Tesla CEO Elon Musk graced Palo Alto with his presence to officially open their brand new Global Engineering Headquarters last Wednesday evening (February 22) It was an event filled with excitement and anticipation as hundreds of Tesla employees, engineers and potential recruits gathered to hear what Elon Musk had to say.  It was a special opportunity for attendees to not only receive valuable information directly from Elon himself but get a first-hand glimpse into Tesla’s plans for the future! This blog post contains the entire transcript of Elon’s inspirational talk. 

Tesla shared a pre-talk video featuring music, graphics, and a montage of Tesla’s products including the humaniod robot and then Elon Musk stepped onstage,

“Hello everyone, welcome to the grand opening of Tesla Global Engineering Headquarters.  This is definitely the wildest party I’ve ever seen in Palo Alto.  Next-level (laughs). I hope you all have a great time here tonight, and I’m excited to share some updates.

This year will be the 20th year since the creation of Tesla. It’s pretty wild to think what’s happened 2 decades, from basically a test ride in the AC Propulsion tzero to now (having) millions of cars on the road and we’ve got several models.  We’ve got the Cybertruck coming out later this year which is going to be epic.  And I think we’ve got a whole bunch of Cybertruck pre-production units that you can check out.  Its going to be an amazing car, something that’s going to change the look of the roads. 

It’s going to be great!  We’re developing Optimus here.  I mean we’re really building a better future for humanity right here in Palo Alto!

I’m just reflecting on the immense amount of stuff that has happened in the last 20 years.  It’s like… whoah! In fact, we have now 48,000 employees in California.  And we’re the biggest manufacturing employer in the state by a factor of two. Fremont manufacturing is the biggest automotive plant in North America, it has the highest output! Hand it to the Fremont team! Its pretty incredible what Tesla Fremont manufacturing is producing, just an incredible number of vehicles. We’re running 24/7, its incredible. Last year the Model Y and Model 3 were the No. 1 and No. 2 best-selling cars in the state of California.”

I mean we’re really building a better future for humanity right here in Palo Alto! Elon Musk

“Now when we started out, and actually for many years, they said what we were doing was impossible and then when we weren’t quite on schedule they would say we were just late and that’s why we specialized in making the impossible merely ‘late.’ (laughter) The sheer number of articles saying this was impossible is insane.”

“And then I think we’ve also done a lot to get the whole industry and earth thinking in the direction of electric vehicles.  We open-sourced our patents, made our patents available and we’ve really tried everything we can to encourage the rest of the industry to move toward sustainability.   And that’s thanks to all of your hard work, so my hat is off to you! 

When we started out, no one believed in EVs. No one was producing EVs, and now the industry has accepted that electric vehicles are the future, so, its pretty wild.”

“So this is our Global Engineering Headquarters, we’ve got a gigantic manufacturing facility in Fremont, we’ve got Lathrop. We’ve got a big center in Los Angeles and also operations in San Diego, so throughout the state doing software and hardware.  Like I said, Tesla is as much a software company as it is a hardware company.  We’re doing a lot (and) we’ve got stationary storage.”

“Tesla is as much a software company as it is a hardware company” Elon Musk

“We’re looking forward to Investor’s Day on March 1st, coming up soon.  It’s going to be sort of Investor’s Day not just for Tesla investors but kind of like investors in earth and just sort of explaining how we get to a fully sustainable energy future and that people should have optimism and hope for the future.  We shouldn’t be complacent, but people should not feel that there’s no hope for the future because there absolutely is and along with the rest of the industry we’re going to make it happen.  So believe in the future! (applause) We really have alot of people here.”

“Although we are obviously expanding in many parts of the world, we’ve continued to expand in California the entire time. Every year we’ve grown our headcount in California significantly and we expect that to continue in the future.  We’ve invested $5 Billion since 2016 (in California).  Right now we’re doing almost $45 Million per day of value creation in the California economy.”

“This is our cool view of the Tesla Engineering HQ.  The thing really warms my heart and I think is pretty incredible is that this is Hewlitt-Packard’s original headquarters.  This is where they created Hewlitt-Packard, which was really the foundation of Silicon Valley.  We’re, I think, inheriting an incredible legacy here and also they did really great decor and we’re quite appeciative of this nice place! Its a nice sort of poetic transition from HP to Tesla.  We intend to keep carrying that torch forward.”

As a picture of the original Tesla Roadsters is shown, Elon continues, “Yeah that’s 2008 I guess, 15 years ago! I hope you guys have a fantastic time tonight, welcome to our new Global Engineering Headquarters and its going to be epic!  We’re going to build the future here! Thank you!” 

I was able to catch up with a representative of Tesla Owner’s East Bay who gave me this statement after attending the event:

“The event truly embodied the evolving story of Tesla as it comes full circle from its days as a small scrappy startup 20 some odd years ago, to its position on the forefront of the planet’s emerging technologies from sustainable transport to manufacturing, renewable energy, power storage, autonomy, Ai and robotics. All at HP’s old HQ, the birthplace of the modern tech movement. It isn’t about Tesla a Texas or California, New York, or Nevada company. This is now Tesla a global-American company. And securing the world’s best engineering talent here, means the best days for humanity are still ahead.”

Watch Elon’s full talk here on Tesla Youtube or Tesla Twitter!

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I’m amazed at what Tesla has accomplished in the last 20 years, its astonishing to think that it all started with Elon’s test ride in the AC Propulsion tzero. From these early roots of Tesla to having millions of cars on the roads today, Elon Musk and the Tesla team have revolutionized the entire automobile, software, solar, and AI industry.  I know Tesla won’t rest until they achieve their goal of helping all humanity transition to sustainable energy and transportation, which is why I believe working with Tesla Engineering is such an amazing opportunity. If you’re passionate about engineering or know someone who is, and want to be part of Tesla to change lives on earth for the better, then consider joining Tesla Engineering!

^{Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – This article was created by Gail Alfar with the goal to preserve this interview in text or written form for the purpose of 1. education and 2. preserving the brilliant insight and words of Elon Musk. February 25, 2023. All Rights Reserved.}