National Governors Association
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (10)
Transcript
0:00Gov. Brian SandovalI know each governor has a vision for his or her own states and we have a responsibility to enact policies to help our citizens and our states thrive. So I've asked Elon to join us today to share his thoughts on how governors can not only stay ahead of the curve, but become innovation governors.
0:21Gov. Brian SandovalSo with that, please join me in welcoming Elon Musk.
0:32Gov. Asa HutchinsonHey,
0:34Governorgood see.
0:43Gov. Brian SandovalGood afternoon and welcome. Elon. Oh, I was going to take off my tie, is that right? If I do that, I came in
0:49Elon Muskwith a tie, but then I was like told it a bit tie, so
0:55Gov. Brian Sandovalthen we'll both be more comfortable.
0:56Elon MuskSounds good. Well, thanks for having me.
1:00Gov. Brian SandovalAppreciate your being here today. You know, when I'm with you, it's difficult to know where to start. Let's start just what drives you, what is it that when you wake up in the morning, do you see a problem and you want to solve it?
1:22Elon MuskI think the thing that drives me is that I want to be able to think about the future and feel good about that so that we're doing what we can to have the future be as good as possible, to be inspired by what is likely to happen and to look forward to the next day.
1:51Ina Fried (Axios)So
1:53Elon Muskthat's what really drives me, is trying to figure out how to make sure that things are great and going to be so. And that's the underlying principle behind Tesla and SpaceX is that I think it's pretty important that we accelerate the transition to sustainable generation and consumption of energy.
2:21Elon MuskIt's inevitable, but it matters if it happens sooner or later. And then SpaceX is about helping make life multi planetary and doing what we can to continue the dream of Apollo and ultimately make contribution to life becoming multi planetary.
2:45Gov. Brian SandovalLet's talk a little more about that. I think everyone very interested that when you say making life multi planetary, that's exciting. It is exciting. So what's your vision there?
2:57Elon MuskYou know, I think, you know, particularly for Americans, you know, like think about America is a nation of explorers. People came here from other parts of the world that, you know, chose to give up the known in favor of the unknown.
3:16Elon MuskSo I think exploration, like the United States, is a distillation of the human spirit of exploration. And so that's why it appeals to Americans so much. You can see this when say there was a shuttle tragedy and seven people died and that's terrible, but a lot of people die all the time.
3:39Elon MuskBut why do we care so much? Because it was the dream of exploration that was dying along with those people. That's why.
3:48Gov. Brian SandovalNo, and I'M one of those. Probably like many of you, remember exactly where you were when that tragedy happened. So you have 30 plus governors here today and we're very excited about your willingness to be with us.
4:04Gov. Brian SandovalAnd you hopefully heard me talk a little bit about my initiative, which is being ahead of the curve. What do you tell us as governors? What should we be thinking about in terms of innovation and developing public policy for the the future?
4:23Elon MuskWell, it sure is important to get the rules right. And you know, it's sort of in terms of legislative and executive actions, you know, it's sort of like say like professional sports or something.
4:45Elon MuskIf you don't have the rules right, if there isn't, you know, if the game isn't set up properly, it's not going to be a good game. So it's real important to get the rules right.
5:01Elon MuskI think it's worth noting that I think still in the United States, the rules are still better than anywhere else. But the, you know, it's very easy to put something in place which is an inhibitor to innovation without realizing it.
5:21Elon MuskSo in terms of the regulatory environment, it's always important to bear in mind that regulations are immortal and they never die unless somebody actually goes and kills them. And then they get a lot of momentum.
5:41Elon MuskSo a lot of times regulations can be put in place for all the right reasons, but then nobody goes back and gets rid of them afterwards when they no longer make sense.
5:53Elon MuskAnd there used to be a rule in the early days when people were concerned about automobiles because that was a pretty scary thing to see a carriage just going around by itself.
6:01Elon MuskYou never know what those things might do. So there were like rules where you had to, in a lot of states where you had to carry a lantern in front of the automobile and had to be like 100 paces ahead of the automobile, there had to be someone with a lantern on a pole like, okay, but you really should get rid of that regulation.
6:20Elon MuskAnd they did, you know, really be awkward. So just regulations, even if done correctly and for, and being right at the time, it's always important to go back and scrub those periodically to make sure they're still sensible, they're still serving the greater good.
6:41Elon MuskI think in terms of tax structure, what is economically incentive and what is not economically incentive? Just make sure that the incentive structure is correct. I think I'm saying just totally common sense things here, but it's economics 101.
7:00Elon MuskWhat have you incent will happen. So if you incent one thing, that thing will tend to happen more than the other.
7:09Gov. Phil ScottThing.
7:09Elon MuskIf you send another thing, that thing will happen. And so the economics should favor innovation. And this is particularly important to protect small to medium sized companies because it's sort of like trying to grow a tree in a forest.
7:29Elon MuskLike it's real hard for a new company to grow when it's just a seedling or a sapling. It needs a lot more protection than if it's a giant redwood or something like that.
7:42Elon MuskSo very important to give support to small and small, to medium sized companies on the innovation front. And they're the ones that need it more than big companies. And I think at this point Tesla's almost big company, biggest company anyway.
8:02Elon MuskSo I favor, you know, supporting smaller companies in Tesla, relatively speaking.
8:09Gov. Brian SandovalWhat would your response be? Because there are critics out there with regard to incentives and that are, and you know, Tesla has been, and I can speak from experience, the beneficiary of incentives, economic incentives, when.
8:26Gov. Brian SandovalWith regard to the gigafactory.
8:28Elon MuskSure.
8:29Gov. Brian SandovalWhat would you tell those, those people?
8:32Elon MuskYeah, I think, well, first of all, as you know, those incentives were a little overstated. In the case of the gigafactory, It's a, a $5 billion investment, capital investment to get that factory going.
8:49Elon MuskAnd I didn't actually know this until, by the way, I didn't know this until we did the press conference actually, that over 20 years the Nevada incentives added up to 1.3 billion.
9:01Elon MuskActually didn't even know this. But now he's telling.
9:05GovernorGo ahead.
9:06Elon MuskLiterally, I learned it at the press conference. I'm like, really? No, but I mean, the thing is that they took what added up over 20 years and made it sound like Nevada was writing us a $1.3 billion check.
9:19Elon MuskAnd I'm still waiting for that check. Did it get lost in the mail? I don't know. So this is the way the press works, of course. So now if you divide 1.3 billion by 20, then it's, it's like, okay, Tesla's on average receives sort of a tax.
9:45Elon MuskWell, it's basically sales and use tax abatement is what it amounts to. So Tesla gets like on the order, we get on the order of 50 to 60 million of sales use tax abatement divided over 20 years.
10:02Elon MuskAnd but this is for something which has a $5 billion capital cost. Just get going. And then would have to generate about $100 billion over that period of time to achieve a $1.3 billion tax benefit.
10:18Elon MuskSo essentially it's a little over 1% over that period of time. And that's great. Okay, but it's not, you know, it's not like it's not the way it was characterized in the press.
10:36Elon MuskBut if, because if it's put in the proper context, it sounds like, okay, well that's neat. You know, it's about 5% helpful on setting up the factory and about 1% helpful over the next 20 years.
10:48Elon MuskCool. That actually sounds pretty reasonable. And yeah, so that was helpful, but there are a lot of other factors as well. And we actually had slightly bigger incentive packages from some other states that were offered.
11:07Elon MuskBut we factored in how quickly could we get the Gigafactory into operation? What were the risks associated with that progress? What would the over, what would be the logistics, cost, costs over time of transferring battery packs and powertrains to a vehicle factory in California?
11:31Elon MuskAnd you know, and all of those factors weighed together is what is what led us to make the decision in favor of Nevada. And working with your team was great.
11:45Elon MuskI was very forward leaning and a big part was also just like making, you know, sure you feel really welcome, you know, within a state.
11:58Gov. Matt BevinSo
12:00Elon Muskthat's sort of what led us to make the decision for the Gigafactory. And then we have another factory in New York doing solar panels also. Actually it's will be the biggest solar panel producer in North America when it's done.
12:20Elon MuskAnd then we expect to establish probably at least two or three more gigafactories in the US in the next several years, as well as a couple overseas. But the overall objective of Tesla is really what set of actions can we take to accelerate the advent of sustainable production and consumption of energy?
12:47Elon MuskAnd I think the sort of the way I would assess the historic good of Tesla is in terms of how many years of acceleration was it? And if we can accelerate sustainable energy by 10 years, I would consider that to be a great success.
13:07Elon MuskHope even if it was only five years, that would still be pretty good. That's the overarching optimization.
13:16Gov. Brian SandovalSo you've talked about interplanetary travel and sustainable energy and the vehicles a little bit. What would you want things to look like in 5 to 10 years associated with energy and with autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles?
13:40Elon MuskWell, I think things are going to be, they're going to grow exponentially. So there's a big difference between 5 and 10 years.
13:50Elon MuskYou know, my guess is.
13:56Elon MuskProbably in 10 years, more than a half of new vehicle production is electric in the United States. And China's probably going to be ahead of that because China's been super pro ev.
14:14Elon MuskI don't think a lot of people know this, but China's environmental policies are way ahead of the U.S. their mandate for renewable energy far exceeds the U.S. i think sometimes people are under the impression that China is either dragging their feet or somehow behind the US in terms of sustainable energy promotion.
14:34Elon MuskBut they're by far the most aggressive on earth. It's crazy. I mean, in fact, the coalition of Chinese car manufacturers just wrote the Chinese government to beg for them to slow down the mandate because it's like too much.
14:50Elon MuskThey need to make 8% electric vehicles. I think like next year or in two years or something. There's like, they can't physically do it. So China's by far the most aggressive on electric vehicles and solar.
15:05Elon MuskSo. But that's a common misperception that they're not. There's one Google search way to figure this out, by the way. It's really pretty easy. So. And in 10. Yeah, 10 years, man.
15:18Elon MuskI think. Yeah, yeah. So half of all production, I think, will be ev. I think almost all cars produced will be autonomous in 10 years. Almost all. It will be rare to find one that is not in 10 years.
15:37Elon MuskThat's going to be a huge transformation. Now the thing to bear in mind though, is that new vehicle production is only about 5% the size of the vehicle fleet.
15:49Elon MuskSo you think about how long does a car or truck last? And they last 15 to 20 years. So before they finally scrap. So new vehicle production is only roughly at most 1/15 of the fleet size.
16:07Elon MuskSo even when new vehicle production, say switches. Switches over to electric or to autonomous, that still means the vast majority of the fleet on the roads is not. It'll take another, you know, five to 10 years before that becomes majority.
16:22Elon MuskThe majority of the fleet becomes EV or autonomous. But if you were to say, God, 20 years, overwhelmingly things are electric, autonomous, overwhelmingly.
16:37Gov. Brian SandovalFully autonomous.
16:38Elon MuskFully autonomous.
16:39Gov. Brian SandovalSo no one will have to touch the steering wheel if there is one.
16:44Elon MuskThere will not be a steering wheel. 20 years, it will be like having a horse. People have horses, which is cool.
16:58Gov. Brian SandovalSo having a regular car will be like having a horse, is that what you're saying?
17:02Elon MuskYeah, yeah. And there will be people that have non autonomous cars, like people have horses. It just would be unusual to use that as a mode of transport.
17:15Gov. Brian SandovalYes. All right, let's talk about the energy piece and rooftop solar and storage.
17:24Elon MuskYeah. So first of all, it's a important to appreciate that the Earth is almost entirely solar powered today in the sense that the sun is the only thing that keeps us from being at roughly the temperature of cosmic Background radiation, which is 3 degrees above absolute zero.
17:44Elon MuskIf it wasn't for a sun, we'd be a frozen dark ice bowl. And the amount of, so the amount of energy that reaches us from the sun is tremendous.
17:55Elon MuskIt's, it's 99% plus of all energy that Earth has. Then there's this energy we need to use to run civilization, which to us is big. But compared to the amount of energy that reaches us from the sun is tiny.
18:15Elon MuskSo it's very easy. It actually doesn't take much. If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would
18:23Gov. Phil Scotttake
18:26Elon Muska fairly small corner of Nevada, Texas, Utah, anywhere. You only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States. And then the batteries you need to store that energy to make sure you have 24, seven power is one mile by one mile, one square mile.
18:55Elon MuskThat's it. I showed the graph of the image of this where this is what 100 miles by 100 miles looks like. It was like a little square on the US map and then there's a little pixel inside there and that's the size of the battery pack that you need to support that.
19:14Elon MuskReal tiny.
19:15Gov. Brian SandovalSo Will you talked about 20 years from now? None of us. Well, some people will still be using horses or it won't be zero. Yeah but so what will the, the energy piece look like?
19:28Gov. Brian SandovalI mean what will there be transmission lines? Will there be a need?
19:33Elon MuskYeah, I think the, so there's
19:37Governoruse
19:37Elon Muskof energy can is roughly divided into three areas. They're more or less equal at a high level. There's about a third of energy is used for transportation of various kinds.
19:52Elon MuskAbout a third is used for electricity, about a third is used for heating. So if you want to have
20:02Gov. Phil Scottof
20:03Elon Muskthe electricity production, call it, you know, something in the order of 10% depending upon how you count it is renewable maybe 15% today. So that means that there's a massive amount of solar that would need to be produced and connected in order to be fully sustainable.
20:25Elon MuskBecause fully sustainable means you're tackling transportation, non renewable electricity generation and heating. So that, that means there will need to be a combination of utility scale solar and rooftop solar combined with wind, geothermal, hydro, probably some, some nuclear for
20:47Ina Fried (Axios)a while
20:49Elon Muskin order to transition to a sustainable situation. Which means really for the most part massive, massive growth in solar. And it's going to be important to have rooftop solar in neighborhoods because otherwise there'll need to be massive new transmission lines built.
21:12Elon MuskAnd people do not like having transmission Lines go through the neighborhood. They really don't like that. I agree. So you want to have some localized energy production combined with utility.
21:28Elon MuskSo you want rooftop solar. Utility. Solar. And that's really going to be the solution from a physics standpoint that I can't see any other way to really do it.
21:42Elon MuskPeople talk a lot about fusion and all that, but the sun is a giant fusion reactor in the sky and it's really reliable, comes up every day. So if it doesn't, we've got bigger problems.
21:57Gov. Brian SandovalSomebody asked me to ask you this. We talked about workforce today, but they asked me, are robots going to take our jobs, everybody's jobs in the future? How much do you see artificial intelligence coming into the workplace?
22:15Elon MuskWell, first of all, I think on the artificial intelligence front, you know, I have exposure to the very most cutting edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it.
22:31Elon MuskI keep sounding the alarm bell, but, you know, until people see like robots going down the street killing people, like they don't know how to react, you know, because it seems so ethereal.
22:43Elon MuskAnd I think we should be really concerned about AI and I think we should. This AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive.
22:56Elon MuskBecause I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it's too late. And normally the way regulations set up is that a whole bunch of bad things happen, there's a public outcry, and then after many years a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry.
23:18Elon MuskThere's a bunch of opposition from companies who don't like being told what to do by regulators anyway. It takes forever. That in the past has been bad, but not something which represented a, you know, a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization.
23:43Elon MuskAI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization in a way that car accidents, airplane crashes, faulty drugs or bad food were not. They were not. They were harmful to a set of individuals within society, of course, but they were not harmful to society as a whole.
24:09Elon MuskAI is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization. And I don't think people fully appreciate that. You know, it's not, it's not fun being regulated. It's not, you know, can be pretty irksome.
24:25Elon MuskBut, you know, in the car business, you know, we get regulated by Department of Transport, by EPA and a bunch of others. And there's regulatory agencies in every country.
24:39Elon MuskYou know, in the space, we get regulated by FAA and. But you know, if you ask the average person, hey, you want to, do you want to get rid of the FAA and just like take a, take a chance on manufacturers not cutting corners on the aircraft because, you know, profits were down that quarter.
25:01Elon MuskI was like, hell no, that sounds terrible. So, you know, I think even people who are pretty extremely like libertarian, free market, they were like, yeah, we should probably have somebody keeping an eye on the aircraft companies, making sure they build a good aircraft and good cars and that kind of thing.
25:23Elon MuskSo, you know, I think there's, there's a role for regulators that's very important and I'm against overregulation for sure, but man, we, I think we better get on that with AI Prono.
25:41Elon MuskAnd there'll certainly be a lot of job disruption because what's going to happen is ROAS will be able to do everything better than us. I'm including, I mean, all of us, you know.
25:59Elon MuskYeah. Not sure exactly what to do about this.
26:07Elon MuskIt's like, like, this is really like the scariest problem to me, I'll tell you. And yeah, so I really think we need government regulation here just because this is, you know, ensuring the public good is served.
26:22Elon MuskBecause you've got companies that are racing, they kind of have to race to build AI or they're going to be made uncompetitive. You know, like, essentially, if your competitor is racing to build AI and you don't, they, they will crush you.
26:38Elon MuskSo then you're like, ah, we don't want to be crushed. So, you know, I guess we need to bullet too. That's where you need the regulators to come in and say, hey, guys, you all need to really, you know, just pause and make sure this is safe.
26:55Elon MuskAnd like, when it's cool and we're convinced and the regulators are convinced that it's safe to proceed, then you can go, but otherwise slow down and. But you kind of need the regulators to do that for all the teams in the game, you know, otherwise the shareholders will be saying like, hey, why aren't you developing AI faster?
27:17Elon MuskBecause your competitor is like, okay, we better do that anyway. So it's like, I mean, there's like something like 12% of jobs are transport. Transport will be one of the first things to go fully autonomous.
27:33Elon MuskBut when I say everything, like the robots will be. It will do everything. Bar. Bar nothing.
27:41Gov. Brian SandovalLet's move back to. You're rolling out the Model 3 this year, right? And how many orders? What is, what is that going to look like?
27:52Elon MuskYeah, it's going well on that front. We got, I don't know. I think if somebody orders a Model 3 today, they'd only get it probably late next year. We just, actually just started production, made the first production unit last week.
28:10Elon MuskAnd the thing that is not well appreciated about something about cars and any kind of new technology is how hard it is to do the manufacturing. Is vastly harder to do the manufacturing by a factor of a hundred, like a hundred, than to make the, to make that car, to make one of something with maybe 50 or 60 people, we could make a prototype of practically anything in six months.
28:40Elon MuskNow to manufacture that thing, we need 5,000 people to spend, you know, three years. And that's considered really fast. So manufacturing does this kind of S curve where it's excruciatingly slow at first and then it grows exponentially and then people tend to extrapolate on a straight line.
29:03Elon MuskSo if it's real slow at first, they say, oh, this is real slow. Look at that. They're only going to make five cars a week forever. Like, nope, it'll be 10 cars a week, then 20 cars a week, then 40 cars a week, then 5,000 cars a week eventually.
29:16Elon MuskJust grows crazy fast. So we're hoping to get to, you know, something, you know, like 5,000 cars a week by the end of the year.
29:28Gov. Brian SandovalWell, I wanted to give an opportunity for some of the governors to ask questions and perhaps some audience questions. I was told that you'd be willing to do that.
29:37Elon MuskGreat.
29:37Gov. Brian SandovalSo governors, any questions for Elon? Governor Scott?
29:43Gov. Phil ScottWell, thank you very much. We in Vermont have partnered with Tesla in terms of a power pack in our homes. And it's $15 a day. You can rent this for 15 years and it'll carry power as a backup generation device for 12 hours.
30:00Gov. Phil ScottAnd it's been really, really interesting from my perspective, but I'm curious about the vehicles and where we're going in the future or how far in the future. Do the cars themselves become the charging device, like the roof and deck lids and hood?
30:17Gov. Phil ScottOr do the batteries get so efficient that you don't need that and then you just power up for a week or something like that? Where are we going in the future with battery storage?
30:28Elon MuskYeah, I think the future is just the three legs to the stool. There's electric cars, there's a stationary battery pack and solar power. With those three things, you can have a completely sustainable energy future.
30:43Elon MuskThat's all that's needed. On the solar front, like I said, it's going to be a combination of rooftop solar and utility scale solar. You'll need both because of the enormous demand for electricity.
30:56Elon MuskAnd then, you know, one of the things that's. That's been missing, I think up till now is having rooftop solar that looks good and isn't. You know, that's where we've got the solar glass roof that we're developing and we're doing it in different styles so that it matches the aesthetics of a particular house or so regional style.
31:21Elon MuskThat's again, I think that's actually pretty important. And the conventional flat panel solars for flat roofs and for commercial will be the way to go. But yeah, and putting solar panels on the car itself, not that helpful because the actual surface area of the car is not very much and cars are very often indoors.
31:48Elon MuskAnd so it's the least efficient place to put solar is on the car.
31:52Gov. Phil ScottJust wondering about maybe a wrap of some sort. Does that make any sense in the future? Like a wrap of solar around either a building made of a solar panel or a wrap of a vehicle actually being the solar panel, but being the
32:06Elon Muskcomponents of the vehicle itself? I don't think so.
32:10Gov. Phil ScottI'll scrap that idea.
32:15Elon MuskIt's just way better to put her on the roof for sure. I've really thought about this. I mean, really. And I pushed my team about like, isn't there some way we could do it on the car?
32:26Elon MuskI mean technically, if you have like some sort of transformer like thing which will pop out of the trunk like a hard top convertible and just like ratchet solar panels over the whole surface area of the car extending like for the entire say, square footage of a parking space, provided you're in the sun, that would be enough to generate about 20 to 30 miles a day of electricity.
32:57Elon MuskBut that is for sure the expensive, difficult way to do it. Governor Bergam still thought about maybe we should.
33:05GovernorBut Elon, thanks for being here. With your background in payment systems, you understand the important role of security and transactions.
33:15Elon MuskNow that you've got. I think security is a huge concern. Like cyber security.
33:20GovernorYes. In the vehicles you're building now are incredibly complex software systems. I mean, the car is really a rolling piece of software.
33:27Elon MuskIt is. It's like a laptop on wheels.
33:29GovernorYes. So share with us a little bit about your thoughts on cyber security and how you, how we protect. You talk about protecting society when you've got a rolling fleet of.
33:41Elon MuskI think one of the biggest risks for autonomous vehicles is somebody achieving a fleet wide hack. You know, in principle, if somebody was able to hack say all of the autonomous Teslas, they could say, I mean, just as a prank, they could say like sentinel to Rhode island
34:01Governoracross the
34:01Elon MuskUnited States And I'll be like, well, okay, that would be the end of Tesla and there'll be a lot of angry people in Rhode island, that's for sure. So we got to make super sure that a fleet wide hack is basically impossible and that if people are in the car that they have override authority on whatever the car is doing.
34:27Elon MuskSo if the car is doing something wacky, you can press a button that no amount of software can override that will ensure that you gain control of the vehicle and cut the link to the servers.
34:42Elon MuskSo that's pretty fundamental within the car. We actually have. Even if somebody gains access to the car, there are multiple subsystems within the car that also have specialized encryption.
34:55Elon MuskSo the powertrain, for example, has specialized encryption. So even if somebody would gain access to the car, they cannot gain access to the powertrain or to the braking system.
35:06Elon MuskAnd but it is my top concern from a security standpoint at Tesla is making sure that fleet wide hack, or any vehicle specific hack can occur. They have the same problem with cell phones.
35:20Elon MuskYou know, it's kind of crazy today that we live quite comfortably in a world that George Orwell would have thought was super crazy. Like we all carry a phone with a microphone that can be turned on really at any time with our knowledge, with a GPS that knows our position and a camera and well, kind of all about personal information.
35:52Elon MuskWe do this willingly. And it's kind of wild to think that that's the case. So the phone, like Apple and Google, kind of have the same challenge of making sure there cannot be a fleet wide hack or, or a system wide hack of phones or a specific hack.
36:18Elon MuskSo that's our top concern. Yeah, it's going to become a bigger and bigger concern. Tesla's. I don't want to have bait here, but Tesla's pretty good at software compared to the other car companies.
36:35Elon MuskAnd so I do think it's going to be a bit like an even bigger challenge for the other car companies to ensure security. Yeah.
36:46Gov. Brian SandovalThank you, Governor Dugard.
36:49GovernorThank you, Governor. Mr. Musk, thank you for speaking to all the governors today. It's an honor to have you here. One question I had. We saw when gasoline prices went to three and a half dollars a gallon, there was a big jump in interest in hybrid vehicles.
37:04GovernorVehicles. And you saw those vehicles become very much in demand. And then as gasoline prices have fallen, you've seen a reversal of that. And I'm wondering to what extent you have a concern about the future of electric vehicles in the face of those very low prices.
37:22Elon MuskCan you speak to that? Well, the economics, they kind of set the slope of the curve. So there's no question in my mind whatsoever that all transport, with the ironic exception of rockets, will go fully electric.
37:46Elon MuskEverything. Planes, trains, automobiles. Well, a lot of trains are already electric, all ships.
37:54Gov. Matt BevinAnd.
37:57Elon MuskBut it's a question of what that time frame is. And the economic incentive structure drives that time frame. That's really what it amounts to.
38:12Elon MuskYou know, the big challenge is that there's an unpriced externality in the cost of fossil fuels. So the unpriced externality is the probably weighted harm of changing the chemical constituency of the atmosphere and oceans.
38:39Elon MuskSince it is not captured in the price of gasoline, it does not drive the right behavior. You know, it'd be like if tossing out garbage was just free and, you know, there was no, you just do as much as you want.
38:56Elon MuskThen, like, trees would be full of garbage. So. And we regulated a lot of other things like sulfur emissions and nitrous oxide emissions, that kind of thing. It's done a lot of good on that front with CO2.
39:11Elon MuskIt's tough because there's so many vested interests on the sort of fossil fuel side. And sometimes I think, like, those guys feel like kind of hard done by because, you know, it wasn't obvious, like when they were creating their oil and gas companies that it would be bad for the environment.
39:31Elon MuskAnd they worked really hard to create those companies. And then they feel like, well, now they're being kind of attacked on moral grounds when they're. They didn't originally start those oil companies or build them up on bad moral grounds.
39:47Elon MuskAnd it is true that we cannot instantaneously change to a sustainable situation, but then those guys will also fight pretty hard to slow down the change. And that's really where I think is morally wrong.
40:01Gov. Brian SandovalGovernor Bevin and then Governor Hutchinson, then we'll take a couple. Oh, and then Governor Hickenlooper, and then we'll take some audience questions.
40:09Gov. Matt BevinGovernor Bevitt Elon, thank you for being here. Short version of the question, then slightly longer. The short version is, do you ever feel pressure by others expectations of you and your endeavors in light of the progress you've made thus far?
40:27Gov. Matt BevinIs the short version. And more specifically, when you look just at Tesla alone and you look at a company with a $54 billion valuation and seemingly by typical market metrics, no justifiable reason for that?
40:42Elon MuskWhat are you saying?
40:43Gov. Matt BevinI'm just saying I'm curious. I'm just. In all seriousness, do you feel a concern ever that your Intellect and your intellectual curiosity and your ingenuity cannot be matched by those that are trying to commercialize it.
40:58Gov. Matt BevinDoes that ever affect how you think or decisions that you make?
41:05Elon MuskWell, it is actually, I find it quite tough when there are very high expectations. I try to actually tamp down those expectations to be possible. In fact, I've gone on record several times of saying that the stock price is higher than we have any right to deserve.
41:26Elon MuskAnd that's for sure true based on, you know, where we are today and have been in the past. So the stock price obviously reflects a lot of optimism about where Tesla will be in the future.
41:40Elon MuskAnd now the thing that makes that quite a difficult emotional hardship for me is that, you know, those expectations sometimes get out of, out of control. And like, I hate disappointing people.
41:58Elon MuskAnd so I'm like trying real hard to meet those expectations. But that's pretty tall order. And a lot of times it's really not fun, I have to say, a lot less fun than it may seem.
42:15Elon MuskSo, yeah, I mean, I don't ever sell any stock unless I have to for taxes. So, you know, said publicly I'm not going to like take money off the table.
42:32Elon MuskYou know, I'll be last. I'm going down with ship, so I'll be the last to do it. But yeah, I mean, it's. I really wouldn't recommend anyone start a car company.
42:48Elon MuskI really wouldn't recommend it. It's not a recipe for happiness and freedom.
42:57Gov. Brian SandovalThanks Governor Bevin, Governor Hutchinson, Mr. Musk,
43:00Gov. Asa HutchinsonAsa Hutchinson from Arkansas. Thank you for your frank observations about exploration. You know, I look at the spirit of invention and the spirit of exploration, which is really the hallmark of America.
43:16Gov. Asa HutchinsonWhat is your comment on NASA, its mission? I was in Congress, I supported NASA, but I always feel like it's floundering, does not have the support of the American people that's needed.
43:29Gov. Asa HutchinsonWhat, what's your comment on NASA, its mission and what advice would you give us?
43:35GovernorSure.
43:36Elon MuskWell, first of all, I should say I'm a big fan of NASA. In fact, at one point my password was I love NASA. Literally, that was my password. And you know, I think the.
43:57Elon MuskNASA does a lot of good things for which people for which it doesn't get enough credit and that the public, I guess doesn't know that much about. Like a lot.
44:07Elon MuskYeah, most members of the public, they're not really into hard science. You know, it's like not, it's not the thing they're tuning in for most of the time. I love hard science, you know, but it's not that popular.
44:22Elon MuskSo. But there's great things in terms of the telescopes like the Hubble and the James Webb and the, you know, the rovers on Mars and the probes to the outer solar system.
44:38Elon MuskThose are all really great things. But to get the public excited, you've got to get people in the picture. It's just 100 times different if there are people in the picture and if there's some criticism of NASA.
44:55Elon MuskIt's important to remember people in the picture, you know, if you want to get the public support and, but like, if you talk to a scientist about that, say like, where's the science in that?
45:08Elon MuskLike you're not getting it. It's like that's not why people are giving you money. It's not, that's, I mean, it's a little bit of the reason. But like the serious scientists are like, people just make things more expensive.
45:23Elon MuskLike, why do we have people like, okay, well why do we have people at all or anywhere? Sometimes the scientists are the ones who just don't understand, even though they're like smart people.
45:34Elon MuskBut like, you know, so you gotta have something that's gonna fire up the, you know, fire people up and get them really excited. And like, I think if we had a serious goal of having a base on the moon and sending people to Mars and said, okay, we're going to be outcome oriented, how are we going to do this?
45:56Elon MuskOkay, we've got to change the way contracting is done. You can't do these like cost plus contracts, cost plus sole source contracts, because then the incentive structure is all messed up.
46:08Elon MuskSo as soon as you don't have any competition, well, okay, there's sense of urgency goes away. And as soon as you make something, a cost plus contract, you're incenting the contractor to maximize the costs of the program because they get a percentage.
46:22Elon MuskSo they never want that gravy train to end and they want to make it. They become cost maximizers. And then you have good people engaged in cost maximization because you just gave them incentive to do that and told them they'll get punished if they don't.
46:37Elon MuskEssentially, that's what happens. So it's critically important that we change the contracting structure to be a competitive commercial bid. Make sure there are always at least two entities that are competing to serve NASA and that the contracts are milestone based with concrete milestones.
47:00Elon MuskPowerPoint presentations do not count. Everything works in PowerPoint. I have a teleportation device. Look, here's my PowerPoint presentation. So milestone based competitive commercial contracts with competitors. And then you've got to be prepared to fire one of those competitors if they're not cutting it and recompete the rest of the remainder of that contract.
47:26Elon MuskAnd by the way, NASA's actually already done this and they did it with the commercial cargo transportation to the space station. And that was a case where NASA, you know, NASA actually, I'm not sure if they thought it would work or not work, but they didn't have the budget to do anything else.
47:46Elon MuskSo they're like, okay, we're going to try this competitive commercial milestone based contracting. And it worked great. And they awarded it to two companies, to SpaceX and a company called Kistler.
47:59Elon MuskAnd SpaceX managed to meet the milestones, Kistler did not. So then NASA recompeted the remainder of the contract to, to Orbital Sciences. But then Orbital Sciences got across the finish line.
48:11Elon MuskSo now NASA's got two suppliers for taking cargo to the space station. And it's a great situation. Same thing for commercial crew to the space station. NASA competed that in the commercial crew case.
48:26Elon MuskIt's SpaceX and Boeing. And I think that's also a good situation. So now like I can tell you, like the SpaceX team is like, we're gonna do this before Boeing, that's for sure.
48:38Elon MuskAnd then like I read up the Boeing team, they're like, we're gonna do this before SpaceX. That's good, that's, it's a good forcing function to get things done. But that I can't tell you how important that contracting structure is.
48:51Elon MuskThat is night and day. There's way too much in government, which is where it's a sole source cost plus contract. That just again, economics 101. Whatever you incent that will happen and people shouldn't be surprised.
49:11Elon MuskIt's like, oh, you just, you know, said, okay, if that company manages to find some excuse to double the cost of the contract, they're going to get double the profit because they're getting a percentage.
49:21Elon MuskSo they can do exactly that. And also they're not going to say no to requirements. So the government will come up with some set of requirements. 90% of them could make a lot of sense and 10% of them are cockamamie.
49:34Elon MuskThat double the price of the project. For those 10% of cockamamie requirements in a cost plus contract, the contractor will always say yes.
49:44Gov. Brian SandovalThere could be a future for you
49:46Gov. Asa Hutchinsonin government contracting at the state level.
49:48Gov. Brian SandovalYeah, let's go to Governor Hickenlooper and then Governor Ducey.
49:53GovernorSo I think like Most governors, I find it so refreshing to have the unbridled truth. But I do suspect every time you say publicly that the stock price is higher than we have any right to believe, I going to guess you probably get some calls from investors suggesting that maybe you don't say that so frequently.
50:10Elon MuskYeah, that's true. I wanted to go back and just
50:14Governorbriefly because I think I wrote this down that you said, said that artificial intelligence is the fundamental existential risk facing civilization. Did I get that close to that?
50:26Elon MuskIn my opinion, it is the biggest risk that we face as a civilization is artificial intelligence. And so to a group of leaders,
50:34Governorwhat would you advise that we should. How should we be addressing something that's such a large landscape and yet obviously so important?
50:43Elon MuskI think that the, you know, one of the roles of government is to ensure the public good and that dangers to the public are addressed. So that, hence the regulatory thing.
50:59Elon MuskI think the first order of business would be to try to learn as much as possible, you know, to understand the nature of the issues, to look closely at the progress that is being made and the remarkable achievements of artificial intelligence.
51:15Elon MuskLast year, Go, which is quite a difficult game to beat, that people thought would never be beaten with by a computer, that a computer would either never beat the best human player or that it was 20 years away.
51:33Elon MuskAnd last year, AlphaGo, which was done by DeepMind, which is a kind of a Google subsidiary, absolutely crushed the world's best player and now it can play at the top 50 simultaneously and crush them all.
51:54Elon MuskSo just like that pace of progress is remarkable. And you can see more and more coming out in robotics. You can see robots that can learn to walk from nothing within hours, like way faster than any biological being.
52:23Elon MuskBut the thing that's most dangerous is, and it's the hardest to kind of wrap, kind of get your arms around because it's not a physical thing, is kind of a deep intelligence in the network.
52:43Elon MuskYou say, well, what harm could a deep intelligence in the network do so well, it could start a war by doing fake news and spoofing email accounts and fake press releases.
52:55Elon MuskAnd just by manipulating information, the pen is mightier than the sword. So I mean, as an example, I want to emphasize, I do not think this actually occurred. This is purely a hypothetical that I dig in my grave here.
53:21Elon MuskBut you know, there was that second Malaysian airliner that was shot down on the Ukrainian Russian border and that that really amplified tensions between Russia and the EU in a massive way.
53:38Elon MuskWell, let's say if you had an AI, that was where the AI's goal was to maximize the value of portfolio of stocks. One of the ways to maximize value would be to go long on defense, short on consumer, start a war.
53:58Elon MuskAnd then how could it do that? Well, you know, hack into the Malaysian Airlines aircraft routing server, route it over a war zone, then send an anonymous tip that an enemy aircraft is flying overhead right now.
54:20Gov. Brian SandovalLet's go to Governor Ducey and then we'll have after Governor Ducey, we'll finish our gubernatorial questions and then two questions, then we quick questions or one audience question, then we'll be done.
54:34Gov. Brian SandovalWe're running short on time. Governor Ducey.
54:36GovernorThanks, Elon. I really enjoyed your comments today. And as someone who has spent a lot of time in his administration trying to reduce and eliminate regulations, I was surprised by your suggestion to bring regulations before we know exactly what we're dealing with with AI, you know, and I've heard the example used, if I were to come up with a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that was explosive, people would say, well, you have to ban that.
55:04GovernorAnd then we'd have no natural gas. So you've given some of these examples of how AI can be an existential threat. But I still don't understand as policymakers what type of regulations beyond slow down, which typically policymakers don't get in front of entrepreneurs or innovators.
55:29Elon MuskWell, I think the first order of business would be to gain insight. Right now the government does not even have insight. And the right order of business would be to stand up regulatory agency, initial goal, gain insight into the status of AI activity, make sure the situation is understood.
55:54Elon MuskOnce it is, then put regulations in place to ensure public safety. That's it. And for sure the company's doing AI will, most of them, not mine, will squawk and say, hey, this is really going to stifle innovation, blah, blah, blah.
56:11Elon MuskIt's going to move to China. It won't and it won't because like, it's like, has like, has Boeing moved to China? Nope, they're Boeing Aircraft here. Same on cars.
56:25Elon MuskAnd so the notion that if you establish a regulatory regime that companies will just simply move to countries with lower regulatory requirements is false on the face of it because none of them do unless it's really overbearing.
56:43Elon MuskBut that's not what I'm talking about here. Just talking about making sure that there is awareness at the government level. I think once there is awareness, people will be extremely afraid, as they should be.
57:01Gov. Brian SandovalOne audience question. We'll take the first hand that came up
57:09Gov. Matt Bevinright here.
57:13Ina Fried (Axios)Thanks, Elon. Ina Fried with Axios. Early on in this administration, you had argued pretty vociferously that it was best to engage and better to be in the room than not be in the room.
57:25Ina Fried (Axios)Then when the President decided to pull out of Paris, you said that was kind of the last straw and you were going to drop off.
57:30Elon MuskWhat drove you to that?
57:32Ina Fried (Axios)And if you were still speaking to him today, what would you say to the President?
57:37Elon MuskWell, I thought it was worth doing. Trying hard to, you know, it was worth trying. I got a lot of flack from multiple fronts for even trying. When some guy ran up billboards and like, attacking me and like full page ads in the New York Times and whatnot, just for, just for being on the panel.
58:07Elon MuskAnd, you know, in every meeting I was like, just trying to make the arguments in favor of sustainability and sometimes other issues, like we need to make sure that our immigration laws are not unkind or unreasonable.
58:24Elon MuskAnd, you know, did my best. And I think in a few cases I did actually make some progress, which gave me some encouragement to continue. But. But then I just really think that the Paris accord, man, I, I'm.
58:41Elon MuskIf I stayed on the councils, then I'd be essentially saying that that wasn't important, but it was super important because I think a country needs to keep its word and you know, that that's.
58:56Elon MuskIt's not even a binding agreement. So we could always, like, slow it down. The argument that there will be job losses. Well, we could see if there are job losses before we exit the agreement.
59:08Elon MuskMaybe there won't be job losses, maybe there'll be job gains, but, yeah, there's just no way I could stay on after that. So, you know, did my best. All right.
59:22GovernorAll right.
59:22Gov. Brian SandovalWell, everybody, if you would, please join me in thanking Elon for being here today.
59:31Elon MuskThank you.
59:44Gov. Brian SandovalWell, that was a treat, wasn't it?