[0:00:00] If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end clothes, it's time to get Brex AF, a gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at brex.com slash AF. I'm Ida Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Jennifer Garner.
[0:00:33] We talk all about what it means to be a good friend. Jen's encyclopedic knowledge of my recipes and the Paris tour I put together for Jen and her daughter. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers.
[0:00:58] Hi, I'm Kara Swisher, editor-at-large of Recode. You may know me as the host of a non-smoking podcast, so please put that join away until we're done. In my spare time, I talk tech, and you're listening to Recode Decode from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today in the red chair, finally, is Elon Musk. That was my Oprah voice. The CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company. He invited me to his office in Palo Alto for an in-depth discussion about all of his business and more. I've interviewed Elon twice before, and I've known him for
[0:01:27] Okay, it is Halloween night and I have gotten my treat, which I've been asking for a while. I'm here with Elon Musk at the headquarters of Tesla.
[0:01:41] Is that right? The right pronounce? Is it Tesla? Tesla? Tesla, yeah. Whatever. By the way, I think your costume is great. Thank you. I'm dressed as a lesbian from Castro in San Francisco. That's what I look like. I'm here with delicious coffee. We are going to have a long discussion about all kinds of things. Elon's been very nice to do this in the evening here. We've been chatting about all kinds of things, but we're going to get into it really quick. We're going to talk about Tesla. We're going to talk about SpaceX. We're going to talk about this year. We're going to talk about the Boring Company and anything else Elon wants to talk about because people like to hear you talk.
[0:02:10] So let's start from the beginning about this year. Okay. You've given some very interesting interviews. You've gotten on Twitter, made some mistakes. What's Twitter? Okay, let's start with Twitter. I have an obsession with Twitter too and an addiction. How do you look at that with you? What is going on? What's going on? What happens? I mean, aside from what happens with you and Twitter? Well, I tweet interesting things.
[0:02:39] Pretty much as they come to me and probably with not much of a filter. And why? I find it entertaining. I think other people might find this entertaining. Sometimes they do. Right. And sometimes? Yeah. It's pretty random. Just at night? What are you, at home? You're doing this? Yeah. Mostly. Mostly at home. Yeah. It's mostly. I spend a lot less time on Twitter than people probably think. It's like maybe 10, 15 minutes or something. Yeah. Where people pay attention.
[0:03:09] What about the things they didn't love? Are you under strict orders not to do that? Is that correct? Will you be? Will you have to change your Twitter behavior?
[0:03:35] Not really. Not really. Under the recent settlement. You don't have to be careful about what you tweet. If it's anime, that's one thing. But it's just business, you can't. No, I think it's mostly just if there's something that might cause a substantial movement in the stock during trading hours, that's about it. That's about it. So you can't do that.
[0:03:55] Without somebody getting mad, no. Yeah, okay. That's a lot of people getting mad. So would you consider it, I'm going to get off in a second, but do you consider it a communications medium? How do you look at it? I mean, a lot of us use it that way. I use it that way. Donald Trump uses it that way. How do you look at it? I look at it as a way to learn things, kind of stay in touch with what's happening. It feels like dipping into the flow of consciousness of society. That's what it feels like.
[0:04:25] It's kind of weird. I guess I sometimes use Twitter to express myself, and that's a weird thing to do, I suppose. Not so much. I mean, it is, and I think sometimes it's very funny. Other times it's not so funny. Some people use their hair to express themselves. I use Twitter. Okay, all right, all right. But when you do it in a... I'm not going to get to the SEC, because I understand you can't talk about that very much. Nothing to do with that. Although you did tweak them in one of your tweets. But at some point...
[0:04:52] That will stop. What did I say? You made some remark. Elon, there's so many tweets that you do that are so obnoxious. It's hard to know. That was an obnoxious tweet. It was? Yes, it was. Oh. Don't do that. No, I forgot which one it was. I forgot which one it was. Can you remind me? No, it's like you had some name. Look at your cackling on Halloween. All right. But the ones that I think I do want to ask about is the press. You pick fights with the press over Twitter, and then you have all your fans, of which there are many. Are you aware of?
[0:05:22] What they do once you start them off? Well, I think, I mean, I have to say my regard for the press has dropped quite dramatically. All right, explain that, please. Yeah, the amount of untruthful stuff that is written is unbelievable. You know, take that like Wall Street Journal front page article about like the FBI is closing in. That is utterly false. That's absurd. To print such a falsehood on the front page of a major newspaper is outrageous.
[0:05:51] Why are they even journalists? They're terrible. Do you understand the mood in this country? I get that, but do you understand the mood in this country around the press and the dangers of attacking, especially when the president is doing that, and quite an aggressive enemy of the state and everything else? It's disturbing when someone like you as a leader does that too, or goes along with it. The answer is for the press to be honest and truthful and research their articles and correct things properly when they are false. All right.
[0:06:20] Okay. But I'm asking if you understand where it goes. Yes, of course I do. And what do you think of that? Are you worried about unleashing a dangerous cycle that a lot of the press are worried about? I suggest the press take it to heart and do better. What about what Donald Trump does about enemy of the people? Do you look at it that way? No. Just that you don't like falsehoods?
[0:06:44] Yeah, there are good journalists and there are bad ones. And unfortunately, the feedback loop for good versus bad is inverted. So the more salacious that an article is, the more salacious that headline is, the more clicks it's going to get. And then if somebody is not a journalist, they are an ad salesman. Okay. Not a journalist, an ad salesman. All right. What about things that are just critical of you that you don't like? Do you think you're particularly sensitive? No.
[0:07:13] Of course not. All right. Count how many negative articles there are and how many I respond to. One percent, maybe. Right. But the common rebuttal of journalists is, oh, my article's fine, he's just thin-skinned. No, your article is false and you don't want to admit it. Right. Do you take criticism to heart correctly? Yes. Such as? Give me an example of something. How do you think rockets get to orbit? That's a fair point. Yeah, not easily.
[0:07:42] Yeah. Physics is very demanding. If you get it wrong, the rocket will blow up. Right. Cars are very demanding. If you get it wrong, the car won't work. Right. Truth in engineering and science is extremely important. Right. And therefore? I have a strong interest in the truth. All right. Much more than journalists do. But what I'm trying to get to is you want to acknowledge when you do this, it does set off.
[0:08:10] People beyond you that listen to you. You have a fan base that's quite rabid, I would say. No, I wouldn't say that. No? I think they're great. Okay. All of them? No, not all. I mean, not all of them. Right. Okay. All right. So let's talk about this year. What has gone on this year with you? It's a very rollercoaster year. How would you explain it? You did a very emotional interview in the New York Times. And I promise we'll get to test on all the other things we want to talk about. But what has happened to you this year? How would you put it? I mean, it's been a very difficult year. Why is that?
[0:08:40] We had the Model 3 production ramp, which was excruciatingly difficult. It is incredibly difficult to survive as a car company. Incredibly difficult. People have no idea how much pain people at Tesla went through, including myself. It was excruciating. Talk about that toll. I'm pretty sure I burnt out a bunch of neurons during this process, running both SpaceX and Tesla.
[0:09:07] It's incredibly difficult. You realize we're fighting the incredibly competitive car companies. They make very good cars. They've been doing this for a long time. They are entrenched. Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Lexus, you name it, all those car brands. The history of car companies in America is terrible. The only ones that haven't gone bankrupt are Tesla and Ford. That's it.
[0:09:36] Everyone else has gone bankrupt. So the pressure of doing this. Yes. So why is it that you do this? It's trivial to start a company. Absolutely. It is insanely difficult to make it successful. So you put too much pressure on yourself this year or it just is what you're doing? It sounds like you're not hearing me. I'm hearing you. I'm hearing you. I understand it's incredibly difficult. What I'm saying is why did you do it this way this year? You're definitely not understanding me. All right. Try again.
[0:10:07] Making a car company successful is monumentally difficult. There have been many attempts to create a car company and they have all failed. Even the ones that have had a strong base of customers, thousands of dealers, thousands of service centers, they've already spent the capital for the factories like GM and Chrysler still went bankrupt in the last recession.
[0:10:36] And Tesla made it barely the last recession. There's a good chance Ford doesn't make it in the next recession. So as a startup car company, it is far more difficult to be successful than if you are an established, entrenched brand. It is absurd that Tesla is alive. Absurd. Absurd. So what do you owe that? What do you accredit that to? Excruciating effort. 100-hour weeks by everyone. By everyone here at Tesla. Yes.
[0:11:06] There wasn't some other way to do this. Yes, that's what I'm saying. There wasn't some other way to do this, Cara. While you're also running a space company. Yes. So what I want to get at is why you're doing that. Why do you think you want to push yourself that hard? Well, the other option would have been Tesla dies. Right. Yeah, Tesla cannot die. Tesla is incredibly important for the future of sustainable transport and energy generation.
[0:11:37] The fundamental purpose, the fundamental good that Tesla provides is accelerating the advent of sustainable transport and energy production. Which I think most people credit you for doing. Pushing everyone else into it at the same time, correct? Yes. The success of Tesla is by far the biggest forcing function for the other car makers to get into electric cars. They've said so. Right. No, there's no question. I was just having a discussion with someone the other day and I said, he has pushed everybody into this.
[0:12:05] Really dramatically. There wouldn't have been this much investment. There wouldn't have been this. Yes. It's very important for the future of the world. It's very important for all life on earth. This supersedes political parties, race, creed, religion. It doesn't matter. If we do not solve the environment, we are all damned. And in this way via sustainable transportation. Yes. Okay. I mean, it's sort of...
[0:12:32] It blows my mind that you have all these social justice warriors driving around in diesel cars. It's outrageous. Do you have an electric car? I do not. I have a Ford Fiesta. I'm trying to get rid of my car. I'm going to shame you into buying an electric car. No, I don't drive my car very much. It's in the garage. I try not to drive my car at all.
[0:12:54] Yes, that's true, because you're down here in Palo Alto. But I would like to have public transportation is what I would actually like better. I mostly take public transportation. Who cares about me? I walk a lot. I walk a lot of the time. You're doing this to yourself because you think the world, not the fate of the world, you're not a cartoon character. Yeah, I just think your electrification or transport
[0:13:20] And there's also an important part of Tesla, which is solar and stationary batteries. Because you need to generate electricity in a sustainable way with solar and then store it at night when the sun goes down with batteries. And then use that energy from the sun to power cars. Without Tesla, this would still happen. This would still be a transition to sustainable energy, but it would take much longer.
[0:13:45] History will judge this, obviously, but I would say on the order of 10 years, maybe 20 years. So pushing it forward by that much. Yes. I think it's probably fair to say that Tesla has advanced sustainable energy by at least five years conservatively and probably maybe closer to 10. And if we continue to make progress, we might advance it by 20 years. This could be all the difference in the world. So what is the toll on you? What has been the toll on you and your employees?
[0:14:15] Think about that. Yeah, it's been terrible. I think this year took a lot. This year felt like five years of aging, frankly. Worst year of my entire career. Insanely painful. And was there any other way to do it? You didn't think there was any other way to have it happen? Why this year? Why this year of all the others? Because you've been at this for many years. For this past year, it's been because of the Model 3 production ramp. Right.
[0:14:44] Myself and others at Tesla, we had to go in and fix the mistakes in the Model 3 production system. There were a lot of them. I personally solved a bunch. Jerome solved a bunch. Everyone helped the entire team. J.B. Franz, Deepak, everyone. We had the legal team delivering cars at the end of Q3. Todd was great. There was a lot of people.
[0:15:15] Go hardcore to solve the ramp. The amount of money that you lose if you don't solve the ramp is mind-boggling because you actually get hit from both sides. Let's say you're selling software or something. That would be easier, Elon. It would be a lot easier. But in software you don't have a bunch of parts. You don't have a supply chain.
[0:15:43] If you don't tell software, you lose the revenue, but you don't incur a massive amount of cost associated with producing the software because you just make copies pretty easily. For any large, complex, manufactured item, you have an entire supply chain. And that supply chain has about, on the order of six months of inertia. So you place the order for parts for the car, including...
[0:16:11] If you go all the way to tier three or four suppliers, we have on the order of 10,000 suppliers. It's a crazy number. So we have to place the orders for how many cars we think we're going to build roughly six months in advance of six months before final assembly. Because if you go all the way down the supply chain. So then if you don't actually make those cars, you still have all the costs. It's like a super tank.
[0:16:40] Thank you so much for having me.
[0:17:08] The least lucky part of the production process is that sets your rate. I want to get into Tesla specifically and about the recent results, which I think people were surprised by. You surprised Wall Street and some of your competitors. But when you're thinking about doing this incredibly complex thing, do you regret some of the things you've done to slow it down itself? Or was that unavoidable from your perspective?
[0:17:35] You know, some of your tweets, you just like, you attract attention. I mean, you really truly do. And some of it is self-inflicted. Do you not see it that way? No, I mean, there's no question there's like self-inflicted wounds. In fact, my brother said like, look, if you do a self-inflicted wound, can you at least not twist the knife afterwards? You know, like you stabbed yourself in the leg, like you don't really need to twist it in your leg. Right, right. So why do you do that? Why do you do that? It's not intentional. No, well.
[0:18:03] Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you're under a lot of pressure. Your brother's wise. You're not getting much sleep, you're under massive pressure, and you make mistakes. Right. All right, so is that over? Do you feel like that's over? Do you feel calmer? It's totally over. I will never make another mistake again. No, I'm teasing you. But how do you feel? I mean, you look well. You don't look under a lot of pressure. You seem rested. Yeah, I mean, things are back to like...
[0:18:30] A hard work schedule, but not an insane work schedule. So there are times when some weeks, I don't know, I can't count exactly, but I would just sort of sleep for a few hours, work, sleep for a few hours, work, seven days a week. Some of those days must have been like 120 hours or something nutty. You're going to go a little bonkers if you work 120 hours a week. And now we're down to 80 or 90.
[0:19:00] Pretty manageable. Okay. And you had talked in the New York Times about using Ambien and stuff like that. That was to regulate your sleep, correct? Yeah. Yeah. It's not, I mean, it's not like for fun or something. No, no, not at all. So your work... No, it's just like if you're super stressed. Right, exactly. You can't go to sleep. Right, got it. You either have like choice of like, okay, I'll have zero sleep and then my brain will work tomorrow or you're going to take some kind of sleep medication to pull sleep. So now you're to 80 hours. So it's like totally manageable.
[0:19:30] Yeah, 80 to 90. You're just like a regular lawyer. What is that? I think I'm about 80. I think I'm probably about 80. Yeah, yeah. 80 is pretty sustainable. Sustainable for you. Yeah. The pain level for ours increases exponentially. It's like non-linear above 80. We're going to take a quick break now. We'll be back in a minute with Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and the Boring Company. Support for the show comes from Upwork. Every business owner hits a point where they need more expertise than they can handle alone.
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[0:21:57] So let's talk about Tesla in specific. You return in a great quarter. These cars are moving off. How do you look at where you're going with the Model 3 and others? And then I want to get into some of the new features, the navigation features on autopilot and things like that. How do you look at Tesla right now? And I want to first talk about the product and then talk about the company itself and what you need to move forward.
[0:22:28] Yeah, I think at Tesla we're going pretty well right now. Tesla's not staring death in the face. We're in, I think, a pretty good position. We don't want to be complacent, but it's not like... Up until around September, we were really faced with we must solve this or we're going to die constantly. And I feel like we're no longer in the...
[0:22:57] What is death over in the sitting in a seat nearby?
[0:23:21] We could probably do 6,000 or more, or maybe 6,500 cars of Model 3s a week right now, but we'd have to stress people out and do tons of overtime. And what about innovations to these models? And we're going to talk about other products coming in, but you've put in a number of innovations in all the current.
[0:23:46] Our cars are constantly being updated with new technology. We don't really have a model year like other car companies. As soon as we come up with some improvement, we just roll it into production. Talk about the new navigation feature. Drive-on navigation?
[0:24:03] I think one of the first major steps towards full stop driving. So you can enter in an address and from highway on ramp to highway off ramp, the car will change lanes. It will go from one highway to the next automatically and take the off ramp automatically. It's pretty wild. And it'll overtake a slow car. So it's basically integrating navigation with autopilot capability. That's why we call it...
[0:24:31] So what are the challenges then you face with these technologies now, from your perspective? Well, the main challenge has been improving the neural net so that we can recognize all types of objects from all eight cameras. There are eight cameras, three forward and two on each side and one rear. And we're running essentially eight neural nets of varying...
[0:25:00] Then we've got to integrate the output of the neural nets into path planning and then hook in the navigation to say, okay, where do you need to go? And the big challenge has been solving a wide range of corner cases. Because you think it just happened. Yeah, the roads are pretty messy. So you could have, say, skid marks on the road that look like a line. Sometimes tar seams look like a line.
[0:25:29] Thank you.
[0:25:57] Thank you.
[0:26:24] All creatures on Earth navigate with cameras. Like a fish eagle can see a fish from far away and take into account the refractive index of the water, dive down and get the fish from far away. There's no question that image recognition, neural nets, and...
[0:26:45] You can be superhuman in driving with just cameras. With just cameras, okay. So you don't need anything else from the government or from infrastructure or anything. I mean, I recently was talking to the Mercedes people. They were talking about sensors in the roads. Yeah, that's hopeless. That would at best be a specialized solution.
[0:27:11] So how do you look at the regulatory environment? Because that's another thing you'll have to be dealing with here in the U.S., in China, wherever else.
[0:27:36] Yeah, I think the key thing for convincing regulators that self-driving is okay is to show billions of miles with a much better statistical significance and safety than human drivers. So if the probability of injury is half that of the average human driver, then I think probably regulators will support self-driving. But it has to be a very large...
[0:28:02] The statistical population of miles has to be very big, like billions, and essentially almost every possible case. How do you assess different countries, this country versus China versus others? Who do you think is more ahead in that, at least helping these things come to fruition? We're assuming that nothing is done on the roadside, and from a regulatory standpoint,
[0:28:30] I think it's just going to be which regulatory agency has the best appreciation of statistics. And who is that right now? Actually, China's pretty good. I think the U.S. is pretty good. And the states or the federal system? I hope this is a federal system because otherwise it's going to get weird and you cross state borders and then you're in a different situation. Suddenly in Arkansas you can't drive. Yeah, I mean, especially like in, say, East Coast, like you're going from like...
[0:28:56] New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire. You go through several states pretty quickly and then you wouldn't want to have things be different in each state. So have you been working with federal regulators, Elaine Chao? Yeah, we certainly have a close relationship with NHTSA especially. So the sort of hardcore...
[0:29:20] The entity that really is the hardcore regulator of road transport is NHTSA. That's where you're going to rely on it. Yeah, they're like the regulator of cars, really. Now, other competitors. I'd love you to sort of assess the competitive landscape. Faraday just lost another founder today, which was the HOT company.
[0:29:45] The allegedly odd company. I think that's probably easier to say it that way. Lucid got a billion dollars from SoftBank. Saudi Arabia. That's right. I'm sorry. Saudi Arabia. And we'll talk about that in a second. And there's lots of others, but there's all kinds of things. How do you assess Google's working on stuff? Uber still seems to be hanging in there. I don't know what you think about that. I'd love to get your assessment of all of them or some of them. Yeah, I don't.
[0:30:10] I don't really think that much about competitors. I just say, how do we make our cars as good as possible? How do we make sure we have the best engineering and manufacturing talent in the world? Tesla doesn't do any advertising or we don't do any paid endorsements. We don't sort of hackle for cars or anything like that. So we really rely on the quality of the product to sell. And I think it makes sense to sort of put our budget into advancing the technology and make the best possible cars.
[0:30:40] I'm not sure looking at competitors really helps. It's sort of like the old adage with running. If you start looking at the other runners, it's not good. You can lose races because of that. Do you think about them at all? Like Ford or Mercedes or anyone? Or if they're doing anything that's interesting or Google? Which one of them do you think is the furthest ahead or closest to you all? I mean, self-driving, maybe Google, Waymo. I don't think anyone is...
[0:31:09] Close to Tesla in terms of achieving a general solution for working on... Overall solution. Yeah, yeah. You can definitely make things work in one particular city or something like that by special casing it. But in order to work all around the world in all these different countries where there's different road signs, different traffic behavior, there's every weird corner case you can imagine, you really have to have a generalized solution. And to the best of my knowledge, no one has a good generalized solution except...
[0:31:38] I think no one is likely to achieve a generalized solution to self-driving before Tesla. None of the car companies. Do you ever look and go, okay, that's interesting what they're doing there? For the other car companies, I don't want to sound overconfident, but I would be very surprised if any of the car companies exceeded Tesla in getting to full self-driving. I think we'll get to full self-driving next year.
[0:32:05] As a generalized solution, I think, we're on track to do that next year. I don't think anyone else is on track to do it next year. No one even close, when you look at all the competitors? I would say, unless they're keeping it incredibly secret, which is unlikely, I don't think any of the card companies are likely to be a serious competitor. Will they ever be a serious competitor, from your perspective? In self-driving, I don't think so. They're just not good at software, and this is a software problem.
[0:32:35] Okay. All right, so talk about Tesla, and then I want to get to SpaceX and other things. It's a hardware problem, too, on the compute side, but they're also not doing anything on the compute side. Right. So it's like, you do need an advanced sort of AI computer that's very good at doing matrix multiplication with localized memory. So they're missing elements, what you're saying, the generalized solution. You need a specialized inference engine.
[0:33:02] The Tesla Hardware 3 autopilot computer that we'll start rolling into production early next year is 10 times better than the next best system out there at the same price, volume, and power consumption. And it's really because it's got a dedicated neural net chip, which basically, it sounds complicated, but it's really like a...
[0:33:28] All I'm getting is you don't think any of the rivals will come close, any of the ones that are touting their solutions. I would say close to 0% probability. Okay, all right, that's not close. Yeah. Okay. This is my honest, this is just what I think. I mean, I don't think it's like, it's not like I could be wrong, but this is what I think. All right, so the challenge you face is...
[0:33:54] Do you need more investment? No. Not at all.
[0:34:24] I don't think so. Do you need to go private? Are you still contemplating that? We don't need to go private. I think we could execute better if we were private. Without all the attention. Yeah, not to hop on the short sellers because people think I have this obsession with them, but I spend like 1% less of time thinking about them. It's the tweets, Elon, but go ahead.
[0:34:49] Less than 1% of my tweets have anything to do with short sellers. You do know when you tweet it's louder than other people's tweets, but go ahead. Yeah, but if 1 in 100 is about short sellers, that's still 1%. I think that's probably even less than that. But the issue is that there's a group of people who are quite smart, very mean, and have a strong financial interest in Tesla's downfall. And what that results in is a constant attack on the Tesla brand.
[0:35:18] Going private would definitely result in some short-term drama, but...
[0:35:40] If we can avoid the brand damage of... Let's say we went private and then went public five years from now. Then the area under the curve of brand damage by short sellers would be probably less than the short-term difficulty of going private in the first place. That was the approximate calculus. And then also being public, particularly when everyone at the company is a shareholder, causes...
[0:36:08] A lot of distraction when the share price moves around a lot. It just roared upward this week. Yeah, it's gone up, but it tends to end up being to some degree a mood thermometer. When the stock goes down, people are sad and feel undercompensated. When the stock goes up, people are overly exuberant. You get distracted thinking about what you're going to buy. Neither of these things are great. When you have big movements to the stock,
[0:36:38] This just causes a distraction. Do you believe you have enough investment? Even if it's cash flow positive, you want to invest more, correct? Do you think you need more investment? No. No, that you can do it based on selling these cars? Yes. Okay. All right, so last thing on Tesla, these new products, the truck, the Roadster, where are they? Yeah, I mean, I'm super excited about the future. Do you have another thing you're making? We definitely do. Do you have a vertical lift and takeoff?
[0:37:08] Supersonic VTOL jet, electric jet. Perhaps a hovercraft like Larry Page? I don't know. Hovercrafts are pretty straightforward. Yeah, okay, sure. For you. A supersonic vertical takeoff and landing electric jet would be interesting to do at some point. But my head would definitely explode if I tried to do that right now. Yeah, I think so. But I've been thinking about that design for nine years. Do you have something special? Yeah. It's great. It's in your head?
[0:37:37] Yeah. Okay. I mean, I wrote down some of it, but... But the truck is more immediate, the roadster? Yeah, I think what fires me up about Tesla is I think we've got the most exciting product roadmap of any company in the world. We've got the Model Y, the compact, it was mid-sized.
[0:37:57] That was a very dramatic opening of bringing it in, by the way.
[0:38:16] People are obsessed with your jackets, but it actually was the event that you did where you showed it off. Nice jacket. Yeah, nice jacket. Who are you wearing? Are you surprised by that? It was a nice jacket. It's my favorite jacket, actually. I've had it for ages. Okay, but suddenly it was... The reason it looks like... It looks kind of like worn out.
[0:38:40] It's because it is. Back to the truck. Yeah, exactly. It's just to recap the things that are coming out. I think it's literally the most exciting product lineup of any company in the world. Certainly from a consumer standpoint. I'll just go through the things that have been publicly announced. You've got the Model Y, which is the mid-sized SUV. You've got the semi-truck, which is going to be great for the really heavy,
[0:39:09] It'll be the heaviest class of industrial truck. We've got the next generation Roadster, which will be the fastest sports car on every dimension. Fastest acceleration, fastest top speed, best handling.
[0:39:24] Thank you so much for having me.
[0:39:48] Well, I can't talk about the details, but it's going to be like a really futuristic, like a cyberpunk Blade Runner.
[0:40:17] Pickup truck. Okay, what does that mean? It's going to be awesome. Okay. It's going to be amazing. Who are you trying to sell that to? This will be a hot stuffing. Mm-hmm. Who do you want? It's like, I find it's like, oh, it's great. Who do you want to sell that to? People who buy F whatever. You know, I actually don't know if a lot of people will buy this pickup truck or not, but I don't care.
[0:40:40] Okay. I mean, I do care eventually, you know, like sure, I care, you know, like we want to get, you know, gasoline and diesel pickup trucks off the road. Right. But if like, if I find like, you know, like I'm personally super excited. By the? By this pickup truck. It's something I've been wanting to make for a long time. And I've been iterating with sort of designs with Franz and like, it's like, you know, it's like.
[0:41:05] I really want something that's like super futuristic, cyberpunk, which if there's only a small number of people that like that truck, I guess we'll make a more conventional truck in the future. But it's the thing that I am personally most fired up about. It's going to have a lot of titanium. Titanium? Okay, what else? Racing stripes? What? No, I'm teasing, I'm teasing. No, it's going to be...
[0:41:26] I think this is the kind of thing some people would want to buy, even if they don't normally buy a pickup truck. So anyway, that's probably what I'm most excited about. But like I said, it could be just like, okay, I weirdly like it and other people don't. That's certainly possible. But we're going to make it anyway, and maybe we'll just have a niche audience. I don't know. If it does, then I guess we'll make a more conventional pickup truck. Do you have a motorcycle? No.
[0:41:50] I rode motorbikes a lot when I was a kid. So I did dirt biking and then rode a motorcycle on the road. And then I almost got killed when I was 17. Yes, I remember. Yeah, so it's like I... I'm not sure if you realize, but depending on how you count it, the probability of death in a motorcycle versus... It's quite high. It's 25 times higher. Yeah, my brother is a doctor. He calls them donor mobiles. Yeah, it's organ donors. Yeah, that's exactly why he calls it that.
[0:42:20] Yeah, so, and the thing is, I rode dirt bikes for six years or more and did all sorts of crazy, you know, jumps and things in the dirt bike, but never got seriously injured. But not going to make one, not making a Tesla motorcycle. Yeah, and then I almost got killed. Bad memories. A truck knocked, you know. Last thing, what about a plane? By a truck. What about a plane? Literally got hit by a truck. Yeah. So, we're not going to make motorcycles.
[0:42:48] But a few more Tesla products that are cool. We're almost done with development of the solar tile roof. So we have those on a few hundred roofs right now. And we're just doing testing to make sure they have long-term durability. These are tiles on the roofs, yeah. Yeah, the solar tile roof where it looks like a normal, beautiful tile roof, but it's actually solar.
[0:43:12] That development process is longer than we'd like because we've got to make sure that the roof's going to stand up for 30 years. And even when you do accelerated live testing on a solar roof, it still takes a while. And we've got to put a lot of work into making the installation process easy so it doesn't take pages to install the roof. Or rely on government subsidies.
[0:43:31] Yeah, long-term there won't be any government subsidies. Those are just kind of short-term things. I agree. You'd be surprised to know I do have a solar roof and have had one for 10 years. Oh, cool. Great. Thank you. I think I have real old ones. I think it's super old and it seems to be working. Yeah, you probably have the retrofit solar that's on top of a normal roof.
[0:43:50] So we have that. But this is tiles. This is integrated with the roof. Right. So the solar tile roof, it's integrated with the roof. You don't even realize it's solar. And of course, we have the conventional retrofit solar, so we're working on steadily improving the aesthetics of the retrofit solar. Then we've got the Powerwall battery storage system. We've got the PowerPack, which is used for utilities and industrial scale. We're going to have some other...
[0:44:19] We have a large product on the stationary storage side that I think will be very compelling for utility customers. We're going to take another break now, and we'll be back after this with Elon Musk. Support for the show comes from Granola. Have you ever left a meeting thinking, that was productive?
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[0:46:15] So any planes? No plans to make planes at Tesla. Well, let's get to rockets then.
[0:46:45] Last time we talked, you said you wanted to die on Mars, just not on landing, which was a very funny joke. It's probably not a joke. Well, it would be ironic if that happened. I think we have to be careful about tempting fate because I think often the most ironic outcome is the most probable.
[0:47:05] Yeah, it's kind of the way it should go, right? This is how Elon Musk must die. He must die on landing on Mars. It might happen. It just very often seems like reality tries to... Well, actually, technically there's a...
[0:47:22] A friend of mine, Jordan Olin, who had this modification of Occam's razor where he said he thinks the most ironic outcome is the most likely. But I think that's some truth to that. And then also I think sometimes the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. Whether that entertainment is in the nature of drama, comedy, or something else. What would be more entertaining than that? You tripping on the way to see The Martian and just banging your head.
[0:47:49] I mean, hopefully me dying on impact and loss is not the most entertaining outcome. No, that's not entertaining. Yeah, yeah. It's ironic. Because then what happens next? It's like, okay, we're a crater. Yeah, right, right. That's true. Okay, all right. Okay, let's talk about what you're doing. Instead of discussing your death, your impending doom, let's discuss what's going on at SpaceX, which has had a smoother ride, so to speak, of what you're all doing with the rockets. You're going to do an astronaut. What are some of the things you're doing?
[0:48:16] Yeah, so this year has been great for SpaceX. We successfully launched the Falcon Heavy rocket, which is the most powerful rocket in the world by a factor of two. So it's twice the thrust of the next biggest rocket. And we actually launched my Tesla Roadster to Mars orbit. Although a lot of people thought this was some ego thing or whatever. Well, it feels stunty. Come on.
[0:48:41] You're launching a... I'm trying to listen to the reality simulation, which is do the most entertaining thing. Yes, exactly. That's pretty entertaining. All right, it is. It sure is. And, you know, we had like a lot of, you know, like playing David Bowie, you know, and we're like, have like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy stuff in there. We've got the Asimov Foundation series, Estrogen Glass, like there's a lot of like little things. Anything really weird you stuck in there you didn't tell anybody about? No. Like a sandwich? I don't know.
[0:49:09] It might be. I don't know all the things that are on there. But there's probably some weird things in there. The reason we did that is actually because normally when a new rocket is launched, you just put a dummy payload, which is like a block of concrete or something. Literally, I think when Boeing launched the Delta 4 Heavy, they launched a block of concrete or something. Not creative in any way. Super boring. So we were like, okay, what is the least boring thing we can launch? Okay, all right.
[0:49:36] All right, so it's up there. What are the prospects for SpaceX right now? You've got the rockets, the Falcon Heavy. You've got astronauts? Yes, absolutely. Falcon Heavy, we launched the Block 5, or sort of version 5, technically version 7 of Falcon 9 this year. We were able to refly a rocket three times, which is great. We came close to catching the fairing with this weird duck. We actually got a boat.
[0:50:06] There's quite a big boat and then both put a giant net over this boat. And so it's like this boat that's a giant catcher's mitt. For rockets. Yeah, to catch the nose cone when it's falling back from space. Okay, all right, okay. Yeah, that's pretty fun. And you caught it? No, no, we missed, unfortunately. Okay, all right. But we get close, we get close. All right, where is this boat? It's just, I think it's more in LA or something. All right, it just floats around and catches nose cones. Yeah, yeah, it's a boat with a giant net. Okay. What's the net made out of?
[0:50:36] Metal? No, I think like nylon or Kevlar. Okay. Yeah, so we're close catching and firing. And then next year, the exciting things are we're going to be launching astronauts for the first time to the space station. It'll really be the first time a vehicle from the United States launches astronauts into orbit since the space shuttle. Which has been some years, right?
[0:51:03] Was it 2010 or something like that? Yeah, it's been some years, yeah. So since then, the United States has relied upon the Russian Soyuz, which actually recently has had some issues. So for the first time around the middle of... You're going to give them a ride. Yeah, for the first time since the space shuttle, a US vehicle will transport US astronauts to orbit. What do you think of the Space Force, the Trump Space Force? Well, this may be a little controversial, but I actually like the idea. I think it's cool.
[0:51:32] When the Air Force was formed, there was a lot of poo-pooing and like, oh, how silly to have an Air Force. Because the aircraft in World War II were managed by the Army. So you had the Army and the Navy and the Coast Guard and the Marines. But it became pretty obvious that you really needed a specialized division to manage aircraft.
[0:51:58] And so the Air Force was created. And people today may not realize back then it was widely panned as a ridiculous thing to create the Air Force. But now everyone's like, obviously we should have an Air Force. And I think it's going to become obvious that we should have a Space Force too. Out there to do what? Well, I mean, I kind of think it's basically defense in space. And then I think also it could be pretty helpful for maybe expanding.
[0:52:29] Expanding things beyond Earth. The Space Force could be something that... I think we should have a base on the Moon, for example, a base on Mars. It'd be great to expand on the idea of a Space Force. For explorers, anyone who has an exploratory spirit, and I think that especially applies to the United States and countries like the United States,
[0:52:59] It's kind of a distillation of the spirit of human exploration. I think the idea of being out there among the stars and on other planets is very exciting. Do you think the Trump administration has a commitment to it or is it just let's have a space force? I don't know. I haven't had detailed conversations. But I do think it will become obvious over time that a space force is a sensible thing to do. All right. And Mars, last time we talked, it was 2024, was it, that you talked about getting there?
[0:53:29] Yeah, we're still aiming for 2024. Okay. And you going or someone going? I don't know if I will go or not. It may be just an unmanned mission. I'm not sure if there'll be people on board or not. But there is a Mars rendezvous opportunity because you'd only do a launch to Mars roughly every two years. So around the 2024 timeframe, there's...
[0:53:52] There's a rendezvous opportunity for Mars, which hopefully we can catch. So an unmanned flight to Mars to... Hopefully there are people on board. But I think there's a pretty good chance of at least having an unmanned craft go to Mars. I think we will try to do this. Try to do this. And for working with the U.S. government, working with... Well, I suspect by the time we make enough progress,
[0:54:22] To want to try to do it, I suspect that the US government will be interested in doing this too, or being part of the effort. But I think the vehicle that we're designing right now, which is sort of code named BFR, I think I'm thinking of changing the official name to Heart of Gold. Okay, as in Neil Young? Well, I do like that song.
[0:54:48] It's more like the spaceship in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Oh, right. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's powered by infinite improbability. Okay. I think it's the great, this is like a very great power source. What was BFR? BFR is to some degree a Rorschach test on acronyms. Okay. But officially it is the Big Falcon rocket. Okay, the Big Falcon. What is the other thing you want to call it? The other thing... Big fucking rocket? What?
[0:55:15] It's a Rorschach test. Okay, big fucking rock. That would be mine. So how do you assess your, again, first of all, one, do you think NASA should continue to exist or all these space agencies by the government? And then how do you look at competitors, say like what Jeff Bezos is doing?
[0:55:31] Yeah, I certainly think NASA should continue to exist. NASA does a lot of really useful things, and these go beyond astronaut transport. There are missions to rovers on Mars that are thanks to NASA. There are these planetary probes. There's the Hubble telescope. NASA does a tremendous amount of good, so I definitely think NASA should continue, and ideally we should actually increase the budget of NASA.
[0:56:00] I think it's high time that we went beyond Earth orbit again. I think it's very exciting, inspiring, and I think it really gets the whole world fired up. It can. It can, yeah. When the first humans sort of stepped foot on the moon, it was probably the most inspiring thing, maybe in history. Probably. Yeah, I just saw the movie The First Man. Yeah, it's like, if it's not the most inspiring, I think it's the most inspiring thing in history.
[0:56:30] For Earth as a whole. We should try to do more of that stuff. To Mars or wherever. We've got to get through a couple of things. I know you have limited time, but how do you look at what Bezos is doing with Blue Origin? Because I suppose that's the most comparable private thing going on. Yeah, I think it's great that Jeff is spending lots of money on space. They are a competitor, but it's good that...
[0:56:59] He's spending a lot of money on developing rockets. I think he'll encounter some challenges getting to orbit. It's remarkably difficult getting to orbit. But he has the resources to overcome those difficulties. He does. He seems to be. He's got some spare change in the couch, I think. You're not buying newspaper, are you? No. I don't generally acquire things. Just curious.
[0:57:27] I create companies, but I don't really acquire them. Right. So I wouldn't, I have no plans. It does seem to be like popular these days. It is, it is. Benioff bought one. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. Is there something you think I should buy? I don't know. What do you want to buy? I mean, do you have any suggestions? I don't know. I kept, I was just interviewing the publisher at the New York Times and I said, would you like a billion dollars from one of these people? He didn't want it. I found that unusual. I think the things you could do with a billion dollars. I don't know.
[0:57:58] Jeff has more of them than other people. Yeah, he does have a lot. Speaking of the vagaries of stock price, it's like Amazon shot way up and then it went down. I think Amazon's a great company and just done some amazing things. Amazon's obviously one of the greatest companies in the world. But I imagine that they experience challenges when the stock price rises so much and then falls. Not quite as much as you.
[0:58:25] It's usually over like a package delivery. It's not quite the same level of difficulty. Yeah, but you know, it's like we're up 30% or something. Yeah, it does. That's quite a lot. It goes up and down and he faces issues with the government and everything else, the tax and stuff like that. So let's finish up the last two things. Boring Company. I was just with Eric Garcetti in Los Angeles. Oh, great, yeah. He's a big fan. Yeah, Eric's been a great supporter. Yeah, he has. He says anything to cut traffic, he doesn't care. He told me, he thought, I was like, why do you think these people are interested in traffic so much? And he said, because...
[0:58:54] No matter how rich you are, everybody can get caught in traffic. And so they just want to do something about it. Yeah, Eric's been really supportive of our activity in LA. I mean, technically, our first tunnel's technically in Hawthorne. But we do expect to, over time, create a network of tunnels under greater LA. And I think this is really the key to getting around the city very fast. You've got to go 3D. Essentially, we have a 3D...
[0:59:23] Offices are 3D and dense, and then we have a 2D road transport network. And everyone wants to go in and out of the buildings at the same time. So naturally, you're going to have traffic. So you're thinking all around, lots of roads within the tunnels. Yeah, many levels of tunnels. Like a subway system. Yeah, but even subways tend to be essentially two-dimensional. You'll have a subway.
[0:59:46] Yeah, exactly. I mean, I know that LA has a subway, although people don't. It's good. Is it good? Yeah, it's good.
[1:00:14] You're the first person I've met that actually uses a subway. Sure. I use all public transportation. Well, they had a two-mile extension, or two-and-a-half-mile extension of the subway. It cost $2 million. So the typical cost for a subway, per-mile cost for a subway in the U.S. has been about a billion dollars a mile. So that is not a very scalable solution.
[1:00:38] Yeah, so you really have to, we have to massively improve the technology associated with digging tunnels. And the tunnels themselves, being 3D tunnels versus 2D tunnels. Being many layers. I mean, you could certainly have a subway system which had many layers of tunnels, but the tunnels are so prohibitively expensive that they don't do it. But you can go down 100 levels if you want to. You can have 100 layers of tunnels on top of each other. You can go further down, you can go up.
[1:01:05] So the deepest mines are much deeper than the tallest buildings. But really the key is a massive improvement in tunneling technology. That's the linchpin. That's fundamentally what it amounts to. And as I got sort of digging into tunnels... Oh, good one. Please don't do that. Is that how you amaze yourself? It's like, yeah, yeah, no, I've got a million of them.
[1:01:32] Talking in. You know, tunnels are really so underappreciated. They are. Okay. All right. Okay. They have no place to go but down. Oh, my God. All right. Okay. These are dad jokes. You know that. I'm a dad. I get that. Yeah, totally. I'm glad you're amused with yourself. Yeah, no, no. I definitely am amused by myself. It's a terrible habit. That's obvious. Terrible habit. So tunnels. Yes, tunnels.
[1:01:57] So if you like to apply physics first principles to...
[1:02:24] To any given technology endeavor, you can sort of envelope the possibilities. And what I discovered in talking to the engineering heads of the various tunneling companies is that they actually did not know, I had no idea what the true potential of tunneling was. Because the first question I'd ask is, well, is your tunneling machine power limited or thermally limited? It was like a very obvious question from a physics standpoint. Nobody knew, none of them could answer that question. I was like, okay, this is not a good time.
[1:02:52] And the answer is basically everything's power limited within the framework of how much you can transport heat away from the face using some sort of liquid cooling system. But we're so far away from that, we're crazy far away from that.
[1:03:11] Of being anywhere near the thermal limit. Increasing power is relatively easy, and then you hit the threshold where you've added so much power that you're melting the drill head. Then you have to put a lot of effort into cooling the drill head in order to not melt it, or go with advanced ceramics. But then you still have to cool the bearings and the bearing housings.
[1:03:38] I'm used to a lot of the stuff from rocket engine design, for example. The turbo pump on the Merlin engine runs at 36,000 RPM. It's got 10,000 horsepower and weighs. So applying the rocket technology to what you're doing. Yeah, essentially taking rocket technology and automotive technology and applying it to drilling technology. Right, so the problem is it's too hot. It's too hot.
[1:04:08] We need to massively crank up the power to the drill head. Then we need to cool it. But the first step is simply jacking up the power like crazy and then automating the placement of the tunnel reinforcements. So you're going to have to continue to be going slowly and building it. Yeah, like right now tunnel machines will drill for a bit and then they'll stop and they'll...
[1:04:35] People very slowly put in the reinforcing segments. And so tunneling machines basically go at half speed. Right. I think of that a lot about house construction, how slow it is. Why is house construction so slow? Well, you can make house construction crazy fast if you're doing a factory. Yes, or other ways.
[1:04:53] It's a totally different topic. Construction in general, I think there's a lot of potential for disruption and for entrepreneurs to enter construction in general. There's a tremendous amount of opportunity. So cranking up the power of the drill, then...
[1:05:09] Making the drill battery powered, which is not something they'd ever considered. But the nice thing, but if you don't make it battery powered, then you've got to have this massive cable. Behind it. Yeah, and then the cable, in order to have the cable be manageable at all, has to be like an 11 KVA, 11,000 volt cable. And even then it's thick. And then you've got to have step-down transformers.
[1:05:36] The standard practice is to use a diesel locomotive to transport the tunneling segments to the drill head and to transport the dirt out.
[1:06:06] And to use it in one way.
[1:06:30] So you don't need to worry about the rest of this stuff. It's not consuming oxygen and spewing noxious fumes. This was a big improvement. So when are these happening? When will one be useful? The Hawthorne one? It's a test tunnel. Yeah, we're about to finish the first test tunnel. At what cost? I don't know. I think it's probably...
[1:06:58] Excluding the equipment probably costs us like $10 million for a mile. To put this in. So I'm going to finish up. That's one way. So when will people be able to use it, actually use it? We're planning on having an opening party on December 10th. On December 10th. In six weeks. Six weeks. Yeah.
[1:07:19] And what's going to go through there? Sure. Yes. I'll come. It'll be a very one-dimensional party. It's a date for my birthday. That'd be great. That'd be great or something. So one-dimensional party. Very funny. Very funny. So I'm going to finish up. One thing I didn't ask, all this is money, the amount of investment you put in here. When you had been looking to go private with Tesla, I just have a few more questions. When you've been looking to go private with Tesla, you had talked to the Saudis. How do you feel about them now? I ask every internet executive this now, given the amount of money they have in the system.
[1:07:47] Yeah, well, I mean, it's important to appreciate that the societies have been approaching me for two years about going private. It wasn't like spur of the moment. But I'm talking about in the wake of Khashoggi's murder. Yeah, I mean, that sounds pretty bad. So, you know, that is not good. Right. That is bad. That is bad. That's really bad. Yeah, yeah.
[1:08:10] So do you think about that? Because there's been this sort of tech lash against Facebook. That's not your area, Facebook and social media. But there's been a real backlash against where the money's coming from, the damage on society. You're not the only person in tech, but it all washes over tech. How do you look at that? Let me ask about the Saudis first. Would you take their money now? I think we probably would not. Okay. Yes.
[1:08:39] And what about their influence in Silicon Valley, given the billions that are being poured in here? I know I can't speak to that. I mean, it's not, you know, I think Saudi Arabia is an entire country. So I think you don't want to, like if there's like one really bad thing that occurred, now damn the whole country. It's not great. It's their ruler.
[1:09:07] Sure. It's the ruler. It's the guy who runs everything. They didn't elect him. No, they didn't. That's right. No, I get that. I'm not impugning all Saudis, but it is the government. I think we should just consider that there is a whole country.
[1:09:26] There are a lot of good people in Saudi Arabia and Saudis who are outside of Saudi Arabia. So I think you cannot paint an entire country with one brush. You're just talking about the people who have the money. I think there are...
[1:09:39] Serious issues. Serious issues. And what about the tech lash itself? Again, that's the word they use, the tech lash. I mean, you had been a critic of how the responsibility around AI, around diversity of AI, about the power that's held by Facebook and Google and others in previous interviews we've done. How do you look at that now? You've been one of the few that have raised issues about worrying about the ethics of it and everything else. Yeah, I think there's probably...
[1:10:05] It probably makes sense if something is responsible for a public good and could potentially negatively affect elections or something like that, that there probably should be some regulatory oversight to ensure that we're not negatively affecting the democratic process, that the quality of news is good and not unduly influenced.
[1:10:27] These seem like sensible things. Are you still worried about the power that Google, at the time we talked a couple years ago, you were worried about the power that Google and Facebook were assembling in AI. And you were worried about AI itself. And I think one of the things you said that really struck me was that it wasn't going to kill us, it would treat us like house cats. I thought that was a really striking way to think about it. In the long term, as AI gets probably much smarter than humans,
[1:10:54] The relative intelligence ratio is probably similar to that between a person and a cat, maybe bigger. I do think we need to be very careful about the advancement of AI. And you're still worried about it in that way? Yeah, I think my recommendation for the longest time has been consistent that I think we ought to have a government committee that starts off with insight, gaining insight, spends a year.
[1:11:22] Or two, gaining insight about AI or other technologies that are maybe dangerous, but especially AI. And then based on that insight comes up with rules in consultation with industry that give the highest probability for a safe advent of AI. Do you see that happening? I do not. You do not. And do you continue to think that Google... To the best of my knowledge, this is not occurring.
[1:11:51] No, do you think that Google and Facebook continue to have too much power in this? That's why you started OpenAI and other things. Yeah, OpenAI was about the democratization of AI power. So that's why OpenAI was created as a nonprofit foundation to ensure that AI power, to reduce the probability that AI power would be monopolized. Which it's being. There is a very strong concentration of AI power.
[1:12:20] And especially at Google, Google slash DeepMind. And a very high regard for Larry Page and Demis Hassabis. But I do think that there's value to some independent oversight. Very last question. I'm not going to go into simulation because that's the last time you blew everybody's mind when we talked. Are we still on simulation? No. Yes. This would be quite a thing.
[1:12:47] I think sometimes when I mention the simulation, people infer that, well, therefore, we shouldn't take what appears to be reality seriously. I do think we should take what appears to be reality seriously. Okay. But you did say there was a chance that we are still innocent. I said what appears to be reality. You're right. You said it. You're right. Okay. In this reality, when you look at it, how are you feeling about the future when what appears to be reality? You know, for some reason,
[1:13:18] I feel optimistic. Okay. I'm not sure if that is irrational or not. My current gut feel is weirdly optimistic. Because given this polarization, does this polarization affect you? You pulled yourself off the Trump councils. I know you and I talked about whether I said you shouldn't go because he was going to screw you. Remember? Well, you're right. I am right. Thank you, Elon. I know that. But you feel...
[1:13:46] In the midst of this polarization, these bombings, the president continually being divisive, you feel optimistic.
[1:13:54] Yeah, but by the way, I still think it was worth trying. Right, I get that. To be on the Trump councils and especially just to be an advocate for climate. I did my absolute best. I know you did. I think I called you. I think I said you're not Jesus. It's not going to work. I definitely do not think I'm Jesus. No, I know you don't. I think I'm just trying to egg you into getting off the councils. You know, arguably it was unlikely, but it was worth a shot. Right. Would you do it again?
[1:14:19] Do you mean now? Yeah. Are there councils? No, there aren't. Okay. Do you continue to engage on climate and the things that are important to you? I know gay rights and transgender rights also. Yes. Actually, I'm not sure if you know this, but in terms of LGBTQ...
[1:14:38] This is quite complicated. You'll miss a letter. Totally. There's a new letter. Do I have all the letters? No, there's a new one. Oh, no. Okay. But there's an independent organization that evaluates companies in terms of their, let's at least for now say just LGBTQ friendliness. And we've gotten 100 out of 100 every year for like...
[1:15:07] Four or five years running. Yes, you've been very supportive. Yeah, absolutely. But optimistic. You're optimistic given all this polarization. Are you not worried about it? Are you thinking about the midterm elections? I am thinking about the midterm elections. And I did vote, by the way. Me too, today. And I do wonder what effect a vote in California has. Right, fair point. Yeah. And there's so much gerrymandering of electoral districts that it seems like...
[1:15:36] I voted for the sake of voting, but things are very divisive right now politically. It's probably not wise for me to wade into political debates. But how do you feel as a citizen? I definitely wish people wouldn't yell at each other quite so much. I wish there was less hate. Any solutions? I guess you can't come up with a gadget for that, can you? No.
[1:16:08] I feel we're doing a lot of good here at Tesla on the climate stuff and also making products people love. It's one thing to make an electric car, but can we also make a product that people love, that really makes them happy? There's not many products you can buy that really make you happier.
[1:16:31] So Apple did that for a long time. I still think obviously Apple makes great phones. Earbuds make me very happy. I don't know why. The ones without the cable? Without the cable, I love them. I look terrible. I love them. Earbuds. Yeah, the one without the cable. Yeah. I still like Apple products. They still make me happy. No, I still use an iPhone and everything. But Apple used to really bring out products that would blow people's minds. And some make great products, but there's less of that. That's your goal. There's less of that.
[1:17:01] People are necessarily running to the store for the iPhone 11. But I think with Tesla, we really want to make products that people just love, that are hot-stopping. Okay, my last question. If you had to redo anything this year, Elon, what would it be?
[1:17:17] Besides, apparently you did sumo wrestling, obviously. That was five years ago. Okay, all right. My back still hurts. Your back still hurts. What would you redo? I would definitely not do that again. All right, okay. Five minutes of sumo wrestling has caused me five years of back pain. All right. So, I mean, it's fair to say I would probably not have tweeted some of the things I tweeted. That was probably unwise. And probably not gotten into some of the online fights that I got into. All right.
[1:17:45] I probably shouldn't have like, you know, attacked journalists. Yeah. Probably shouldn't have done that. I don't know why you do it. Yes. Yeah. You want to say you're sorry? No. You can if you want. I'm sorry to some journalists. Okay. I'll give you that. I'll give you that. Okay. I'll give you that. Elon, podcast secured.
[1:18:09] Thank you, Cara. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You kept your promise. Elon and I have been emailing about this, and you do keep your promise compared to a lot of other people, and I appreciate it. It's been a really fascinating discussion, and I will think about buying an electric car. Probably not. I'm not going to try.
[1:18:25] Make a scooter. Why not? Make a scooter and I'll go for it. Actually, they are electric. What am I talking about? I don't know. There was like some people in the studio wanted to make a scooter, but I was like, ah. I love the scooter. I know. It's like lax dignity. No. It doesn't lax dignity. Yes, they do. They don't lax dignity. What are you talking about? Driving one of those things? Yes, I do it all the time. I look fantastic. No, you do not. You are laboring under an illusion. I think I look good. This is an illusion. It lacks dignity. All right. Well, everybody at Lime, don't worry. Elon Musk's not coming for you. Electric bike.
[1:18:54] I think we might do an electric bike. All right. Okay. All right. Perhaps. All right. Elon Musk, thank you very much. It was a pleasure. Thank you. It was good to see you. Elon, it was great talking to you as always. Thanks for coming on the show. If this is your first episode of Recode Decode, welcome. You can also find more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please tell a friend about this show. Now that you're done with this, go check out our other podcasts, Recode Media and Pivot. You can find those shows wherever you found this one.
[1:19:24] I'll be back here on Monday. Tune in then.