Tesla Hong Kong Event
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (2)
Transcript
0:10ModeratorIn the crowd tonight. Is that right?
0:11Elon MuskYay.
0:12ModeratorAll right, great. Thank you. Thanks for your longtime support at Tesla and also some Model S owners. Thank you too for your support at Tesla. You've helped make Hong Kong one of the fastest expanding markets for Tesla worldwide.
0:27ModeratorSo I'm John McNeil, I'm the President of worldwide sales and I know that you came here to see Elon Musk. So let me, without any further delay,
0:40Elon MuskWelcome everybody.
0:46Elon MuskSo, thanks for coming and I know there's a number of long time president supporters in the crowd, so thanks for your faith from the beginning for Roaster Model S and everything.
0:57Elon MuskAnd so I'm just going to tell you about what our plans are in Hong Kong. And yeah, we got big plans. So, as I think you may know, the goal of Tesla is to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport.
1:13Elon MuskSo to do whatever we can to have a sustainable future happen sooner rather than later. So we started off with the Roadster back in 2008. Low volume, obviously, high price.
1:29Elon MuskNow with the Model S and X, which are mid price, mid volume. And then in about two years we expect to have the Model 3, which is a lower price, higher volume.
1:40Elon MuskSo the overarching goal, though, is just to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport and to help other companies do that as well. Which is why we open sourced our patents last year, more or less.
1:58Elon MuskWe tried very hard to make an electric car be the best car. It was really important because previously people had the idea of electric cars being like a golf cart, like something that was slow and ugly and low range.
2:12Elon MuskWe had to show that an electric car could actually be the best car. It could be fast, it could be great, have brake handling look good, have long range.
2:23Elon MuskThis was very important to break the mold, to get rid of the idea that an electric car is not a good car. And the results were quite, quite good.
2:34Elon Musk98% of owners would buy the Model S again. We won car of the year and the Consumer Reports said it was the best car that they've ever tested.
2:51Elon MuskSo we start off with safety and achieving five stars across the board. The Model S still has the highest safety rating of any car ever tested. So it's doing well on that front.
3:04Elon MuskWe have a longer crumple zone than any car in any gasoline car because there's no engine in the front, very rigid cabin, and a low center of gravity because of the battery pack being in the floor pan.
3:20Elon MuskAnd then it's also all wheel drive, can make it to 100km in under three seconds and has a range of almost 500km. So these were all really important characteristics to achieve in an electric car, to show that an electric car could be a real substitute for a gasoline car.
3:40Elon MuskAnd then with over the updates the car keeps improving over time. So instead of buying a car and having the software be static and unchanging, this would actually improve over time.
3:54Elon MuskAnd then with Autopilot, which I know you don't actually have it, so I'm meeting with the government tomorrow. Hopefully.
4:15Elon MuskWe're going to have some conversations and hopefully they will consider allowing us to release Guadalupe.
4:28Elon MuskSo anyway, cautiously optimistic that it'll be a good meetings tomorrow. Anyway, this is going to keep getting better over time with the software updates and we'll take it as far as the sensor suite will allow.
4:45Elon MuskSo I think which is actually pretty far. And that's combining the camera, the radar, the sonar and gps. And it's worth maybe showing some of the key statistics. In 2004 Tesla was just five people.
5:04Elon MuskNow we're almost 15,000 and five years ago we were making about 600 cars a year and now it's 50,000 cars a year. So it's good progress I think, and proud of the fact that we've saved over 150 million liters of gasoline.
5:25Elon MuskSo it's.
5:32Elon MuskSo in terms of where we are in greater China, we have 15 stores in seven major cities, several hundred superchargers and even more destination charges. And we're opening up in Macau towards the end of this year.
5:48Elon MuskI actually think Hong Kong will probably be the leading city in the world for electric cars.
6:00Elon MuskSo I think it's going to be really a leading light because I think it'll actually have more EVs per capita than any other city. Which means we'll pioneer figuring out how to do charging, how to handle the large number of electric cars on the grid.
6:21Elon MuskAll of these issues which will then be a good example for the rest of the world.
6:29Tesla OwnerI think Hong Kong is the perfect city for electric vehicles. It's that sense of movement, that sense of dynamism. The Hong Kong people, they want to go everywhere fast.
6:41Mark Wood JohnsonTesla is really taking off.
6:43Tesla OwnerIt just makes sense. The number of Teslas on the street I'm seeing they just that boat tripled now see easily dozen Teslas on the roads every single day.
7:00Tesla OwnerWhen I test drove it, I just couldn't stop thinking about the car afterwards. It's the combination of the practicality of it, the performance, all the cutting edge technology inside the vehicle.
7:11Mark Wood JohnsonWe've got a five person family every day. I feel comfortable with them Strapped in
7:15Elon Muskthe back of that car.
7:16Mark Wood JohnsonIt's one of the safest cars on the road today, if not the safest.
7:19Tesla OwnerI decided to buy a Tesla two seconds after test drive. The moment you put your foot on the pedal. It has the performance of a very good sports car.
7:28Tesla OwnerBy driving it, Tesla has installed superchargers in all the most convenient locations so people can charge while they're out shopping. I love it. When you have this Tesla on inside, you don't have to worry about running out of battery.
7:44Mark Wood JohnsonHong Kong has no reason it cannot convert 100% to electric transportation.
7:48Tesla OwnerWe do want to reduce the carbon footprint, especially here in Hong Kong. We need to preserve the air quality.
7:54Mark Wood JohnsonAnd really where electric cars and Tesla can help is with that roadside pollution.
7:58Tesla OwnerDriving a Tesla, it's entirely quiet and there's just no emissions. So smooth and so quiet, you're almost in your own little bubble when you're inside the car amidst all this noise around you.
8:31Elon MuskThanks to the customers that were part of the video and the interactive, we have a break starting 2016. Coming up, second half of the year, we've got Model X that'll be coming to Hong Kong.
8:43Elon MuskWe've got a huge new service center that we're building, so that should help reduce some of the service time challenges. And then we're also expanding the charge network substantially.
8:54Elon MuskBut it's always important to remember that this is just the beginning. There's over 90 million new cars and trucks produce every year and less than 0.2% are electric vehicles.
9:05Elon MuskSo there's still a huge, huge way to go to transition the world to sustainable energy. So I think that's something worth bearing in mind. It's really just the very beginning,
9:22Audience Memberbut
9:23Elon Muskwe do expect that Hong Kong will be the leader of any city in the world for sustainable energy transport. All right, that concludes the introductory remarks. I'm going to answer a few questions.
9:35Audience MemberWe know that like Tesla is a huge success in Hong Kong, but however, like most of our car owners, cannot install their own chargers and we don't have a very good public charging infrastructure.
9:46Audience MemberThe pace of the supercharging network expansion cannot keep up with the growth of the. This we can see that soon will be become an obstacle for Tesla growth in Hong Kong.
9:57Audience MemberSo how do you think you can overcome this challenge? Thank you.
10:01Elon MuskSure. That's a great point. So in my meetings tomorrow with the government, we're actually going to be discussing this exact subject. We want to try to upgrade some of the public charging stations to higher power and make them available to, to other power companies as well.
10:22Elon MuskBut we really want to work with the government and offer our technology for upgrading the public charging spots. Because my understanding is that there is maybe as many as 800 or even a thousand public charging spots, but they're low power.
10:36Elon MuskSo we've got to. I think the right solution is to upgrade them to higher power and also to have the regulations, the building regulations ideally require that if somebody requests charging in their building that there's an obligation to provide it.
10:55Elon MuskBecause in the long run the best way to charge your car is to charge it the same place you charge your phone. If you have to go to a third location that's generally undesirable, most convenient is where your phone is charged.
11:09Elon MuskThat's where your car should be charged except for long distance driving. But that's the basic idea. So regulatory changes and then, and then providing whatever technology and support that we can from a Tesla standpoint to the government to upgrade the public charging stations.
11:30Mark Wood JohnsonHi you all, my name's Mark Wood Johnson, I'm a roadster and model. Essay. Firstly, before my question I just like to say in the last five years we've had George come, we've had Jerome come, but today is really special.
11:43Mark Wood JohnsonThank you so much for.
11:46Elon MuskWell, thank you for supporting Tesla.
11:50Mark Wood JohnsonSo as well as the roadster in Model X, I've got a Model X on reservation. So of course the question is what is the plan for Right Hand Drive Model X and when are we going to see them?
12:03Elon MuskWell, the plan is to X's is we should be starting production of those around the middle of this year. So hopefully this summer is when we should be delivering the Right Hand Drive X's.
12:22Elon MuskIt's the way spot is over here. Over where
12:27Audience Memberthe sign.
12:28Elon MuskAll right, John B.
12:30Audience MemberOn here with charged Hong Kong, which is Hong Kong's charity representing EVs. Again, thank you for coming. Specific question about Autopilot. One of the most successful campaigns online for in the last couple of years was for Blendtec.
12:47Audience MemberI don't know if you saw that one. Can you blend it? Simple demonstrations of the technology. I've been sort of waiting with bated breath to see cascade of good news about Autopilot and the situations it saved.
13:02Audience MemberAnd all we've seen has been the disaster movies. Is there something to share? Because for every bad news we need five times more good news to balance it psychologically.
13:14Audience MemberIs there anything that Tesla could be sharing?
13:17Elon MuskWell, there are a lot of sort of interventions that occur that we're aware of, but we haven't really asked customers if we could share their information.
13:32Audience MemberI'm sure many of them would agree.
13:33Elon MuskActually. It's a good point. You know, we don't want to put any pressure like no pressure if you
13:38Audience Memberwant to share it.
13:40Elon MuskYeah, maybe that. If we can sort of ask people in kind of a really low pressure way.
13:45Audience MemberWell, there was that one in Seattle which is. Each of us I think is having repeat playback for at least a week.
13:52Elon MuskYeah. And there are many. I mean there are thousands more. So that's a good idea. Maybe we should just ask.
14:00Audience MemberThat's the point. I mean whether they were case studies or if you could do aggregated statistics. And I'm sure I for one would volunteer if I was ever saved by my models.
14:10Elon MuskYes. Actually the statistics putting something up that I think is framed in a statistical way. Maybe the right move. And I just actually recently saw a. Just a histogram of for example, the lane position for autopilot versus non autopilot.
14:30Elon MuskAnd the probability distribution is much tighter if it's on autopilot than if it's manual driving. It's actually remarkable how much people bury in their lane if it's manual driving.
14:45Elon MuskIt's quite a lot. So it's. I think maybe releasing that would be a good idea just to show like look, it's. It's actually a tighter position distribution on autopilot than non autopilot.
14:58Audience MemberWell, what I can share on the record is that in the few short weeks that we had autopilot, I was arriving much more refreshed.
15:05Elon MuskYeah, it is a big workload reduction. In fact, the reason we called autopilot was to have people think of it in the same way that people think of an airplane autopilot.
15:17Elon MuskWhich is not to say that the pilot can abdicate responsibility or go to sleep, that would be concerning, but rather that it's a workload reduction. So just. It eventually makes it easier to fly the plane and in the same way to drive the car with the auto steer function.
15:41Audience MemberOn a personal note, I did complete the police Class 1 driving test while back for safety and I can absolutely say that it requires much less concentration and I'm much more aware of the situation around me and much less stressed by traffic jams and so on.
15:56Audience MemberSo I want it back.
15:57Elon MuskWe're doing our best. I'll take one more question, then I hand it over to John. Okay, great. Sure.
16:08Tesla OwnerRight away.
16:09Elon MuskYou really want to ask a question?
16:20Elon MuskOkay,
16:46Mark Wood JohnsonSure.
16:50Elon MuskSo if the. So just to repeat the comments, the preface was you have an uncle in Australia, a father in law, sorry, in Australia and any of mine. Okay, so he loves using autopilot in Australia.
17:13Elon MuskYeah. And so your bottom law thinks that autopilot is a better driver than, than he is. So that's a good compliment. And the question was with respect to apps, will we when we'll be able to download apps and whatnot into the Model S?
17:29Elon MuskI think the, you know, as we've sort of thought about it more, the logical thing to do from an app standpoint is to maybe allow apps on your iPhone or Android to project onto the screen center display as opposed to trying to create a new app ecosystem.
17:50Elon MuskSo that's probably going to be our focus in the future, is enable you to project apps from your phone onto the center screen. That seems like the logical move.
18:05Elon MuskAll right, well, once again, thanks everyone for coming, and I hope you have a great night.