← BackSeptember 25, 2014Code ConferenceWithElon MuskWalt MossbergKara Swisher0:00 / 0:00CC1×YouTubeCode ConferenceSeptember 25, 2014Full Code Conference fireside interview covering Tesla, SpaceX and the future of technology.Full Code Conference fireside interview covering Tesla, SpaceX and the future of technology.TranscriptWalt MossbergElon, let me start by saying we're very glad you're here safe and sound.Elon MuskThanks. Unfortunately, I had to. Sorry for a bit late. I was flying. I flew here with the landing gear down because it was like some kind of landing gear issue.Walt MossbergLanding gear was stuck.Elon MuskThere's some kind of warning light. My pilot said that if they were attracted to the landing gear, it may not go back down again, so.Walt MossbergSo this happens. This even happens to you?Elon MuskYeah.Walt MossbergOkay.Elon MuskLanding gear problems of various kinds.Kara SwisherSo anyway, we're happy to wait for you and we're glad you got here safe.Elon MuskThanks for having me. It's great to see you guys.Kara SwisherThank you for coming. I really appreciate it. You kept your promise, which was nice. I think you were drunk when you promised me, but that's okay. I'll take it. So, you know, in a couple of years since you've come, you've done some astonishing things in terms of substantive stuff with both your companies. Let's start talking about space and what you've been doing there.Obviously you've had some success landing the rocket. You've had, you know, you've done a bunch of other things where people thought you weren't going to be successful. Talk a little bit about sort of the progress you think you've made with SpaceX.Elon MuskSure. Well, I mean, there's a lot of things where I think I didn't think would be successful. So the, and the most significant thing is being able to land in an orbit class rocket brew stage and bring it both back to Cape Canaveral, land on land and be able to land on a drone ship out in the ocean.There is a bit of an education process that's needed to understand orbital dynamics because a lot of people are confused of like, why the heck are you landing a ship, Landing a rocket in a, a ship in the ocean, that seems pretty inconvenient. And the reason is because that going up and staying up is actually about velocity horizontal to the Earth's surface.So there's a huge difference between space and, or space and orbit. Like space you could think of as like, say, being the international waters boundary for the Pacific Ocean. Like if you go, you know, 100 miles offshore, you're technically out of coastal waters. Now you're in the Pacific, so it's like technically you're in the Pacific, but orbit is like circumnavigating the globe.It's a really giant difference. And the reason that things go up and stay up is because you're zooming around the Earth so fast. That your outward radial acceleration is equal to the inward acceleration of gravity. And so those balance out and you have a net zero gravity. So when you see the space station, the thing that's a little sort of counterintuitive is that the space station is actually zooming around the earth at 17,000 miles an hour.Walt MossbergEven though it seems like it's, itElon Muskseems really still, you know, but it's moving really, really fast. To put that into perspective, A bullet from a.45 gun handgun is just below the speed of sound. So the space station is going more than 25 times faster than that.And that's what's needed actually to go up and stay up. And that's why there's the term escape velocity, not escape altitude. There's no such thing as an escape altitude. There's only an escape velocity.Walt MossbergYou need to be a certain speed to escape the gravity of the Earth.Elon MuskYeah, you can think of gravity as kind of a funnel in space time. So think of like a coin funnel. Like it's really, it's very much like that, but it's obviously sort of a four dimensional coin funnel. But if you spin a marble or a coin on a coin funnel, when it's far out, it sort of spins slowly and then as it gets closer, it spins faster and faster.And if you were to start at the bottom of the coin funnel and you wanted to exit, you'd spin it horizontally and it would spin out. And that's really how you get to orbit.Yeah. So the gravity well is like aWalt Mossbergfunnel, why you want to land on a ship in the ocean.Elon MuskBecause in order to get to orbit, all that matters is your horizontal velocity. Your altitude doesn't really matter. In fact, the force of gravity at say the nominal boundary of space, 100 km is almost exactly the same as it is on the surface of the Earth.It's a few percent lower than the surface of the Earth.So in order to go up and stay up, the only thing that matters is how fast are you going horizontal to the Earth's surface. So you have that outward radial acceleration, or think of it like maybe like tetherball or something like that. It's really that outward acceleration is the thing that matters. And so when the rocket is going to orbit, the only reason it's going up is to get out of the thick part of the atmosphere.Because at high velocity the atmosphere is thick as molasses. And so it goes up very briefly. But if you look at a long exposure of the rockets trajectory, you'll see it goes up. But immediately curves over and starts going horizontal.And so at the point at which the, at the point at which the stages separate, there's two stages. The primary boost stage, which is the most expensive part of the rocket, the point at which that staging occurs, can be as high as Mach 10. But it's. So it's going away from the launch site at 10 times the speed of sound.So in order to get back to the launch site, you would have to have enough fuel and oxygen to reverse out that velocity and boost back all the way to the launch site. And you just don't have the physics of it, don't really allow you to have that much. It's not about saving money on fuel or anything. It's just physically impossible.So.Because another sort of thing about if you're in space is that there's nothing to react against. So like, whereas an aircraft can circle very easily because it's reacting against air, in vacuum, there's nothing to react against. So the only way to go back the other direction is to apply just as much energy as it took you to go.If you want to go backwards, you have to apply just as much energy as it took you to go forwards. In fact, well, twice as much really, because you got to zero it out and then you've got to, you've got to land elsewhere. Yeah. So bottom line is this thing is zinging out to zinging out to be at super at 10 times faster than the bullet point.Walt MossbergIt may well be over the ocean because the ocean covers most of the.Elon MuskOh, it's actually at the point of separation. It's not that far away. It's maybe 100km away from the launch site, but it is going like hell in the opposite away from the launch site. So the only way to really land it is to have it continue on that arc, that ballistic arc, and then land far out to sea on a ship that's pre positioned to articulate latitude and longitude very precise to within about a meter.And then the rocket will then go from vacuum through rarefied air at hypersonic velocity.And so when it's in vacuum, it has to, obviously you can't use aero surfaces. You have to use nitrogen jets to control the attitude and position. And then as it starts to encounter the air, we use grid fins, because grid fins look sort of like a waffle that they work quite well across a wide regime from both very high velocity hypersonics through supersonic transonic and subsonic.So it's hard to have aero surfaces that work well across that entire regime. And then so once the aero forces become high, it uses the, the four grid fins to sort of control its attitude to land itself. Yeah, it's controlling its. It's controlling pitch, yaw and roll with the grid fins and then once. And those grid fins will then position it to where it's fairly close to the ship and then it will light, in this case, three of the nine engines to arrest the velocity and then drop to one engine for precision right before landing.Kara SwisherRight, okay, so that was maybe aElon Muskbit of a explanation.Kara SwisherOkay, what we're going to get to is. That's super fucking hard.Elon MuskThere's a video.Kara SwisherSo why, why is that important? Why has that this moment been important for you?Elon MuskWell, so in order to reuse the boost stage, which is about 70% of the cost of the rocket. So that.Kara SwisherWhat cost is that? How much is that?Elon MuskWell, I mean, it's sort of on the order of 30 to 35 million dollars.Kara SwisherRight, so you want to save that?Elon MuskYeah, I mean, it's like I try to tell my team, it's like, imagine there was a pallet of cash that was plummeting through the atmosphere and it was going to burn up and smash into tiny pieces. Would you try to save it?Kara SwisherRight, right, right.Elon MuskProbably. Yes.Kara SwisherYes. Okay.Elon MuskYeah, that sounds like a good idea.Kara SwisherRight, okay.Elon MuskSo, yeah, so we want to get it back and that way we don't have to make another one. And I think it's quite tragic if rockets get smashed into tiny pieces and land.Walt MossbergSo if I ask you a question, we've been going to space for what, 50 years or something like that? Nobody, until you started doing this and Jeff Bezos company has done it. The government never sort of saved the rockets. They never saved the pallet of cash. Why not? And the Russians didn't either. I mean, what was the deal there?Elon MuskYeah, I mean, there was some attempt made to do that with the space shuttle, but there was no return. It's the first time that a rocket boost has returned to launch site from an orbital mission, and certainly the first time that there's been a landing on a ship out.Walt MossbergBut the regular rockets that we went up that weren't designed like planes never tried to do this.Elon MuskRight. The plane thing is not a good idea in my view.So the plane. And the reason, I think is like, intuitively it seems like a plane should work. But actually if you consider that really every mode of transport has a design that is appropriate to its medium. And if you're in space, wings are not very useful because there's no air.And then if you want to go somewhere other than Earth, there's also no runways.So these are important considerations.So that's why when they went to the moon, they used propulsive landing.Walt MossbergRight. But what I'm saying was when they built the space shuttle, it sort ofElon Muskwas like a, looked like a kind of bulb, I think that appealed to Congress. Yeah, yeah.Kara SwisherCool. Cool.Elon MuskYeah, like an airplane.Walt MossbergCan you explain the, you know, Jeff, Jeff, good one. Jeff Bezos was here last night and I asked him what's the difference between what you're doing and what Elon Musk is doing? And he said, well, I think we have, I think he's the word like minded in the general sense of it. And then he went on to explain some differences.Do you. And then he, but he talked about, and correct me if I'm misquoting him, but I think he was saying this is all about laying the foundations of being able to do greater things by getting the basic infrastructure of being able to reuse these rockets down. Right. Do you, is that correct? Do you have a similar starting point from him in your thinking process?Elon MuskI think there's certainly some similarities of opinion. I think both Jeff and I believe that it's important for the future to be a spacefaring civilization and out there, ultimately be out there among the stars. And I think that's the, that's the exciting, inspiring future that I think. I think certainly people in this room want and anyone.Walt MossbergWell, particularly after seeing that the asteroids are going to destroy the planet.Elon MuskI mean, I don't view it as, you know, we want, we. I mean, I think what, when I say, you know, multi planet species, like that's really what we want to be. It's not like, you know, solving a single planet species, but moving planets. It's, it's really being a multi planet species and having civilization and life as we know it extend beyond Earth to the rest of the solar system and ultimately to other star systems.I think that's the thing, that's the future that's exciting and inspiring and I think that's what, you know, I think you need things like that to be glad to wake up in the morning. Life can't be just about solving problems. There have to be things that are inspiring and exciting that make you glad to be alive.Kara SwisherSo in the immediate time frame, what is your goal for SpaceX now that you've done this, which is a huge accomplishment, what is the plan for you in the immediate time and then the longer range?Elon MuskSure.So we plan to refly one of the landed rocket boosters hopefully in about two or three months, something like that.And then. So that'll be an important milestone. So far the stages are looking quite, quite good. Even though they come through quite, it's a really difficult entry reentry situation. But they're, they're looking like they're, they're in good shape and we now have four of them. So we want to start re flying them, you know, towards the end of summer and then hopefully by the end of this year we'll be launching Falcon Heavy, which will be the, the most powerful rocket in the world by more than a factor of two.So Falcon Heavy is, will be on the order of 5 million pounds of thrust on liftoff, which is about 2/3 the size of a Saturn V. Oh really? Yeah.Walt MossbergThat's the rocket that took the astronauts to the moon.Elon MuskRight, exactly. So in fact launching from the same, from the same pad, from very same pad, from the Apollo 11 pad.Walt MossbergWow, that's amazing. So you're hoping to launch that Falcon Heavy by the end of this year?Elon MuskYeah, that's, that's our aspiration is thatWalt Mossbergnow that's somewhat of a delay from when you first hoped to launch it, Right?Elon MuskYeah, but I mean it's not like we had a lot of pressing customers who wanted us to launch it.In fact, the first launch will not have any operational satellites. It'll be a demonstration launch and the first operational flights where customers actually want us to launch it are next year. Whereas there's a lot of customers who want us to launch Falcon 9. So about a quarter of our launch of our flights are for NASA, but three quarters are for commercial satellites, the broadcast and communication satellites or science missions for other countries and there's quite a big, quite a backlog and we had an issue with the rocket last year, so that put about a six month hold in our schedule.So we're sort of backlogged on our launches and we're trying to get them out as, as quickly as we can and service our customers. So the launches will take place every two to four weeks. There's quite a high launch cadence.Walt MossbergThat's a much faster cadence than NASA had, right?Elon MuskYeah, I mean it'll be more launches than anything else in the world. So more than Russia, more than Europe, more than, well, more than China. By next year certainly.Kara SwisherAnd largely to deliver customers satellites.Elon MuskYeah, it's, there's a lot of broadcast and communication satellites that are going to geosynchronous orbit and then there's, we'll also be launching the new Iridium constellation. So that Iridium's got a next generation constellation of satellites, I think 60 or 70 satellites, quite, you know, decent sized satellites.That'll be like many orders of magnitude improvement over the current Iridium system. So we'll have global broadband. So that'll be a whole bunch of launches and. Yeah, and then, and then next year we'll be flying Dragon version two, which is the one that's capable of taking up to seven astronauts to the space station.In fact, Dragon 2 really is. It's a propulsive lander as well. And it'll be the, it's intended to carry astronauts to the space station, but it's also capable of being a general science delivery platform to anywhere in the solar system. So.Walt MossbergSo where are you going with it?Elon MuskWe're going to send one to Mars in 2018 now.Walt Mossberg2018, that's for sure.Elon MuskYeah.Kara SwisherA couple years now. Will you be on that flight?Elon MuskNo.Kara SwisherYou have talked about this. You said you don't want it. You want to die on Mars, just not on landing. Right. Is that correct?Elon MuskWell, I mean, I think if you're going to choose a place to die, then Mars is probably, you know, not a bad choice.Kara SwisherAll right.Walt MossbergBut you're not ready.Elon MuskIt's not some sort of Martian death wish or something.But yeah, I mean, if you're going to be born on Earth, die on Mars.Kara SwisherSo sending this up to Mars 2018. Right. Sending this up to Mars 2018. When will someone like you get there from your plans?Elon MuskSure. So the 2018 mission would be our dragon version two and that I wouldn't recommend traveling to Mars in that because, I mean, it has the interior volume of a large suv.Kara SwisherOkay.Elon MuskThe, the trip for Dragon would be on the order of six months. It's a long time to spend in an suv, I think.Can be done. Can be done, but probably not ideal. And it also doesn't have the capability of getting back to us.Kara SwisherRight.Walt MossbergThat seems more important than the space.Elon MuskYeah, we can put that in the fine print.Walt MossbergIt's like the side effects in aElon Muskdrug ad, by the way.Walt MossbergWe cannot get back to Earth.Kara SwisherWe saw the movie, we saw what happened. He got back.Elon MuskYeah, yeah. So it was good. I actually enjoyed the movie.Kara SwisherDo you think he could have gotten back like that? Was that plausible?Elon MuskWell, I thought there was some connection. It was like 80% scientifically correct. That did connect a series of improbable events.Kara SwisherSuch as?Elon MuskWell, I mean, I don't think you can sort of just take off from Mars on an unguided rocket, really and, and then prick your finger on the spacesuit and navigate to a spaceship.Not impossible, just extremely unlikely.Walt MossbergSo the standard movie, but if you're Matt Damon maybe, maybe you have someElon Muskmad skills for sure.Kara SwisherSo when will people like yourself get there? And I assume you'll be first in line for that.Elon MuskYeah. So later this year in September at the iac, which is the big sort of World Space Conference, Industry Space Conference, I'm going to be presenting the architecture for Mars colonization. So I think what really matters is being able to transport large numbers of people and ultimately millions of tons of cargo to Mars.And that's what's necessary in order to create a self sustaining, not really self sustaining, but a growing city on Mars.Kara SwisherI'm curious, have you been to space yet? No, why? You could just go up, right, for a little bit or not?Elon MuskI could, I suppose.Kara SwisherWhy haven't you like walk through something?Elon MuskYeah, probably will.Kara SwisherWill you do a moon test before you go to Mars?Elon MuskYeah, I mean probably, I don't know, go to orbit in four or five years or something like that. But again, space and orbit are very different things.Walt MossbergBut on the Mars thing, would you send up two or three whether it's you or not? I kind of would prefer it if you tried it frankly, but because it would be exciting. But would you send up some people before you do this whole architecture for colonizing Mars? Just a handful of people to kindElon Muskof see what I mean. The basic game plan is like we're going to send a mission to Mars with every Mars opportunity from 2018 onwards. So and they occur approximately every 26 months. So you know, we're establishing cargo flights to Mars that people can count on for cargo.And it's like I said, the Earth Mars Orbital Rendezvous is only every 26 months. So there's one in 2018, there'll be another one in 2020.And I think if things go according to plan, we should be able to, should be able to launch people probably in 2024 with arrival in 2025Kara Swishersoon.Walt MossbergIs that a more certain schedule than United Airlines?Elon MuskWell, I don't know.There's certainly some uncertainties associated with that.Kara SwisherSo let's. I'm going to show anyway, that's theElon Muskgame plan, like approximately 2024 to do the first to launch the first of the Mars on your transport system.Walt MossbergI want to get back to what you said earlier about a multi.Elon MuskThis will be a very big rocket.Walt MossbergOkay. Very big. Bigger than seven, five.Elon MuskVery big, yes.Walt MossbergTwice as big or what?Elon MuskSeptember, I'll tell you, not going toWalt Mossbergsay anything till September. Come on.Elon MuskVery big.Walt MossbergCome on.Elon MuskHas to be very big.Walt MossbergHow big is very big?Elon MuskSo big.Walt MossbergDo you think we should abandon the Earth at some.Elon MuskNo, no, no, I think that's great.Walt MossbergBut you have said things.Elon MuskWhy would we abandon Earth? It's really nice here.Walt MossbergYou've said things about we may have to abandon the Earth, so it's good to have a plan B. You've still.Kara SwisherNo, that was.Elon MuskI think that's Bezos. I don't know, but it wasn't me.Walt MossbergAll right, okay.Elon MuskWasn't me. Like Shaggy.Kara SwisherSo let's move to things on this earth. Let's move to hyperloop, Tesla, other things. Let's talk about Tesla first.Where do you feel like the company is at at this point? And there's been lots of activity in self driving cars. Autonomous. Autonomous. How do you look at how everybody's jumped in? Google, Apple, others and all the car manufacturers.Elon MuskYeah, I mean there have been so many announcements of like autonomous EV start offs. I'm waiting for my mom to announce one. Okay, it's like, mom, you too?I mean there's a lot. So yeah, I mean in the US alone there are four, I think maybe five China funded EV startups at the billion dollar plus level, like serious funding and there's a bunch of startups. And then of course the, you know, the car industry as a whole seems to be moving in that direction.Volkswagen just, I think announced a huge battery factory that they're going to build. And I think these are all good. You know, it's good, it's good for the industry to be moving towards sustainable transport as quickly as possible. We open sourced our patents to try to be helpful in that regard. And yeah, so it's encouraging to see all this activity from a Tesla standpoint.You know, we just, we want to take a set of actions that are likely to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. So scale up production as fast as we can. So we accelerated plans for the Model 3 by two years.And so we want to try to get to half a million cars in total in kind of the 2018 timeframe, which is an aggressive schedule, but I think achievable, and then maybe a million cars a year by 2020.And you know, I can see, I think a pretty clear path to get there. Autonomy is obviously extremely important. People are going to want autonomy. It's going to be odd to have a car without autonomy in the future, but yeah, so I think that's so scaling up our.Kara SwisherHow do you look at all these efforts? Not your mother, but.Elon MuskYeah, my mom's.Kara SwisherShe's not going to do it. She may do a rocket situation. But how do you look at each of them? Let's go through them. What Google is doing. How do you assess what they're doing when you're looking at it? Because there'll be competitors at some point. These are all eventual competitors.Elon MuskWell, you know, I think what Google's. I mean, Google's done a great job of showing the potential of autonomous transport, but they're not a car company. So they would potentially license their technology to other car companies. And I think they announced something with Fiat.And so I wouldn't say, you know, Google's a competitor because they're not a competitor car company that we would compete with somebody perhaps that they license technology to, but not to them directly.Kara SwisherRight.Walt MossbergApple.Elon MuskYeah, that'll be more direct.Walt MossbergThat'll be more direct, yeah. You can tell that by the hiring pattern and that kind of stuff. So what do you. Okay, so they're going to be more direct. How do you assess it?Elon MuskI mean, I say, like, you know, I think it's great that they're doing this and I hope it works out.Kara SwisherWhat's the time frame for them, do you think?Elon MuskI don't know. I think they should have embarked upon this project sooner, actually.That.But I don't know. I don't know when they. I mean, they don't share with me the details of their production plans, but I don't think it's going to be. I don't think they'll be in volume production sooner than maybe 2020. That'd be like the soonest.Walt MossbergAnd that's. Is that too late? We say they should have embarked sooner. Is that because 2020 will be too late to stop you or beat you or compete with you or.Elon MuskIt's just like it's a missed opportunity. It's just that they, It's.Walt MossbergIt'll be over by 2020.Elon MuskIt's just like it's a couple of years. I think they'll. They'll probably make a good car and probably be successful. The car industry is very big, so it's not as though there's, you know, one company to the exclusion of others.I mean, it's like a dozen car companies in the world of significance, and the most that any company has is approximately 10% market share. So it's not like, you know, somebody comes up with a car and they're suddenly like they kill everyone else. It's not. Not that way.And the sheer scale of automotive manufacturing is just. It's hard to appreciate until you see the plants. I mean, they're gigantic.Walt MossbergYeah, I have seen the plants.Elon MuskYeah. I mean, the sheer size of the industrial infrastructure is staggering.Walt MossbergNot just the assembly plant, but everything else that goes.Elon MuskYeah, the supply chain. Exactly. The simple plant is just a little engine. Tip of the iceberg, really. The assembly plant is literally the tip of the iceberg.Walt MossbergPhenomenal.Elon MuskThe supply chain is.Once you go to tier two, tier three, tier four suppliers, that's probably an order of magnitude more than the final assembly.Walt MossbergSo you think Google will not be a competitor? Apple probably will be a direct competitor. What about the car companies?Elon MuskI think they'll all be competitors. Yeah, sure.Kara SwisherWho do you see out there that has done a nice job so far?Walt MossbergMercedes or gm?Elon MuskOf what?Kara SwisherOf a competitive car.Walt MossbergOf the incumbents.Kara SwisherPotentially competitive car, I guess.Elon MuskI mean, I don't think anyone's. Any of the car companies thus far have made a really great electric car. I mean, tell me if you disagree, but I don't think yet that any of them have made a great electric car.They presumably will continue to improve on what they've done so far, and then at some point they may make a car that's, you know, that's a great car. But they haven't done that yet.Walt MossbergCan I ask you about batteries for a second?Elon MuskYeah, sure.Walt MossbergSo you're building this gigafactory, right? It's built.Elon MuskWell, it's not completely built.Walt MossbergOkay. But it. Part of it's up and running.Elon MuskA chunk of it's built.Walt MossbergYeah, part of it's up and running.Elon MuskIt's a really gigantic thing. When the gigafactory's done, it'll be the largest footprint building of any kind in the world. Of any kind. Not just factories. It literally of any.Walt MossbergWhat is this? The largest rocket? The largest building? I mean.Elon MuskWell, I mean, I think it's not scale for scale's sake. It's just like if you say, well, we want to accomplish these goals, then you kind of have to be make a big thing.Walt MossbergOkay.You've got this big thing. It's this big giant building. It's going to make batteries. The batteries is going to make our lithium.Elon MuskWe're going to have it. Have an opening. Well, let's not take the opening party since it's been operating for a little while, but we're have a party soon. You guys maybe want to come? All right, good.Kara SwisherWe'll Come to the box party.Walt MossbergBut they can't come.Elon MuskIt's worth seeing. This is.Walt MossbergThey can't come, right?Elon MuskThis is crazy. No, this is like an alien dreadnought. It's really nutty.Kara SwisherBecause I love a battery party, but. Yeah, right, but talk about where it's going.Walt MossbergAre these lithium ion batteries?Elon MuskYeah, sure.Walt MossbergSo they're the same batteries that's in our phone? No, explain. Please explain.Elon MuskYes. So let's.Walt MossbergHave you made a battery breakthrough? Is something I'm interested in.Elon MuskYeah. I mean, generally the. I mean, there's. There's so much nonsense out there about batteries. Like about. You can believe about 1% of what you read on a. You know, maybe lithium ion covers a very broad range of technologies and you can have an enormous difference in the power density and the energy density and the cycle life between one chemistry and another.They can be really enormously different. So what you really actually want to ask is what is the cathode and what is the anode?Walt MossbergRight.Elon MuskSo in our case, that's right.Kara SwisherOkay.Put it in the.Elon MuskLithium is actually 2% of the cell mass. So it's like the salt and the salad. It's a very small amount of the cell mass and a fairly small amount of the cast. But it sounds like it's big because it's called lithium ion. But it really like our battery should be called nickel graphite because it's mostly nickel and graphite again, and it's nickel, cobalt, aluminum.But battery other little things. And graphite with a silicon oxide layer.Walt MossbergBattery efficiency or power that, you know, the power that you can store in a certain mass seems to be move very slowly, at least compared to, you know, we're used to Moore's law, pushing integrated circuits faster. Batteries kind of are always in our consumer devices, always lagging behind in your. You've built this giant thing, the biggest building in the world has ever seen.Elon MuskIt's not fully built, but yes, it's.Walt MossbergYou're building a pretty big chunk ofElon MuskboltsWalt Mossbergto make batteries. Your whole business depends on batteries in these cars. Have you figured out a way to do some significant increase in the yield of energy from a given amount of space in the battery?Elon MuskWell, yeah, the energy density is increasing sort of maybe on the order of like 5ish percent per year. And it doesn't sound like much, but you add that up over a number of years with compound interest, it ends up being quite, quite a significant number.And a lot of people sort of think that, oh, well, we just sort of cobbled together some laptop Batteries and somehow made a great car. If it was that easy, then I think we would have quite a few competitors who did the same thing. But it's really quite, quite a lot harder than that.It's a cylindrical form factor, but the internals of the battery are quite different from what you would find in a laptop and will be increasingly different with what's built at the Gigafactory, which is highly optimized for automotive and has improved energy density. But mostly it's not the energy density that's the issue, because if you buy a Model S today, the range is around 300 miles and that's quite a lot.So it's pretty rare that people really need to go more than 300 miles at a time without stopping.So I don't think we really have a range issue and we could make a 400 mile range car today. That wouldn't be too big of a deal.What really matters is decreasing the cost per unit of energy of the battery pack so you can make the car affordable. That's actually the important thing.And there's really two main dimensions along which cost optimization and making something available to the national market can be achieved. One is design iteration, going through multiple versions of something, and then the other is economies of scale. You kind of need both of those things in order to make a compelling mass market product.And you look at like cell phones and how many design iterations have we gone through with cell phones? And then look at the scale at which they're made, which is enormous. And that's what enables everyone to have a supercomputer in their pocket.Kara SwisherSo speaking of that, the sales, when you're talking about the sales you have booked how many orders for, it's onElon Muskthe order of 400,000.Kara Swisher400,000. Obviously consumer interest and a promise, a lot of it around you, around the idea of you and Tesla and the excitement. They're not looking.Elon MuskIt was quite surprising, actually. I mean, because we didn't do any advertising or there was no guerrilla marketing or anything. It was just basically like, yeah, we're going to have this webcast. There were only about 1,000 people in the audience and I really caught us by surprise. But I think when you have a product that really resonates with customers, the word of mouth grows like wildfire.And that seems to be word of mouth.Kara SwisherYeah, but it's a little bit. I mean, honestly, in some groups, especially men in Silicon Valley, if you show up and read like a label of a peanut jar, they'd be thrilled with the situation. So, I mean, a lot of this does base around you, like the idea of you and the excitement around exciting entrepreneur. Is that. Is that enough to get it to this massive company you've been hoping to.The idea of this is the Elon Promise or it's the.Elon MuskWell, I think actually it's not so much. I mean, I sort of.I'm not sure. I think I deserve less credit than that, actually.I mean, what Tesla's done, and we have a phenomenal team, is like 15,000 people to come. Company worked super hard to create compelling products, to create great cars. And we started off with the Roadster and then the Model S. And the Model S was rated by Consumer Reports as the best car ever. But the Model X, which has had some teething issues, but I think it's now at the point where it's really starting to.I think it's really, I think, quite sublime at this point.And so people look at that and say, okay, well, if Tesla's made these cars, then probably the next car they make is going to be the less expensive one. Also a great car. Yeah. So it'll be a great car, but it'll be affordable. And it's like, great. Ok, that sounds like something I want.Kara SwisherSo this car, this next car, the price is.Elon MuskIt's starting at 35,000.Kara SwisherOkay. Affordable, relatively speaking. When do you get to the really affordable? The way down. Much lower than that.Walt MossbergYeah.Elon MuskI mean, it's important to point out that 35,000, particularly when factoring in the lower cost of electricity versus gasoline, and that the maintenance cost is much less. You don't have to have oil changes. You never need to replace your brakes because the car uses regenerative braking. So the brakes last as long as the car does.It's basically, you just need to replace the tires, like, that's about all. So the operational cost of the car is much lower fundamentally than a gasoline car. And so. And I think the average price for cars, for gasoline cars, is around 30, 32, something like that. Yeah. I mean, there are starting prices that are lower, but when people pick options, I believe it's in the.Around 32 or so in the U.S. so we're pretty close to the.Walt MossbergBut that's your base price, right? I mean, yeah, that is a great price. It may not be the asp for the car.Elon MuskNo, but it's going to be a great car, even at 35. So it's like, even if you order nothing, no options at all. It'll be great.Walt MossbergBut you're at. But you're likely to have a mix where the average car that you actually sell sells for a little more than that.Elon MuskYes, probably. It's probably going to be. Yeah, it's probably going to be some higher number. But it's really important to have size like 35. If somebody orders the $35,000 car, they'll be very happy. Like, it's not like you need to order a bunch of options without which the car is, you know, not. Not good.Walt MossbergThat car will have autonomous for 35.Elon MuskI have a.I'm going to do another Tesla event maybe at the end of the year, talk more about that.Walt MossbergWell, so you could start here.Elon MuskIt will be real big news if I start here.Walt MossbergWe don't mind that.Elon MuskLet me just say that we're going to do the obvious thing.Walt MossbergOkay.Kara SwisherOkay, Got it.Elon MuskIt's really obvious.Kara SwisherSo cup holders. Good. Okay.Brilliant.Elon MuskThose things are nuanced.Kara SwisherAbsolutely. Let's talk about two more things. I want to talk about AI because we've been talking about it a lot here, which I want to get it clear what your thoughts are because it's mostly Elon. Scared of robots. I mean, that kind of thing. Or how do you. I'm scared of robots or artificial intelligence. Can you like clarify exactly what theWalt Mossbergissue you have now and you deserve the background. We've been talking to Jeff Bezos, Sundar Chai. We talked to Mark Fields from Ford about it.Yeah. The Facebook folks. There certainly seems to be in the tech companies a big tremendous new drive or interest to believing there will be all competing for intelligent assistance.Kara SwisherAnd it's good. It'll make life better, make your life better.Walt MossbergSiri is going to suddenly get smart. Microsoft, Swan is going to get smart. Google is going to cream them all.Kara SwisherLargely a happy version of this is sometimes technology hurts you, but not as much as it helps you. That's really.Walt MossbergYeah. So that's. There's been a lot of conversation here about that. Sure.Kara SwisherAnd yet.Walt MossbergAnd you've staked out a slightly different position. So can you talk about that?Elon MuskWell, I mean, I think my sort of full position would require quite a long explanation. I mean, I am concerned about certain directions that AI could take that would be not good for the future. I think it'd be fair to say that, like not all AI futures are benign. Not all.Walt MossbergOkay.Elon MuskAnd so if you have something, if we create some digital superintelligence that exceeds us in every way by a lot, it's very important that that be benign.And so actually with. With the few others I created OpenAI, which is an AI, it's a non profit actually. So there's no, I think the governance structure here is important. So we want to make sure that there was not some fiduciary duty to generate profit off of the AI technology that's developed. So we created this 501C3, but it's quite different from, I mean a lot of sort of 501C3s are, you know, they don't have a high sense of urgency.Like, they're not like, you know, they're not really sort of developing technology at a fast pace. But OpenAI is. So OpenAI has a very high sense of urgency and the talent. I think that the people that have joined are really, really amazing.And the intent with OpenAI is to democratize AI power. There's a quote that I love from Lord Acton. He was the guy who came up with power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, which is that freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism in its concentration. And so I think it's important if we have this incredible power of AI, that it not be concentrated in the hands of a few and potentially lead to a world that we don't want.Kara SwisherIn what world is that? What do you see, foresee that whenElon Muskyou said it's difficult, I mean it's called the singularity because it's difficult to predict exactly what future that might be. Except I don't know a lot of people who love the idea of living under a despot.I don't think people generally choose to live in a democracy over a dictatorship.Kara SwisherAnd the despot would be the computer.Elon MuskWell, the people controlling the computer.Walt MossbergAnd do you worry specifically about any of these companies I mentioned who've all seemed to now kind of be pivoting toward this as the battleground in the next 10 years?Elon MuskI won't name a name, but there is only one.Walt MossbergThere's only one you're worried about. And they're not preoccupied with making a car that will compete with you. I assumeElon Muskthere's only one.Kara SwisherAnd what this is an interesting.Elon MuskIt's not about competing. This is sort of like what would the point of competing for mutual destruction? It's like there's no, it's not about competing, it's really just about trying to increase the probability that the future will be good. That's all. So the, the goal of OpenAI is really just to take the set of actions that are most likely to improve the positive futures.Like if you can think of the future as a set of probability streams that branch out and then converge, collapse down to a particular event and then branch out again. And there's a certain set of probabilities associated with the future being positive and different type flavors of that. And at OpenAI, we want to try to do whatever we can to guide to increase the probability of the good futures happening.I think that's, that's really what we're trying to do there.Walt MossbergYou worry that by making this open, some bad actors may use some of what has been developed to do bad stuff with the power.Elon MuskI mean, that is certainly the, I mean, a good rebuttal to that. However, I think if AI power is widely distributed, then then. And there's not, say, one entity that has some super AI that is a million times smarter than anything else, you know, if instead the AI power is broadly distributed and to the degree that we can link AI power to each individual's will.So like, you know, you would have your AI agent. You knew it. Like every would have their sort of AI agent. And then if somebody did try to do something really terrible, well, then at the collective will of others could overcome that bad actor, which you can't do. If, if there's one AI that's, you know, a million times better than, and it's proprietary and it's.Yeah, it's either has its own world or more likely, at least in the beginning, is controlled by, you know, some small set of people. So I think that's really the risk. I mean, there's always been these arguments like, what's the best form of government? Big fan of, I think it was Churchill. Like democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.Walt MossbergRight.Kara SwisherSo speaking of that, this election, you are.Elon MuskOh, no, no, no.Kara SwisherYes, yes, yes. How does that strike you? What's happening now? You come to this country, you're naturalized.Elon MuskI think I'm glad that the framers of the constitution saw fit to ensure that the President was someone who was captain of a large ship with a small rudder.Kara SwisherOkay.Elon MuskAnd there's a limit to how much harm any given president.Kara SwisherAre you sure about that?Elon MuskOh, yeah, yeah, yeah.Kara SwisherSo you're not worried about. Are you backing either of the candidates at this point?Elon MuskTry to stay out of this situation because I don't think that's the finest moment in our democracy.Walt MossbergWell, given that it's not the finest moment in our democracy, do you think the best thing is to stay out or to get in?Elon MuskI'm not sure what I do to try to head off the worst. I'm not sure how much influence I could have as one person on the outcome. So, I mean, if I think I could make a difference, I would probably do something. But like I said, I think I'm just glad that the. Being the US President is like being captain of a large ship with a small rudder.And so there's just a limit to how much good or bad a president can actually do. Obviously, if a president could make the economy great and there was like a button they could press, they'd be pressing that button at the speed of light.So, you know, that they. But they can't, like, can't. They can't just magically make the economy good. No president wants the economy bad ever. But they, you know, like, there's just a limit to how much they can do.And you know, I guess there is the nuclear thing, which is.Walt MossbergYeah, the nuclear thing. I guess there is the nuclear thing.Elon MuskYeah. But I, I don't know. I think people. I think, I think. I don't think we would like just arbitrarily launch nuclear missiles.Walt MossbergYeah, the president can do that.Elon MuskI don't think so. I mean, I think that he's.Walt MossbergNo, he's the commander in chief.Elon MuskYeah. But I still don't think that means you can just launch nuclear missiles or whatever you want. Yeah, I think Congress would be like quite upset about that and they might not be consulted. Yeah. But I think, I think the military would be like, yeah, we really think Congress should be consulted on before you launch that.Walt MossbergThat might happen.Elon MuskWe have to. Nuclear strike.Walt MossbergAre you willing. You're basing your faith in that, though.Elon MuskI'm quite confident that the military would not just, you know, randomly agree to launching nuclear missiles at somebody.Kara SwisherWell, that's calming.Walt MossbergThis is.Kara SwisherWe're going to put up just very quickly. We'll end on hyperloop. You've been involved with it. Your level of involvement is what at this point. Point just.Elon MuskYeah, I know it's a bit confusing because I.Walt MossbergYou talked about it when you were here last time.Elon MuskYeah, I actually came up with the idea.I came up with an initial idea which turned out to be wrong. It wouldn't work several years ago.But I sort of shot my mouth off and said, I, I have an idea that would work. And it turned out that didn't work. But with a lot of iteration, I was able to come up with something that. Where the physics hangs together. And then published the paper and just said like, look, anyone who wants to do this is great, be my guest.Because I sort of have a Plate full, running Tesla and SpaceX. And so I think it'd be great. I mean, it'd be great to have any interesting new transport solutions. Anything that gets people to their destination in a way that's safer, costs less, is more convenient, that'd be great. I mean. And so I think probably the most valuable thing that the Hyperloop paper that I published has done is to spur thinking in terms of new transportation systems.So it's not just, oh, let's, you know, have a fast train, okay, that's not even as fast as what Japan did in the 80s. Like, okay, I don't see what the point of that is. Like, we should really be trying to think of something that's particularly in California. Like, we should be like, saying, hey, what is the best. Let's invent something new that's way better than anything else.Kara SwisherDo you want to shoot your mouth off about that?Elon MuskWell, you know, I mean, I'm not an investor in any of the companies that are working on it. And I've tried to be neutral because I'm trying not to favor one company over another, but just to encourage anyone that is interested to say, you know, try to give them moral support, you know, and I hope they succeed. The only thing that I am doing on Hyper Bluefront is like, we're holding a student competition.And the student competition is really just aimed towards encouraging students to think about exciting new transport methods. And it's totally cool if they want to do some architecture that's different from what I propose in Hyperloop. And in fact, the winning team at the student competition that we held earlier this year used a different suspension mechanism than what I proposed, which is I propose using essentially taking the air that builds up on the nose from the compressor and flowing that through air skis so that you simultaneously remove the drag from the nose and provide a means of suspending the pod.And that's also something that works well even at super, supersonic velocities. You can go. It's been demonstrated up to Mach 1.1 in terms of using air bearings as.Walt MossbergBut they use something different.Elon MuskYeah, basically electromagnetic suspension. And the reason I didn't suggest sort of any kind of magnetic suspension is that it's very important that the cost of the tube be minimized. So you really want. Because the part is cheap, the tube is expensive. So if you want to go say 400 miles in two directions, you've got 800 miles of tube.The critical economic optimization parameter is the cost of the tube. So you want that tube to be as low cost as possible. And so if you do anything that requires action on the tube side, it's going to make that tube much more expensive. So if you use air bearings, it doesn't change. Like that's real cheap and. Yeah.Walt MossbergSo you think this is going to happen?Elon MuskYeah, I think something like, I think something will happen in the future.You know, I think if the companies that are trying to make it happen now, if for whatever reason that doesn't work out, then, you know, I think I'll, you know, I might do something myself in the future. I don't want to do something, I don't know, I don't want to sort of front run them. You know, it's like, say, here's this free idea and then meanwhile I go and do it myself.You know, that wouldn't be nice. So but if they, if they, if companies don't try it and it doesn't work out, then I think, I think, I think I'll try to just at least do a demonstration system.Kara SwisherOkay, last question. Do you think tech has gotten more serious? How do you look at the tech landscape? As someone who's well known, you probably qualify as a visionary. The concept, what do you imagine we are right now in the tech space? And then we'll get to questions from the audience.Elon MuskI think there's a lot of innovation happening in many different areas.The advancements in AI, I think are quite, quite astonishing. The advancements in genetics are amazing.So I think that there is a lot of innovation going on.I think that there's probably a few too many talented entrepreneurs in kind of the Internet space. And I think their talent actually would be better served in some other industries.But I do think, I mean, I don't think we're like facing some sort of low innovation period or anything like that. I think there's a lot of innovation going on.Kara SwisherThey need to move to other.Elon MuskI just think that like, if you had some ideal distribution, it'll probably be fewer. Like there's just a lot of talent focused on the Internet and probably some of that talent would be better to have some of that talent in other industries. That's about all. But there's tremendous amount of innovation that's happening.It's something that I think is going to be quite important and I don't know if a company is working on it seriously is, Is a neural lace. So going back to the AI situation, this is quite important, quite an important debate. Like the, if you assume any rate of advancement in AI, we will be Left behind by a lot.And so then we could be in, you know, benign. But even the benign situation, if you have some, you know, if you have ultra intelligent AI, we would be, you know, so, so far below them in intelligence that it would be, would be like, you know, a pet.Kara SwisherThat's what I think. Like a pet.Walt MossbergLike a cat?Kara SwisherLike a cat, Like a house cat?Elon MuskYeah, it would be like the house cat, right?And yeah, it's not the end of the world sort of pet.Kara SwisherIf you've seen the movie, it couldElon Muskbe, it could be, it could be.But honestly that would be the benign scenario.Kara SwisherSo house cat is ok.Elon MuskI mean, I don't love the idea of being a house cat,Walt Mossbergbut what's the solution?Elon MuskYeah, so I think the, I think it's to essentially, I think one of the solutions, the solution that seems maybe the best one is to have an AI layer. If you think of like you've got your limbic system, your cortex and then a digital layer, sort of a third layer above the cortex that could work, work well and symbiotically with, with you.I mean, just as your cortex works symbiotically with your limbic system, your sort of a third digital layer could work symbolically with the rest.Walt MossbergThis is something that's surgically inserted or bred into the species or what.Elon MuskThe fundamental limitation is input output. So we already have, we're already a cyborg. It's just that, I mean, you have a digital version of yourself or partial version of yourself online in the form of your emails, your social media and all the things that you do.And you have basically superpowers with your computer and your phone and the applications that are there. You have more power than the President of the United States had 20 years ago. You can answer any question. You can video conference with anyone, anywhere. You can send a message to millions of people instantly.You know, you can just do incredible things and.But the constraint is input out output. So we're I O bound, particularly output bound. I mean like the, your output level is so low, it's like, particularly on a phone, like your two thumbs are so sort of tapping away. This is ridiculously slow.Our input is much better because we have a high bandwidth visual interface to the brain. Like our eyes take in a lot of, lot of data. So there's many orders of magnitude difference between input and output.So mostly effectively merging in a symbiotic way with digital intelligence revolves around eliminating the I O constraint.So it's some sort of direct cortical interface.Walt MossbergAnd you called it A neural lace.Elon MuskNeural lace, yeah.Kara SwisherIt's totally not Google Glass, right?Elon MuskNo, I'm talking about something which.Kara SwisherWould you wear it?Elon MuskNo, I mean, it would be.I mean. I mean, there are a few ways to approach this, but some sort of interface directly with your cortical neurons, particularly.Walt MossbergBut doesn't that apply surgical insertion?Elon MuskNot necessarily. You could go through the veins and arteries because that provides a complete roadway to all of your neurons. Your neurons are very heavy users of energy, so they need high blood flow. So you automatically, with your veins and arteries, have a road network to your neurons.Walt MossbergStill some kind of surgery, right?Elon MuskYes, but you could insert something, you know, basically, you know, into the jugular and have it get some carb.Walt MossbergBut it sounds really easy and it doesn't involve it.Elon MuskIt doesn't involve, you know, like chopping your skull off or anything like that.Walt MossbergYeah.Kara SwisherAnd plus you're not a house cat anymore.Elon MuskNot a house cat. So, I mean, essentially, if we can figure out how to establish a high bandwidth neural interface with ourselves, with your digital self effectively, then.Then you're no longer a house cat.Kara SwisherAll right, on that note.Walt MossbergNo, on that note, just one closing thing.Elon MuskI mean, I think it's probably. That's probably the best outcome, I think.Walt MossbergThink. Are you interested in exploring this possibility that you have just laid out?Elon MuskSomebody's got to do it.I'm not saying that I will, but I'm. Somebody's got to do it. I mean. I mean, somebody should do it. And I mean, if somebody doesn't do it, then I think I should probably do it, but.Walt MossbergAnd the goal of this is to prevent there being an external AI, particularly one controlled by a small group of people that could be so much more powerful and intelligent than we are, that the house.Elon MuskIt'll be godlike in situations. Yeah.Walt MossbergWell, this has been really cheerful.Kara SwisherThank you.Elon MuskYeah. But if we can establish.Walt MossbergI was worried about Asteroids at the beginning of this.Elon MuskI mean, Asteroids are a low probability existential threat on the timescale that's relevant to us.Kara SwisherOkay.Walt MossbergOkay. This is different. This requires urgency.Kara SwisherSo what do you do for fun?Elon MuskYes, this is much more fun.Kara SwisherElon, what do you do for fun? Fun. What do you do? Anything.Elon MuskI play video games with my kids.Kara SwisherAll right, that sounds good. Let's get some questions. Elon. Elon, the house cat.Elon MuskWatch movies, that kind of thing. Normal thing.Walt MossbergWhy don't we start over here?Elon MuskYeah. Hi. I think this last question just did that. I want to know, how do you live through the stress, that kind of conversations we just heard that you went through and kind of ambitions that you carry and then how do you adjust to the everyday work life, balance, et cetera, things that are in your life. So a little bit of your personal side actually.Kara SwisherYou're very busy. How does that work?Elon MuskYeah, I mean, I am sort of in kind of work triage mode a lot of the time. So I don't know, it seems to be.As long as there's not like a Crisis simultaneously at SpaceX and Tesla, it's okay. But you know, companies are, I mean, the situation in any given company, particularly one, you know, if it's sort of growing fast and sort of quasi startup, it's somewhat sinusoidal. So that, I mean, it's okay if you don't, if the waves don't crest together.You know, when that does happen, then that's a huge strain.But right now things are like, you know, motoring along. Okay. And I have like the context loaded for both companies and I can look sort of see a path to a good outcome. So I feel pretty good right now. But they've been super stressful times in the past and then, you know, and then I always try to reserve time for my kids because I love hanging out with them.Like, I mean, kids are really great. I mean they're like the 99% of the time they make you happier. Their kids are awesome.Kara SwisherYeah, then there's that 1%.Elon Musk1%, you know, like. Yeah, 1%. But, but like it's, it's of anything in my life, I would say kids by far make me the happiest. I don't know, you know, I agree. Yeah, it's great.Walt MossbergI agree. Yeah.Elon MuskSo hang out with them. Like, so like things like a lot of times kids are kind of in their own world, so you don't need to like, they don't want to talk to their dad for hours on end generally.Walt MossbergI've noticed that.Elon MuskYeah.So I can be in the same room with them, they can talk to me from time to time, but I can get some emails done, get some work done and then whenever they want to talk to me, they can.And then we try to do things like travel places and like I said, we play video games together or actually on Monday we went to the new Harry Potter Land at Universal. It was quite fun.Walt MossbergSomebody from Universal just clapped.Elon MuskWhoever was in charge of Harry Potterland did a great job. It's really good.Kara SwisherYeah, it is good.Elon MuskI highly recommend it. The butterbeer is amazing.Kara SwisherYeah, I was just saying the butterElon Muskbeer, the Butter beer is amazing.Kara SwisherYeah.Walt MossbergOkay. Right here, over here.Elon MuskHi, my name is Evan Burns, I'm the founder of Odyssey and I hope into the future to be in something in the space industry. And my curiosity is, you've talked about SpaceX getting into many different businesses. For example Global WI fi through launching many satellites. Do you hope SpaceX becomes a platform for others to launch businesses?Or you see SpaceX being a business that launches many business lines?Well, I mean the general strategy of SpaceX is to, to like, we clearly need a lot of money in order to develop the transport system to establish a city on Mars. So you know, we're like kind of gathering revenue, like Earth based revenue that's we're trying to maximize.Walt MossbergIs there some other Earth revenue?Elon MuskWell, right now it's only Earth. So we've got to maximize Earth revenue as it relates to space, you know, as it relates to rockets and spacecraft. So.But I think what assuming SpaceX is able to transport large numbers of people and goods to Mars, it will be an enormous enabler for entrepreneurial activity on Mars because there's going to be so much to do, you know, everything from creating like the first iron ore refinery to the first pizza joint to, you know, something that doesn't even exist on Earth.You know, it's kind of like when the Union Pacific crossed crossed, you know, and like everybody thought Union Pacific, what a stupid idea. You know, like there's nobody living in California, you know, well, okay, now there's quite a lot of people living in California. So just having. You need the transport link. And so what SpaceX is trying to do is establish a transport link and then try to create a fertile environment for entrepreneurs on Mars to flourish.And I think that will be an amazing expansion of entrepreneurial.Walt MossbergHow long would it take to deliver a pizza from Mars?Elon MuskWell, it's going to be a little cold I think, but I mean we can certainly see a way to get to Mars in under three months. And I think ultimately you'll be able to get to Mars in under a month. It does get exponentially difficult as you reduce the time time. But you know, three months is aWalt Mossbergway to think of it.Elon MuskAnd I think that's probably, you know, that's really where SpaceX will I think, create a great environment for entrepreneurial potential. Thanks, Neelak.Kara SwisherI hope Domino's does not get to Mars. Please don't let it.Elon MuskSpecial Mars.Kara SwisherI'm assuming you're going to be king of Mars.Elon MuskSo you're obviously very ambitious. That's led to some really Ambitious deadlinesWalt Mossbergthat have been missed.Elon MuskSo Falcon heavy was originally 2012. The Model X was a little bit delayed. The Model X was delayed. The Model 3 seems to be stretching. But the Model 3 in particular is a consumer product. You're taking money from people against a really aggressive production schedule and a huge amount of orders. What are you going to do to hit your deadlines on that?Because it's real consumers this time in a big class of people. Sure.I think the biggest thing is just designing the car for manufacturing. So in the case of Model S, the Model S was the first time we really built a car, a whole car. Like with the roadster, Lotus did the body and chassis, we did the powertrain. Then we did the sort of final installation of the powertrain to the. To the chassis.But the Model S was the first time we made a car. So we were just trying to make a great car and. But we had no idea, like, what it meant to design something to be manufacturable. So the Model S is super hard to make. And then the Model X is built off of the Model S platform, except it's got a bunch of other whiz bang technologies that make it even harder to build.So.And you know, so, I mean, definitely we want to do the opposite of what we did with the X, which is make something that is going to be a lot simpler, but still a car that people will love and where every design decision is factoring in the manufacturability and making sure that when we design something that you can manufacture it at volume at an affordable price in the schedule that we're.That we're on the schedule that we're targeting.One of the things that makes a car very difficult, particularly if it's a new car, is that it's an integrated product with several thousand unique components. So we are somewhat at the mercy of whatever the slowest component is. Whatever. Basically, if you say go to tier two and three suppliers, they end up being several thousand suppliers.So things move as fast as the least lucky and least competent supplier.And you can think of any natural disaster you care to name. All of those things have happened to our suppliers. The factory has burnt down. There's been an earthquake. There's been a tsunami. There's been massive hail. There's been a tornado. The ship sank. There was a shootout at the Mexican border. No kidding.That delayed trunk carpet at one point. And we couldn't get. And the border patrol wouldn't give us the truck because it had bullet holes in it.We just wanted Our trunk carpet, it's pretty safe. There's no cocaine or anything. This is good.But you know, that shut down the production line as an example for several days. So that's the biggest issue is like the supply chain stuff is really tricky. We're trying to anticipate as much of that as possible, increase our optionality so that there's more internal capability at Tesla. Not that we want to do things internally, but if a supplier is unable or unwilling to deliver the part, we can quickly make that internally.So I think the whole company is geared for that. And I mean, right now it looks like, you know, we should be able to do that. We expect to. I mean, almost all of the Model 3 design is done and we're aiming for pencils down. Basically about six weeks complete pencils down. And we're tabling all, you know, like, if there are ideas for future cool things, we'll have it in version two, version three, you know, future years type of thing.So overall I feel pretty good about it.And our supplier, particularly our major supplier partners have been very supportive and are on board.But you know, I mean, I should say like the, like, when I, when I sort of cite a schedule, it is actually the schedule I think is true. It's not some fake schedule that I don't think is true. So I mean, you know, it's never, you know, it's maybe delusional. That is entirely possible. Maybe it's happened from time to time, but it's never some knowingly fake deadline ever.So is there an event in six weeks where you're going to announce autonomous driving is included in the pencil down plan for the Model 3?We're not expecting any event in six weeks.Walt MossbergJosh.Elon MuskHi. So this is kind of a weird question. I feel like you would be the guy with the right answer for it. There's a sort of a philosophic concept that a sufficiently advanced civilization will be able to create a simulation. Yeah, maybe you've answered this before.Walt MossbergA simulation.Elon MuskI've had so many simulation discussions, it's crazy. Okay, so. Because in fact it got to the point where basically every conversation was, was the AI simulation conversation. And my brother and I finally agreed that we would ban such conversations if we were ever in a hot tub. That was like, that really kills the magic.So the idea is, right, any sufficiently advanced civilization could create a simulation that's like our existence. And so the theory follows that maybe we're in the simulation. Have you thought about this? And a lot.Kara SwisherAre we,Elon Muskare we even in hot tub? So much so it had to be banned from a hot tub.Okay, it's not the sexiest conversation. Are we in? Are we in?I think here's, in my mind, like the strongest argument for us being in a simulation, probably being in a simulation, I think is the following.40 years ago we had Pong, like two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were.Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously. And it's getting better every year. And soon we'll have virtual reality, augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, just indistinguishable.Even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is right now, then you just say, okay, well let's imagine it's 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing in the evolutionary scale. So.So given that we're clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality, and those games could be played on any set top box or on a PC or whatever, and there would probably be billions of such computers or set top boxes.It would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions.Tell me what's wrong with that argument, is the answer? Yes, the argument is probably.Is there a flow in that argument? I mean, I'm not sure what the error. No, no, the argument makes sense. So the assumption then is that somebody beat us to it and this is a game. No, no, there's a one in billions chance that this is base reality. Oh, okay. What do you think? Well, I think it's one in billions. Okay.That seems to be clearly what it suggests. And actually arguably we should hope that that's true because otherwise if civilization stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that erases civilization. So maybe we should be hopeful that this is a simulation because otherwise.Walt MossbergBecause they could reboot it.Elon MuskWell, otherwise either we're going to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will cease to exist. Those are the two options. I like those odds.Walt MossbergOkay.Elon MuskIt's unlikely to go into some like multimillion year stasis, so it's either going to increase or decrease.Hi, I'm Jeetu Patel from box two. Part question for you. One is, if you think about fully autonomous vehicles which have passed through regulatory approvals, have passed through in city driving and traffic conditions, how far do you think from A timeframe perspective. We are for that becoming reality. And number two would be the second part of that question is how far before, how long before you think it's either illegal or extremely prohibitively expensive for humans to drive on their own?Well, I mean, I think, I mean I really would consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem even in cities like Beijing. And yeah, yeah, actually there's really only one area where it's like a little dodgy and that's basically if you're at roughly the 30, 30 to 40 miles an hour in, in urban environments, which is, that's difficult to achieve.In Beijing it's like heavy traffic. In dense traffic situations, autonomy is really easy because you can just maintain a set distance from various cars. It's actually quite, quite easy. You very unlikely to run anyone over. You're just not moving fast enough. And you can break in time on highways, particularly highways that are, that are barriers so that you don't have pedestrians.That's also relatively easy. And like a Model S and Model X at this point can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person. Right now my point is when does it get to be where you don't need to be sitting behind a vehicle? And it actually, the way that society starts expecting this is I can have my 75 year old mother who doesn't speak any English or doesn't drive, be able to be transported from point A to point B by just sitting in a car by herself and being taken.I know it's technically possible, but how far do you think the regulatory approvals are for that happening?I think we're basically less than two years away from complete autonomy. Wow, safer than a human. However, regulators will take I think at least another year, at least another year and depend on which what part of the world you're in. Because they all want to see billions of miles of data to show that it is statistically true that there is a substantial improvement in safety if something's autonomous versus not autonomous.I don't think that regulators will accept something that's close to, that's sort of approximately as good as a person. I think they'll have to be at least twice as good as a person, maybe five or 10 times better in terms of safety.And that will have to be a statistically relevant data set. So like billions of miles over widely differing roads and situations.So yeah, you know, so I think it's like probably three years before it's food from a regulatory standpoint, but less than 2 before it is technically possible. And do you think there's a day when it's illegal to drive for humans or, you know. Well, I mean, we live in a democracy, so presumably that would be a function of the population deciding.I mean, I mean, I'm not in favor of banning people from driving cars. Like, I'm in favor of freedom and not restricting what people do.Yeah, but maybe the requirements for a license will get more stringent. I think that seems like maybe a good move, you know, so you have to demonstrate a higher level of skill to drive in order to be allowed to manually drive.Kara SwisherOkay, very last question.Walt MossbergThis is the last question Elon has to go.Kara SwisherGotta make it a great question.Thinking about life on Mars again. How do you think about cultural unification, systems of government, rules of law, establishing those very early on?Elon MuskWell, I think I was just declared king of Mars a moment ago.Kara SwisherI like that. Take it.Elon MuskYeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.So I think most likely the form of government on Mars would be a direct democracy, not representative. So would be people voting directly on issues.And I think that's probably better because the potential for corruption is substantially diminished in a direct versus a representative democracy.So I think that's probably what will occur.I think there's some, I think I would recommend like some adjustment for the inertia of laws is what would be wise in that it should probably be easier to remove a law than create one.I think, you know, this is, I would just be like, let's just. I mean, I think that's probably, probably good because just laws have infinite life unless they're taken away. So I think my recommendation would be like something like, let's say 60% of people need to vote in a law, but at any point Greater than 40% of people can remove it.And any law should come with a sunset, with a built in sunset provision. If it's not good enough to be voted back in, maybe it shouldn't be there.Walt MossbergSo that's, that's the framework for the government on Mars.Elon MuskI mean, those would be my recommendations. Direct democracy, where it's slightly harder to put laws in place than to take them away, and where laws don't just automatically live forever.Kara SwisherYou'll be a good king. Thank you, Elon Musk. Thank you.