Late Show with David Letterman (2009) April 29, 2009 Elon Musk on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2009, with a Tesla Roadster and the new Model S on stage: batteries as the real breakthrough, the EV1 and Who Killed the Electric Car?, CO2 even on coal power, and the $49,900 Model S.
Elon Musk on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2009, with a Tesla Roadster and the new Model S on stage: batteries as the real breakthrough, the EV1 and Who Killed the Electric Car?, CO2 even on coal power, and the $49,900 Model S.
Transcript How are things going at Tesla Motors?
They're going really well.
Yeah, you build cars like this one right here? Yeah, this is a Lotus of some description with a electric motor in there. And how many of these have you sold?
And this car is priced at about what, roughly $100,000. $100,000?
Now from looking at websites, I'm under the impression if a person wanted to buy an electric car country, this pretty much is the only highway friendly electric car available.
Yeah, we make the only car that would be considered sort of a real car where you can take it on the roads.
And that's some have like a range of 15 or 20 miles. They're like golf carts, more or less. So why when your company decided that you wanted to do this as a project, you chose a sports car of about $100,000?
Well, that's an excellent question. In fact, the goal of Tesla has always been to make mass market electric cars, even from the beginning. But when you have new technology, it takes time to make it lower cost and mass market. If you think of the early days of cell phones or laptops or any new technology starts off expensive. Remember that giant phone that the guy on Wall street walked down the beach with and that was cutting edge technology. Well, it's the same thing with cars. So in fact, anyone who does buy the, the Tesla Roadster, the sports car at $100,000 is helping pay for the development of the lower cost cars to follow. And in fact, we've recently announced our sedan which is.
But that'll be available when in mass
production in a couple of years.
In a couple of years. But you mentioned new technology, but to my way of thinking, the electric motor, not necessarily new technology. It's been around for nearly 100 years, hasn't it really?
Yeah, the electric motor is actually very old. In fact, the, in the early days of cars, it was a competition between gasoline cars and electric cars. And there was a range issue with, with electric cars and so gasoline ended up winning out. But now that with the advent of lithium ion batteries, we can now address the range issue.
So the real breakthrough is the batteries, then how to store, how to store that electricity.
Yeah, it's the single biggest breakthrough.
Right. And I remember like 15 years ago there were General Motors was making the EV1 or Saturn was making EV1, and it was an electric car that was in California and there was a thousand of them on the road. So again, the idea that we have an electric car is not a breakthrough. We had electric cars. And to my way of thinking, we should be so far ahead of this curve, much farther ahead than we are now. For what reason? Why don't we have more electric cars today?
Well, there was a great movie, who Killed the Electric Car? By Chris Payne, which I think explores that question. And it's noteworthy in that movie that Chris shows how much people really wanted that EV1 car. In fact, they wanted it so much that when the cars were forcibly taken away from them and crushed, they weren't actually destroyed, they were actually crushed. The people who had those cars held a candlelit vigil for the destruction of those cars. Now, when's the last time you heard anyone doing a candle vigil for destruction of any product, let alone a General Motors product?
There'd be one after B1 after the show. For my voice, let's just say that you charge this electric car and you charge it on your outlet at home and it's from a coal fired power plant that supplies the grid. Are you polluting? Are you adding more CO2 by taking electricity from a coal mining fired power plant or burning gallons of gas in your internal combustion engine?
Actually, even if 100%, even if 100% of the electricity comes from coal, the Tesla Roadster, which is a sports car, produces less CO2 per mile than a Toyota Prius. So and of course, in many parts of the country, coal is less than half of the power. And as we go over time, we're going to have to move to renewable energy generation.
When you say over time, I mean we are so far beyond over time should have been taking care of taking place 20, 30 years ago, right?
Yes, absolutely. I think we're sort of lulling the complacency with a temporary drop in the price of oil. But that's, that's going to come back to haunt us in a major way.
But when you take a look at the economy and the circumstance of General Motors and Chrysler and Ford, what if the electric car movement had not been killed off 20 years ago and every company had now a viable electric car with would that be a means of keeping these factories open today? Would that be a means of further research and development and greater employment and greater marketing and showrooms and all of the accessories that need to accompany an electric car?
I think it's fair to say that with the benefit of hindsight, General Motors probably wishes they had done an EV2 and an EV3 following the EV1 rather than sort of crushing them in.
But doesn't it make you a little angry that we're all pretending like, whoa, we got an electric car. It's like, you know, nobody landed from Mars here. Like you said, Mars. We had electric cars at the turn of the century, 1900s, right?
So, I mean, it's frustrating to me. Isn't it frustrating to you?
It is frustrating. In fact, the reason I put so much time and energy and my own financial resources into helping create Tesla was to try to spur that electric car revolution. I really thought that the incumbent car companies would do this and there wouldn't be any need for a new car company to try to do this. But it turns out there was and I'm glad for it because now that we have the Tesla Roadster, General Motors. Actually, Bob, let's General Motors kind enough to credit Tesla with the inspiration for the Volt that they're coming out with. The plug in hybrid Volt.
The Volt has a range of 40 miles. Yeah, that'll get you down the driveway and back. I'm going to go pick up the vehicle, take the electric car. Call me if there's trouble at the curb. I mean, it's insane. I mean, 40 miles is the range on the Volt. That's ridiculous. I was talking to Elon Musk during the commercial and he says from now on, for every electric car they sell, he'll throw in his new fragrance, Elon Musk.
So, I mean, Dave, I can't thank you enough for plugging this product.
Go crazy. Now, I have, I, I have driven one of your cars and I must say, in the beginning I was a skeptical and nervous, I think like everybody else. Because you think electric car, this is for guys in Topanga Canyon selling sprouts. But the thing is bulletproof. I mean, you can drive the wheels off the thing. And honestly, I thought the first time I would charge the electric car that my house would catch fire. That didn't happen. And it couldn't be more safe. The thing goes like a bat out of hell. But it irritates me that people who might be interested now because honestly, very few people are going to spend the money to buy that car, as slick as that car is. But it does kind of call attention to the product, doesn't it?
Absolutely. It was important for us to also show that an electric car can be a great car, that it can compete in its own right against gasoline cars. So we wanted to make sure that we made a sports car that even if it wasn't electric, it would still be a great car to buy and compete against other cars.
You and me, the first time I drove it, I was worried that it would magnetize my nuts.
This is the sedan, is that right?
And you know those free fuel cell cars, that's a load of crap too, you know. Oh, hydrogen. It's going to make its own hydrogen. You can do it and it'll be right there. Well, they're talking about 20 years from now, maybe 20 years from now. So I think that these automobile companies, and it couldn't be a worse time for them to be doing this, are just shining people on because if they were actually working on technology that was going to be in showrooms, they wouldn't have to be closing down plants and filing for bankruptcy.
This will have a starting price of 49,900. There's a very important point.
Oh, God. Turn it off. I'm being electrocuted. Thank you. Thank you so very much for being here, Sam.