Tesla Model X Reveal
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (1)
Transcript
0:01HostWhat I'd like to do is I'd like to welcome you to our Los Angeles design and engineering studio. This is one of the buildings at Tesla where incredible things happen every day, innovative, creative things.
0:16HostAnd we're going to share one with you tonight that we're actually very, very excited about, and we think you will be, too. It's really quite awesome, actually. I'm so excited because we've been going through rehearsals today and I've actually got to see.
0:28HostAnd it's actually extraordinary. And we. There's. It's not a coincidence that we are here in California. What I mean by that is we love California. We. We have our design and engineering studio here.
0:44HostOur corporate headquarters are in Palo Alto, and we are going to build our cars at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California. We are very, very closely connected to California, and we have a very special guest here tonight.
0:59HostVery, very special guest who's been very supportive throughout the years. And it is my pleasure to introduce tonight the governor of the great state of California. Ladies and gentlemen, Governor Jerry Brown.
1:16HostJerry, thank you for being here. All right, all yours.
1:19Jerry Brown (Governor)Okay, well, great to be here. You know, you got a rocket ship next door and, you know, as Governor Moonbeam, I love rocket ships, but I also like electric cars.
1:33Jerry Brown (Governor)And California has set the tone, set the goal for the whole nation. And isn't it great that California has a manufacturing plant of today, which is also a plant of the future?
1:45Jerry Brown (Governor)We're setting the roll, we're setting the pace. And you all here tonight are here to celebrate that and give evidence to the fact that California is on the move.
1:55Jerry Brown (Governor)Now, we got our problems. We got our problem characters, some of them in politics, some in business, some in other places, but we got a lot of tremendous creativity.
2:07Jerry Brown (Governor)And being in a design center really makes the point that it's about design. Instead of fighting all the old battles, we need to imagine how we can change the design because we can work our way out of our mess with creativity and openness and the kind of spirit that is willing to take risks and not get bogged down with all the garbage that we talk about most of the time.
2:34Jerry Brown (Governor)So I'm glad to be here. And I don't know what else is next, but that's all I got to say.
2:43HostThank you.
2:44Elon MuskStep over here.
2:47HostThank you. That was great. Always happy to have a VIP in the crowd. It's great. I now have the honor of introducing the person who, on a daily basis.
3:00HostDaily basis at our company, pushes the ideal that nothing is impossible. Nothing. And he also reminds Us every day of two things. One is that everything we do is going to make a difference.
3:17HostAnd two, everything we do, we do for you. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Elon Musk.
3:55Jerry Brown (Governor)That's a good looking car.
3:56Elon MuskThank you. So do you want to take a photo?
4:01Jerry Brown (Governor)Yeah.
4:02Elon MuskAll right. Voila.
4:08Jerry Brown (Governor)That's what the state bar should look like.
4:11HostExcellent.
4:11Elon MuskAll right,
4:15Hostsure.
4:15Jerry Brown (Governor)I'm going to buy three.
4:18HostThanks a lot.
4:28Elon MuskAll right, well, welcome everyone. I want to start off by just explaining a bit about Tesla. Why did we create Tesla? What was the purpose of the company? We created Tesla to make a difference in the world.
4:46Elon MuskThe world desperately needs sustainable transport. If we don't solve this problem this century, we are fracked.
5:00Elon MuskSo the thing is, if you don't make compelling electric cars, if you don't make electric cars that are not, not almost as good as gasoline cars, not as good as electric cars, but if you don't make electric cars that are better, then it's not going to happen.
5:19Elon MuskSo that's really the mission of Tesla, is to apply creativity and innovation to create the most compelling cars in the world, bar none. We want to show that electric cars are in fact better than gasoline.
5:35Elon MuskI'd like to just touch on one point before getting to talk more about cars, which is just to show if you have an electric car in California, you use only a quarter, as you create only a quarter as much as CO2 as an equivalent gasoline car.
5:52Elon MuskThis is important because sometimes people will say, well, sure, it's an electric car, but haven't you just moved the problem of CO2 production from the car to the power plant?
6:01Elon MuskSo even if you have, if you're just taking electricity directly from the meter in California, you're only using, you're only creating about quarter as much CO2 as you would with a gasoline car.
6:14Elon MuskSo yeah,
6:20Elon MuskAnd even if you're in the worst case situation, which is West Virginia, you're still, you're still producing less CO2 per mile with an electric car than with a gasoline car.
6:36Elon MuskSo you're still ahead of the game. And then if you happen to be in Vermont, you're, if you have in Vermont, you're producing almost no CO2 per mile. And then there's a situation which is even better, which is if you install solar power,
7:00Elon MuskI know a company that's pretty good at that. And if you install solar power, you can easily produce more electricity at your house than you consume in your car.
7:12Elon MuskSo that's an incredibly sustainable solution that's addressing both the production and the consumption of energy. So our goal at Tesla has always been to create cars that no one thought was possible.
7:27Elon MuskWe started with the Roadster.
7:36Elon MuskI think some people drove the Roadster here today.
7:44Elon MuskSo for the longest time, people said a car like the Roadster was impossible. It was like some fictional creature. So we had to show that you could create an electric car, an electric sports car.
7:57Elon MuskThat totally changed the paradigm of what people thought about an electric car, because people used to think electric cars were slow and they were kind of ugly and they had low range and they sort of looked like a golf cart.
8:09Elon MuskWell, the Tesla Roadster is one hell of a golf cart. So we created a car that is actually faster than most gasoline sports cars, that has a long range, and that looks pretty good.
8:24Elon MuskAnd that car was really what got the electric car revolution started. And no less a person than Bob Lutz. Bob Lutz, who is vice chairman of gm, when he saw us unveil the Tesla Roadster, he took our press release down to his team and said, look, if a little company in California can do this, then so can General Motors.
8:51Elon MuskAnd that's what really got the ball rolling. And then there came the Nissan Leaf and many other electric vehicle programs. And then in partnership with our awesome partners, Toyota and Daimler, with Daimler, we did the electric Smart Car.
9:05Elon MuskWe did the Mercedes A Class, all electric. And with Toyota, we've created the electric RAV4 that's going to come out later this year. So our goal is not. Tesla's really a hardcore technology and design company.
9:27Elon MuskThe way that we don't really want to keep technology close to our best. And that's why we've really done our best to bring that technology to mass market by working with companies like Toyota and Daimler and perhaps others in the future.
9:44Elon MuskSo we went from the Roadster to the Model S,
9:55Elon MuskAnd we took everything we learned from the Roadster, which is now 31 countries. And with the help of our partners Daimler and Toyota, who have been great mentors to us, we've tried to create the best car in the world and the most advanced car in the world.
10:14Elon MuskAnd I think we've done that with the Model S.
10:22Elon MuskIn fact, the Model S, despite being a much larger car than the Roadster, actually has more range. We pushed the range up to 300 miles. So it's really something, I think, pretty special.
10:37Elon MuskAnd we're going to be starting deliveries no later than July of this year.
10:48Elon MuskSo the Model S has a lot of cool things. I won't dwell too much on the Model S. It's going to go off stage now. But it's got great things like the 17 inch touchscreen display.
11:03Elon MuskAnd I should mention that we really believe in having electronics in the car that are as good or better than consumer electronics, because people are used to take going from having their cell phone, you know, the iPhone, iPad or Android phone.
11:14Elon MuskAnd when they go to the car, the electronics are worse. Well, we said, well, you know, why does that have to be the case? So let's have a screen that's actually better than your MacBook Pro.
11:23Elon MuskSo we tapped the Apple supply chain and said, well, let's take away the constraints that make a laptop screen worse because the laptops have to conserve energy. So we increase the contrast level, we increase the light lumen level.
11:38Elon MuskAnd so you actually, when you go to the screen on a Model S, it's going, you're going from a screen on your laptop is actually better than your laptop.
11:47Elon MuskSo there's a lot of things like that. And the Model S also has five plus two seating. So it's seating for five adults plus two kids, which I need personally.
12:01Elon MuskBut when we designed the Model S, we created a platform so it's not just a single car. We created something on which we could build many cars. And we're able to leverage that and bring another car to market fast.
12:17Elon MuskAnd that's really what the Model X is, is all about.
12:30Elon MuskSo with the Model X, what's the problem that we're trying to solve? Well, minivans have lots of room, but not much style. SUVs are big on the outside, but they tend to be small on the inside.
12:48Elon MuskMany vans and SUVs have been trying for years to overcome these problems. Here we see the first attempt at that. Not bad, not bad. People kept iterating over the decades.
13:03Elon MuskIt's not clear it got better.
13:12Elon MuskAnd then we've got things like, say, the Audi Q7, which is, it's not bad. We have one here, so you can take a look at it and compare it to the Model X.
13:23Elon MuskAnd I actually have an Audi Q7 personally. And then you can also have things like, say, the Honda Odyssey minivan. I don't have one of those. So you've got functionality with the minivan, you've got style with the suv.
13:48Elon MuskAnd then what's the third missing element? Well, how about performance? So what if, what if you could have a car that has more functionality than a minivan, more style than an SUV, and more performance than a sports car?
14:05Elon MuskThat's the Model X.
14:55Elon MuskSo one of the main inventions of the Model X is something we call the Falcon Wing doors.
15:14Elon MuskAnd driving the car is Franz von Holzhausen, our head of design.
15:23Elon MuskAnd then we've also got six of the key engineers and designers behind the Model X.
15:37Elon MuskYou'll notice these are not small people. So with the Model X, we wanted to create something. We really wanted to create a door that was better than any other door.
15:49Elon MuskThis is something that's very important for each. You know, something like a minivan. You have that sliding door. Well, how do you create something that's better than a sliding door?
15:57Elon MuskWe went through many iterations. This was not an easy thing to figure out. And the thing that makes this unique is it's a split goal. It's like a gullwing, but it's a split gull wing.
16:05Elon MuskSo we call it the Falcon Wing. That's really important because with the split gull wing, with the second hinge, we're able to make it such that the door opens out very, very slightly.
16:19Elon MuskAnd it being so tall, you can do things like stand up inside the car.
16:29Elon MuskYou can't do that in any other vehicle. So it also has the only sort of only roof opening. So even if you're in the rain, it's protecting you from the rain.
16:40Elon MuskAnd one of the things that's nice about this is like, let's say you've got a child seat here. If you put a child seat here, normally what you'd have to do is you'd have to cantilever yourself over the car and try to.
16:52Elon MuskTry to put your kid in. In this case, you can actually just step into the car, put your kid down.
17:04Elon MuskSo it truly has seating for seven adults, like seven real adults. And you can also do things, you can step directly into the third row. So little unwieldy. So ordinarily I'd move the seat, but I don't want to wait for that.
17:27Elon MuskSo the thing about this is that normally if you have an SUV and you have a child seat in the second row, it's extremely difficult to use. Use the third row.
17:36Elon MuskIt's almost impossible. So with the Model X, you can actually do that. And it really fits perfectly every everywhere you go. So this is a roadster in a garage.
17:48Elon MuskIt's actually in my garage.
17:54Elon MuskAnd this is the Model X. So the doors don't go any higher than a normal SUV rear hatchback would go. So. So if you can open the hatch on an suv, you can open the Falcon Wing doors.
18:14Elon MuskWant to show an illustration?
18:27Elon MuskSo we're designed the Falco windows such that if you can physically fit between your car and another car, you can enter the door. It actually has more accessibility than any minivan sliding door.
18:40Elon MuskBecause normally you'd have the sliding door in the way when you're trying to get in. So, I mean, I'm sure we've all been in a parking lot where somebody's parked really close to us and we can't get in.
18:50Elon MuskYou won't have a problem with felt ruined doors.
19:00Elon MuskWe've really tried to create something which is perfect for everything you do.
19:09Elon MuskSo what can I do in my Q7? Well, when you actually have the third row up, you've got basically no cargo space. You can fit a couple of sleeping bags, a backpack and a rope.
19:26Elon MuskWith the Model X, we've got a third row seat, plus tons of space for baggage.
20:11Elon MuskAnd all the seats fold. I mean, you can practically fit a queen size bed in there. So just think of all the things you could do with this space.
20:18Elon MuskI mean, this car can do anything you want. It's crazy. Fit a bike in there, you can travel, practically move house.
20:35Elon MuskWhat an EV architecture really, really allows is that all this stuff that is normally there, that would normally be in the front of a car. So you'd ordinarily have this huge engine and you might have a big transmission.
20:45Elon MuskIn the back, you would have. You'd have a fuel tank and a catalytic converter and an exhaust, all sorts of stuff that just takes up room. We give all of that room back to you.
20:58Elon MuskThere's something in the front you didn't expect. I didn't expect it either. So the other major invention associated with the Model X is dual motor all wheel drive. So we actually have a motor in the front and a motor in the rear.
21:31Elon MuskSo despite having a motor in the front, you actually have this enormous trunk.
21:47Elon MuskWhat dual motor all wheel drive gives you is the best all wheel drive experience of any car, period. Because you can dynamically shift power from front to rear depending upon what has got the most traction.
21:59Elon MuskSo thousands of times a second the car is figuring out where the most traction is and shifting power front to rear. This is something you can't do in a regular all wheel drive where it's just a dumb mechanical linkage.
22:11Elon MuskSo this has incredible road holding and traction. And we've also designed it such that we're able to shift power according to how you want to turn. So it actually has an incredible turning radius.
22:23Elon MuskWe think it may actually have a turning radius that's better than a MINI in an suv. So this is really a very powerful thing and also does something with respect to performance.
22:37Elon MuskSo let's say a car you're probably familiar with, the Porsche 911 Carrera, does 0 to 60 in 4.6 seconds. Model X, 4.4 seconds.
22:54Elon MuskSo you've got something that's the size of an suv, it's faster than a Porsche Model S. Model X gives you functionality, style and performance. There's no other car like this.
23:10Elon MuskSo just going over that again, what was the problem? Well, there are 77 years of cars that. Well, it didn't really quite do it. With the Model X, we've got the Falcon Wing design, we've got mountains of storage, seating for seven adults.
23:27Elon MuskIncredible performance.
23:34Elon MuskSo the Model X, this is a product you're going to love.
23:49Elon MuskSo you may be wondering, how do you get one? Reservations will be done the same way as the Model S. We'll have the signature series and then general production.
24:01Elon MuskWe'll start production towards the end of next year, probably deliver a few units and then bulk production will start in 2014. So when can I sign up? Tomorrow at noon.
24:14Elon MuskReservations go live@tesla motives.com.
24:22Jerry Brown (Governor)But
24:24Elon Muskyou can reserve one tonight.
24:32Elon MuskAll right, so Model X. Absolutely. So come up on stage. You're welcome to come on stage and check the car out and have a great party.
25:02Elon MuskSam.