60 Minutes (2014)
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (3)
Transcript
0:01Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)60 minutes. Rewind. Comparing the Tesla Model S to other cars is like comparing an iPhone to a desk phone. It is a technological marvel that scorches the pavement 0 to 60 in 4 seconds.
0:19Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Tesla is another revolutionary idea from the mind of Elon Musk, a 42 year old silicon Valley entrepreneur who, who built an industrial empire from the stuff of little boy dreams, fast cars and rocket ships.
0:36Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Musk is an idealist who told us he had to start his companies so that man could colonize Mars and save the earth. His sister says it's like her brother traveled into the future and came back to tell us all about it.
0:51Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)So what is the future like? Apparently it's fast and smoke free. The Tesla Model S is powered by 7,000 battery cells linked to an electric motor. No engine, no transmission, no tailpipe.
1:08Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)As this company video shows. The dash is dominated by a computer that's constantly connected to the Internet. It has a fanatical following. There's a waiting list that Elon Musk is trying to shorten.
1:21Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Building 600 Model S's a week in this high tech plant in Northern California. I have heard a lot of people describe you.
1:31Elon MuskOkay, good. I mean hopefully on balance, hopefully mostly good.
1:35Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)How do you describe yourself?
1:36Elon MuskI usually describe myself as an engineer. That's basically what I've been doing since I was a kid. I'm interested in things that, that change the world or that affect the future.
1:47Elon MuskIn wondrous new technology where you see it and you're like, wow, how did that even happen? How, how's that possible?
1:53Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)How is it possible that Elon Musk could launch two impossible businesses. Space X, a builder of rocket ships, and Tesla, which could be the first successful car company startup in America in 90 years.
2:08Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)How did you figure you were going to start a car company and be successful at it?
2:13Elon MuskWell, I didn't really think Tesla would be successful. I thought we would most likely fail. But I thought that we at least could address the false perception that people had that an electric car had to be ugly and slow and, and boring like a golf cart.
2:25Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)But you say you didn't expect the company to be successful. Then why try?
2:29Elon MuskIf something's important enough, you should try, even if the probable outcome is failure.
2:34Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)What's important to Musk is reducing greenhouse gases which he believes threaten the world. The Tesla will go about 250 miles on a charge and Musk is building a network of charging stations where the driver pays nothing for a fill up.
2:52Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)He hopes to make the stations largely solar powered one day.
2:56Elon MuskYou can drive for Free forever on pure sunlight. That's the message we're trying to convey. So even if there's a zombie apocalypse and the grid breaks down, you'll still be able to charge your car.
3:07Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)So there's a zombie apocalypse warranty.
3:09Elon MuskYes, exactly.
3:12Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)And if you're running from zombies, it's good to know. The Model S won the highest quality rating in the history of Consumer Reports and has the government's highest safety rating.
3:23Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Musk may be changing the car the way Steve Jobs changed the phone. Like Jobs, he's a perfectionist in the art of engineering. His goal wasn't to show a profit, but to reveal the possibilities.
3:36Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)It is a desire to discover that's also behind Musk's other line of vehicles. Only four entities have launched a space capsule into orbit and successfully brought it back. The United States, Russia, China, and Elon Musk.
3:55Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)This Buck Rogers dream started years ago when he had a nutty idea to fly an experimental greenhouse to Mars. But he couldn't. He discovered that the price of rockets was astronomical.
4:08Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)So now he builds his own.
4:10Elon MuskI had so many people try to talk me out of starting the right company. It was. It was crazy.
4:14Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)What did they tell you?
4:15Elon MuskOne good friend of mine collected a whole series of videos of rockets blowing up and made me watch those. He just didn't want me to lose all my money.
4:26Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)He never did launch that greenhouse. But now Musk is lofting commercial satellites and flying cargo to the space station for NASA at a fraction of the former cost. Musk's fascination with technology dates to his childhood in South Africa.
4:43Justine MuskHe just found everything interesting. He wanted to explore everything, you know, knocked his teeth out because he was just falling off stuff. Kimball too, actually.
4:51Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)We spoke with his mother May, sister Tosca, and brother Kimball.
4:55Kimbal MuskHe's a guy with unlimited ambition.
4:57Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Ambition to do what?
4:59Kimbal MuskNot a typical type of ambition. It's more like he just needs to be constantly. His mind just needs to be constantly fulfilled. And the problems that he takes on therefore need to become more and more complex over time in order to keep him interested.
5:16Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)He was interested in computers early. At the age of 12, he wrote the software for a video game and sold it. Against his parents wishes, he set his sights on the software capital of the world.
5:29Elon MuskIt seemed like the vast majority of such things came from the United States. I also like, read a lot of comic books and they all seem to be set in the United States.
5:38Elon MuskSo it's like, well, this is a good place. This is where I got to go to this place.
5:41Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)He earned degrees in Business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania and asked his brother to join him in California.
5:49Kimbal MuskWhen we moved to Silicon Valley, we had nothing. So we actually lived in the office. And we would sleep on the floor in the evening and go shower at the YMCA the next morning.
5:58Kimbal MuskAnd then we would be ready to go before the. Before some of our employees would arrive, so they wouldn't think we were actually sleeping in the office.
6:05Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)In that office. Musk invented a program that gave, step by step directions between addresses. That's common today in cars and phones. But in 1995, it was magic. In four years, he made $22 million.
6:22Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Only in America, right?
6:23Elon MuskOnly in America. I agree. Absolutely.
6:25Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Next, he started an online banking firm that he grew into. PayPal, a system for making purchases on the Internet. And you sold PayPal to eBay for what?
6:36Elon MuskIt was about one and a half billion dollars. So that, that was. It was a good outcome. A good outcome, yes.
6:46Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)His share was 180 million and he bet it all on Tesla and SpaceX. But at the age of 37, he hit rock bottom. His first rockets failed to reach orbit, and an early model Tesla Roadster failed, had quality problems.
7:03Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)In 2008, the rocket company is not going well. You had three failures.
7:10Elon MuskGreat.
7:10Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)The car company is hemorrhaging money.
7:13Elon MuskYeah.
7:14Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)And the American economy has tanked in the worst recession since the Great Depression.
7:21Elon MuskRight.
7:22Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)What was that year like for you?
7:23Elon MuskAnd I'm getting divorced, by the way. Add to that. That was. That was definitely the worst year of my life.
7:30Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)That terrible year was captured in a documentary called Revenge of the Electric Car. His plant was filled with flawed cars that couldn't be delivered.
7:41Elon MuskHoly mackerel. Jesus. We have, like an army of cars here. Like, Jesus, I'm looking like we're going to be able to deliver four cars to the sales team. This is frightening.
7:53Elon MuskIt's really pedal to the metal here. I mean, each month that passes is literally costs us tens of millions of dollars. I mean, we need to appreciate that.
8:03Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)To save Tesla, Musk needed millions more from investors. His fortune was gone.
8:09Elon MuskWhen we'd call people and say, hey, would you like to invest? They'd be angry that we just called. It's like, it's only no, no, and no one, you know, various expletives.
8:21Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)He was essentially broke.
8:23Kimbal MuskOh, yeah. In debt. More than broke.
8:25Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)More than broke.
8:26Kimbal MuskYeah.
8:26Elon MuskI remember waking up the Sunday before Christmas in 2008 and thinking to myself, man, I never thought I was someone who could ever be capable of a nervous breakdown.
8:39Elon MuskAnd. But I felt this was the closest I've ever come because it seemed pretty, pretty dark.
8:47Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)The story will continue after this.
8:57Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Toward the end of 2008, SpaceX prepared its fourth attempt.
9:02Elon MuskWe were running on fumes at that point. We had virtually no money.
9:06Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)So a fourth failure, a fourth failure
9:08Elon Muskwould have been absolutely game over.
9:10Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Done, done. SpaceX bankrupt.
9:14Elon MuskYes, it's bad enough to have three strikes. Having four strikes, it's really kaput.
9:21Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)But flight four was flawless in Musk's world. It lit the darkness.
9:34Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Then, as often, the week of Christmas became a time for when little boy dreams are answered.
9:40Elon MuskNASA called and told us that we'd won a one and a half billion dollar contract. And I couldn't even hold the phone. It's like I just, look, I just blurted out, I love you guys.
9:50Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)They saved you.
9:52Elon MuskYeah, they did.
9:54Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Financially and maybe even emotionally.
9:56Elon MuskI'll tell you what that was. That was definitely helpful. Yeah.
10:00Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Two days later, on Christmas Eve, Tesla's investors decided to pour in more money. So you were saved in the period of three days.
10:09Elon MuskYeah.
10:10Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)By two completely unexpected events.
10:12Elon MuskYeah.
10:13Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Merry Christmas.
10:15Elon MuskYeah, absolutely. That's for sure.
10:21Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)The rockets haven't failed since. His cargo capsule has docked three times with the space station. Capture is confirmed. And in the California plant, they're fitting seats for what they hope will be eventual manned missions.
10:35Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)SpaceX is also testing a rocket that can be reused softly landing on a column of flame. Another step on a longer journey.
10:45Elon MuskI'd love to have Space X be the company that brings humanity to Mars, and I hope I see it while I'm still Alive.
10:53Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)He's at SpaceX three days a week, two days at Tesla, and weekends are at home with his five sons from his first marriage and his second wife, Tallulah, whom he met in London.
11:06Justine MuskIt all happened very fast. We were, we were engaged after, I think sort of two, two weeks of knowing each other. And I was 22 and it was. There were all these boys and it was.
11:16Justine MuskWhich was the best part. And it was, it was fast. And then we were in it.
11:22Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)You knew each other two weeks, something before you got engaged?
11:25Justine MuskSomething like that.
11:26Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)What was so attractive?
11:28Justine MuskHe's very charming and definitely the most interesting and eccentric person I have ever met.
11:34Elon MuskElon Musk.
11:38Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Tesla stock has rocketed up nearly 500%. But that's not based on the cars he's selling today. That price is counting on the hope that Tesla will create an electric car at one third the cost of the Model S, which runs about a hundred thousand dollars.
11:57Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)This is what stands in the way this slab covered in plastic, is the battery. So this is essentially the bottom of the car. The front wheels would be there, the rear wheels would be right here.
12:08Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)It fills up the entire bottom of the car.
12:10Elon MuskThat's right.
12:10Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)This is how it fits into the bottom of the chassis. Trouble is, the battery's so expensive, Musk can't build a $35,000 car with acceptable range. To make Tesla successful, he must reinvent battery manufacturing.
12:27Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Musk has just announced a $5 billion factory to be built in the US which he says will make more lithium ion batteries than all the other plants on Earth combined.
12:41Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)Gambles like that have led a lot of people on Wall street to bet against him, taking investment positions that can count on Tesla stock to fail. But so far, those pessimistic investors have lost a lot of money.
12:55Scott Pelley (60 Minutes)What is it about you that seems to invite skepticism?
13:02Elon MuskWell, I think it's because we're doing these things that seem unlikely to succeed, and we've been fortunate. And at least thus far, they have succeeded.