market uh long term um the rest of the world is probably three quarters of it do you see I promised I didn't have any more Twitter questions but I had this is sort of a Twitter question do you um do you see any risk

at all that China uses your ownership of Twitter potentially to interfere or block Tesla's operations in the country because obviously China has has banned Twitter I've seen no indication to that effect okay how um how close would you say you are personally to the Chinese government because when you set up the factory in Shanghai the walls were Rewritten around joint ventures to allow you to do that well um yeah I was suddenly asked many times by the government attorney to to do a factory in China I said well we we're not going to do one which is 51 locally owned um and so if they're willing to to change rules not just for us but for everyone um then then we would move forward and so they did um and I think it's been very successful so far and the guy

was very happy about it and so I don't know things are proceeding fairly well how many other plants are you expecting to open in China in the near future um well we're not expecting to open uh any any additional plants in China in the near future we will we will be expanding our Shanghai Factory um but we are our focused on production is going to be on the two new factories that we've recently completed uh in Berlin and in Austin Texas and US getting those to high volume production is the is the near-term challenge now we had Herbert Des Volkswagen chief executive who you know well at the summit yesterday and we asked him what his big question was for you and it was how do you scale production in China Germany and Texas simultaneously because for any

experienced OEM even the ones with 100 Years of doing this that's a challenge yes I think generally the difficulty of manufacturing and scaling manufacturing is very much underappreciated uh I've said many times that prototypes are easy production is hard um and we can easily whip out a prototype of any kind of car you could possibly imagine with a small team in six months now you know we have a team of 100 people in six months now to bring that to fruition with high volume or direction is 10 000 people in two years and that's three times faster than the rest of Industry um so overwhelmingly the problem with with cars is production overwhelmingly it's you know 99 of the difficulty um so he's certainly correct that that the difficulty is scaling um but

if you look if you look at our track record thus far in scaling production uh We've scaled production at like I said a rate faster than any car company in the on the history of Earth or any company making a large sophisticated product of any kind so provided we continue to execute at that rate um we'll do fine um and even if that rate slows down a little it'll still be faster than any other company on Earth now what I want to ask you about two specific rumors that have swirled around future production plants for you um are you going to build a plant in Indonesia um as I said this is not the forum for us to make a major company announcements and finally have you looked at building a plant in the UK do you think you might ever build a plant in the UK in

the future I refer back to my prayer answer it was worth a try right mm-hmm can I can I ask um can I ask about autonomy right so you have this way that you think about autonomy using cameras on the vehicles and you want to get to almost a kind of human level AI to get the the cars to drive themselves fully in the real world um but a lot of people who work in AI I think human level AI is a long long way off how do you square that Circle about the approach that you're taking and the speed at which you want to deploy full self-driving technology well I don't think you need full human level intelligence to drive a car um you need sufficient human level intelligence to drive a car but not uh you know you're not you don't need like deep conceptual understanding

of you know esoteric Concepts or anything like that uh you need sufficient intelligence to um match what human neural Nets do when driving a car and I think you know anyone who's driven a car for any length of time once you're you you know once you have some years of experience driving a car the cognitive load on driving a car is not high you're able to think about other things listen to music have a conversation and still drive safely so it's not like matching everything a human does um but it is still matching enough of the the neural Nets to what you know to look at the Silicon neural Nets need to at least be on par with the biological neural Nets uh to uh enable safe driving and I think we're quite close to achieving that um and but I recommend that

uh don't take my word for it just sign up for our beta program and try it out uh we'll look at the videos that people are posting um who are in our beta program we have like I think at this point about hundred thousand people in our beta program so it's not exactly top secret how how hard is it as a problem to solve because you've made predictions in the past about autonomy um you know some of those haven't come to fruition at the same time as your understanding of the problem of autonomy changed over the last few years uh yes the I'd say that self-driving is one of those things where um there are a lot of false stones or you know where um you think you're getting there but then you end up asymptoting um your your progress is initially linear and then

and it looks logarithmic and sort of tapers off um because you're in a like in a local maximum that you do not realize you were in now at this point I think we are no longer in trapped in a local maximum and uh obviously I could be wrong but I I think we are actually quite close to achieving self-driving at a safety level that is uh better than human and it appears my best guess is that we will get there this year um but we're really not far from it um and like I said the best way to assess this is to be in our beta program or look at the videos of those who are in the beta program and and look at the the progress that has had that has occurred and if the progress is dramatic um and I'm confident we will not really get to the safety level of a human we'll

get far in excess of the safety level of a human um so I think ultimately probably a factor of 10 uh is safer than a human as measured by the probability of injury like given where you're trying to get to with this the you know the factor above human driving the potential lives that could be saved with that I need to ask you about some of the accidents and fatalities that have happened with vehicles previously um the people who died do you consider that that was a price worth paying to get to the level where we want to be to save more human lives in the future well it's important to note that uh and and we have never said ever that Tesla uh the Tesla autopilot does not require attention we have always made that extremely clear repeatedly you can't even

turn it on without acknowledging that it requires a supervision um we remind you of that every time you turn it on to to ad nauseam so this was not a case of setting expectations that the card could simply drive itself in the past and then not meeting those expectations that is completely untrue um now I it is also the case however and and I knew this would be true from the beginning that um people don't the the people who are whose lives are saved with autopilot or autonomy don't know that the lives were saved um and and so you know if you look at say death's annual Automotive deaths every year it's about around a million people per year die from Automotive accidents of maybe 10 million uh per year are severely injured um and so with autonomy you um

you know the cause you know driving or it's a sister driving right now but it will be fully autonomous in the future um like I said those who who didn't realize they would have crashed or hit a pedestrian or a cyclist they don't know that um but but the so see basically even if you if you um let's say save 90 of the people that uh would otherwise have died the remaining 10 percent who did die will still sue you now but I think it is I say like in the grand scheme of things what is the morally right decision is and I'm a strong believer in the in during the reality of good over the perception of good and utter contempt for those who simply who prefer the perception of good over the reality of it and so so we're just going to take the Heat but if we believe

that uh that that quality of injury is reduced and we have very very confident with that uh and and but we also know that we're going to be sued despite doing the right thing we will do the right thing and get sued thank you we have it will not necessarily surprise you to hear a lot of audience questions that have come in um in the last few minutes I'm going to try and rattle through as many as we can what is Tesla's approach to smaller and more affordable end of the market you're going to go smaller than the model of three but could you get into a scooter micro Mobility something else uh scooters are very dangerous I would not recommend anyone drive a scooter if there's ever an argument between a scooter and a car the scooter will always what about smaller

than a model three what do you how far can you go down the entry level of the market [Music] well I said this is not some forum for roundabout product announcements no matter how no matter how cleverly the question is asked um so uh you know well we that there's some probability that Tesla will do a smaller cloud in the middle three um I would say more than that okay that's fine that wasn't my question that was an audience question um does Tesla would you ever consider licensing your platform to other oems presumably that would help switch the industry towards uh Electric Mobility in your opinion well we've already open sourced all our patents anyone can use our pads for free so uh all right um you know we we only patent things in order to prevent others

from creating this Minefield of patents that that inhibit progress with electric vehicles um but several years ago uh you know I came from conclusion we're never going to really prosecute anyone for using our patents so let's just say um you can use any Tesla patterns for free um so I think hopefully that's helpful to others um and uh but but I think the you know the regular car industry the traditional car makers um will solve electrification it's not fundamentally difficult at this point to make electric cars um the thing that I think they may be interested in licensing is Tesla uh autopilot full self-driving um and I think that would save a lot of lives um but but I think we still have we have to prove prove ourselves for I don't know maybe another

year or so um and and then perhaps there will be some um other carmakers who uh may wish to license Tesla autopilot um and we'd be very open to that thank you um of all the other EV startups which one has impressed you the most well I think the company making the most progress besides Tesla is actually VW which is not a startup but could be viewed in some ways as a startup from an electric vehicle standpoint so VW is doing the most uh on on the electric vehicle front um I think there will be some very strong companies uh coming out of China um there's just like a lot of super talented hard-working people in China that are um strongly believe in in manufacturing and and they will they go they'll they won't just be voting the Midnight Oil they'll be burning

the 3am oil so um they won't even leave the leave the factory type of thing whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all we've got a question on the Cyber truck um is it a is there a risk um that you you lose the pickup segment to Ford GM and rivien if you don't launch the Cyber truck or get it to Market soon no good um we've had another question coming what is the first cyber truck then we could possibly fulfill for three years after the start of production okay thank you we've had a question coming about China um you've been critical of lockdowns in the past uh uh particularly when it happened in the U.

S Shanghai is currently locked down most of the western world is able to carry on functioning at the moment because of vaccines but China is is going towards a zero covert approach what do you make of the Chinese government's actions well um the you know had some conversations with the Chinese government um in in recent days and it's uh clear that the uh lockdowns are are being lifted rapidly so I would not expect this to be um a significant issue in in the coming weeks um you know the in the past where I was sort of upset with lockdowns is where those lockdowns differentially affected Tesla but not others um so in the case of California and the Bay Area County specifically um every other car factory in North America was allowed to start but not Tesla

even though we there was no basis for that it was simply because we were located in Alameda County in California um and but they had no rational it was arbitrary and and uh unfair and and um you know that's that's the reason for why we're quite upset about uh kind of Tesla being singled out as the only car company in America that was allowed to start even though I think our health care practices are probably better than anyone else thank you we've had a question on software at what point did you realize that software was going to be key to Tesla's success and particularly as others are coming into software how do you maintain leadership in it well Tesla is I think as much a software company as it is a hardware company you know I personally wrote software

for 20 years so um I have great respect and admiration for software engineering um I think it's incredibly important and um I think that's why Tesla's been able to recruit uh some of the world's best software Engineers is because we we value software engineering so highly and do not regard it as an afterthought um uh so you know our autopilot for self-driving AI team is uh incredibly talented and and some of the most the smartest software engineers in the world um so and I do not give compliments lightly so we have an incredible team we have the best real world AI team in the world the the best real world AI team that on Earth um and um and we're seeing more and more uh incredibly talented people join our team so um and we're really not seeing anyone

else being close to solving real world AI um they may exist but if so they're being very subtle about it and that periodically pull our team and say like do we know anyone who is doing this because you know we know who a lot of the the top people are in Ai and what they're doing and and we just don't see anyone else that we're aware of making any significant progress in real world AI apart from Tesla um so yeah I I do I am quite confident that we'll not merely maintain our software lead but increase it thank you um we've had a question come in on the supercharger Network what are your thoughts about opening it to other motorists who don't drive Teslas and doesn't that risk what is currently one of your great competitive advantages uh we've already opened

Tesla superchargers to um other uh electric cars in Europe and we intend to roll that out uh worldwide um it's a little trickier in the us because we have a different connector than the the rest of the industry but we will be adding the rest of Industry connectors as an option to superchargers in us so we'll be fully we're trying as best as possible to do the right thing for the advancement of electrification even if that diminishes our competitive advantage do you uh do you think you'll ever wrap all your various operations Tesla SpaceX Etc under one umbrella group or do you want to keep them separate for the time being I think they're they're sort of separate objectives with uh different shareable devices and I think you know I don't see a ton of merits

in combining them um at times there are people um you know where we have some say very talented people who who actually are willing to join but they they want to do things both at SpaceX and Tesla uh so for example we've got um one of the best Advanced Materials teams in the world it might be the best but it's certainly one of the best um and uh a lot of people on that team were willing to join but only if they could work on both rockets and cars it was like great um let's do that and and so we can sort of share some of the ideas uh between rockets and cars which are obviously not competitive you know they're they're not different competitive segments um so you know if you say like if somebody's a really incredible uh technologist innovator engineer they

want to work on interesting things so the more interesting you know like sure like money is you know they can get money from you know anyone would hire them for a lot of money so um then it's it's not a money thing it's really just how interesting are the projects and so there are just a few cases where um we can recruit some of the smartest you know Engineers scientists technologists in the world but they they want to work on both rockets and cars and there's a few cases like that thank you what do you I know we've I know we've run over time but it's one more I'm going to try and get in and then if you need to go go but if you're happy to keep talking we'll we'll keep you um what is the uh what do you think's the next big innovation in personal transportation

well I think tunnels are underrated underappreciated tunnels Will Never Let You Down here's the question here's the question on tunnels right so if you look at say for instance Robert Moses in New York built loads of Highways they were supposed to solve congestion and all they did was led to more congestion how do you avoid tunnels doing exactly the same but just being very expensive in the process foreign I have to say the this this notion of induced demand is one of the single dumbest Notions I have ever heard my entire life um if if you know if adding roads just increases traffic why don't we delete them and decrease traffic and I think you'd have an uproar if you did that the the real problem is that we have not if you take say congested cities which

really almost all large cities are congested you have a fundamental dimensional problem you have say these tall buildings or multi-level buildings where you've got uh you know people people you know living in 3D and then you want to take them in and out of those buildings on a 2d Road Network like how would you possibly expect that to work um so uh especially if they want to all to you know arrive and depart at roughly the same time this is just a recipe for traffic obviously so now if you go 3D which you go 3D up or you go 3D down now you have you're matching the dimensionality of the buildings um the buildings are 3D that the the and if the road Network or you could potentially have flying cars uh is 3D then you will completely alleviate the traffic

problem um so think of titles not as a single layer of tunnels but as as many layers as you want um as whatever layer count isn't is necessary to drop traffic to landline that people wouldn't think it would work um and we've already we have a proof of concept list in Las Vegas with the tunnel uh going from the convention center to the strip and that will soon be connecting all of the hotels and the airport uh in in Las Vegas um and Phil will just try it out for themselves it's working really well uh already in Vegas and there was some skepticism um among the county in the city as weather would be effective um and I think the the test tunnel just barely succeeded in in a vote with the the you know the with the local government in Clark County and and Las

Vegas but uh once they saw the initial test tunnel and wrote in it themselves uh we got a unanimous vote in favor of expanding it to the whole city so that should tell you something could you ever potentially go in the other direction three-dimensionally and look at vetoles and potentially flying vehicles well I like the idea of details but um you know we already have vetoes in the form of a helicopter so but the problem with with going 3D in the air um is is that um you you now have things that make a lot of noise uh that uh and the wind force that they generate when taking over Landing is very high um I mean if you just say like look at a little drone and say and I imagine that that thing was big what a record it would make and how much wind force would

it generate and now they're going all over the place like a giant beehive of super noisy bees um I don't think people is what people want and most cities uh helicopters are actually banned except for emergency purposes because of this reason so um then there's also the weather dependency so if if it's if there's if there are high winds or or heavy snow rain sleet uh now the you can't fly um so but now you're shut down and and can't go anywhere um then there's the the probability of something falling on your head is much higher if there are all these uh you know vetoes flying all over the city right I mean I think people's Comfort level would be quite reduced uh you know should someone have perhaps not properly serviced their you know flying car and drops

a wheel on your head um I know that that I think would be discomforting to most people um and and also having them fly over your backyard and and having a strangers stare at you all day is probably also discomforting so I think these are all uh reasons why I have I think vitals will not succeed perfect I deliberately avoided calling them flying cars because they don't most of them don't drive on the road but no you're right but apart from that they're great um uh you told Kara Swisher in 2020 um that if Tesla investors knew what you you knew they would Panic about the state of the company that was two years ago so what were you referring to at the time I'm not sure what I was referring to at the time uh 2020 um I mean I think it's it's not that uh tells

the investors should should Panic it's just that the sheer number of problems being sold behind the scenes I think would would blow their minds and uh it's it what you know it's like that analogy of of you see that the duck serenely moving along the pond but the meanwhile the legs are patterning like crazy underneath this is really what's happening pretty much all the time um so the there there are a Non-Stop series of issues that need to be solved uh with um Tesla or with SpaceX really with most companies I suspect um and uh now we do solve them um but I think it would be very scary to most people to realize just how many things have to get solved on a real-time basis for the company to function well just last night I I basically got no sleep uh I was

up on Sunday night until well I really just didn't get any sleep until until last night you know so what is I was literally working all night uh just a Sunday through Monday what is paddling under the water at the moment is there something going on that makes you worry about the future of Tesla or do you think the company is now completely secure no it it's it's I think the future of Tesla is extremely strong um so Tesla is uh has no debt it has a lot of cash and uh you know there's there's a sort of a short-term um hiccup with the covert restrictions in in Shanghai uh but I I as for the rest of my knowledge the future of Tesla is incredibly bright um and I think we will uh throw off uh a tremendous amount of free cash flow do you think with your cash

and obviously your market cap at the moment you would ever consider buying another car maker whether an established OEM or a new business um uh well I think it's highly unlikely now great finally we've had a couple of questions coming on super capacitors do you think they might be potential have potential as an alternative energy storage solution to lithium-ion batteries what's interesting uh specific capacitors or Ultra capacitors are um oddly enough uh and I did research in that for a couple years uh while doing my Physics degree um I had a company in uh Silicon Valley called political research which at the time at least made the highest energy highest energy density capacitors in the world um now they used a ruthenium tantalum uh alloy which is um

very rare with him especially is very rare so um the that that would not scale to to high volume um because it simply isn't not enough enough ruthenium um so that and but I thought about the problem quite a lot and in fact my primary goal um had I continued as a graduate student and done a PhD at Stanford um would have been to try to figure out uh how to build ultra high energy density capacitors um and the the sort of theory I had at the time was to use Advanced chip making equipment uh to build a solid state capacitors uh that would be accurate at the molecular level um and um that this this uh a little bit of we're not new physics but explore exploring some some areas of of quantum quantum mechanics because you have to minimize the probability that

electrons can sort of tunnel from uh one you know essentially a tunnel across the insulator from the conductor to the insulator so um I guess make things get get quite complicated and rather weird at the sort of single or or when you when you get to get to a small number of atoms um but anyway it belongs to kind of long story short I think the capacitors are not needed at all for electrification of the entire Auto industry thank you we've got a question on money and again I know what I'm talking about so I know that don't worry um could um we've had a question on mining you've obviously done a number of mining deals trying to secure raw materials do you think you could ever go a step further and actually buy a mining company in the future it's not out

of the question we will address whatever the limitations are on accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy it's not that we wish to buy mining companies but if that's the only way to accelerate uh transition then we will that that will do that there are no arbitrary limitations on uh what's needed to accelerate sustainable energy we'll just tackle whatever set of things are needed to accelerate sustainable energy and doing Mining and refining or buying a mining company provided we think we can do we can change that mining company's trajectory significantly our possibilities yeah do you this is a slightly personal one do you ever think your children could end up working at Tesla obviously not the new one she's only a few months old but the

older ones yeah um well my Elder uh children have said that they were to do their own thing which I support um that none of them have said that they wish to work at Tesla or SpaceX uh they they want to do their own thing and um obviously I support them doing that um uh I think they want to do something for themselves and uh you know you know make their own way in the world and that's fine and it's possible at some point in the future that they um perhaps they do something of themselves and then and then decide that they'd like to do something a Tesla SpaceX and I'd support that too but but currently they they want to do their own thing perfect if I were to judge by it by a little x uh I know seeing a kid level Rockets more than than he does it's next

level he likes it I mean it's really Next Level so if if his level of rockets continues from H2 and to when he's older then then he may be interested he will be interested in working on Rockets perfect thank you um do you have time for time for one more question sure um excellent good um you talked uh earlier about things that are abundant in the world irons abundant Oxygen's abundant and hydrogen is also very abundant in the universe in the universe but not on Earth not on earth have you ever considered do you think that it has a role to play if we really want to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels no there we go I I really can't emphasize this enough the number of times I've been asked about hydrogen it might be like well over 100 times

maybe 200 times um it's important to understand that uh if if you want a means of energy storage hydrogen is a bad choice it is has extremely low energy density sorry it's extreme extremely low density and so it's actually it's volumetric energy density is poor