Talking Tech with Marques Brownlee
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (3)
Transcript
0:08Marques BrownleeHere and just got back from sunny California where we spent some time with possibly the busiest man alive, Elon Musk. But he was super generous with his time and we did this sort of a sit down chat at the Tesla factory and then also did a sort of a factory tour, which will be a separate video coming soon.
0:27Marques BrownleeBut ton of things we could have talked about since we were at Tesla at that time. Basically our topics ranged from talking about Tesla products to our love for Tesla to tech and the future all wrapped into one.
0:40Marques BrownleeSo this is that chat. Thanks for watching. Enjoy. First of all, thanks for taking the time sitting down. I'm on your very busy schedule, I'm sure.
0:52Elon MuskGood to see you.
0:53Marques BrownleeYeah, good to see you too.
0:53Elon MuskWelcome.
0:55Marques BrownleeThis is a really interesting place to be. We're kind of in like a bird's eye view of seeing a couple different things happening behind us in the factory. These occasionally move, which is cool.
1:03Elon MuskThose are empty door carriers, so they would have carried doors to cars to get assembled and then they're on their way back to pick up some more doors.
1:10Marques BrownleeNice. So I think most people know you as the boss, the face of Tesla, the decision maker. For those who just for some context, what is your. How do you spend time at Tesla?
1:21Marques BrownleeWhat do you do?
1:21Elon MuskYeah, that's a good question. I think probably a lot of people don't realize I'm like basically just in the factory in design or engineering meetings or production. So that's like 80, 90% of the time.
1:34Elon MuskI think sometimes people think I spend a lot of time on Twitter.
1:36Marques BrownleeSure.
1:37Elon MuskI don't know why they would think that that's crazy, but actually that's like almost nothing. Most of my time is spent at least the last several months, especially going around the factory and then working on say the paint shop, the body shop where we weld up the body, the final assembly where we put all the parts together and then if I'm not here, I'm at the Gigafactory in Nevada.
2:08Marques BrownleeOkay, so P100D owner, undefeated in stoplight races for a while now. Rich over here in audio model 3, pre order waiting for his. And Brandon behind the camera also waiting for model three.
2:21Elon MuskOkay, what version are you waiting for?
2:25Marques BrownleeLong range. Long range. And what color?
2:28Elon MuskOkay, that is a good combo. Variable drive.
2:32Marques BrownleeNice, nice.
2:33Elon MuskOkay, cool.
2:35Marques BrownleeSo my question is how, aside from making great products, how do you get people excited about Tesla? There's a lot of people I know and that I talk to who are just intrigued and interested and excited about Tesla as a company.
2:48Elon MuskThe Thing I really focus on at Tesla is really put all the money into, and attention into trying to make the product as compelling as possible. Because I think that really the way to sell any product is through word of mouth.
3:02Elon MuskSo if somebody gets the car, they really like it. Actually the key is to have a product that people will love. And general people, if they're at a party or torn friends or whatever, you'll talk about the things that you love.
3:19Elon MuskBut if you just like something, it's okay, you're not going to care that much.
3:22Marques BrownleeBut if you love the reactions from the highs and the lows, so you got to make sure
3:27Elon Muskyou're going to talk and then that'll generate word of mouth. And that's basically how our sales have grown. We don't spend any money on advertising or endorsements or. And so anyone buys our car, they just bought it because they like the car.
3:43Elon MuskAnd you know, it's like it's genuine, no discounts. I actually even pay full retail price for my own cars.
3:49Marques BrownleeOkay. Yeah.
3:51Elon MuskAnd then we're really focused on trying to make the cars more affordable, which is really tough. Like in order to make the cars affordable you really, you need high volume, so you need economies of scale.
4:02Elon MuskAnd because the other car companies make a lot more cars than we do, they got way better economies of scale. So as we're gradually able to build up and do do more cars, higher volume, then we can build them for progressively like less money and then make, make the cars available to wide, wide range of people.
4:19Elon MuskBut it's super, honestly like the car industry is like a super, like super competitive, it's like one of the, it's like insanely competitive.
4:28Marques BrownleeSo far I think I read a really interesting, or I think I heard it actually from an earnings call about what something interesting you said is one of the top five most frequent trade ins for model three is a Prius.
4:39Marques BrownleeRight?
4:40Elon MuskYeah.
4:41Marques BrownleeWhich starts at 20 something thousand dollars. And they obviously have massive economies of scale. Do you think there's room, I mean Tesla has Model 3, Model S and road stirring up.
4:52Marques BrownleeIs there room for possibly an even less expensive quality electric car experience?
4:59Elon MuskYeah, absolutely. I think in order for us to get to like let's say ultimately getting like a $25,000 car, that's something we could do. But it's probably, if we work really hard, I think maybe we could do that in three years.
5:17Marques BrownleeDoes it come with time and scale or just.
5:19Elon MuskYeah, it's a bit of both. Yeah. Because like the key to making things affordable is like Designing, it's like design and technology improvements as well as scale. So if you think of like, say, phones, like the very earliest, like the earliest cell phones, like, I'm probably like dating myself here, but like the original Wall street where the guy's like walking down the beach and he's got like the.
5:43Elon MuskIt's like on a giant phone, he's
5:45Marques Brownleecarrying like a briefcase kind of thing.
5:47Elon MuskOr massive, like massive, massive phone.
5:49Marques BrownleeYeah.
5:50Elon MuskAnd like all it could do is phone.
5:52Marques BrownleeYep, yep.
5:53Elon MuskAnd had like 30 minutes of battery life and that kind of thing. Now, at that time, in the absence of technology improvements, like no amount of money, no amount of scale could have made that phone affordable.
6:03Elon MuskThat fee. A lot of engineering iterations, a lot of design iterations. And we're probably, I don't know, on the 30th version of a cell phone. And with each successive design iteration, you can add more capability, you can design, you can integrate more things, you figure out better ways to produce it.
6:23Elon MuskSo it actually gets better and cheaper. But it's like a natural progression of any new technology that it takes multiple versions and large volume in order to make it affordable.
6:34Marques BrownleeGotcha. Is there anything in the near future of Tesla that you're really excited about?
6:40Elon MuskYeah, there's a lot of things, actually. We've got definitely way more product ideas than we have resources to execute. We were just talking about this with my team, just like, hey, guys, what should we focus on?
6:55Elon MuskAnd now in the past, we've only done one car at a time, but as we go into the future, we've got to basically figure out how to walk and chew gum.
7:05Elon MuskIt's like, okay, how do we do two products at the same time, but still have enough resources that both products are great? And so we're going to, we're going to try to do two products.
7:18Elon MuskOne of them for sure is like the Model Y, sort of compact SUV, comparable price point to the Model 3. Then there's the semi, the pickup truck, and the next gen roadster.
7:32Elon MuskNext gen roadster is kind of like dessert.
7:33Marques BrownleeWe got to talk about that.
7:34Elon MuskYeah, yeah, it's super exciting. But it's like. And I think there's definitely some value to doing it to show that an electric car can be faster than a gasoline car in every way.
7:44Elon MuskSo I think there's like, you know, because it's still this sort of like halo effect of the gasoline sports cars because, like, in terms of top speed, they still have the best top speed.
7:53Marques BrownleeYeah. So that halo effect that I was going to basically every Metric possible seems like really ambitious. Like, there's a lot of things that people, people like me kind of accept that.
8:03Marques BrownleeLike, I love my electric car, but I know it's not going to put down lap times 30 laps in just because there's constriction.
8:09Elon MuskExactly. We got to work on that.
8:11Marques BrownleeYeah.
8:11Elon MuskIn fact, I was just talking to the team, I was like, you know, I think we got some headroom there. Are we going to talk about track mode?
8:21Marques BrownleeSure, yeah. Because I had a very short experience with track Mode with Model 3. Yeah. So obviously Roadster is going to be that Halo car, and if we're confident it's going to be an amazing car, I hope it's that car to beat, essentially.
8:34Marques BrownleeBut then bringing Track Mode down to Model 3 brings that fun experience to a lot more people. That higher volume.
8:41Elon MuskExactly.
8:42Marques BrownleeYeah.
8:43Elon MuskSo it's kind of like we're basically a bunch of nerds here. So obviously I don't want to give it away, but so tracking mode, we want to open up a lot of settings, so you can adjust settings and it's kind of like an expert user mode.
9:00Elon MuskAnd you can sort of adjust traction control, adjust battery temperature, you know, brake. You can basically configure a bunch of things and it will tell you, like, hey, if you do this, it's a bit risky.
9:16Elon MuskLike, you're going to wear out your brakes a little sooner. It's like you might blow a circuit, but it'll be clear this is the risk that you're taking. It's kind of like if you have a graphics card in your computer, you can go in there and you can change the settings and you can overclock things and like, okay, but, you know,
9:36Marques Brownleeso that's going to be all that will be in track mode and you'll be able to see that and mess with it.
9:40Elon MuskThat's cool. Yeah, it'd be cool. And you can try different things and. Yeah, it'd be fun.
9:45Marques BrownleeA little more on Roadster because I made a video about it just after the event. I was sad I couldn't be there, but I'm a day one deposit because I was that excited.
9:52Elon MuskOk.
9:53Marques BrownleeBut I was wondering, after you made that announcement, one you said, I think I quote, plenty of space. Where. What does that mean?
10:01Elon MuskOh, you mean like, it won't be cramped inside? Basically, if you're a tall dude, you'll be able to sit in there.
10:10Marques BrownleeHow tall are you?
10:11Elon MuskSix, one and a half.
10:12Marques BrownleeOkay. So I feel like if you're comfortable in there, a lot of people will Be.
10:15Elon MuskYeah. And then like my brother is 64
10:17Marques Brownleeand is he comfortable in there?
10:18Elon MuskYeah. Yeah.
10:18Marques BrownleeOkay. All right.
10:19Elon MuskAnd Franz is like 6:3. I don't know, he's pretty tall.
10:22Marques BrownleeAnd then my other question was the side mirrors. This has been a theme in the past with prototypes and cars that we've seen before. They come out, they don't have mirrors.
10:31Marques BrownleeRegulatory. They have to have mirrors. Is there an advantage to not having mirrors or is it just aerodynamic or is there more to it?
10:40Elon MuskIt's actually. Surprisingly, mirrors, particularly at high speeds, can have quite a big effect on the drag of a car. They're like little air brakes. Basically. Like typical car side mirrors reduce highway range by around 5%.
10:56Marques BrownleeWow.
10:56Elon MuskYeah, it's pretty intense. You can see in a wind tunnel, like, you can see when you select those sort of smoke trails in the wind tunnel, you can see just how much.
11:03Elon MuskYeah, they're like, they're just like air brakes. To be aerodynamic, you actually want kind of like a teardrop shape. So it's like it doesn't end in like a bluff because it creates a low pressure zone behind the mirror.
11:14Elon MuskAnd so you'd have to like have a kind of almost like a cone behind the mirror or blend it with the body or something like that. So it's like they're actually surprisingly draggy.
11:24Elon MuskNow a manufacturer is required to have side view mirrors, but I believe that the owner is not. I think you can modify things. At least in the US the owner can modify things.
11:40Marques BrownleeThe rule is about manufacturing, not driving very much about.
11:43Elon MuskManufacturers are very tightly constrained. And it's actually one of the things that makes it very hard to make a car that looks good and has a good performance and aerodynamics because it's like you got, you got all these constraints and there's so many rules you need to follow.
12:01Elon MuskSo it's very challenging to make a car look good.
12:05Marques BrownleeMy other question about Roadster, the specs are insane. They're ludicrous, some might say.
12:12Elon MuskYeah.
12:13Marques BrownleeSo the plaid.
12:14Elon MuskThe only thing beyond ludicrous is plaid.
12:16Marques BrownleeSo 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds. But more importantly, I was interested in is the 200 kilowatt hour battery and the 600 plus mile range. Are these numbers assuming an improvement in available technology by 2020, or are they something you can achieve now but don't have the manufacturing capacity to, or is it somewhere in between?
12:39Elon MuskYeah, so I think Basically it's like two model S per 100 packs. Yeah, but. But you're really just doubling the internals, the cells inside so it's like a lot of stuff that's related to the pack and the packaging and safety and all that sort of stuff that is not related to the cell.
13:01Elon MuskSo you can double the number of modules inside and with. But it would still be, like, maybe an 80% increase in the volume of the packs. Like, the floor would get 4 or 5 inches higher if it was current technology.
13:18Elon MuskBut we think we'll probably get another maybe 20%, at least 10, maybe 20% improvement because we'll use. The thing about an expensive car is we can use the state of the art, the most advanced equipment.
13:36Elon MuskIt's kind of like with computers, they've come out with a new graphics card or something like cpu. It's like, initially it's expensive, but then over time, that price drops down.
13:48Elon MuskAnd people wonder, is it like, do you have automation? Do you have people? It's like, we have both. It's like a cyborg, but integrated cyborg thing. Actually, one of the biggest constraints for us is being able to hire enough people.
14:02Marques BrownleeThat's what I was going to ask.
14:04Elon MuskParking, man. Parking.
14:05Marques BrownleeThere's a lot of parking here. You have a lot of robots and a lot of people in the factory. What do people do that robots can't do? And obviously, there's a lot that robots can do as far as lifting and moving things.
14:16Marques BrownleeBut as far as precision, maybe there's things they can do that humans can't do. Do you have a ratio off the top of your head, maybe as far as people versus machines?
14:27Elon MuskIt varies massively depending upon what part of the production process. So some parts of it are like 80 to 90% automated, and then some parts of it are, like, only 10 to 20%.
14:41Marques BrownleeWhat are those parts that humans do better than.
14:43Elon MuskHumans are really good at adaptation and rapid evolution and, like, doing, like, little, like, finicky things like that. Like, for general assembly, like, one of the mistakes we made that was like, pretty.
14:58Elon MuskPretty big mistake was trying to automate general assembly, which is where you put the parts together, you know, like some of the things. It's like trying to connect a hose that's sort of dangling around.
15:10Marques BrownleeI see.
15:11Elon MuskAnd the robot's got to find the hose, grab it, then connect it to another hose.
15:16Marques BrownleeAt that point, it's really hard.
15:19Elon MuskLike, a person can just go, all right, done.
15:21Marques BrownleeGotcha. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
15:22Elon MuskYeah. And it's like, when you see it, it's like, wow, it's super obvious. And then we try to have robots do this, and it's like, robots Grabbing the wrong thing and people stick it over here and they're like, oh, the, the hose was here when the robot was here.
15:35Elon MuskAnd so now it tries to grab air and then smashes into the car.
15:39Marques BrownleeYou don't want that.
15:41Elon MuskYeah, it was a comedy of errors, tragedy of errors. Like, personally, you could say this thing needs to connect to that thing and then however they arrive, the person can figure it out.
15:50Marques BrownleeThe robot would be.
15:51Elon MuskThe robot would be like, ah, gotcha.
15:53Marques BrownleeAnd then as far as Tesla's overall master plan is what it was originally called. So. So you start with the low volume, high price roadster, then you move on Model S, higher volume, lower price to Model 3.
16:06Marques BrownleeAs far as I know, that's where the master plan ended.
16:08Elon MuskYeah, that was like part one. We had Model X in there, which.
16:16Elon MuskThat was definitely an exercise in hubris. Now, the X is an amazing car and it's like. But it's like we kind of got carried away with the art.
16:24Marques BrownleeI hear it's very difficult to make.
16:27Elon MuskYeah, we got carried away with the carrier with art and technology. It's like, obviously you want great art, you want great technology, but we did get a little distracted from our mission, which is to advance the cause of electric vehicles, and it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.
16:44Marques BrownleeSo I guess my last question in here would be, just as far as the Tesla master plan, part one coming to an end, is it now just a matter of steering the ship towards new opportunities?
16:55Marques BrownleeYou see, there's not a lot of companies making a $35,000 electric car and a quarter million dollar supercar and a semi truck and doing them all really well. Do you guys see yourself just keeping a tight ship and picking your choices here and there?
17:08Elon MuskYeah. That's why what I was saying earlier, it's a tough strategic call between focus and wanting to do a bunch of different models. I think we want to try doing two at the same time.
17:26Elon MuskWe've only ever done one at the same time before. Do two and then if we're good with that, then we could just try doing three at a time. Like a lot of the other manufacturers.
17:36Elon MuskThey'll do 12 at a time, so they're way bigger than us. Right.
17:41Marques BrownleeAwesome. I wish you the best of luck with it and thanks for taking the time to sit down. Yeah, thanks. Thank you.
17:47Elon MuskAll right, cool.
17:48Marques BrownleeAppreciate it.