Gail has a bachelor of art in film/radio/tv and a bachelor of science in nursing
She has worked for years caring for all ages of people with many diagnoses in over 5 hospitals and schools around the texas hill country
Originally from north dakota, she is now based in austin and writes about sustainable energy for the website she created ‘What’s up Tesla’ and 'What's up Twitter' and maintains her nursing practice
(Austin, Texas) On March 10, 2023, an important event unfolded as Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm visited key stakeholders in Texas to discuss the groundbreaking Aggregated DER Pilot Project and the ADER Task Force. This visit marked the initiation of a series of Virtual Power Plant (VPP) listening sessions aimed at fostering deeper collaboration and information exchange. The primary goal is to explore how the Department of Energy can accelerate the deployment of VPPs, positioning them as essential tools for achieving national energy goals.
The Setting: Aggregated DER Pilot Project and ADER Task Force
During the visit, Secretary Granholm met with sponsors of the Aggregated DER Pilot Project and the leadership of the ADER Task Force, along with local Texas leaders and various stakeholders who are actively involved in advocating for distributed energy reliability solutions. These solutions, treated as virtual power plants, hold the potential to revolutionize energy affordability, grid resilience, decarbonization efforts, and energy justice.
Roundtable Discussion and Insights
The roundtable discussion, facilitated by Jigar Shah, Director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, delved into several crucial aspects of the ADER Task Force’s efforts. Participants engaged in a comprehensive discourse on the rapid launch of the ADER pilot program and its accelerated timeline. This pilot program seeks to enhance energy affordability while bolstering the resilience of the energy grid. The roundtable served as a platform for participants to share valuable insights, best practices, and success stories that can be adapted across the United States.
Collaborative Governance and Essential Reforms
A distinctive aspect of the ADER Task Force’s work is the collaborative governance approach. This approach involves a dynamic partnership between sponsoring Commissioners, ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) staff, private sector entities, institutional stakeholders, and committees dedicated to organizing and mobilizing progress. This collaborative effort signifies a commitment to accountability and progress, aiming to catalyze essential reforms within electric markets policies.
Texas’ National Influence in Energy Innovation
The Department of Energy’s engagement with ERCOT and Commission leadership, research institutions, and energy reform advocates showcased the remarkable impact Texas is making on the national stage. By innovating solutions and driving investments where they are most needed, Texas is leading the way in shaping the future of energy reliability.
Gemstone of Progress: Illuminating the Brilliance of Virtual Power Plant
The visit of Secretary Granholm and the subsequent roundtable discussion underscored the significance of virtual power plants as a transformative solution for achieving energy affordability, grid resilience, decarbonization, and energy justice on a national scale. The collaborative efforts of stakeholders in Texas, coupled with the Department of Energy’s involvement, spotlighted the role of innovation in addressing pressing energy challenges. As the nation strives for a more sustainable and resilient energy landscape, the potential of virtual power plants shines brightly on the horizon.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas
Article Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – March 14, 2023. All Rights Reserved. “My goal as an author is to support Tesla and Elon Musk in both making lives better on earth for humans and becoming a space-faring civilization.” – Gail Alfar
Elon Musk with Michael Grimes at Morgan Stanley TMT Conference 2023. Image courtesy @anirvanc on Twitter
Morgan Stanley held this year’s TMT Conference in beautiful (and rainy!) San Francisco and Elon Musk spoke on March 7 about Twitter, X.com, Tesla and SpaceX. The talk was informative, hopeful, well thought out and funny! Of course you may listen to it online and you may also prefer to read Elon’s interviews so that is why I have transcribed (and categorized) the interview here on “What’s Up Tesla.”
I do this with many of Elon Musk’s talks for you. It is part of the goal of this publication to preserve these important talks in writing. A breakdown for your reference:
Twitter:
Mission , News happening in real-time
Public relations department?
Advertising’s incredible potential
Community Notes and the rigorous pursuit of truth
Proactively reducing child exploitation
Advertisers enjoy brand safety
A healthy national dialogue
Freedom of speech: hearing what you don’t want to hear
Twitter won’t always be a fractal rube goldberg machine
Cash flow
Starlink, X.com, Tesla and SpaceX’s Starlink and Starship:
Starlink: a case study in effective advertising
X.com as your everything app
Tesla Master Plan 3 and the next-gen vehicle
Starlink’s advantage
Starship orbital launch
The Mission of Twitter
Michael Grimes: (paraphrased) Where are you on the core principles of Twitter: Authentic, informative, entertaining, accurate, brand safe and democratic?
Elon Musk: “I think some of these are a little at odds, but ‘brand safe’ I think really means ‘where advertising is displayed’ or the advertiser gets to choose what material is near that advertising. If it’s some sort of… like a train accident or a war scene, then probably a family-friendly brand is not going to want to advertise right next to that. Or it can’t be like, ‘here’s a bleak war scene, would you like to buy a hamburger?’ it would be like, awkward, you know?
So that’s understandable you want to put advertising next to content where it makes sense. But the content in general needs to be authentic and informative even if it is controversial or jarring. I think people need to be able to choose, to some degree, what content they want to see. Of course, on Twitter, you can. But really we want it to be the fundamental place you go to, to learn what’s going on and get the real story.
The truth, the whole truth and it’s going to be more than, hahaha, I’d like to say nothing but the truth but that’s hard, (laughter) there’s going to be a lot of BS there too. There are going to be lies, for sure, but you want to have the truth and you want to bubble up the truth and be able to sort of sort it out… you really want truth with the least amount of error.”
News happens in real-time on Twitter
Elon Musk explains Twitter’s unique place as a real-time news source,
“Well, I’m sure many of you use Twitter. Everything on Twitter is happening in real-time.
So if you contrast that to what’s happening in a newspaper, they have to learn the information, propose an article to their editor, get it approved, write the article, get it edited, figure out which day it’s going to get published on, and so the thing that happened is being reported on 3-4 days, sometimes a week late. And if it happens on a weekend then it’s at least 3 days.
You know ChatGPT was huge news for several days on Twitter before there were any news articles about it in major publications. So when thinking about investing in things, you want to have information that is as timely and accurate as possible, there’s no better source than Twitter for that.” Elon Musk
Michael Grimes lamented on the fact that people need to be “default skeptical” of any news story about Twitter and assume it’s default wrong because “not only some journalists have an agenda but the source has an agenda and it’s so easy to go through the chain of inaccuracy or outright falsehood.” He asked Elon Musk if a public relations department was a consideration,
No, PR departments… no the right name for PR is propaganda. Maybe we should have a VP of propaganda, I think that’s more honest, and also a VP of witchcraft. (laughter) Those would be two great ones.
“If you pick up any given newspaper and read the whole thing and say, ‘how many of those stories are positive about anything at all?’ Almost none. So if something is newsworthy it is going to have a negative slant, whether it is positive or not. There’s like something in journalism that, they’ve been trained to basically never write a positive story about anything. Once and a while you see a puff piece but it’s rare. So anything that’s newsworthy will get written about, anything that’s written about will go through a negativity lense and so you, therefore, have a bizarrely negative view of the world if you draw your information from newspapers. This is simply a fact.” Elon Musk
Why advertising on Twitter has incredible potential
“So on Twitter, you can get a much more balanced positive-negative situation, it doesn’t have that bias quite as much. There’s probably still a little bit of negativity bias but much less so. I’m not sure what the legacy media does, I mean at this point, really, Twitter is, by the way, the #1 news app in the world. So in terms of what people download for news, it’s #1.
There are 500M active users. 250M daily users of which I’d say there are probably 180M significant daily users, where it’s a meaningful amount of time. The average amount of time people spend on Twitter of that 250M is about 1/2 an hour or so. The thing I think that is most interesting is about 120M to 130M hours of human attention per day on Twitter, every single day on average.
I think it comes to an interesting point which is, it’s startling how poorly monetized that is because you have to say, how valuable is that attention? 130M hours of human attention per day, of people that read. So these are generally the smartest people in the world, the most influential people in the world, and you have 130M hours of their time per day, that’s a lot!
Currently, Twitter makes about 5 or 6 cents per hour of that time. I think this is poorly monetized (laughter). Like, if I’m spending 2 hours a day on Twitter, whatever ads are coming through are getting my, or yours or everyone in the room’s attention, your time is incredibly valuable. The thing is, we need to actually serve ads that are relevant and useful and I think as we do that we can probably at least get it like 15 cents an hour or 20 cents an hour, a quarter?
I think the actual potential here for Twitter revenue is gigantic. And it’s going to be a win-win situation which is if you are served advertising that you find timely and relevant with products and services that are useful to you, that’s good for you and good for the advertiser. Advertising in the limit of relevance is content.” Elon Musk
Community Notes and the rigorous pursuit of truth
Michael Grimes asked how Community Notes can be used without being hijacked by either side of an issue or political spectrum. Elon Musk explained,
“There’s a White Paper on Community Notes that I recommend reading, in fact, I’ll tweet it out so that people can have easy access to it because it’s really quite a clever idea. Think of it like page rank for pages as applied to people, which is that as people build credibility in how they review notes, they build up enough credibility to actually write notes. Those notes are then rated by others, and depending upon the credibility of the people rating your notes, your credibility score gets affected. In order to be a notes contributor, you have to be a verified person. And it takes a while to get there; when you just start out, you will start off with no credibility score.
We actively look at any attempts to game the system and shut them down. If they’re determined to be not real people or if they seem to be brigading because there are deliberate attempts to manipulate Community Notes. We also make the Community Notes source code open and available, so you can basically see everything. You can see exactly how Community Notes is calculating things, and what changes are made to Community Notes and we’ll keep iterating and the goal is to have truth with the least amount of error.
There’s always like, ‘What is truth?’ Does someone really aspire to the truth? If they really aspire to the truth they must acknowledge that there is some probability that what they think is untrue. If somebody thinks that what they say is true with 100% probability, there’s a 100% probability they are lying. Truth must acknowledge error, and you aim to minimize the error over time, that’s what Community Notes is. I think also, once someone gets Community Noted, they think twice about being dissected in the future. You start getting noted a few times, and you think ‘Uh, oh!’
The important thing is that anyone can be noted, including me, and in fact, I wanted to make a note of being noted. The point is that if I can be noted, anyone can be noted, including advertisers. We’ve had a few cases where the advertising wasn’t accurate and it got noted. This, I think will be very helpful in truth in advertising. The goal is the rigorous pursuit of the truth, aspirationally the whole truth, and the least amount of untruth.” Elon Musk
Proactively reducing child exploitation on Twitter
“I’ve repeatedly said to the Trust & Safety team at Twitter that the #1 Priority, which will always be the #1 Priority no matter what, is ensuring that children are safe on Twitter, that there’s no child exploitation. So that is #1 priority always and forever.” Elon Musk
Elon Musk explained to Michael Grimes, “I’ve repeatedly said to the Trust & Safety team at Twitter that the #1 Priority, which will always be the #1 Priority no matter what, is ensuring that children are safe on Twitter, that there’s no child exploitation. So that is #1 priority always and forever.
What I’ve been told is that we’ve done more to eliminate [CSE material] on Twitter in the last four months than what has been done in the last ten years. It will continue to be our number one priority. A 100-fold reduction in CSE search patterns is pretty gigantic to say the least. It’s the absolute number one priority.”
Advertisers on Twitter enjoy brand safety
Elon Musk used the example of Disney. “With respect to brand safety, it really depends a lot on the brand. By the way, Disney is a major advertiser on Twitter worldwide. Apple is one of our biggest advertisers.
But Disney of course does not want to have one of their ads next to things that aren’t appropriate for a family audience. But there are other products that are kind of more R-rated if you will, so they’re more comfortable with advertising being in the equivalent of like a R-rated movie or something like that. So brand safety depends on what brand you’re talking about. Is it a family brand or a less family brand?
Advertisers can actually adjust what content they are comfortable having their advertising appear next to. The same is true on TV. The advertising that you’ll see at 7 pm is different than the advertising that you’ll see at midnight. We have the same functionality on Twitter, so it’s truly up to the advertiser where they want to put their content. But I think by far the most important thing is if the advertising is effective. That it is relevant and that it moves the needle for a company. Advertising relevance is the most gigantic thing.
This is going to sound totally bizarre but Twitter did not consider relevance in advertising until 3 months ago. In fact if you use Twitter for a long time, you should ask ‘how many products have you bought off Twitter?’ Probably zero! (laughter) Judging by the laughter, probably zero. And your time is incredibly valuable.”
Michael Grimes: Flamethrower, no one bought a flamethrower?
Elon Musk: Haha, its possible that they might have bought things from content-based tweets because the content that’s recommended is reasonably relevant but the advertising has not been. So as we shift towards advertising being relevant and timely, as I said, advertising that is relevant and timely is content. The time of 130M person-hours of the smartest people on earth is insanely valuable. Historically, with advertising being mostly irrelevant, we’ve been wasting peoples’ time and that’s not good. Going forward, Twitter will have very relevant and useful advertising. There will be a massive increase in revenue because it is now useful. So I’m very optimistic about the future. It’s been a very difficult 4 months, but I’m optimistic about the future.
Healthy national dialogue on Twitter
Elon Musk: I think the objective reality for anyone looking at Twitter for a long time was that Twitter had a massive thumb on the scale on the left side. Twitter would ban and suspend accounts on the right 10 times more than on the left. This is naturally what you would expect, frankly, because we are in San Francisco, which is deep deep blue.
So, Twitter was controlled by the far left. So the natural thing that would happen then was the suppression of moderates, not just suppression of the right but even suppression of moderate voices. But that’s not conducive to a healthy national dialogue.
In order to have a healthy national dialogue, you have to represent the whole country, and you have to represent everyone in other countries too. That’s the only way to have a Town Square.
Freedom of speech: hearing what you don’t want to hear
Elon Musk: There were disproportionately more accounts unsuspended and un-shadowbanned on the right because Twitter had a huge thumb on the scale in favor of the left. But if you say, ‘Have we been suspending accounts on the left? Have we been shadowbanning accounts on the left? No, no we haven’t.’ No, because exactly what I said we were doing which is to make it an even playing field and you know something is Freedom of Speech when you’re hearing speech from someone you don’t like and you don’t like what they’re saying.
Otherwise it’s not free speech. And if you don’t have that ability, then sooner or later that suppression of speech is going to be turned on you. It is a good sign if you’re seeing people you don’t like say things you don’t like. That is a good sign, not a bad sign… provided you can say your piece too! I think this is fundamental.
The reason I did the Twitter acquisition was not because I thought this would be some lucrative goldmine, and in fact, it has been arduous and difficult with being dumped on [by mainstream media] every day. That’s not the most fun thing in the world. But if we do not have a strong foundation of free speech, I fear for the future of our civilization. We must have this. That’s why I did it.
Twitter won’t always be a fractal rube goldberg machine
Elon Musk: The codebase is like a Rube Goldberg Machine and when you zoom in on one part of the Rube Goldberg Machine there’s another Rube Goldberg Machine and then there’s another one! That’s what I mean by the fractal. As you zoom in there’s another fractal and another fractal and a fractal Rube Goldberg Machine. It’s quite difficult to keep this thing running and then also difficult to advance the product because it is really overly complex. We’ll make what appears to be a small change somewhere that then causes a massive disruption. For example, yesterday we made what we thought was a small change, we want to be in full disclosure including gruesome details. There was what was supposed to be a small change to 1% of the Twitter user base ended up being a catastrophic event to 100% of the Twitter user base. We don’t have enough time to go into the details but there was a Boolean flag in the Twitter front end that should not have been there.
I’ll give you an example. At one point there was a problem with Twitter Spaces where suspended users were able to join conversations even though they were suspended and so we temporarily turned off access to Twitter Spaces which then made anyone who is using the Twitter Android App unable to like a tweet. Now how those things are connected is not clear, haha. So if you had an iOS app you could like tweets, if you’re on the Web app you could like tweets but not if you had an Android app because of Spaces.
There’s a lot of work behind the scenes and simplifying the code base, getting rid of extraneous features and enabling Twitter to evolve more rapidly in the future but it requires a lot of cleanup.
Looking forward to Twitter being cash flow positive
Michael Grimes: You’ve grown users [on Twitter] despite a lean engineering team and cutting out a data center.
Elon Musk: Yeah, I think on balance we’re doing okay. Just to give you a sense of where things were at the close of acquisition on October 29th, Twitter was tracking to a negative 3 Billion dollar a year burn rate and had 1 Billion in the bank. That’s a pretty dire situation.
If 2023 had been a normal year, Twitter would have done something on the order of 4.5 Billion in revenue and 4.5 Billion in cost, roughly break even, but when you add 1.5 Billion of debt servicing to that and a massive decline in advertising, some of it cyclic, some of it political, but call it at roughly a 50% decline in revenue, you’ve got over 3 Billion dollars negative. Twitter has some revenue that’s not advertising-based, data subscriptions and what-not, but in the absence of action, Twitter would have had 6 Billion in costs and 3 Billion in revenue so minus 3 Billion and there was 1 Billion in the bank, so it would have gone bankrupt in 4 months. Immediate and drastic action had to be taken, which was.
We actually have now cut the non-interest burn to roughly 1.5 Billion. So we’ve got 1.5 Billion of debt servicing and 1.5 Billion of expenditures. We went from 3 data centers to 2, and reduced our cloud expenditures significantly, while at the same time having the fastest product evolution in Twitter’s history. So overall, not bad. There have been a few bumps along the road obviously but this is to be expected. And now I think we have the opportunity to grow it into something quite spectacular. We had the highest total user minutes in Twitter history.
The real numer to care about is actually not the MDAU (Monetized daily active user) but its user time. How many total user hours per day do you have? That’s the real figure of merit because one could for example go to 300 Million daily active users but if they spent less time on the system cumulatively that would actually be a downgrade. Its how much human attention are you worth?
That’s why I think the really profound thing is what Twitter has is roughly 130 Million hours of the smartest most influential people on earth, every single day. There’s nothing else that has that. I mean there are social networks that have more users but they do not have the smart, influential people, they don’t have you!
Michael Grimes: After doing the math, Twitter is EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) profitable today and then you’re looking for break even after debt services. When do you get to cash flow break even?
Elon Musk: Well it’s EBITDA profitable but the “D” is quite big! (laughter)
Michael Grimes: When do you get to cash flow break even after that “D”?
Elon Musk: This is where we need to focus on the “E” part. (laughter) Yeah, I hope we pay taxes. So like I said, we’re getting to the point where we’re close to having the total expenditures for the company excluding debt roughly equal to the debt. I think we’ll be there in Q2. I definitely don’t want to count chickens before they’re hatched or jinx it or anything but I think we’ve got a shot at being cash flow positive next quarter.
Twitter has huge advertiser value
Michael Grimes: Twitter has great advertiser value with 147 Billion global impressions of the World Cup 2022 conversation.
Elon Musk: What I say to advertisers and brands is ‘use Twitter yourself and believe what you see on Twitter, not what you read in the newspapers.’ Because what you see on Twitter is the real thing, and what you read in newspapers is not. And I’d like to thank Mark Read and WPP for their support and publicists and others that have stuck with us like Disney and Apple.
Michael Grimes: When do you introduce performance-based advertising and scale it?
Elon Musk: Performance-based advertising is really just advertising that is relevant, in fact we should realistically have zero nonperformance-based advertising.
We want advertising that matters, people’s attention is precious. We should not serve them ads that are annoying or irrelevant or strident or ugly. It was interesting you should mention White Lotus, I was talking today with David Zaslav, it was great, and he was like, ‘Why can’t we put a White Lotus trailer every time someone mentions White Lotus on Twitter?’ I’m like, ‘Absolutely!’
So one of the super-obvious but profound things that we’re doing is enabling keyword advertising so that can the keywords, like ‘White Lotus’ and if somebody mentions White Lotus, you put the White Lotus trailer there. I mean, that sounds very obvious.
We don’t need advanced AI for this one (laughter). It’s sort of just google Adwords that apply to tweets and the home timeline and replies and everywhere else because you often have sort of long, deep conversations with people going on talking about movies, TV, products and whatnot and that’s the perfect opportunity for advertisers to provide their message.
Starlink: A case study in effective advertising
Elon Musk: You know, if I think about something, for example, like Starlink, which does advertise in various media you want to advertise to users in a region that are not already saturated. So Starlink tends to be saturated in urban areas but it is not saturated in rural areas. What Starlink would like to do is say, ‘Please show the ad to rural users with a slow connection. And the simple message is, ‘Do you want faster internet for less money? Click. Probably you do. Twitter needs to be able to do a simple thing like that. And it will. It is already able to do that, we just haven’t fully rolled it out. So I think we’re around 20%-ish but by the end of this year almost all advertising should be reasonably relevant.
“Twitter is not a one way street, there’s continuous interaction. I think we can have a profoundly more useful advertising experience.” Elon Musk
Elon Musk: Even if you say nothing about that ad, after its dropped in the Twitter system and it has 10,000 views, you populate the parameter space of the ad and then you correlate the user parameter space and the ad parameter space and then you don’t need to do any demographic targeting because you could be like, say its a gardening ad or you could be 20, 30, 40, 70 years old, any sex, whatever, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is you like gardening and that’s the ad that should be shown. I think we can get away from the ad targeting by age range and sex in favor or targeting by interest. Alot of this demographic tageting was done coming from a TV or newspaper era where you don’t have interaction with the user, you just have to kind of guess because its a one way street in TV. But on Twitter its not a one way street, there’s continuous interaction. I think we can have a profoundly more useful advertising experience.
The everything app: X.com
Michael Grimes: Tell us about your vision for X, the everything app.
Elon Musk: I think its possible to create a very powerful finance experience basically. Paypal is kind of like a halfway version of what I think could be done in payments and finance. You want to be able to send money easily from one account on X / Twitter to another account effortlessly with one click. You want to be able to earn interest on the money, you want to be able to have debt so your interest can grow negative. Basically, I think it’s possible to become the biggest financial institution in the world just by providing people with convenience and payment options. We don’t have time to go into detail here except if we just make the app more and more useful, people will use it more and it will be great. I mean, you’ll see!
Michael Grimes: The Tesla team is nice and built out, the Twitter executive team is perhaps a bit leaner. Maybe there’s a meme that’s accurate.
Elon Musk: He does have a black turtleneck, haha! Do you need anything more? I don’t think so.
Michael Grimes: So when does that Twitter management team have that bench like you showcased at the Gigafactory?
Elon Musk: Well I think it takes a lot of time to build a strong management team. We built the Tesla management team over 20 years. I think Twitter is an easier problem than Tesla by a long shot. But it will take some time to build the team, probably a few years.
Tesla Master Plan 3 is a message of hope grounded in physical reality
Michael Grimes: You shared Master Plan 3 at the Gigafactory and the edit that came to my mind was ‘Master planet! after your first piece there in sustainable energy for all earth. Can you take us through that positive, optimistic, mathematically underpinned vision?
Elon Musk: Okay, there’s not a lot of time to do that but I guess the overall message is that we can absolutely turn earth into a sustainable energy economy, fully sustainable, using lithium-ion batteries, solar, wind, as well as geothermal, nuclear and other things but primarily it’ll be solar and wind and lithium-ion batteries.
And to our calculations, you need roughly 240 TeraWatt hours of lithium-ion batteries. Most of those will be iron phosphate for the primarily iron cathode which is a plentiful material. In fact, the #1 element on earth is actually iron — a little factoid. I think earth by mass is about 32% iron and about 30% oxygen and then everything else is miscellaneous. So we’re like a mighty rust ball. So, plenty of iron. Basically, the materials needed to make 240 TerraWatt hours of batteries are actually plentiful on earth. We don’t need to mow down the Amazon or anything like that!
We don’t need to do anything terrible to the environment to create 240 TerraWatt hours of batteries, in fact, there will be less mining required in a sustainable energy economy than is currently required. Really, this is a message of hope and optimism grounded in physical reality, it is not wishful thinking. We should be excited and inspired about the future.
And I am not suggesting complacency or anything like that and getting there faster is better than getting there slower, but we don’t need to live some terrible austere life and give up the things that we like. You can have the things that you like, in fact, even more of them, and the environment can be good. All the good things are possible, that’s what I’m saying.
We should be excited and optomistic about the future. We need to go build this, its a lot of work but you should not feel sad about the future regarding sustainable energy, it will happen! Elon Musk
Elon Musk: We should be excited and optimistic about the future. We need to go build this, its a lot of work but you should not feel sad about the future regarding sustainable energy, it will happen! We just want to make it happen faster rather than slower.
Tesla’s next generation vehicle
Michael Grimes: That was the first big takeaway, the next one that I had was your next phase of vertical integration, the relentless first principles thinking on vehicle design, battery design, factory optimization. Could you talk more on this?
Elon Musk: There’s a clear path to making a smaller vehicle that is roughly half the production cost and difficulty of our Model 3. That vehicle will really be used almost entirely in autonomous mode. The thing that is really gigantic for Tesla is autonomy and if people have used the Tesla full self driving and gave seen how rapidly the full self driving capability has been evolving, it should be obvious that that is by far the most profound thing.
Elon Musk: The total addressable market stuff, it’s like, guys, this is actually not the right way to think about it. Passenger vehicles right now only see about 10-12 hours of use per week. There’s 168 hours in a week, if those vehicle are autonomous they’re probably going to get used for 50-60 hours a week. That’s a 5x increase in the value of a car and it costs the same to make the car. At that point you basically have software margins in a hardware product, it’s the same. Total addressable market is everyone, all humans. Powerful.
Why Starlink’s speed is fast
Elon Musk: The Starlink team is doing an amazing job.
More than half the satellites in orbit right now are Starlink satellites. So if you add up all satellites launched cumulatively, they are less than Starlink. Starlink is currently providing global connectivity, you can get connectivity anywhere on earth from the most remote part of Antarctica to San Francisco. Anywhere. Full-level connectivity, high bandwidth, and low latency.
The latency is important because unless you’re in low earth orbit you cannot get a low latency. The geostationary satellites are very high, you’ve sort of got sometimes up to a second of latency from a geostationary satellite, all things inclusive. With Starlink satellites, we believe we can get the latency under 20 milliseconds.
For international communications, an interesting thing is that in fiber, light travels much slower than in air or vacuum. So in rough approximation, light travels about 300 kilometers per millisecond in air or vacuum but only just roughly over 200 kilometers per millisecond in fiber. So you’ve got roughly a 40% increase in speed of light going through the Starlink system than through fiber and it can also follow a more direct route.
Instead of following the coastline of the continents, it [Starlink] can actually have a more direct route. It’s a shorter route and inherently faster from a physics standpoint so it connects the world way better than fiber and is providing connectivity to people that either never had it before or where their options were extremely expensive or very low bandwidth.
So [Starlink] is helping out a lot of communities that never had access, especially when you consider that education is digital these days, that’s really how you can learn anything. You can basically learn anything for free on the internet if you have the internet! In terms of providing education abilities to remote communities, Starlink is doing a lot of good in that regard.
Starship going orbital
“We don’t want to be one of those lame, one-planet civilizations!” Elon Musk
Starship launch soon. Image courtesy Elon Musk.
Elon Musk: We’re getting ready for the first launch of Starship. This is a very difficult program. The rocket is roughly 2.5 times the thrust of a Saturn V so if and once it reaches orbit it will be by far the biggest rocket that reaches orbit, but more importantly it is designed to be the first reusable orbital rocket ever so that the key to extending life beyond earth is a fully and rapidly reusable orbital rocket.
This is a very hard problem given the constraints of earth. Earth has a thick atmosphere and strong gravity, it is literally barely possible to do this, that’s why its not been done before. We are getting close to our first orbital attempt of Starship, hopefully in the next month or so we’ll have our first attempt. I’m not saying it’ll get to orbit but I guarantee excitement. (audience laughter) It won’t be boring. I think it’s hopefully above a 50% chance of reaching orbit.
We’re building a whole series of Starships in South Texas and so I think we’ve got, hopefully, an 80% chance of reaching orbit this year. It will probably take up a couple more years to achieve full rapid reusability, which I can’t emphasize enough, is the profound breakthrough that is needed to extend life beyond earth because it lowers the cost of access to space by orders of magnitude. In the same way, let’s say there were no airplanes that were reusable, how expensive would air flight be? It would be insane. You’d have to buy a new airplane every time you flew somewhere and you’d have to tow a small airplane behind you for the return flight. That’s not going to scale.
So if things go well there, this vehicle could make life multi-planetary, that’s a really big deal. And it could make life on Mars real and that’s one of the great filters that any civilization has to pass through which is, ‘does this civilization become multi-planetary or not?’ This is one of the elements of the Fermi Paradox. I mean I sort of wonder that, if we are able to get to multi-planetary that will be a forcing function to improve spaceflight to become multi-stellar, to go to other star systems and I think we may discover that there are many long-dead one-planet civilizations. We don’t want to be one of those. We don’t want to be one of those lame, one-planet civilizations!
Austin at sunset, image courtesy Aeriel Austin, Instagram
Gail Alfar, Author, Military Veteran. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – March 12, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.
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(Austin, Texas) Meet special guest, Minimal Duck aka Arash Malek. Arash is an artist at heart with an eye for clean, elegant, minimalistic design. When I first tried his scentwedge pine scented natural wood product (Mountain Forest) in my Model Y, I was instantly enchanted with the peaceful, non-overpowering scent. As a fine perfume customer and collector of Chanel, Dior, nYc, Burnt Hair by Singed and many more fragrances, I believe that to leave the house without wearing a scent, you are leaving the house partially undressed.
Likewise, you are driving your Tesla without the full benefit of an extraordinary scent if you pull out of the driveway without a scentwedge in your Tesla. I loved hearing Arash explain his business model during our podcast, all the while driving with me on FSD beta in Austin. Our conversation went beyond scentwedge.
We also talk about Austin jobs, Elon Musk, and the Tesla community. Hope you enjoy!
Tesla Model 3. Image Courtesy Arash Malek/Scentwedge
Try Arash’s “Collective” He says, “Experience everything we have to offer and explore the scents you love. This kit is about a 3 month supply of Scentwedge. Includes a 2-week supply of every scent we have to offer. Scents Included are: Valencia, Grounded, Big Sur, Coastal Forest, Mountain Forest, and The Summit.”
Tesla Model Y in Iceland. Image Courtesy Arash Malek/Scentwedge
Don’t have a Tesla yet to put Scentwedge into? Use this code to receive a nice sum of money when you order: www.tesla.com/referral/gail74884
Don’t own a bottle of Burnt Hair by Singed? You can order it here.
Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author and podcaster is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on Earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.
Did you watch Tesla Investor Day on March 1 live from Gigafactory Texas in Austin? Master Plan 3 was created for the investor and Elon Musk said he meant “the broadest definition of investor, as in the people & life of Earth. It will be a message of good hope & positivity for the future.”
This article is part 1 of a series that will examine the message of good hope and positivity for the future. The “investor” is considered the people & life of Earth instead of only retail and institutional investors.
The People of Earth
You may have heard Elon Musk explain how our earth is like a small vulnerable candle in vast darkness and that we must not let that candle blow out. Each of the 8 billion people who are alive today has a unique story and their life is amazing. The generations that come after yours can live in a clean beautiful future. Master Plan 3 explains how to make this a reality.
The Life of Earth
The life of earth takes on many forms as depicted in the header picture of this article. All life should be preserved so the earth can remain healthy. Non-human life forms need us humans to work to preserve them. It is easy to destroy the earth and we should stop doing so. Tesla shared a picture of our current state and this is what needs to change to protect the life of earth.
Our energy economy is dirty & wasteful. Image courtesy Tesla.
Message of Good Hope
Stamped Tesla car parts, courtesy Tesla, Inc.
No one feels great after listening to a message of doom and gloom. If we want to inspire the young generation to raise a family then the older generations can start by sharing a message of good hope.
Tesla shared a pretty gloomy photo at the start of Investor’s day of our current dirty and wasteful energy economy that leads to a polluted world and the goal is to change humanity from depending on fossil fuels to one of clean-energy use exclusively.
Tesla also shared what seemed like an infinite number of stamped vehicle body parts. I was first hit with how cool and artistic it looked and then later I was hit with the message that Tesla may one day be able to create limitless vehicles that are affordable for people to own or ride in. What a message of good hope this really is!
The new Gigafactory in Mexico will build a new vehicle that is expected to be a huge volume product.
Elon Musk highlighted the challenges, which may explain why Mexico was selected for the next gigafactory,
“Demand for our vehicles, in terms of desire to own them may as well be infinite, it’s indistinguishable from infinite at this point.
The affordability is what matters so as you make the car more affordable we will have to amend go crazy basically. The hard part is building the cars. I can’t emphasize that enough.
The hard part is building the cars and the entire supply chain that goes with the cars. this is a logistics challenge of extraordinary difficulty.
All the things that have to go into the car have to scale with the car while everything is doing an exponential ramp and if you miss even one of those things — and, it doesn’t matter why, earthquake, fire, revolution, I thought I’ve heard them all! If any part of that supply chain gets interrupted, then you have a seizure.
The hard part is building the cars in the supply chain that goes with it.” Elon Musk
Gigafactory Mexico is a message of hope that Tesla will be able to build affordable vehicles faster and at greater volume.
Tesla has the magnificent support of the government of Nuevo León, Mexico and Mexico is home to many automotive clusters that have grown up throughout the country as a way to more effectively support local manufacturers through economies of scale.
Message of Positivity for the Future
Positivity means you have an optimistic attitude. Master Plan 3 is achievable. It is fitting that the Tesla HQ is in Texas. Texans are known for having a “CAN DO” attitude. Elon Musk said,
“The thing that is needed at a very large scale, that’s not currently present, is a vast amount of battery energy storage.
Our rough calculations is that this is about 240 TeraWatt hours — 240,000 GigaWatt hours. It is actually a lot of batteries, but it is actually a very achievable amount that’s a combination of electric vehicles and stationary storage.” Elon Musk
Elon and the Tesla team explain how battery storage can be achieved and I’m going to add that it will create endless job opportunities so the road it takes to get to a clean energy future is a bright one. I will write more about this in Part 2 of this series.
Master Plan 3
On the live stream, Elon spoke about the most important message, Master Plan 3,
“There is a clear path to a sustainable energy Earth.
It doesn’t require destroying natural habitats.
It doesn’t require us to be austere and stop using electricity and be in the cold or anything.
The story, and I think this holds together quite well – it will be actually published in a detailed white paper with all of our assumptions and calculations — is that there is a clear path to a fully sustainable earth with abundance.
In fact, you could support a civilization much bigger than Earth and much more than the 8 billion humans could actually be supported sustainably on Earth.
I am often just shocked and surprised by how few people realize this. Most of the smart people I know actually don’t see a clear path, they think that there’s not a path to a sustainable energy future or at least there’s not one that is sustainable at our current population or that we have to resort to extreme measures. none of this is true.
So we are going to walk through the calculations for how to create a sustainable energy civilization.”
Elon Musk
A Sustainable Energy Economy is Within Reach & We Should Accelerate It. Image Courtesy Tesla, Inc.
To be continued…
In my next article, I’ll write more in depth about Master Plan 3 and how it affects you and future generations. Please subscribe to my blog to get a notice of when my articles publish.
Tesla Semi and Model S 3 X Y make an appearance at Investor Day. Image courtesy Jeff Roberts.
Gail Alfar, Author, Military Veteran. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – March 5, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.
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Elon Musk talks about an exciting future. Image courtesy Tesla, Inc.
On March 1st, Tesla hosts Investor Day at Giga Texas in Austin and it will be livestreamed for everyone to watch. But this won’t be your typical investor event. According to CEO Elon Musk, this is an event for investors in earth—a chance to learn how we can all make a difference and create a fully sustainable energy future. It’s time to have optimism and hope for the future!
Tesla is leading the way in accelerating earth towards sustainability, with electric cars that are a pleasure to drive, solar roofs that can strengthen the power grid and massive battery storage. But what else does Elon Musk have up his sleeve? If you want to get a glimpse of Tesla’s vision of the future, then you’ll want to watch the Investor Day livestream on March 1st. It will begin at 3 pm CT and here’s a link to Tesla’s Livestream!
At Investor’s Day, Tesla says, “Our investors will be able to see our most advanced production line as well as discuss long term expansion plans, generation 3 platform, capital allocation and other subjects with our leadership team.”
Tesla Investor Day agenda (March 1):
11:00am – event check-in
11:00am – 2:45pm – Factory Tours and Plaid Demo Rides
3:00 – 4:30pm – Keynotes (livestream)
4:30 – 5:30pm – Q & A (livestream)
5:30 – 7:00pm – Meet & Greet
Elon Musk’s Master Plan 3 is highly anticipated by people around the world. Thus far, Elon has shared,
“Looking forward to Tesla Investor Day on March 1. By this, we mean the broadest definition of investor, as in the people & life of Earth. It will be a message of good hope & positivity for the future.” Elon Musk
Master Plan 3, the path to a fully sustainable energy future for Earth will be presented on March 1.
Tesla has been expanding its presence outside of just cars; their projects like artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will help automate processes within factories so humans can focus on more creative tasks. Tesla is also constantly improving and developing batteries that store clean energy for use when renewable sources aren’t available—like at night or when there’s no wind —so we can still have access to clean energy even during stormy days or calm winds.
I believe Tesla has the best plans on the planet for sustainable energy production and I think we all possess a collective ability to make the world a better place through renewable energy sources like solar and wind power. I know we can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and that we’ll live to see the world switch from gas-powered vehicles to electric ones.
This Investor Day is sure to inspire hope in many for a bright future! Join Elon Musk on March 1st on the livestream as he talks about his vision of a sustainable future 100% powered by clean energy — and find out what other innovative projects Tesla has in store for us!
We should all take heed of Musk’s advice and believe in a bright future. After all, if we don’t believe it ourselves first, who will? Let’s join together and create a brighter tomorrow starting today!
Gail Alfar, Author, Military Veteran. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – February 28, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.
Elon Musk talks at Tesla Global Engineering HQ offices. Picture courtesy Tesla, Inc.
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.”
Articles insinuating Tesla would fail. Image courtesy Tesla, Inc.
“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.”
Hundreds line up to attend Grand opening of Tesla HQ. Image courtesy Tesla, Inc.
“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.”
Tesla Engineering HQ. Image courtesy Tesla, Inc.
“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.”
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!
Tesla Career website screen capture courtesy Tesla, Inc.
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.
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Let your Tesla take you to the Hair Salon | Enjoy this fun drive through Austin’s suburbs and I’ll share a few hacks with you! | Special sponsor is ATX Auto Finishes!
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Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author and podcaster is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on Earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.
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Elon Musk gives an amazing talk at World Government Summit 2023
Welcome back to my blog, I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s post as it is a good solid read. Elon Musk gives an amazing talk at World Government Summit 2023 (Feb 15) in Dubai. The reason I am focusing on this is I believe Elon’s words hold great value. We all want a better future and I hope reading this will inspire you to look toward a positive future for humanity. So relax, enjoy and get ready for these 14 important areas that Elon Musk covers in this great talk,
Why did Elon buy Twitter?
What will X.com be like?
What is Community Notes on Twitter?
How can governments and organizations tweet best?
Why civilizational diversity matters
Twitter’s next CEO
Elon’s thoughts on technology in the next 10 years
Elon Musk talks about the need to regulate Artificial Intelligence
Education: Elon Musk explains a better way to teach kids
How much time should children spend at school?
How does Elon balance his stressful and busy life?
As a father, does Elon restrict social media for his own kids?
Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter as a ‘Reverse Startup’
Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), Aliens
Below are Elon Musk’s words at World Government Summit 2023
Elon explains why he bought Twitter
“I mean I thought about creating something from scratch but I thought Twitter would perhaps accelerate progress versus creating something from scratch by 3 to 5 years. I think we are seeing a tremendous technology acceleration that 3 to 5 years is actually worth a lot. I mean, if you think I was a little worried about the direction, and the effect of social media on the world and especially Twitter I thought it was very important for there to be a maximally trusted sort of Digital Public Square where people within countries and internationally can communicate with the least amount of censorship allowed by law, and obviously that varies a lot by jurisdiction.
I think in general, social media companies should adhere to the laws of countries and not try to put a *thumb on the scale beyond the laws of the countries. I think this is something that is probably agreeable to the legislators and to the people of most countries. So that’s the general idea, it’s just to reflect the values of the people as opposed to imposing the values of essentially San Francisco and Berkeley, which are somewhat of a niche ideology, as compared to the rest of the world. I think Twitter was doing a little too much to impose a niche ‘San Francisco-Berkeley’ ideology on the world. You know, I thought it was important for the future of civilization to try to correct that *thumb on the scale if you will and just have Twitter more accurately reflect like I said, the values of the people of Earth. That’s the intention and hopefully we succeed in doing that.”
X.COM
Q: Long term vision for twitter?
“Well I think it would be, you know, have this long-term sort of vision of something called x.com from way back in the day which is sort of like an everything app. where it’s just maximally useful. It does payments, provides financial services, provides information flow, really anything digital. It also provides secure communications. You know, I think [the goal of x.com] is be as useful as possible, as entertaining as possible, and a source of truth if you want to find out what’s going on and what’s really going on then you should be able to go on the x app and find out. So it’s sort of a source of truth and a maximally useful system. And Twitter is essentially an accelerant to that sort of maximally useful everything app.”
What is Community Notes on Twitter?
“I think there’s something that we’re putting a lot of effort into called Community Notes. It’s currently just in English, but we will be expanding it to all languages. That is I think quite a good way to assess the truth of things where it’s the community itself basically the people of Earth who are basically, not exactly voting but competing to provide the most accurate information. So it’s sort of a competition for truth. I think it’s a very powerful concept to have a competition for truth, because you also said, like what is truth, it’s because what may be true to self, may not be viewed as true to others, but you want to have the closest approximation of that so I think the Community Notes thing is very powerful. I think we are trying to have as many organizations and people and institutions verified as being legitimately those people and organizations is important, and to have the organizational affiliation clearly identified so that if you want to find out if somebody’s actually, if an account is actually from a member of parliament or a journalist or if let’s say, a Twitter handle actually belongs to Disney corporation or something like that, you can go on Twitter and it’s sort of an identity layer of the Internet you can confirm that is, in fact, the case.
I think once you’ve got these interlocking, sort of identities, it’s actually very hard to be deceptive in that case, and it’s also, you have a reputation to protect at that point. So I think then people are far more likely to be measured in their response. And will be more reasonable, since they have reputational value at that point. So these are some of the ideas that I have, and you know I’m not saying that for sure it will succeed or that it’s going to be perfect but I am confident that it will over time head in a good direction. and I think that the evidence for that will be, do people find it useful? As we’re measuring sort of the total user minutes, but not just user minutes, unregretted used minutes which I think that that’s the key figure of merit. For example, TikTok has a very high usage but I often hear people say well. I spent two hours on TikTok, but I regret those two hours. I’m not trying to knock TikTok, but it’s just we don’t want that to be the case with Twitter. We want to say like ‘ok, you spent half an hour on Twitter, but you found it to be useful and entertaining, and a good thing in your life. and ultimately be a force for good for civilization,’ that’s the aspiration.”
How can governments and organizations tweet best?
“I think, generally, I would recommend really communicating a lot on Twitter. And I think it’s good for people to speak in their voice as opposed to how they think they should speak. Sometimes people think, ‘I should speak in this way that is expected of me,’ but it ends up sounding somewhat at times, stiff and not real. You know like if you read a press release from a corporation it just sounds like propaganda. I would encourage CEOs and companies and legislators and ministers and so forth to speak authentically. If there’s a particular policy to explain it. I think sometimes there’s a sometimes a concern about criticism but I think at the end of the day having some criticism is fine. It’s really not that bad.
I’m constantly attacked on Twitter, frankly. And I don’t mind, you have to be somewhat thick-skinned I suppose at times you know because they really try and twist the knife. But I think as a forum for communication, its great. I would just encourage more communication and like I said, to sort of speak in an authentic voice. Like sometimes people will have someone else be their sort of Twitter manager or something like that and I think people should just do their own tweets. And like sometimes you make a mistake or something, its fine. But I think, doing your own tweets, just like you would give a talk here or have a meeting at a summit, that’s the way to do it is to actually do the tweets yourself and convey the message that you want directly.”
Why civilizational diversity matters
“One thing I should say, I know this is called the World Government Summit, but I think we should be a little bit concerned about actually becoming too much of a single world government if I may say that we want to avoid creating a civilizational risk by having, frankly, this may sound a little odd, too much cooperation between governments. If you look at history and the rise and fall of civilizations where all throughout history civilizations have risen and fallen but it hasn’t meant the doom of humanity as a whole because they’ve been all these separate civilizations that were separated by great distances.
While Rome was falling, Islam was rising so you had, you know, the sort of caliphate doing incredibly well while Rome was doing terribly. That actually ended up being a source of preservation of knowledge and many scientific advancements. So I think we want to be a little bit cautious about being too much of a single civilization because if we are too much of a single civilization then the whole thing may collapse.
I’m obviously not suggesting war or anything like that but I think we want to be a little bit wary of actually cooperating too much. It sounds a little odd but we want to have some amount of civilizational diversity such that if something does go wrong with some part of civilization that the whole thing doesn’t collapse and humanity keeps moving forward.”
Twitter’s next CEO
“Well, I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place and that the product roadmap is clearly laid out, so I’m guessing probably towards the end of this year should be good timing to find someone else to run the company. I think it should be in a stable position around the end of this year.”
Elon’s thoughts on technology in the next 10 years
“Let’s see, ten years… It’s always difficult to predict with precision, especially over a ten year time frame when it is changing so much. There’s obviously the transition to sustainable energy with solar, wind, batteries and electric vehicles and if you look at the percentage growth from that, that is a very high percentage growth, although because of the massive industrial base of the current fossil fuel economy, even if all cars were 100% electric production immediately it would take 20 years to replace the fleet. This is still something that is quite gradual, its measured in at least 30-40 years type of time frame.”
Elon Musk talks about the need to regulate Artificial Intelligence
“On a more sort of near-term time frame, I think artificial intelligence is something we need to be quite concerned about and really be attentive to the safety of AI. You mentioned ChatGPT earlier. I played a significant role in the creation of Open AI. Essentially at the time I was concerned that Google was not paying enough attention to AI safety and so I went in with a group of other people and created Open AI. Although initially it was created as an open source nonprofit and now it is closed source and for profit. I don’t have any stake in OpenAI anymore nor am I on the Board, nor do I control it in any way. But Chat GPT I think has illustrated to people just how advanced AI has become because AI has advanced for a while it just didn’t have a user interface that was accessible to most people. So what really Chat GPT has done is just put an accessible user interface on AI technology that has been present for a few years. And there are much more advanced versions of that that are coming out.
So I think we need to regulate AI safety, frankly, because think of any technology which is potentially a risk to people like if it’s an aircraft or cars or medicines and we have regulatory bodies that oversee the public safety of cars and planes and medicine. I think we should have a similar regulatory oversite for artificial intelligence because it is, I think, actually a bigger risk to society than cars or planes or medicine. And this may slow down AI a little bit but I think that that might also be a good thing. The challenge here is that government regulatory authorities tend to be set up in reaction to something bad that happened.
So if you look at say aircraft or cars, you know cars were unregulated in the beginning (aircraft were unregulated) but they had lots of crashes and in some cases, manufacturers that were cutting corners and a lot of people were dying. So the public was unhappy about that and so they established a regulatory authority to improve safety. And now commercial airliners are extremely safe. In fact, they’re safer than if you were to drive somewhere. The safety per mile of a commercial airliner is better than a car. And cars are also extremely safe compared to where they used to be.
The auto industry fought the introduction of seat belts as a safety measure for 10 or 15 years before finally the regulators made them put seatbelts in cars. That greatly improved the safety of cars. Airbags were another big improvement in safety.
My concern is that with AI, is that if something goes wrong the reaction might be too slow from a regulatory standpoint. If I’d say, ‘what are the biggest risks to the future of civilization?’ It’s AI, but AI is both positive and negative and has great promise, and great capability but also with that comes great danger. Just like with nuclear physics, you had nuclear power generation but also nuclear bombs. I think we should be quite concerned about it and we should have some regulation of what is fundamentally a risk to the public.”
Education: Elon Musk explains a better way to teach kids
Education should be more compelling and establish relevance
“With respect to education, I think in general there are some things that we could do to make it more compelling would be to explain to children why we are teaching a particular subject. The human mind is default to really forget anything that it deems unimportant, in fact human memory is really quite bad relative to the memory of your phone. Your phone can remember the entire contents of an encyclopedia down to the last letter and pixel. But human memory is terrible by comparison. The mind is constantly trying to forget things. But if you explain why a subject is being taught, that will establish relevance and is much more likely to result in motivation for kids. If you teach knowledge in the sciences as solutions to a problem, its much more effective.”
Examples
“Let’s say you’re trying to understand an internal combustion engine, well it’s actually better to take that apart and then say ‘what tools do we need to take it apart? We need a wrench and screwdriver and various other things and then you understand the reason for the tools. Mathematics and Physics and Engineering are like tools. If you teach to the problem then you establish the relevance of the tools then its actually much easier to remember mathematics and physics because they help explain how the world works as opposed to teaching them without explaining why. It’s like teaching to the problem but currently, we teach to the tool. It would be like having a course on screwdrivers or a course on wrenches but not understanding why you’re learning about screwdrivers and wrenches.
I think this is really quite a fundamental principle that should be applied in education. I think sometimes we do teach classes that children do not find useful and where the answer to the ‘why’ is actually not going to be a very good answer. Most people do not find advanced mathematics useful and are unlikely to find in their life, or the elements that they do find useful could be taught very quickly as general principles.
Critical thinking should be taught to children at a relatively young age. It’s effectively like a mental firewall to really think about when somebody tells you something is it cogent? Is it true? Or what is the probability that it is true? So that you can be taught to reject things that are untrue, or are more likely to be untrue and favor things that are more likely to be true. Critical thinking is very helpful for people to learn.”
How much time should children spend at school?
Elon was asked if he thinks children should go to school for 12 years,
“Twelve years is a long time I suppose, I mean humans do take a long time to mature so there’s emotional maturity, physical maturity, and mental maturity that is happening simultaneously with education. I suppose it could be done in 10 years, perhaps it does not need 12, but then is someone mature at age 16? They’re more likely to be mature at age 18. So I guess 12 years is probably not bad.
We probably don’t need an additional 4 or 5-6 years in college or university, that seems probably excessive. I think we could probably shave a few years off and be fine.”
As a father, does Elon restrict social media for his own kids?
“I’ve really not tried to restrict social media from my kids although that might have been a mistake, depending on which kid it is they’ve really been programmed by Reddit and Youtube I’d say. More than anything else, Reddit and Youtube. I think probably I would limit social media a bit more than I have in the past and take note of what they’re watching because I think at this point they’re being controlled by some social media algorithm which you may or may not agree with. I think probably one needs to supervise children’s use of social media and be wary of them getting programmed by some algorithm written in Silicon Valley, which may or may not be what you want.”
How does Elon balance his stressful and busy life? (Elon has worked 20-hour days)
“I should point out that a 20-hour workday is relatively unusual and rather painful but I do sleep 6 hours a night, and if I sleep less than 6 hours a night I find that I might be awake longer but I get less done. But I do have a worker (unclear) this amount I think relative to most people and that is pretty much 7 days a week and mostly from when I wake up to when I go to sleep. I’m not suggesting this is good for everyone and I think frankly I would like to work a bit less than that.”
Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter
Tesla tested vehicles in extreme weather conditions in the Middle East. Image courtesy Tesla, Inc.
“Like I say, Tesla went through some very difficult times, where it was on the ragged edge of survival and if I didn’t give it everything I got the company could have easily gone bankrupt. I was really on the verge of bankruptcy for quite a while. I don’t mean to suggest complacency at this point but it does require much less work to operate Tesla now versus the 2017-2019 time frame. Now it’s not at mortal risk of survival, it’s achieved economies of scale that make it not on the ragged edge of survival.
SpaceX also has a strong team and is able to make a lot of progress even if I spend less time there. It does help when I spend time there but it keeps making progress even if I don’t.
Twitter as a Reverse Startup
Twitter is still somewhat of a startup in reverse and so there’s a lot of work here to get Twitter in sort of a stable position and, like I said, to really build the engine of software engineering at Twitter and really have a great product roadmap and the people in place to implement that product roadmap. And so it is not my intention to work like crazy, I mean I think I still am, I’m comfortable with a mere 80-hour workweek. That would be fine! That is what I would aspire to.”
Unidentified Flying Object (UFOs), Aliens
Elon clarifies if he thinks reports of “sightings” are Aliens
“I don’t think it’s aliens, no. I do find the whole question of aliens a very interesting one. What is typically called the fermi paradox which is that if the universe is really is as old as science seems to think it is, where are the aliens? Have we really been around for 13.8 billion years? If so, shouldn’t there be aliens all over the place? The crazy thing is I’ve seen no evidence of alien technology or alien life whatsoever and I’d think I’d know. You know, SpaceX, we do a lot. I don’t think anyone knows more about space than me or at least space technology.
But I think it’s actually a troubling thing if there are no aliens as well. What that actually could mean then is that civilization and consciousness is like a tiny candle in a vast darkness and a very vulnerable tiny candle that could easily get blown out. We should therefore take great care with what may very well be this tiny candle in a vast darkness and make sure that it does not go out and that we send the light of consciousness beyond earth and do everything we can to ensure that the light of consciousness does not go out.”
“We should therefore take great care with what may very well be this tiny candle in a vast darkness and make sure that it does not go out and that we send the light of consciousness beyond earth and do everything we can to ensure that the light of consciousness does not go out.” Elon Musk
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 19, 2023. All Rights Reserved.
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Join Gail to go get groceries at HEB. We’ll drive through Austin’s streets together following the ice storm that hit Austin and most of Texas in February, 2023. Gail will show you some fun ways to relax while using FSD beta to get around town. Enjoy the podcast!
Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author and podcaster is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.
Cybertrucks (lots of them!) on the roads are essential for Tesla’s mission to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy.
As we await delivery of first Cybertrucks, it’s worth looking at the ecosystem forming in anticipation. This article takes us on a journey into our future cyberworld and looks at,
Travel, hunting and camping applications
Military, law enforcement & apocalypse mods
Artistic expressions
Travel, camping and hunting applications
Image Courtesy Tesla, Inc.
Tesla has people excited with their beautiful render of a camping addition. Camping enthusiasts are ready to reserve this the moment Tesla makes it available.
Cybertruck Hunting mode has been suggested, “One of the things I’m really looking forward to in my CT is hunting Elk on southern Montana public lands. My dad’s truck was modified to disable all lights (interior, headlights, brake lights, blinkers, etc., with the flip of a couple of switches. Has anyone given any thought as to what a “Hunting Mode” might do? It would be great if all lights could be disabled from the control screen, and the screen itself dimmed, once you were off road.” (Michael Jorge, Cybertruck owners club)
StreamIt, Inc. created the CyberLandr, a retractable camping add-on that has solar panels mounted on top allowing you to stay off the grid for days. The Green Product Award went to this American company for creating a distinguished product in sustainability, innovation & design. For information regarding CyberLandr visit https://cyberlandr.com/features.
Image of CyberLandr courtesy StreamIt, Inc.
One South African company is already putting a Cyber-inspired camper-trailer on the road. Edgeout won the Red Dot Design Award 2022 in the category Product Design. Red Dot jury panel said, “With its innovative construction and distinctive exterior design, the EdgeOut conveys robustness and mobility,”
Edgeout camper-trailer
Military, law enforcement and apocalypse technology
Police forces in Mexico and the United Arab Emirates placed early reservations for Cybertruck.
San Luis Potos, Mexico with its 2.8 million people may enjoy 15 Cybertrucks for local law enforcement and logistics. Cybertruck is “common sense,” – Adrian Esper Cardenas, Mayor
When Adrian Esper Cardenas announced the purchase of 15 Cybertrucks the media questioned the maintenance of the vehicles, to which the mayor pointed out that maintenance costs are “zero.” Cardenas assured the press that if an engine fails, the guarantee will be applied for replacement; If a headlight breaks, you can order it online. “It’s very easy,” he said.
Jay Leno asks Elon: "But why make it bullet proof...?"
Elon to Jay: "Do you want your Cybertruck to be bullet proof or not?"
Jay: "Yea, I guess I do want my Cybertruck to be bullet proof!"
Military applications are natural for Cybertruck. The dreamer in me imagines Giga Texas with an underground facility where apocalypse, combat ready and law enforcement Cybertrucks with accompanying drones are assembled. Tougher wheels and suspension are needed for these applications.
“… the body panels are bulletproof to a handgun so it’s probably helpful in the apocalypse. Let me tell you, the truck you want in the apocalypse is the Cybertruck. We wish to be the leader in apocalypse technology.” Elon Musk
Cybertruck Heavy Duty. Image courtesy Z AV Design
CyberMonster, safe loading and artistic expressions
Monstertruck owners make up a small but enthusiastic market. Expect to see websites that will guide you on the best ways to convert Cybertruck into CyberMonster.
Remote control monster Cybertrucks available now on amazon
Ramp for safety and practicality
Cybertruck ramp image courtesy Tesla, Inc.
Tesla makes safety a top priority and loading truck beds is difficult and dangerous. Cybertruck reduces the chance of injury with a retractable ramp and elevated front suspension. Tesla says,
“Raise and lower suspension four inches in either direction for easy access to Cybertruck or the vault, while self-leveling capabilities adapt to any occasion and assist with every job.”
“Every job” will include harp transportation,
“Harp transportation! Our daughter plays the harp. It’s big, it needs to be wrapped up and put on a hand truck every time we move it (multiple times a week for practices). When I saw that ramp off the back, and the size of the bed confirmed it would be large enough….. that’s when my pre-order went in. It will save my back.” (reddit user MotorFloating)
“Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy. Needs be able to get from Starbase to South Padre Island, which requires crossing the channel.” Elon Musk
My take is that Tesla needs to get Cybertrucks on road fast as possible by scaling production for hundreds of thousands of eager reservation holders. This will greatly accelerate Tesla’s mission. I believe people will receive a high-quality utility vehicle that will be open to many aftermarket modifications.
An ecosystem is starting in anticipation of Cybertruck and will get bigger as people take delivery. This article covered fantasy mods and practical ones that can be reserved or purchased now. If you know of an accessory or mod that I should include, please let me know!
Gail Alfar, Author, Military Veteran. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – February 12, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.
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