Tesla Model 3 Unveiling
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (2)
Transcript
0:09Franz von HolzhausenGood evening everyone here and out there on the Internet. My name is Franz Von Holzhausen. I lead the design team here at Tesla, and I'm excited to welcome you to the Tesla Design studio here in Hawthorne, California.
0:28Franz von HolzhausenWe are here tonight to talk about Model 3. But we wouldn't be here without years of intense drive and passion from the Tesla team and leadership on an unwavering mission.
0:42Franz von HolzhausenLadies and gentlemen, on behalf of all of my colleagues here at Tesla, it is my honor to welcome to the stage Mr. Elon Musk.
0:57AudienceThanks everyone.
1:07AudienceAll right, thank you.
1:10Elon MuskAll right, welcome everyone. Welcome everyone to the Model 3 unveil. We have, we have an amazing product to show you tonight. I think you're going to be blown away, but I want to start talking.
1:27Elon MuskJust preface this by talking about why are we doing this? Why does Tesla exist? Why are we making electric cars? Why does it matter? It's because it's very important to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport.
1:42Elon MuskIt really, really is. This is really important for the future of the world. We have record high CO2 levels. We recently passed over 403 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere.
2:01Elon MuskYou can see the chart and it looks like a vertical line and it's still climbing. And the last time there was this level of carbon concentration was 11 million years ago.
2:14Elon MuskThat was approximately when primates started walking upright. The world was very different. We do not want to return to that situation. And what that CO2 increase results in is a steadily increasing temperature.
2:31Elon MuskSo we've already increased by 2 degrees. In fact, that doesn't tell the whole story because the extremes of temperature increased by as much as 20 degrees. And that line is going to keep going for some time in the future.
2:44Elon MuskIt's really important. It makes a difference if we accelerate the transition to sustainable transportation. And beyond global warming, there's just the fact that combustion cars emit toxic gases. And According to an MIT study, there are 53,000 deaths per year in the US alone from auto emissions.
3:07Elon MuskSo it stands to reason that if a vehicle is spewing toxic gas, that's obviously bad for your health. And so to address this, what we came up with, the Tesla, was what we call the secret master plan.
3:24Elon MuskSo.
3:30Elon MuskThis is the first blog that ever wrote for the company. And it was originally a three step, it was originally a trilogy. Now it's a four part trilogy as it turns out.
3:44Elon MuskBut we needed to figure out how could we, as a tiny company with very few resources, actually make a difference? And the only way to do this was to start Small to start with a low volume car, which is why we started with the Tesla Roadster.
4:04Elon MuskSo with any new technology, it takes multiple iterations before and multiple iterations and it takes economies of scale before you can make it, make it great and affordable. So step one was the Roadster.
4:20Elon MuskThe Roadster was high price and low volume. But where it really made a difference was that it showed people, it showed the world that you could make a compelling electric car.
4:32Elon MuskYou could make a great electric car. What was unique about the Roadster was it was the first really great electric car. And before the Roadster, people thought an electric car would be slow and ugly and low range and have bad performance.
4:49Elon MuskAnd we had to break that mold. It was incredibly important to show that that wasn't true. And so we made the Roaster, which is fast, it's beautiful, it's great performance.
4:58Elon MuskFor those of you who bought the Roaster, thank.
5:09AudienceSo.
5:11Elon MuskAnd we only made 500 units a year because that's all we really could make for the Roadster. But it had a very leveraged effect. In fact, Bob Lutz, the former vice chairman of gm, actually credits the Roadster with the Chevy Volt program, which then led to the Nissan Leaf program.
5:28Elon MuskAnd really, even though we were making very few cars, it actually had a close, quite a huge leverage effect on the auto industry. But there was still a lot more to do.
5:40Elon MuskAnd a lot of people said, well, the Roadster is nice, but it's sort of a toy and it's very expensive and you couldn't really make a car that people would use every day or a car that could really compete against the great combustion sedans of the world.
5:54Elon MuskSo we thought, ok, we're going to make the Model S,
6:06AudienceSo do it
6:08Elon Muskagain, do it again. So the Model S, any of you drive a Model S? Thank you. So then, you know, it's a great sedan. It can seat up to seven people, five adults and two kids.
6:31Elon MuskIt's tested by Road and track and Motor Trend and others as the fastest four door car in history ever.
6:44Elon MuskAnd it's got great handling, it's got great technology, it's got things like Autopilot and it really, it was rated by almost every group as, as the best car in its year and by Consumer Reports as the best car ever.
7:08Elon MuskAgain, the reason for that is not just to achieve some superlative in cars, but to show what an electric car can do. Because nobody believed that an electric car could do this.
7:19Elon MuskSo what was really important was to show the reason it was important was not to achieve Awards or anything like that. It was to just show the car industry, show the world that an electric car really can be the best car.
7:33Elon MuskThat's what really mattered. Now for cars, about half the market wants a sedan and about half the market wants an suv. So we thought, well, we'll extend the Model S platform into the Model X.
7:56Elon MuskBoth of these are very important because the revenue from the Model S and the X is what's needed to develop the Model 3. So the Model 3 with very high volume and all the engineering needed to achieve the cost reductions and the capabilities, it costs billions of dollars.
8:12Elon MuskSo the S and the X are what pay for that Model 3 development. So I just want to say for all of you who bought an S or an X, thank you for helping pay for the Model 3.
8:29Elon MuskSo the Model 3 is happening because of you. And so we actually have an S and an X on the side there and has of course, the Falcon wig doors, which did cause us some challenges, but now they're working.
8:51Elon MuskSo now then, going from the S and the X, we finally come to step three or the final step in the master plan, which is a mass market affordable car.
9:09Elon MuskIt was only possible to do that after going through the prior steps. But we're here and we're here to show that to you tonight.
9:22Elon MuskOkay, so I'm going to describe some of the aspects of the Model 3 and then. Yeah, so let's move to describing. So let's show the master plan again. OK, so that's math's plan with steps 2 and 2.5.
9:46Elon MuskNow going to the model 3. First of all, I want to start off by saying the Model 3 is going to be an incredibly safe car. We really believe at Tesla that safety has to come first.
9:56Elon MuskWe care about you. We want you to be safe. We want your friends and family to be safe. This is paramount. The Model 3 will not just be five star on average, it will be five star in every category.
10:11Elon MuskAnd even the base model of even the base Model 3 will do 0 to 60 miles an hour or 0 to 100 kilometers an hour in less than six seconds.
10:22Elon MuskAt Tesla, we don't make slow cars. And of course there will be versions of the Model 3 that go much faster. And in terms of range, the range will be at least an EPA rating of 215 miles.
10:45Elon MuskI want to emphasize these are minimum numbers. We hope to exceed them.
10:55Elon MuskIt will. Also, all Model 3s will come standard with autopilot hardware.
11:04Elon MuskAnd all autopilot safety features will be present in every car. You won't need to buy an option. The autopilot safety features will always be there.
11:16Elon MuskThe Model 3 also fits five adults comfortably. That comfortably is the important part here. The challenge, obviously, with building a smaller car is how do you still make it comfortable with a bunch of people inside.
11:32Elon MuskSo there are two important design steps we did with the Model 3 to achieve that. One was to move the instrument panel or the firewall. There really isn't a firewall.
11:42Elon MuskWe don't have a big combustion engine in front. We move the front seats forward and compress the instrument panel. When you do your rides tonight, you'll see what I mean.
11:52Elon MuskYou're sitting a little further forward. It actually feels great on the front seats. That's what gives you the leg room to have five adults. And so the first and second row have plenty of legroom.
12:03Elon MuskThen on the rear roof area is actually one continuous pane of glass. The reason that that's great is because it gives you amazing headroom and a feeling of openness.
12:16Elon MuskSo it has I think by far the best feeling, best roominess of any car in this size. Then. Then in addition, it has just, just like the Model S, it has a front and rear trunks.
12:29AudienceSo
12:32Elon Muskyou, you can, it has more cargo capacity than any gasoline car of the same external dimensions. And yeah, and you can. Actually, somebody asked me this question recently is can you fit a seven foot long surfboard on the inside?
12:52Elon MuskThe answer is yes, you can.
12:58Elon MuskThen with respect to supercharging, all Model 3s will come with supercharging standard.
13:09Elon MuskSo the reason supercharging is very important, as many of you know, is that it gives you freedom of travel. Okay? It means you can conveniently go where you want, where you want, how you want.
13:22Elon MuskAnd a lot about having a car is it's about freedom. It's about going where you want to go. And so the superchargers are critical to that. So we're now at the point where we've built out over 3,600 superchargers worldwide.
13:39Elon MuskAnd about the same number, about the same number of destination charges. That's present day. By the end of next year, we will double the number of superchargers.
13:56Elon MuskAnd quadruple the number of destination charges. So you will be able to go virtually anywhere. And in fact, because the onboard charge of the Model S is able to adapt to, to any country's voltage and amperage, wherever you go in the world, if there's electricity, you can charge.
14:20Elon MuskSo then what about buying and servicing? So where we are today with Tesla is, we've got 215 locations in Asia, North America and Europe. And by the end of next year, we expect to more than double that to 441 locations.
14:38Elon MuskSo the key point being almost no matter where you are in North America, Europe or Asia, if you're near any even mid sized metro area, you'll be able to buy a car and get your car serviced.
14:55Elon MuskSo now how are we going to make these cars? Okay, good question. We need to achieve high volume production. So this isn't, this is in two parts. First there is the vehicle factory.
15:10Elon MuskSo the, our Fremont factory in the past has actually made almost 500,000 cars a year. So we're confident that Tesla can achieve that number in the future in terms of vehicle production.
15:24Elon MuskSo I think that's going to be, wouldn't say straightforward, but very doable. And then what about batteries? Because in order to produce half a million cars a year, we would actually need the same battery production.
15:42Elon MuskWe basically need to absorb the entire world's lithium ion production. That's why we are building the Gigafactory. These are the recent pictures of the gigafactory. This is a vital element to give you a sense of scale.
15:58Elon MuskThe Gigafactory will actually have the largest footprint of any building of any kind. Okay. Volumetrically, it will only be second to the Boeing factory in Washington. So this is really quite an enormous facility.
16:18Elon MuskIn fact, it'll produce more lithium ion batteries than all other factories in the world combined in this one location. So we're talking about 50 gigawatt hours a year of production.
16:33Elon MuskAnd it won't just be at that volume. It will also be producing the most advanced cell and battery in the world. So it's the combination of high volume with the most advanced technology is what enables us to make the Model 3.
16:45Elon MuskAnd we already, it's already operational today.
16:55Elon MuskSo when, when are deliveries? Well, they're next year, so.
17:05Elon MuskSo I do feel fairly confident that it will be next year. Yeah.
17:15Elon MuskAnd then in terms of price, well, of course it'll be $35,000.
17:24Elon MuskAnd I want to emphasize, I want to emphasize that even if you buy no options at all, this will still be an amazing car. You will not be able to buy a better car for $35,000 or even close, even if you get no options.
17:38Elon MuskSo it's a really good car, even with no options. So do you want to see? Well, we don't have it for you tonight. I'm just kidding. It's April fool somewhere.
17:57Elon MuskAll right, let's bring him out.
18:18AudienceSam.
18:49AudienceIt's.
20:30AudienceAll right.
20:31Elon MuskSo what do you think?
20:38Elon MuskYou like the car?
20:40AudienceSeem good.
20:45Elon MuskAll right. And this is kind of crazy, but I just learned. Just told that the total number of orders for the Model 3 in the past 24 hours has now passed 115,000.
21:05Elon MuskSo.
21:15Elon MuskThank you. That's a lot.
21:16AudienceYeah.
21:21Elon MuskThank you to everyone that ordered the car. We love you. And for those of you that are here, please enjoy your rides tonight in the Model 3. And for those online, you can [email protected].
21:35Elon Muskthank you.
21:40AudienceSam.
22:12AudienceIt.