On May 29, 2025, Elon Musk delivered his company speech at Starbase, Texas, the newly incorporated city and SpaceX’s hub for space travel to Mars. This transcript, which I have worked hard on to bring you accuracy, captures Elon’s valuable and historical words.
Elon details Starbase’s evolution from a sandbar to a powerhouse for building the world’s largest rockets. Elon highlights breakthroughs like rapidly reusable rockets, Raptor 3 engine, and orbital propellant transfer plans, all critical for a self-sustaining Mars civilization. With vivid descriptions of catching boosters with “giant chopsticks” and plans for a million-ton Mars transfer, our hero Elon inspires a future where anyone can visit Starbase or journey to Mars.
Elon Musk: The gateway to Mars. Here we are at the newly incorporated Starbase, Texas. This is the first new city made in America in, I think, quite a few decades. At least that’s what I’m told. It’s a very cool name, named because it’s where we’re going to develop the technology necessary to take humanity, civilization, and life as we know it to another planet for the first time in the 4.5 billion-year history of Earth.
[Lots of cheering. Elon shows a short video of the history of Starbase. He talks along with the images.]
Elon: We started with basically nothing. Starbase started as a sandbar with nothing.
[The video shows a prototype rocket and two open tents.]
Elon: Even those little things we built. That’s the original Mad Max rocket!
[Looking at the rocket from 2019, six years ago, the camera pans around it. The sun hits the side, revealing a gorgeous, surreal piece of steel.]
Elon: You know, lighting is very important for that Mad Max rocket.
[Elon is smiling, with his hand in a determined fist. He’s not afraid of silence; this is a tribute to that incredible rocket. Many employees in the audience may not have seen it in person; it’s six years old. Some may have been in high school at the time.]
Elon: Not long ago, there was basically nothing here. In about five or six years, thanks to the incredible work of the SpaceX team, we’ve built a small city. We built two gigantic launchpads and a gigantic rocket factory for a gigantic rocket. The cool thing is, anyone watching can come visit because our entire production facility and launch site are on a public highway. Anyone in South Texas can see the rocket up close, see the factory, and anyone interested in the largest flying object on Earth can drive down the public highway and see it! Pretty cool!
[Video progresses to Starbase 2025.]
Elon: We’re now at the point where we can produce a ship roughly every two or three weeks. We don’t always produce a ship every two or three weeks because we’re making design upgrades, but ultimately we’re aiming for the ability to produce 1,000 ships a year, so three ships a day.
[On the video, birds chirp, water glistens, and a hovercraft pulls gently away from Starbase Beach.]
Elon (smiling): That’s our hovercraft. We’re driving the booster down the road to the launch site. You see the Megabays. The cool thing for those watching is you can literally come here, drive down the road, and see it. This is the first time in history that’s been possible. That highway on the left is public. You can just come and see it, which I recommend. It’s very inspiring.
[Elon points to a render of a massive building.]
Elon: There’s a person next to it that looks like a tiny ant. That’s our Giga Bay! We’re expanding integration to produce 1,000 per year. The Giga Bay hasn’t been built yet, but we’re building it. It’s a truly enormous structure, one of the biggest in the world by some measures, designed for 1,000 Starships per year. We’re also building a Giga Bay in Florida, so we’ll have two facilities—one in Texas and one in Florida. It’s difficult to gauge the size of these buildings because you need a human for scale. When you see how tiny a human is next to it, you realize how enormous it is.
BUILD COMPARISON
Elon: When we look at our build comparison in vehicles per year, Boeing and Airbus make airplanes, but Starship will probably make as many Starships for Mars as Boeing and Airbus make commercial airplanes. This is an enormous scale, and each Starship is bigger than a 747 or an A380. In terms of Starlink satellites, version three satellites, we’ll make on the order of 5,000 per year, and at some point, closer to 10,000 per year. Those Starlink V3 satellites are roughly the size of a 737 (unfurled). They compare to the B-24 bomber in World War II. The scale of production is still small compared to Tesla.
[A large chart appears, showing Tesla’s massively scaled production: currently 1,773,443 cars per year.]
Elon: Tesla will probably double or triple that volume in the future. It puts things into perspective that it’s possible to build a vast number of interplanetary Starships. Even when comparing tonnage, Tesla and other car companies produce far more complex manufactured tonnage than SpaceX, showing it’s achievable. These numbers, while insanely high by traditional space standards, are achievable because they’ve been achieved in other industries.
Progress is measured by the timeline to establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars.
Elon: With each launch, especially early on, we learn more about what’s needed to make life multiplanetary and improve Starship to take hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to Mars. Ideally, we can take anyone who wants to go and bring all equipment necessary to make Mars self-sustaining, so Mars can grow by itself. Worst-case scenario, we reach the point where Mars can continue to grow even if supply ships from Earth stop for any reason. At that point, we’ve achieved civilization resilience, where Mars could rescue Earth or vice versa. Having two self-sustaining planets is incredibly important for long-term survival. A multi-planet civilization is likely to last ten times longer than a single-planet one because of risks like World War III, meteors, or supervolcanoes. With two planets, we keep going, then move beyond Mars to the asteroid belt, Jupiter’s moons, and other star systems, making science fiction reality. To achieve this, we need rapidly reusable rockets to keep the cost per ton to Mars as low as possible. That’s essential. We need rapidly reliable rockets—it’s like a pirate’s “Rrrr”: rapidly reusable, reliable rockets!
Congrats to the SpaceX team on catching the giant rocket.
Elon: It’s mind-blowing that the SpaceX team has caught the largest flying object ever made multiple times using a novel method of catching it with giant chopsticks!
[SpaceX employees and Elon pause to watch a video showing the booster, with fiery engines, descending through space, adjusting, and being caught with chopsticks.]
Elon: Have you ever seen that before?
[The video is awe-inspiring. Elon congratulates his team, calling it quite an achievement. Everyone cheers; it’s an emotional moment.]
Elon: We catch it this way, which has never been done before, to make the rocket rapidly reusable. If the super heavy booster, 30 feet in diameter, landed with legs on a pad, we’d have to pick it up, stow the legs, and move it back to the launch pad, which is difficult. But catching it with the same tower that places it in the launch mount is the best for rapid reuse. It’s caught by the arms that placed it, then set back in the launch ring immediately. In principle, the super heavy booster can be reflown within an hour of landing. It returns in five or six minutes, gets caught, placed back, refilled with propellant in 30 to 40 minutes, and a ship placed on top. It could refly every hour or two.
The next goal is to catch the ship.
Elon: We haven’t done this yet, but we will.
[A video shows a render of a Starship gently caught by chopsticks.]
Elon: We hope to demonstrate this later this year, maybe in two or three months. The ship would be placed on the booster, refilled, and flown again. The ship takes longer because it orbits Earth a few times until the ground track returns to the launchpad. It’s intended to be reflown multiple times per day.
RAPTOR 3
Elon: This is the new Raptor 3, an awesome engine! Big hand to the Raptor team. Raptor 3 requires no basic heat shield, saving mass and improving reliability. A small fuel leak will leak into the flaming plasma and not matter, unlike a boxed engine where it’s scary. It’ll take a few tries, but it’ll massively increase payload capability, efficiency, and reliability. It’s alien technology. Industry experts thought an incomplete Raptor 3 picture wasn’t firing, but it was at unprecedented efficiency.
[Lots of cheers and applause.]
Elon: That’s one clean engine. We simplified the design, incorporated secondary fluid circuits and electronics into the structure, so everything is contained and protected. It’s a marvel of engineering.
PROPELLANT TRANSFER
Elon: A key technology for Mars is orbital propellant transfer, like aerial refueling for airplanes, but for rockets. It’s never been done but is technically feasible. Two Starships get together; one transfers fuel and oxygen—almost 80% oxygen, just over 20% fuel. A Starship with payload goes to orbit, others refill its propellant, and then it departs for Mars or the Moon. We hope to demonstrate this next year.
PLASMAJET TESTING
Elon: Mars’ atmosphere is ~95% CO2. The heat shield entering Mars encounters more than twice the atomic oxygen compared to Earth. Developing a reusable orbital heat shield is extremely difficult. Even the Shuttle’s required months of refurbishment. Only advanced ceramics, glass, aluminum, or carbon-carbon survive reentry stresses without eroding or cracking. This will be the first reusable orbital heat shield, needing extreme reliability. It’ll take years to hone, but it’s achievable within physics. Mars’ CO2 atmosphere becomes plasma, producing more free oxygen than Earth’s (~20% oxygen), oxidizing the heat shield. We test rigorously in a CO2 atmosphere for both Earth and Mars.
MARS ENTRY HEATSHIELD
Elon: Derived from Starship’s current heat shield, we want the same structure and material for Earth and Mars to test hundreds of times on Earth before Mars, ensuring reliability.
NEXT GEN STARSHIP
[The video shows a taller, majestic Starship.]
Elon: Next-generation Starships have improvements. It’s taller, with a better interstage between ship and booster. Struts allow flame from hot staging—lighting ship engines while booster engines fire—to exit easily, and we bring the interstage back instead of discarding it.
SUPER HEAVY
HEIGHT (m) 72.3
PROPELLANT CAPACITY (t) 3650
LIFTOFF THRUST (tf) 8240
[Excited reaction from SpaceX engineers due to increased propellant capacity and thrust.]
Elon: A little taller, from 69 meters to 72 meters. Propellant capacity may push to 3,700 tons, long-term maybe 4,000 tons. Liftoff thrust will keep rising, ultimately close to 10,000 tons. The booster looks naked because Raptor 3 engines don’t need a heat shield, standing in flaming plasma. It’s lighter and looks amazing.
STARSHIP
HEIGHT (m) 52.1
PROPELLANT CAPACITY (t) 1550
THRUST (tf) 1600
Elon: The ship is longer, more capable, moving to 1,550 tons of propellant, likely 20% more long-term. The heat shield is sleeker, with smooth boundaries, no jagged tiles. It looks sleek. This version has six engines, but a future version will have nine. Starship version three achieves all key elements. New technology takes three major iterations to work well. With Raptor 3 and Starship/Booster version 3, we’ll achieve a rapidly reusable, reliable rocket with orbital refilling—everything needed to make life multiplanetary. We aim to launch version three by year-end.
FUTURE STARSHIP
[An image of three Starships shows progress and future plans.]
Elon: The left is current, the middle is by year-end, and the right is long-term. The future Starship is 142 meters tall (current: 121 meters, next-gen: 124.4 meters). The middle version will be Mars-capable, followed by performance improvements. Like Falcon 9, we’ll make it longer and increase payload. By year-end, it’ll be capable of making life multiplanetary, then we’ll hone efficiency, reduce cost per ton and per person to Mars, and make it so anyone can move to Mars to build a new civilization. It’s the best adventure possible.
[Lots of applause.]
Elon: Ultimately, we’ll have 42 engines, as prophesied by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The answer to life’s meaning is 42, so the Starship stack will have 42 engines.
[Lots of applause.]
MASS TO ORBIT
Elon: It’s remarkable—200 tons payload to orbit with full reusability, twice the Saturn V Moon rocket’s capability, which was fully expendable. Starship is fully reusable.
MOON BASE ALPHA
Elon: Without reusability, Starship would have ~400 tons to orbit. It’s a big rocket needed for multiplanetary life. Along the way, we could have a Moon base like Moonbase Alpha, a gigantic science station for universe research.
MARS TRANSFER WINDOWS
Elon: You can go to Mars every 26 months. The next opportunity is November–December next year, in ~18 months. We’ll try for it, with a 50-50 chance if we figure out orbital refilling in time. If achieved, we’ll launch the first uncrewed Starship to Mars by year-end.
[Lots of applause.]
Elon: The distance to Mars is ~1,000 times farther than the Moon. You create an elliptical orbit with Earth at one point and Mars at the other, timing the ellipse to intersect Mars. This is shown on Starlink Wi-Fi routers. Starlink funds Mars missions. Thanks to everyone supporting Starlink—you’re helping make humanity a space civilization.
CANDIDATE BASE LOCATIONS
Elon: We’re looking at the Arcadia region, a lead candidate due to ice for water and suitable terrain. It’s my daughter’s name, too (smiling). First Starships will gather critical data.
Elon: First flights will send Optimus robots to explore and prepare for humans. If we launch by year-end, arriving in 2027, it’ll be epic to see Optimus on Mars. Two years later, if landings succeed, we’ll send humans to build infrastructure. We might do two robot landings before humans, just to be safe.
MARS 2028
Elon: Develop power generation, mining, construction, propellant generation, habitats, communications, and more.
[Elon shows an awe-inspiring picture of Optimus bots on a construction beam above Mars.]
COMMUNICATIONS ON MARS
Elon: We’ll use a Starlink version for Mars Internet. Even at light speed, communication takes 3.5–22 minutes due to Mars’ position. High-bandwidth communication is challenging, but Starlink will achieve it.
HUMANS ON MARS
Elon: Subsequent missions will carry more people and thousands of tons of cargo, laying groundwork for a permanent presence. The goal is to make Mars self-sustaining quickly. Launch pads may be farther for safety. Mars needs lots of solar power. Initially, you’ll need Mars suits and glass domes until terraforming.
Elon: We aim to transfer over 1 million tons per Mars window for a serious civilization.
SPACEPORTS
Elon: We’ll need many spaceports. With transfer windows, 1,000–2,000+ ships gather in orbit like Battlestar Galactica, then depart. Mars needs hundreds of landing pads to handle thousands of inbound ships.
Elon: This is an incredible city on another planet, a new world. Martians can rethink civilization—government, rules, everything. It’s up to them. Let’s get it done!
“We are coming for those who organized the violence & death threats against Tesla. Remember this statement” – Elon Musk
Bloomberg: Hello, everyone, and Elon. Welcome to Qatar Economic Forum. How are you?
Elon Musk: Thank you for having me. I’m fine. How are you?
Bloomberg: Very well, thank you. Pleased to have you with us. Some in the audience in Doha have backed you financially over the years. Since 2022, much has changed. You’re running multiple companies and have a government role. I’ll move between topics to cover a lot. That’s okay?
Elon: That’s correct.
Bloomberg: You’re a CEO and government advisor. Tell me about your week. How’s your time split?
Elon: I travel a lot. Silicon Valley yesterday morning, LA evening, Austin now, D.C. tomorrow. Dinner with the President tomorrow night, Cabinet meetings, then back to Silicon Valley Thursday.
Bloomberg: Is it still one to two days a week on government work?
Elon: Yeah, that’s correct.
The Best Leadership: Tesla
Bloomberg: What does that mean for your corporate life? Tesla faced blowback recently. What’s your plan to turn around declining sales, and when will it happen?
Elon: It’s already turned around.
Bloomberg: Evidence? April sales in Europe show significant declines.
Elon: Europe’s our weakest market. We’re strong elsewhere, sales are doing well. No anticipated shortfall. Stock market sees it—over a trillion in market cap. It’s turned around.
Bloomberg: Still down in Europe compared to last year.
Elon: True for all manufacturers. No exceptions.
Bloomberg: You face a significant problem in Europe. Tesla’s aspirational, tied to the climate crisis. Now some drive with stickers saying, “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.”
Elon: Some buy because of how they view me. Lost some sales on the left, gained on the right. Sales are strong, no demand issue. Stock price near all-time highs shows things are fine.
Dedication to Tesla’s Master Plan
Bloomberg: How committed are you to Tesla? Will you be CEO in five years?
Elon: Short of dying, yes.
Bloomberg: Does your pay package affect your decision?
Elon: Not for this forum. Compensation should match incredible work. I’m confident Delaware activist rulings won’t affect future compensation.
Bloomberg: The judge struck down your $56 billion package, now valued at $100 billion. Are you relaxed about future pay? Is your Tesla commitment independent of pay?
Elon: No.
Bloomberg: So pay is relevant to your commitment?
Elon: Sufficient voting control to avoid being ousted by activists matters most. It’s about reasonable control, not money, especially with humanoid robots. Let’s move on.
Political Challenges
Bloomberg: Did Tesla’s recent challenges feel personal?
Elon: Yes.
Bloomberg: Did it make you regret your political endeavors?
Elon: I did what was needed. The violent reaction—threats, damage to my companies—was wrong. Those responsible will face justice.
Bloomberg: You’re referring to attacks on Tesla showrooms?
Elon: Burning cars, showrooms—unacceptable. Perpetrators and their funders will go to prison.
Bloomberg: Some in Europe turned against Tesla due to your politics, not violence. Wouldn’t you acknowledge that?
Elon: Objecting politically is fine. Violence, death threats, effigies aren’t. Legacy media justifying it is unconscionable.
SpaceX
Bloomberg: SpaceX. You said at West Point the future of warfare is AI and drones. Do you see SpaceX moving into weaponized drones?
Elon: SpaceX builds rockets, satellites, Internet terminals, not drones. We dominate space launch—90% of mass to orbit this year. Starlink’s 80% of active satellites, providing global connectivity. It lifts people out of poverty. We’ve declined weapons programs.
Vision for Starlink’s Growth
Using my @Starlink mini for the first time. This thing is amazing! Nearly triple the speeds I get at home with broadband. Did some gaming before bed while the kids streamed a movie. It's the size of my kids iPad bringing internet from space! 🛰️ Incredible technology! pic.twitter.com/xim41HNXez
Bloomberg: Will SpaceX or Starlink go public soon?
Elon: Starlink may go public in the future.
Bloomberg: Time frame?
Elon: No rush. Public listing adds overhead, lawsuits. Shareholder derivative lawsuits in the U.S. need reform—they’re absurd.
Bloomberg: Will you push Trump to change this before a Starlink IPO?
Elon: Needs 60 Senate votes. Democrats won’t support it due to plaintiff’s bar influence. Texas’s law helps at the state level.
OpenAI, Grok and AI Regulation: Referees
Bloomberg: AI. You’re in this with Grok, co-founded OpenAI, left, and now have a lawsuit against them. Status?
Elon: I named OpenAI for open-source, nonprofit. Funded $50 million. They’re turning it for-profit, closed-source. Like a nonprofit for the Amazon becoming a lumber company. Lawsuit continues.
Bloomberg: They’ve partly walked back restructuring. No difference to you?
Elon: Just media talk. I’ll see them in court.
Bloomberg: You said in 2022 the U.S. needs an AI regulator like the FDA or FAA. Now you lean toward cutting regulation. Changed your mind?
Elon: No. Regulators are like referees. Too many in old fields like automotive, aerospace. AI is under-regulated—needs a few referees for public safety, not an army.
Transformative Government Advisory Role
Bloomberg: Your government role. You have billions in federal contracts, mostly SpaceX, and DOGE insider knowledge. Conflict of interest?
Elon: No. Advisors with economic interests are common. I have no formal power. If any contract was improper, it’d be front-page news. It’s not.
Bloomberg: Your competitors—Boeing, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab. DOGE’s access to their affairs could give insight. Conflict?
Elon: We review for relevance, value for money. Recommendations go to Secretaries, posted transparently on
Bloomberg: Starlink’s sought globally, critical in Ukraine. Bloomberg reported South Africa bending rules for Starlink before Ramaphosa’s White House visit. Conflict?
Elon: No. South Africa’s racist laws are the issue. Mandela wanted equality. I can’t operate Starlink there because I’m not black. That’s wrong.
🚨 ELON MUSK: "Starlink is not allowed to operate in South Africa, because I’m not black." pic.twitter.com/ujkkqOIpaZ
Bloomberg: Looks like they’re bending rules for you.
Elon: Does that seem right to you?
Bloomberg Dodges the Question
The interviewer claimed Elon Musk was dodging the question, but in reality, she was the one dodging a straightforward yes-or-no question that required basic common sense. pic.twitter.com/IvZuNzWGKo
Bloomberg: Those rules aimed for economic equality. They’ve found a workaround.
Elon: Answer: Does it seem right?
Specifically, after Bloomberg raises the issue of South Africa bending rules for Starlink, Elon responds: “No, of course not. First of all, you should be questioning why are there racist laws in South Africa? That’s the first problem. That’s what you should be attacking. It’s improper for there to be racist laws in South Africa. The whole idea with what Nelson Mandela, who was a great man, proposed, was that all races should be on an equal footing in South Africa. That’s the right thing to do. Not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws, which is utterly wrong and improper. So that’s the deal, that all races should be treated equally and there should be no preference given to one or the other. Whereas there are now 140 laws in South Africa that give. That basically give strong preference to, if you’re black, South African and not otherwise. And so now I’m in this absurd situation where I was born in South Africa but cannot get a license to operate in Starlink because I’m not black.”
Bloomberg: Not for me to answer. About DOGE savings—pre-election, you said $2 trillion. Now
Elon: Absurd to expect instant $2 trillion. DOGE advises, doesn’t dictate. Progress is incredible.
Bloomberg: Is $2 trillion still the aim?
Elon: Savings depend on Congress, executive support. DOGE’s progress is excellent.
🚨 Elon Musk on DOGE:
"The ability of Doge to operate is a function of whether the government, and this includes the Congress, is willing to take our advice. We are not the dictators of the government. We are the advisors, and so we can, we can advise, and the progress we've… pic.twitter.com/9RrK2rCxK2
Bloomberg: You said $4 billion/day, but that won’t reach $2 trillion by July. Still the aim?
“The ability of DOGE to operate is a function of whether the government, and this includes the Congress, is willing to take our advice. We are not the dictators of the government. We are the advisors, and so we can, we can advise, and the progress we’ve made thus far, I think, is incredible. DOGE team has done incredible work, but the magnitude of the savings is proportionate to the support we get from Congress and from the executive branch of the government in general. So we’re not the dictators, we are the advisors. But thus far, as advisors, the DOGE team, to their credit, has made incredible progress.” – Elon
Elon Musk just called a reporter an NPC🤣
“I feel you're somewhat trapped in the NPC dialogue tree of a traditional journalist… it's like talking to a computer…” pic.twitter.com/2IFeTzbWWX
Elon: You’re trapped in a journalist’s dialogue tree. DOGE is advisory, not dictatorial. $170 billion saved is historic. More to come.
🚨 ELON MUSK: “There are 140 laws in South Africa that basically give strong preference to if you are a black South African and not otherwise." pic.twitter.com/s34Qbf7QKt
“There are 140 laws in South Africa that basically give strong preference to you if you are a Black South African and not otherwise.” – Elon Musk
Championing Efficient Governance
Bloomberg: Cutting waste is good. On USAID, Bill Gates said cuts could cost millions of lives. You called him out. Have you checked the data?
Elon: Gates, tied to Epstein, has no credibility. USAID claims lack evidence. Useful parts transferred to State Department. Much is fraud, graft.
Bloomberg: *PEPFAR, credited with saving 26 million lives, was frozen, partially waived. *UNAIDS says discontinuation could cause 4 million AIDS deaths by 2029. Gates might not be wrong.
Elon: AIDS medication program continues. Your premise is wrong. Another example?
Bloomberg: Not in entirety. UNAIDS lists disrupted services, like Lenacapavir rollout. They’d welcome your review.
Elon: If true, I’ll fix it.
Shaping a Bold Political Future
Bloomberg: Midterms spending. You spent heavily last election. Continue at that level?
Elon: Less in the future.
Bloomberg: Why?
Elon: I’ve done enough. Will spend if needed.
Bloomberg: Influence beyond U.S. How often do you speak to Putin?
Elon: Once, five years ago, on a video call.
Bloomberg: Only time? You mentioned challenging Putin to single combat.
Elon: That was an X post, not a call. Wall Street Journal is nonsense.
Bloomberg: I read widely, giving you a chance to respond. Thanks for clarifying.
Elon: Legacy media lies.
Revolutionizing Technology for Humanity
Bloomberg: Grok said your hardest challenge is managing ventures amid crises. Is this a pivotal year?
NEWS: Elon Musk's company, Neuralink, has now successfully implanted its brain chip into five humans. The patients can control a mouse using only their thoughts.
Neuralink aims to implant its new brain chip, Blindsight, into a human patient for the first time in late 2025/early… pic.twitter.com/OJuX6robyT
Elon: Every year’s pivotal. Starship’s full reusability, Neuralink’s telepathy and blindsight implants, AI superintelligence, Tesla’s unsupervised autonomy—all breakthroughs this year. I’m a technologist first.
Bloomberg: Elon, thank you for joining us at Qatar Economic Forum.
My thoughts
My thoughts are in this thread on X.
Bloomberg interview in Qatar was more like an inquisition against Elon Musk than an interview, and then they turned around and published this click bait article. Elon is not Bloomberg’s doormat! 🧵 pic.twitter.com/Q3fxbHmewv
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Elon Musk talked to a full audience at the Saudi Investment Forum and millions watched online. This is my transcript of his talk in the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center. My piece honors Elon’s statements for technical clarity and I hope you’ll be inspired!
AI and Robotics: Engineering the Future
When we think about Elon’s work to advance robotics and AI, many of us can see a paradigm shift in automation and intelligence, with implications for building at scale, a new economic model, and the need for a new and abundant meaning for life.
Optimus Robots: Functional Autonomy
Elon detailed the capabilities of Tesla’s Optimus bot, emphasizing practical applications. “We just showed several of our Tesla Optimus robots to His Highness and President Trump. I think they were very impressed. In fact, one of our robots did the Trump dance, which I think was pretty cool. The YMCA dance. So, yeah, very impressed robots can dance, they can walk around, they can interact,” he said.
Economic Scalability Through Robotics and a Non Dystopian Future
Elon projects a transformative economy from widespread humanoid robot adoption.
“My prediction for humanoid robots is that ultimately there will be tens of billions. I think everyone will want to have their personal robot. You can think of it as if you had your own personal C3PO or R2D2 or even better. Who wouldn’t want to have their own personal C3PO or R2D2, that would be pretty great. I also think it unlocks an immense amount of economic potential because when you think about… what is the output of an economy, it is productivity per capita times the population per capita. Once you have humanoid robots, the actual economic output potential is tremendous. It is really unlimited. Potentially we could have an economy ten times the size of the global economy where no one wants for anything. You know, sometimes in AI they talk about universal basic income, I think it is actually going to be universal high income. It is where anyone can have any goods or services that they want. A science fiction book recommendation that I recommend which I think has probably the best envision of an AI future is the Culture Books by Iain Banks. Very highly recommended for a non dystopian view of the future.”
Elon: A science fiction book recommendation that I recommend which I think has probably the best envision of an AI future is the Culture Books by Iain Banks. Very highly recommended for a non dystopian view of the future.
I think this model will win as it is being created with with manufacturing at scale in mind. This is no fancy one off prototype.
xAI: Truth-Seeking Intelligence
Elon’s xAI plans to target fundamental questions about the universe.
“xAI is just trying to solve general purpose artificial intelligence. The goal with xAI is to have a maximally truth seeking AI, and it is important to be a maximally truth seeking AI in order to understand the universe,” he said. “The goal of xAI is to understand the universe. To understand what is out there? Where is the universe going? Where did it come from? I think maybe the biggest thing is, What questions do we NOT know to ask? Once you know the question, the answer is usually the easy part. And so, the goal of xAI is to help understand the universe and help people answer any questions along the way. That’s my philosophy. My philosophy is one of curiosity, just trying to understand the nature of reality.”
Infrastructure and Mobility: Redefining Systems
Elon’s Boring Company is totally under-represented. So, he does a great job of repping it after talking about Robotaxi!
Autonomous Vehicles: Robotaxi
Elon proposed Robotaxi for the Kindom of Saudi Arabia. “You can think of future cars as being robots on four wheels. I think it would be very exciting to have autonomous vehicles here in the Kingdom, if you are amenable,” he said.
Elon: I think it would be very exciting to have autonomous vehicles here in the Kingdom, if you are amenable. Image courtesy of Tesla, Inc.
The Boring Company: 3D Urban Solutions
Elon’s sees a future without brain numbing traffic.
“I have something that may be worth considering, it is tunnels. I have this company called The Boring Company, which sounds kinda boring, but it literally bores tunnels and actually in order to solve traffic, you really need to go 3D with roads and by using tunnels and you essentially create like a wormhole, like a warp tunnel from one part of a city to another and alleviate traffic and we’re actually already done this proof of concept in Las Vegas. There are working tunnels in Vegas that you can use where it feels like teleporting from one part of Vegas to another. My joke is like, tunnels are under-appreciated,” he said.
Cybertruck in Vegas Loop. Image Courtesy of the Boring Company
Elon graciously thanked the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for their support for Starlink and addressed risks of AI. “I’d also like to thank the Kingdom for approving Starlink for maritime and aviation use. Thank you,” he said, highlighting the expansion of satellite-based connectivity for remote applications. On AI risks, Elon noted:
“There obviously are some risks, which illustrate that if you don’t do this right, you could have like a James Cameron sort of movie, Terminator. We don’t want that one, but having sort of a Star Trek future would be great. We’re out there exploring stars, discovering the nature of universe & prosperity and hopefully happiness that we can’t quite imagine yet. So, I am very excited about the future.”
In 2025, Starlink Maritime offers high-speed, low-latency internet access for boats and ships globally, with a shift towards tiered data plans instead of unlimited options, and specialized hardware designed for the marine environment.
My thoughts
My first thought was that Elon’s talk was too short. The brief time he had also gives us a quick look into where he’s at now. He did not discuss DOGE during his talk, but focused on his companies, the heart of the abundant future we all look forward to. In my closing comments on this article, I urge you (again) to support people having kids, and you, if you can. Underpopulation continues to be a threat to humanity, with no real fix in sight, so consider being a parent even against all odds. I have five kids and am neither “wealthy” nor poor. I’m just a regular person, like you probably are. My kids are happy, glad to enjoy life, and a blessing to everyone they meet. Despite people telling me not to have kids, or even a doctor telling me to terminate one of the pregnancies because I was “too old” to have a child at age 46, I had kids anyway. No regrets, only thanks. Bless you. Live your life to the fullest and never give up!
🚨 BREAKING: Elon Musk's Full Interview from the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum today. pic.twitter.com/6Yyt34vBKP
Welcome to Tesla Time Capsule: Revisiting Musk’s Visionary Talks, where we pause for a moment to remember the pivotal moments that shaped Tesla through the lens of Elon Musk’s great talks. Our journey begins in September 2014, when Elon stood outside Nevada’s state capitol in Carson City to announce the Tesla Gigafactory—a daring move that would redefine electric vehicles. With a standing ovation echoing behind him, Elon unveiled a vision for a massive, sustainable battery factory to power affordable EVs. Tesla’s mission to transform the world was palpable. This wasn’t just about building a factory; it was about betting on a future where clean energy wins. In this article, we’ll look at the context, break down Elon’s speech, and explore why the Gigafactory became a cornerstone of Tesla’s rise.
Context: Why Nevada, Why 2014?
In 2014, Tesla was no longer a scrappy startup but a strong player with the Model S gaining traction. Yet, to deliver a mass-market electric vehicle—like the upcoming Model 3—Tesla needed batteries, and lots of them. Lithium-ion battery production was dominated by Asia, and costs were a barrier to affordability. Enter the Nevada Gigafactory: a audacious plan to build the world’s largest battery plant, , and control Tesla’s destiny.
Nevada wasn’t the only contender. At the time, states like Texas, New Mexico. and Arizona offered hefty incentives, but Nevada’s agility, business-friendly environment, and Governor Brian Sandoval’s support tipped the scales. On September 4, 2014, Musk took the stage to explain why Nevada was the perfect home for this game-changing project, captivating a crowd eager for economic and environmental progress.
Elon’s Vision: A “Get-Things-Done” State
Gratitude and Nevada’s Edge Elon opened with heartfelt thanks, setting a collaborative tone:
“Thank you for coming. I’d like to start by thanking Governor Sandoval and the Nevada Legislature for their support. I think people should know that this was not about the biggest incentive package; it wasn’t just about the incentives.”
Elon explained what made Nevada stand out:
“What the people of Nevada have created is a state where you can be very agile, where you can do things quickly and get things done. It is a real ‘get-things-done’ state. That was a fundamental and important part of the decision.”
This wasn’t just flattery. Musk emphasized Nevada’s ability to move fast—crucial for a factory that had to be ready to produce battery packs by the Model 3’s launch. His words resonated with the crowd, framing Nevada as a partner in Tesla’s mission.
The Gigafactory’s Purpose: Powering Tesla’s Mission
A Factory for the Future Elon didn’t mince words about the high stakes:
“This factory is very important to the future of Tesla because, without it, we can’t produce the mass-market car. In order to produce a high-volume, affordable, compelling electric car, which has been the mission of Tesla from the beginning, the Gigafactory is vital.”
This was Tesla’s moonshot: a factory to make EVs accessible to millions, not just the elite. Elon underscored timing and efficiency:
“We had to ask where we would have high confidence that this factory would be ready on time, so that when we are ready to produce the vehicle, the factory is ready to produce the battery packs. That was truly the most important thing.”
By tying the Gigafactory to Tesla’s core mission, Elon made it clear: this wasn’t just a factory—it was the key to a sustainable future.
The Scale: Why “Gigafactory”?
Bigger Than the Rest Elon’s art deco flair for the dramatic shone when he explained the name:
“Perhaps it’s worth highlighting the sheer scale of the Gigafactory and why we even call it the Gigafactory. It will be the biggest lithium-ion battery factory in the world, surpassing the combined production capability of all lithium-ion factories in China, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere.”
This wasn’t hyperbole. The Gigafactory aimed to produce more batteries than the entire global output of 2013, a staggering ambition that left the crowd buzzing. Musk’s vision wasn’t just about meeting demand—it was about rewriting the rules of battery production.
CARSON CITY, NEVADA – SEPTEMBER 4: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, addresses an enthusiastic crowd at the Nevada State Capitol on September 4, 2014. Alongside Governor Sandoval, Musk revealed plans for the Tesla Gigafactory, a groundbreaking battery factory in Nevada poised to power electric vehicles and generate 6,500 jobs. (Photo by Max Whittaker/Getty Images)
A Factory with Flair: Design and Sustainability
Art Deco Diamond in the Desert Elon revealed a surprising detail: the Gigafactory would be as beautiful as it was functional:
“We are taking care to ensure that it looks good and fits in with its surroundings. The factory will be shaped like a diamond. To fit better into the environment, we shaped it like a diamond, and it is aligned to true north so that we can map out where the equipment will be by GPS.”
The diamond shape wasn’t just aesthetic—it minimized environmental disruption. Elon’s nod to “romantic” practicality charmed the audience:
“I think it sounds kind of romantic to say it’s shaped like a diamond and aligned to true north, but there are practical reasons for it as well.”
CARSON CITY, NEVADA – SEPTEMBER 4: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, addresses an enthusiastic crowd at the Nevada State Capitol on September 4, 2014. Alongside Governor Sandoval, Musk revealed plans for the Tesla Gigafactory, a groundbreaking battery factory in Nevada poised to power electric vehicles and generate 6,500 jobs. (Photo by Max Whittaker/Getty Images)
Self-Sustaining Power
Sustainability was non-negotiable:
“This factory will produce its own energy through a combination of geothermal, solar, and wind power. It will generate all the energy it needs, making it a self-contained factory.”
This commitment to zero-carbon energy underscored Tesla’s ethos, earning cheers from an environmentally conscious crowd.
An Invitation to Witness History
Open to the Public Elon closed with a promise:
“We’re going to ensure that people can visit it, look at it, and check it out because it will be worth seeing.”
This wasn’t just a factory—it was a symbol of progress, open for the world to see. The crowd’s standing ovation reflected their excitement and he kept his word, with close friend John Stringer visiting the factory just a week ago!
Giga Nevada is expanding insanely fast. It’s incredible to see what Tesla accomplishes here.
Can’t wait to see the mass volume Semi factory up and running. The Semi will change trucking forever pic.twitter.com/MPh0FDQTde
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) April 25, 2025
Postscript: The Gigafactory’s Lasting Impact
The 2014 Gigafactory announcement was more than a speech—it was a turning point. By 2025, Gigafactory Nevada has become a powerhouse, producing batteries for millions of Tesla vehicles and energy storage systems like Powerwall. It sparked economic growth in Nevada, creating thousands of jobs and proving Musk’s bet was right. This talk showcased Elon at his best: visionary, practical and brief, and unrelentingly ambitious. As we look back, it’s clear the Gigafactory wasn’t just about batteries—it was about building a future where clean energy is the norm. What part of your life has Tesla made better? Feel free to share your thoughts with others on X, I often discuss these historical pieces with my kids/family over dinner, etc. I’ll be writing more Tesla Time Capsule stories in the future.
This is the second part of my series on Elon Musk’s August 16, 2024, West Point talk, released February 6, 2025.
Geared towards students, the discussion with Brigadier General Shane Reeves explored national defense and technology.
In Part 1, Elon emphasized drone warfare, noting U.S. technological strength but low production rates, stating,
“Well I think we probably need to invest in drones, the United States is strong in terms of technology of the items, but, the production rate is low, so, it is a small number of units, relatively speaking, but I think that basically there is a production rate issue with the rate, like if you say how fast can you make drones, imagine there is a Drone conflict. The outcome of that Drone conflict will be based on: How many drones does each side have in that particular skirmish times the kill ratio… so let’s say that the United States would have a set of drones that have a high kill ratio, but then, the other side has far more drones. If you have got a 2 to 1 kill ratio, and the other side has four times as many drones, you are still going to lose.”
Ukrainian Drone Production and Aging
Reeves explained that a recent report quoted Zelensky saying Ukraine will produce 1 million drones by 2025. He then pivoted to ask Elon if he had solved aging.
Elon stated that he had not solved aging, and then added, “I wonder if we should solve aging?” He added, “How long do you want Putin and Kim Jong-un to live?”
Starlink’s Role in Warfare
Reeves shifted to the importance of communications in warfare, prompting Elon to discuss Starlink: “Communications is essential, it is actually very important to have space-based communications that are or that cannot be intercepted, which is Starlink. It is what Starlink offers. Starlink is the backbone of the Ukrainian military communication system because it can’t be blocked by the Russians. It is the only thing that cannot be blocked. So, on the front lines, all of the fiber connections are cut, all the cell towers are blown up, all of the geostationary satellite links are jammed. The only thing that isn’t jammed is Starlink, so it is the only thing. And then, GPS is also jammed. GPS signal is very faint and Starlink can offer location capability as well so it is a strategic advantage that is very significant. And, when you try to communicate with drones, the drones need to like basically, they need to know where they are, and they need to receive instructions. So if you don’t have communications and positioning, then the drones don’t work. So that’s quite important. That is essential.”
Future of AI and Drones
Reeves asked if there will still need to be communication between people and drones. Elon said, “There’s a difference between right now, versus where things will be in 10 years.” Sighing, Elon says he’s looking at the future with some trepidation. He says he has to have some deliberate suspension of disbelief to sleep sometimes. He thinks we’re headed into a pretty wild future. Elon is a naturally optimistic person, but “AI is going to be so good, including localized AI, but at the current rates, you’ll have something that is sort of Grok-level AI and it can probably be run on a drone and so, you could literally say, this is the equipment that the drone needs to destroy, and then it will go into that thing, and it will recognize what equipment needs to be destroyed, and will take it out.”
Elon says, “Communications is essential, it is actually very important to have space-based communications that are or that cannot be intercepted, which is Starlink. It is what Starlink offers”
AI Surpassing Human Control
Reeves asks Elon if he thinks that AI will quickly surpass the human’s ability to control. Elon answers,
“Yes, I mean, <very long pause> I’d like to say no, but the answer is yes.”
Reeves asks how long before the AI surpasses the ability for the human to influence how it’s working?
Elon explained that he does think humans will be able to influence how it’s working for a long time, “This is an esoteric subject, that really goes into pretty wild speculation, to some degree. I think that the AI will want humans as a source of Will. So, if you think of how the human mind works, there is the limbic system, and the cortex, you have sort of the base instincts, and sort of the thinking, and the planning part of your brain, but you also have a tertiary layer, which is all of the electronics that you use, your phones, your computers, applications, so you already have three layers of intelligence, but all of those, including the cortex and the machine intelligence, which is your sort of cybernetic third layer, is working to try to make the limbic system happy. Because the limbic system is a source of Will so, it might be that the AI just wants to make the humans happy.”
Neuralink and AI Mitigation
Continuing on AI, Elon introduced Neuralink: “And part of what Neuralink is trying to do, is to improve the communication bandwidth between the cortex and the digital tertiary layer because the output bandwidth of a human is less than one bit per second per day and there are 86,400 seconds in one day and you don’t output 86,400 tokens you know it’s like, the number of words that I can say in those forums, if you’re just looking at it from an information theory standpoint, how much information am I able to convey? Not that much. Because I can only say a few number of words, and in order to convey an idea, I have to take a concept in my head, and then I have to compress it down, into a small number of words, try to aspirational model, how you would decompress those words into concepts that are in your own mind, that’s communication. So your brain is doing a lot of compression and decompression, and then has a very small output bandwidth. Neuralink can increase that bandwidth by several orders of magnitude, and also, you don’t have to spend as much time compressing thoughts into a small number of words, you can do conceptual telepathy. That is the idea behind Neuralink. It is intended to be a mitigation against AI existential risk.”
AI Alignment and Humanity
Reeves asked about the concept of AI alignment, prompting Elon to explain: “It’s asking the question, is the AI going to do things that make civilization better? Make people happy? Or will it be contrary to humanity? Will it foster humanity? Or not? Will it be against humanity? So obviously, we want an AI that will foster humanity and I think in developing an AI to foster humanity—because I’ve thought about AI safety for a long time—I think I’ve had probably about 1000 hours of discussion about this and my ultimate conclusion is that the best course for AI safety is to have an AI that is maximally truth-seeking and also curious. And if you have both of those things, I think it will naturally foster humanity because it will want to see how humanity develops. Want to see it because humanity is more interesting than not humanity. You know, I like Mars. I’m a big fan of Mars. And I think we should become a multi-planetary civilization. That’s very important. The purpose of SpaceX is to make life multi-planetary. That’s the reason I created the company, and that’s the reason we have the Starship development in South Texas. The rocket is far too big for just satellites. It’s intended to establish life on Mars not just to send astronauts there briefly, but to build a city on Mars. A city that is ultimately self-sustaining so, but getting back to AI, if you have a truth-seeking AI, that is maximally curious, my neural net, my biological neural net says that that is going to be the safest outcome. People say, why do you like Mars, Mars is not as interesting as Earth, because there’s no human civilization there. Or, thought of another way, if you want to render Mars, rendering Mars is pretty easy as it’s basically red rocks, kind of like some parts of Arizona you know there’s not a lot of people. It’s just very easy to render. But, rendering human civilization is much harder, much more complex, much more interesting so I think a curious and truth-seeking AI would want to foster humanity and want to see where it goes.”
Trusting AI and the End of Fighter Pilots
Reeves asked an interesting question, drawing on a comparison to a movie that he and Elon were both familiar with, Top Gun with Tom Cruise. His question to Elon was, “How do we build trust between the human and the machine, as there are many humans who don’t want to use the technology because they don’t trust it?”
Elon: “Well, I think we shouldn’t just automatically trust these things. I think you want to test it out, and do a lot of testing and see how it actually works and a conflict at a small scale, and then scale it up if it’s effective, but, I have to say, like I’m not sure for example, like I have to say,… Well, fortunately, this is not an Air Force gathering, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of room and opportunity for fighter pilots because I think if you’ve got a drone swarm coming at you, then the pilot is a liability in the fighter plane, to be honest. If you compare a drone versus a fighter plane, how easy is it to make a drone? It’s at least 10, maybe 100 times easier to make the drone, and you can afford to sacrifice the drones whereas, with the pilots, you don’t want to sacrifice the pilots, so my guess is actually that the age of human-piloted fighter aircraft is coming to an end.”
A primarily young audience of students gather to intently listen to Elon Musk at West Point. Elon spoke at on August 16, 2024, during a fireside chat with Brigadier General Shane Reeves, as part of the U.S. Military Academy’s convocation.
I am excited to share Part 3 of this talk with you soon!
My thoughts
Elon does not get credit for how much help he’s giving Ukraine. Without Starlink, Ukraine would have no communications for defense. Sadly, we’ve not heard Zelensky thank him for this in the last few years. Instead, Elon is villainized constantly.
Speaking to the young and excited audience at West Point, Elon showed his deep love for humanity when he urged caution: don’t blindly trust AI, test it carefully first. Drones, far easier to build than fighter planes, can be sacrificed—unlike precious pilots. He believes human-piloted fighters are fading, to protect lives.
Interested in other talks by Elon? I publish many of them.
This is the first of a multi part series, that allows you to closely study Elon’s words spoken at West Point on August 16, 2024. The full video was released on February 6, 2025. If you love history of civilizations, and like to study battles and war, you’ll find value in Elon’s insight. I know I did.
Featuring Elon Musk interviewed by Shane Reeves
Elon Musk at West Point: AI and Drones Will Define Future Warfare
How do you see warfare transforming in the future? Elon replied with, “the biggest factor I think by far is AI and drones. The current war in Ukraine is very much a drone war already – sort of a contest between Russia and trying to see who can deploy the most number of drones. Now if there’s a major power war, it’s very much going to be a drone war. It’s gonna be drones and AI and … I do worry about the existential risk of AI, which is that if you employ AI and drones, do you Eventually go down this path where you get to terminator? We should try to avoid that! We should minimize the terminator risk. But essentially when you’re making military drones, you are making terminators. And I think you will be somewhat forced into giving the Drone localized AI. Because if the AI is far away, it can’t control as well as localized AI.”
Elon explained that localized AI means it’s an autonomous scaling machine which will be completely autonomous if you give it the OK in a particular arena and then it just goes.
Will our military have the same types of concerns and limitations? To this question Elon replied, “it depends on how much existential risk there is in these wars, if it’s a regional war, I think it will be more tempered, if it goes beyond regional war, then all bets are off. And then you start deploying things that you really would not want to deploy. So hopefully, that does not happen.”
In response to a comment by Reeves, that machines are not just disrupting warfare today they are commonplace, Elon said “drones are going to be overwhelmingly what matters for any powers that have significant technology. Elon added, my personal belief is like, it’ll actually be I think probably too dangerous to have humans at the front. It’s drones at the front. Drones don’t miss.”
Reeves asked, or commented, because of the lethality then, it’s too dangerous to have humans at the front? Elon responded “Yes, I mean, if you have seen some of the computer-controlled sniper rifles, they just don’t miss. So you are finding a machine that is going to aim with micron level accuracy, and it never gets tired.”
Reeves asked Elon how he thinks the United States should be leveraging technology to further our national defense?
Elon paused, and replied, “Well I think we probably need to invest in drones, the United States is strong in terms of technology of the items, but, the production rate is low, so, it is a small number of units, relatively speaking, but I think that basically there is a production rate issue with the rate, like if you say how fast can you make drones, imagine there is a Drone conflict. The outcome of that Drone conflict will be based on: How many drones does each side have in that particular skirmish times the kill ratio… so let’s say that the United States would have a set of drones that have a high kill ratio, but then, the other side has far more drones. If you have got a 2 to 1 kill ratio, and the other side has four times as many drones, you are still going to lose.”
Reeves asked Elon if he thinks that our industrial base can scale to make the number of drones that Elon is talking about?
Elon replied, “I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge. It can scale. But it is not currently scaling.” Reeves asked why. Elon thought about the current state of Drone procurement in the U.S.A, and also mentioned,
“I read a lot of military history and the thing that I go to sleep with is usually an audiobook on military history of one kind or another so I find the subject very interesting and one of the things that tends to happen is that countries are geared up pretty much enough to fight the last war, but not the next war. And it’s hard to change. If you look at the uniforms at the start of World War I and the tactics they use at the start of World War I, they were not significantly different from the Napoleonic era. You know, when the French were marching into war with brightly colored uniforms. It looks great. But that’s not what you want to be, you know when someone is pointing a gun at you you don’t want a great looking uniform you want a uniform that blends in so, there is a tendency to be gearing up to fight the last war in the U.S. So that would be kind of the Cold War I guess. So, it usually takes some kind of shock factor to adjust. I would recommend adjusting now.”
Elon: “And you are seeing some startups like Anduril and a few others that have a different mindset, but it’s really going to be, can you make a lot of drones? And what’s the kill ratio? That’s what it comes down to.”
Anduril Industries, founded in 2017 in Costa Mesa, California, is a defense tech company revolutionizing military capabilities with AI-driven solutions. Named after a mythical sword, Anduril builds autonomous drones (like Ghost), surveillance systems (Sentry), and software (Lattice) to enhance national security. Unlike traditional defense giants, it operates like a nimble tech startup, prioritizing speed and innovation. With $2.3 billion in funding by 2024, Anduril serves the U.S. Department of Defense and allies, competing with legacy contractors by delivering cost-effective, scalable tech for modern warfare, including border security and counter-drone operations.
This is Part 1, of Elon’s talk, and it gets better. You can follow my account, turn on your notifications, for Part 2. Or check back periodically.
“I see a path. I’m not saying it’s an easy path but I see a path of Tesla being the most valuable company in the world by far.” – Elon Musk
In this article we’ll look at how Tesla’s value is immense, as what Tesla is building will improve efficiency in all areas of human life, and do it at scale, making it affordable. Elon Musk outlined much of this is in this Shareholder meeting, so although he did not make mention of Master Plan 3, this was a big progress report on Master Plan 3.
Elon’s conversation focused on manufacturing at scale, AI, and robotics. Note: This is the January 29, 2025, Tesla Annual Shareholder Earnings Call.
Elon is More that Doubling Investments in Tesla
“Doubling is not even enough. We made many critical investments in 2024 in manufacturing, AI and robotics that will bear immense fruit in the future.” – Elon Musk
When discussing Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, Elon emphasized its market impact, saying, “I think the interest level from other manufacturers to license FSD will be extremely high once it is obvious that unless you have FSD, you’re dead.”
The Misconception of Easy Production vs. the Reality
Elon: “Yeah, prototypes are trivial basically. Prototypes are easy, production is there for many years. The problem is there’s like those who have never been involved in production or manufacturing somehow think that may — once you come up with some eureka design, that you magically can make 1 million units a year, and this is totally false. There needs to be some Hollywood story or where they show actually the problem is manufacturing.”
Hollywood Does Not Make Movies Like This, But They Should
Elon: “I’ve never even heard of one (Hollywood story that shows how to win at manufacturing). It just doesn’t fit the narrative. The Hollywood thing is like some lone inventor in a garage goes EUREKA! And suddenly, it files a patent, and suddenly, there’s millions of units. And like I’m listening to the guys, we’re missing really 99% of the story. One percent is — a product is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Hollywood shows you the 1% inspiration and minus — but forgets about the 99% perspiration of actually figuring out how to make that initial prototype manufacturable and then manufacture at high volume such as reliable, low cost, consistent, and doesn’t break down all the time and that is 100 times more difficult at least than the prototype.”
Austin, Texas Will Experience Unsupervised Full Self-Driving as a Paid Service in June
“In fact, it could drive you. It’s a self-driving wolf.” – Elon Musk
Elon’s timeline was a surprise for many, as he plans to initially launch unsupervised FSD in Austin in June. For me personally, it makes sense. I live in Austin, use FSD everyday, it works astonishingly well!
“We’re going to be launching unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service in Austin in June.” – Elon Musk
Elon: “And I am like — setting up for what I think will be an epic 2026 and a ridiculous ’27 and ’28, ridiculously good. That is my prediction. As you know, very few people understand the value of self-driving and our ability to monetize the fleet. Some of these things I’ve said for quite a long time, and I know people have said, Well, Elon, the boy who cried like a wolf like several times. But I’m telling you, there’s a damn wolf this time and you can drive it. In fact, it could drive you. It’s a self-driving wolf.
For a lot of people, like their experience of Tesla Autonomy is like if it’s even a year old, if it’s even two years old, it’s like meeting someone when they’re like a toddler and thinking that they’re going to be a toddler forever. But obviously not going to be a toddler forever. They grow up. But if their last experience was like, Oh, FSD was a toddler. It’s like, well, it’s grown up now. Have you seen it? It’s like walks and talks. And that’s really what we’ve got.
And it’s difficult for people to understand this because human intuition is linear as opposed to what we’re seeing is exponential progress. So, that’s why my No. 1 recommendation for anyone who doubts is simply try it. Have you tried it? When’s the last time you tried it? And the only people who are skeptical, the only people who are skeptical are those who have not tried it.”
When addressing a question about discussions with other auto companies regarding the licensing of Tesla’s FSD, Elon explained there is interest.
Interest in Tesla’s Autonomous Tech
Elon: “Yeah. What we’re seeing is at this point, significant interest from a number of major car companies about licensing Tesla full self-driving technology.”
Analyzing Tesla’s Hardware
Elon: “What we’ve generally said is the best way to know what to do is take one of our cars apart. And then you can see where the placement of the cameras are, what the thermal needs are of the Tesla AI inference computer.”
Optimus Development Timeline
Elon: “With regard to Optimus, obviously, I’m making these revenue predictions that sound absolutely insane, I realize that. But they are — I think they will prove to be accurate. Now with Optimus, there’s a lot of uncertainty on the exact timing because it’s not like a train arriving at the station for Optimus. We are designing the train at the station and in real time while also building the tracks.”
Production Goals for Optimus:
Elon: “The normal internal plan calls for roughly 10,000 Optimus robots to be built this year. Will we succeed in building 10,000 exactly by the end of December this year? Probably not, but will we succeed in making several thousand? Yes, I think we will. Will those several thousand Optimus robots be doing useful things by the end of the year? Yes, I’m confident they will do useful things.”
Feedback Loop for Optimus Development
Elon: “Those Optimus in use at the Tesla factories for production design 1 will inform how we will change for production design 2, which we expect to launch next year.”
The Immense Scaling of Optimus
Elon: “And our goal is to ramp up Optimus production faster than maybe anything has ever been ramped, meaning like aspirationally in order of magnitude, ramp per year. Now if we aspire to an order of magnitude ramp per year, perhaps, we only end up with a half order of magnitude per year. But that’s the kind of growth that we’re talking about. It doesn’t take very many years before we’re making 100 million of these things a year if you go up by let’s say, a factor by 5x per year.”
How Tesla Solved Challenges in Developing Optimus
Elon: “But we do need to be — this is an entirely new supply chain, it’s entirely new technology. There’s nothing off the shelf to use. We tried desperately with Optimus to use any existing motors or any actuators, sensors. Nothing worked for a humanoid robot at any price.”
Custom Design for Optimus
Elon: “We had to design everything from physics-first principles to work for a humanoid robot and with the most sophisticated hand that has ever been made before by far. Optimus will be also able to play the piano and be able to thread a needle. I mean, this is the level of precision no one has been able to achieve. And so, it’s really something special.”
Future Value of Optimus to Tesla
Elon: “So, yes. And my prediction, long term, is that Optimus will be overwhelmingly the value of the company.”
Additional Statements on Optimus
Elon: “Optimus is not design-locked. So, let’s say like we’re designing the train as it’s going to — we’re redesigning the train as it’s going down the tracks while redesigning the tracks and the train stations.”
Vision for Optimus
Elon: “I’d like it to be the beginning of next year but maybe it’s more like the middle of next year,” (referring to the launch of an enhanced version of Optimus)
Elon: “The current line that we’re designing is for roughly 1,000 units a month of Optimus robots. The next line would be for 10,000 units a month. The line after that would be for 100,000 units a month.”
Elon: “I think probably with Version 2, it is a very rough guess because there’s so much uncertainty here, very rough guess that we start delivering Optimus robots to companies that are outside of Tesla in maybe the second half of next year, something like that.”
Elon: “But like I said, this is such an exponential ramp that it will go from no one’s receiving humanoid robots to these things like coming out like crazy. We can’t build enough. We’re always going to be in the — we can’t build enough situation. Demand will not be a problem even at a high price.”
Elon: “And then I said like, once we start — once we’re at a steady state of above 1 million units a year, I think the production — I’m confident at 1 million units a year, that the production cost of Optimus will be less than $20,000.”
Elon: “If you compare the complexity of Optimus to the complexity of a car, so just the total mass and complexity of Optimus is much less than a car. So, I would expect that at similar volumes to say the Model Y, which is over 1 million units a year, that you’d see Optimus be, I don’t know, half the cost or something like that.”
Elon: “What the price of Optimus is a different matter. The price of Optimus will be set by the market demand.”
Utility of Autonomous Cars
“Once that car is autonomous, my rough estimate is that it is in use for at least a third of the hours per week, so call it, 50, maybe 55 hours of the week.” – Elon Musk
Current Utilization of Passenger Cars
Elon: “So, a car goes — a passenger car typically has only about 10 hours of utility per week out of 168, a very small percentage.”
Projected Increase in Car Utility with Autonomy
Elon: “Once that car is autonomous, my rough estimate is that it is in use for at least a third of the hours per week, so call it, 50, maybe 55 hours of the week. And it can be used for both cargo delivery and people delivery. So, even, let’s say, people are asleep but you can deliver packages in the middle of the night or resupply restaurants or whatever the case may be, whatever people need at all hours of the day or night.”
Economic Impact of Autonomous Vehicles
Elon: “That same asset, the thing that — these things that already exist with no incremental cost change, just a software update, now have five times or more the utility than they currently have. I think this will be the largest asset value increase in human history. Maybe there’s something bigger but I just don’t know what it is. And so, people who would look in the rearview mirror are looking for past precedent, except I don’t think there is one.”
Everyone Should Try Autonomous Driving
Elon: “So, look, the reality of autonomy is upon us. And I repeat my advice, try driving the car or let it drive you. So, now it works very well in the U.S., but of course, it will, over time, work just as well everywhere else.”
Tesla’s Growth Plans: Batteries
Elon: “Yes, so we’re working hard to grow our annual volumes. Our current constraint is battery packs this year but we’re working on addressing that constraint. And I think we will make progress in addressing that constraint. And then things are really going to go ballistic next year and really ballistic in ’27 and ’28.”
Advancement in Full-Self-Driving (FSD) Technology
Elon: “So, a bit more on full-self-driving. Our Q4 vehicle safety report shows continued year-over-year improvement in safety for vehicles. So, the safety numbers, if somebody has supervised full self-driving turned on or not, the safety differences are gigantic. And people have seen the immense improvement with Version 13, and with incremental versions in Version 13 and 14 is going to be yet another step beyond that, that is very significant. We launched the Cortex training cluster at Gigafactory Austin, which was a significant contributor to FSD advancement.”
Training Infrastructure for AI/Optimus Development
Elon: “And we continue to invest in training infrastructure out of Texas headquarters. So, the training needs for Optimus humanoid robot, are probably at least ultimately 10x of what is needed for the car, at least to get to the full range of useful role. You can say like how many different roles are there for a humanoid robot versus a car? A humanoid robot has probably 1,000 times more uses and more complex things than in a car. That doesn’t mean the training scales by 1,000 but it’s probably at 10x.”
Economic Potential of Optimus Robots
Elon: “Now you can do this progressively, so it doesn’t mean like Tesla’s going to spend like $500 billion in training computer because we will obviously train Optimus to do enough tasks to match the output of robots. And obviously, the cost of training is dropping dramatically with time. But it’s one of those things where I think long-term, Optimus has the potential to be north of $10 trillion in revenue, like it’s really bananas. So, that you can obviously afford a lot of training compute in that situation.”
Investment vs. Revenue in AI Training
Elon: “In fact, even $500 billion training compute in that situation will be quite a good deal. Yes, the future is going to be incredibly different from the past, that’s for sure. We live at this unbelievable inflection point in human history.”
Proof of Concept for Unsupervised FSD
Elon: “So, yes, so the proof is in the pudding. So, we’re going to be launching unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service in Austin in June. So, I talked to the team. We feel confident in being able to do an initial launch of unsupervised, no one in the car, full self-driving in Austin in June. We already have Teslas operating autonomously unsupervised full self-driving at our factory in Fremont, and we’ll soon be doing that at our factory in Texas.”
Operational Details of Autonomous Vehicles at Factories
Elon: “So, thousands of cars every day are driving with no one in them at our Fremont factory in California, that we’ll soon be doing that in Austin and then elsewhere in the world, the rest of our factories, which is pretty cool. And the cars aren’t just driving to exactly the same spot because, obviously, they want to collide at the same spot. The cars are actually programmed with where — with what lane they need to park into to be picked up for delivery. So, the drive from the factory end of line to their destination parking spot and to be picked up for delivery to customers and then doing this reliably every day, thousands of times a day.”
Timeline for Unsupervised FSD in Public
Elon: “It’s pretty cool. Like I said, these Teslas will be in the wild with no one in them in June in Austin. So, what I’m saying is this is not some far-off mythical situation. It’s literally five, six months away, five months away kind of thing.
Approach to Safety and Expansion
Elon: “And while we’re stepping — putting our toe in the water gently at first just to make sure everything is cool, our solution, our sort of solution is a generalized AI solution. It does not require high precision maps of locality. So, we just want to be cautious. It’s not that it doesn’t work beyond Austin. In fact, it does. We just want to put our toe in the water, make sure everything is OK, then put a few more toes in the water, then put a foot in the water with safety of the general public as and those in the car as our top priority.”
Energy Storage as a Critical Asset
Elon: “Regarding energy, energy storage is a big deal and will become — really super important, will become incredibly important in the future. And it is something that enables far greater energy output to the grid than is currently possible because the grids are — the vast majority of the grid has no energy storage capability.”
Impact of Energy Storage on Grid Efficiency
Elon: “So, they have to design the power plants for very high peaks and assuming that there’s no energy storage. Once you have grid energy storage and home-based energy storage, the actual total energy output per year of the grid is dramatically greater than people think. Maybe it’s at least double. This will drive the demand of stationary battery packs and especially the grid-scale ones to and saying basically as much demand as we can possibly make.”
Tesla’s Expansion of Big Battery Production: Shanghai and Another 3rd Factory
Elon: “So, we have our second factory, which is in Shanghai, that’s starting operation, and we’re building a third factory. So, we’re trying to ramp output of the stationary battery storage as quickly as possible.”
Balancing Battery Demand Between Sectors
Elon: “Now there is a challenge here where we have to be careful — that were not robbing from 1 pocket to take to another pocket because for a given gigawatt hours per year of the cell output, does it go into stationary applications or mobile applications? It can’t go both into both so we have to make that trade-off, yes. But overall, the demand for total gigawatt hours of batteries, whether mobile or stationary, that will grow in a very, very big way over time.
For context, Tesla navigates between:
Stationary Applications: These include batteries for energy storage solutions that support homes, businesses, and the grid, particularly vital for managing renewable energy sources like solar and wind, which produce energy intermittently.
Mobile Applications: Here, the focus is on electric vehicles, where batteries are essential for vehicle operation, directly impacting Tesla’s automotive business.
Elon metaphorically described the situation as “robbing from one pocket to take to another,” emphasizing the need for strategy to ensure neither sector suffers from resource scarcity. The decision on where to allocate batteries involves complex trade-offs based on current market demand, potential profitability, and strategic long-term goals.
Significance of 2025 in Tesla’s Timeline
Speaking of the year 2025, Elon said “In fact, I think it probably will be viewed ’25 as maybe the most important year in Tesla’s history.
Tesla’s Dominance in Real-World AI
Elon: “There is no company in the world that is as good in real-world AI as Tesla. I don’t even know who’s in second place. Like you say, like, who’s in the second place for real-world AI? I would need a very big telescope to see them. That’s how far behind they are.”
Tesla’s Q4 and Full Year Earnings Calls from 2021, 2022, 2023 by Gail Alfar
The first post I wrote covering Tesla was in January 2022. I wrote about Tesla’s Q4 2021 earnings call. On that day I was locked out of my office (my laptop was locked inside) and there was a Pepsi just sitting there for me to enjoy. I remember calling my friend Johnna Crider that day and we talked until someone opened the doors. I still have that Pepsi bottle to remind me that “there is a lot of work to do, don’t get locked out!” I’ve been writing ever since about one of the best companies in the world: Tesla.
Tesla Q4 Earnings Call
Cybertruck owners love the feel and utility of their vehicles. Tesla built a truck with safety, speed, luxury, utility and performance in mind. You might wonder about deliveries. Are people taking delivery who made reservations years ago? The answer is yes, a Tesla executive explained that Cybertruck’s reservation-to-order conversion rate has been very promising, and if the trend continues, “it is expected that all 2024 builds will be sold out soon. New orders are also anticipated after the launch. The order numbers are increasing, and the team is working hard to ramp up production to fulfill the demand and decrease wait times.”
“Obviously,” Elon Musk said, “we could dramatically raise the price, but that doesn’t feel right to us to (price) gouge people for early delivery.” Elon estimates Tesla will produce around a quarter million Cybertrucks per year in North America, possibly more.
2024 is the year of the Cybertruck, and it is a head-turner
Image Courtesy Tesla, Inc.
“You know, there’s some very good trucks on the road, but if you were to switch out the brand name, you wouldn’t hardly know which company made them. But you definitely would know the Cybertruck. That’s our best product ever.” – Elon Musk
Mini-Timeline: October 7, 2021: Elon Musk officially announces that the Tesla HQ will be located in Austin, Texas.
January 26, 2022: Full-year 2021 financial results reveal that making electric cars is more profitable than making combustion engine cars.
January 25, 2023: Uncertain times did not slow down Tesla. Giga Berlin and Giga Texas joined Giga Shanghai in the production of Model Y, and within months the vehicle became a top seller!
January 25, 2024: Cybertrucks hit the roads in the USA. Model Y surpassed expectations and became the global best-selling car. Gasoline cars fell behind for the first time.
Tesla Energy
Exciting News: Tesla announced that moving forward they will start reporting Tesla Energy volumes in their production and delivery releases. This is good because Tesla Energy has demand signals globally for their Megapack. Growth is almost guaranteed to be strong and consistent through 2024 and 2025. Tesla expressed gratitude to their partners throughout the world for their trust in the Megapack team and gave personal thanks to the engineering and production teams for their outstanding 2023 performance. The Lathrop facility will double its capacity from 20 to 40-gigawatt hours by the end of the year with the operation of a second final assembly line.
Growth for big battery production has been much faster than the car business. Elon emphasized, “The energy storage business delivered nearly 15-gigawatt hours of batteries in 2023, compared to 6.5 gigawatt hours the year before. Tremendous year-over-year growth, triple digits. I think we’ll continue to see very strong growth in storage as predicted.”
Image Courtesy Tesla, Inc.
Many people are pleased that Elon Musk speaks often about Tesla’s progress and plans. This transparency is rare for big companies. Enjoy his opening remarks.
“The Tesla team did an incredible job in 2023. We achieved a record production and deliveries of over 1.8 million vehicles, in line with our official guidance. And in Q4, we’re producing vehicles at an annualized run rate of almost 2 million cars a year.
This was a phenomenal achievement. Looking at just the Fremont Factory alone, we made 560,000 cars. This is a record. In fact, it’s the highest-output automotive plant in North America.
And people are often surprised that the highest-output car factory in North America is in the San Francisco Bay area. It’s a little counterintuitive, perhaps. And it’s had an incredibly positive impact on that entire area. What would have been a rundown strip mall is the highest-productivity car plant in the Americas.
Think about that. It was derelict when we got it, and now, it’s the most productive plant in this entire part of the world, and it’s enriched the community in so many different ways. It’s really a gem. I’m super proud of the people that work there.
Model Y became the best-selling vehicle globally as predicted, and the best-selling vehicle of any kind, not just electric vehicles, with over 1.2 million units delivered. There’s a lot to look forward to in 2024. Tesla is currently between two major growth waves. We’re focused on making sure that our next growth wave driven by next-gen vehicle, energy storage, full self-driving, and other projects is executed as well as possible.
To close this blog post, I’d like to share with you my imaginary futuristic scenario, inspired by listening to the live stream.
In the year 2032, the world has entered an era of sustainable living and tech advancement, thanks to the visionary leadership of Tesla, Elon Musk, and its pioneering innovations. The family of the future is happier and more connected than ever before, as they enjoy the fruits of an earth transformed by clean energy and intelligent automation.
Thomas and Victoria arrive home in their sleek, self-driving Cybertruck, accompanied by four of their children. The family’s home is a testament to the power of technology, with a clean and inviting atmosphere that has been meticulously maintained by their trusty Tesla Optimus bot.
As the sun sets on the horizon, Victoria opens the smart curtains, revealing a breathtaking view of the city skyline. The temperature is a comfortable 65°, and the family decides to enjoy their dinner on the patio by the pool. The pool is heated by solar energy, a resource that powers the entire city through a network of Tesla Megapacks strategically placed on the outskirts. These big batteries store energy when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, ensuring a constant supply of electricity.
After a delicious meal, the family of eight disperses to pursue their passions. The children immerse themselves in reading, creating art, and engaging in virtual reality gaming experiences, all powered by renewable energy. Meanwhile, the fully charged Optimus bot cheerfully takes care of the post-dinner cleanup, leaving the kitchen spotless and preparing the coffee machine for the next day’s caffeine fix.
As we reflect on this futuristic scenario, it’s clear that Tesla’s groundbreaking innovations have not only made our lives more convenient but also more sustainable and connected. The future is bright, and we have Tesla to thank for helping us to live in harmony with our planet and one another.
Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to Gail Alfar. 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.
FOR MEDIA USE ONLY News media is welcome to use my material in connection with a story or article. By downloading any content I create, you understand and hereby agree and represent that: (1) you are a member of the news media; (2) use of the content is in connection with a story or an article appearing in newspapers, periodicals, digital publications or television; (3) all images and rights thereto remain the property Gail Alfar.; and (4) use of the image is not for publication covers, advertising, promotion or otherwise for commercial purposes. Furthermore, use of any and all images and content appearing on this page must each include the notice “Courtesy of Gail Alfar” Use of materials copied from this website is at your own risk. You must obtain prior written consent from Gail Alfar for uses that exceed the above parameters.
Elon Musk talked on a Twitter space on July 12, 2023. Here’s what he said about his new company, xAI, AI regulation, the importance of insight followed by oversight, China’s reasons to regulate AI, “Team Humanity.” He also gives advice for young people (or anyone for that matter) as we enter into a new era and then discusses the singularity. Elon ends the discussion on a positive note, explaining why we should be optimistic about the future.
xAI
“I think I have been banging the drum on AI safety now for a long time. If I could press pause on AI or advanced AI digital superintelligence, I would. It doesn’t seem like that is realistic.
“So xAI is essentially going to build an AI, you know, you’ve got to grow an AI in a good way, hopefully.
“The premise of an AI is to sort of have an AI that is maximally curious, maximally truth-seeking, and, this may get a little esoteric here, but I think that a curious AI, one that is trying to understand the universe, I think I want it to be pro-humanity from the standpoint that humanity is just so much more interesting than not-humanity.
“Obviously, I’m a big fan of Mars and that we should become a spacefaring, civilization, and a multi-planet species, but Mars is quite frankly boring relative to Earth. It’s a bunch of rocks, and there’s no life that we’ve detected, not even microbial life.
But Earth, with the vast complexity of life that exists, is vastly more interesting than Mars.
“You just learn a lot more with humanity being there, and, I think fostering humanity, if you are trying to understand the true nature of the universe, that’s the best thing that I can come up with from an AI safety standpoint.
“I think this is better than trying to explicitly program morality into AI. because if you program in a certain morality, you have to say well what morality are you programming? Who’s making those decisions? And even if you are extremely good with how you program morality, there’s still a morality, inversion problem. This is sometimes called the Waluigi problem, which is if you program Luigi, you inherently get Waluigi by inverting Luigi.
Haha, to use Super Mario metaphors. I mean this is starting to get quite esoteric, but hopefully, this makes some sense.
Who is Waluigi? For some background, Waluigi is a fictional character in the Mario franchise. He plays the role of Luigi’s arch-rival and accompanies Wario in spin-offs from the main Mario series, often for the sake of causing mischief and problems. Interestingly, Elon played the role of Wario in a SNL skit in May 2021. Wario, similar to Waluigi, was designed to be an arch-rival to Mario, an anti-hero or an antagonist.
Elon continued,
“So, I would be a little concerned about the way AI is programming the AI to say that this is good and that’s not good. xAI is really just kind of starting out here, it will be a while before it’s relevant on the scale of OpenAI Microsoft AI or Google Deep Mind AI. Those are really the two big gorillas in the Ai right now by far.
“I could talk about this for a long time, it’s something that I’ve thought about for a really long time and actually was somewhat reluctant to do anything in this space because I am concerned about the immense power of a digital superintelligence. It’s something that, I think is maybe hard for us to even comprehend.
“Even if AI is extremely benign, the question of relevance, perhaps, comes up. If it can do anything better than any human, what’s the point of existing? That is also an issue? Do we even have relevance in such a scenario? That’s the bad side of it. The good side, obviously, is that in an AI future where you really will have (in a benign scenario) an age of plenty where, really, there will be no shortage of goods and services. Any scarcity will be simply scarcity that we self-define as scarcity. It could be a unique piece of art or a house in a specific location. It’s artificially defined scarcity but goods and services will not be scarce in a positive AGI future.
But I think it’s also important for us to worry about a terminator future in order to avoid a terminator future.
AI REGULATION
Elon also spoke about the critical nature of AI regulation,
“And I am an advocate of having some sort of regulatory oversight and I’ve actually made this point throughout the world, meeting with world leaders including in China where there is actually strong agreement that there should be AI oversight, AI regulation.
“Just as we have regulations for nuclear technology, you can’t just go make a nuke in your garage, and everyone thinks that’s cool, we don’t think that’s cool. There’s a lot of regulation around things that we think are dangerous. And even if things are not dangerous at a civilizational level, we have the FDA, we have the FAA and the DOT. There are all these regulatory authorities that we put in place to ensure public safety at an individual level but AGI is just one of those things that is potentially dangerous at a civilizational level not just at an individual level. That’s why we want to have AI regulation.
“We want to be careful in how the AI regulation is implemented, not be precipitous or heavy-handed. But there has to be some kind of referee on the field here. One of the dangers is that companies race ahead to… I think it’s actually more dangerous for companies that are behind that might take shortcuts that could be dangerous.
“You know, the FAA came into being after lots of people died in aircraft crashes and they were like, If you want to make aircraft you cannot cut corners because people are going to die. So, that’s kind of how I see AI regulation. I know a lot of people are against it but I think its the kind of thing that we should do, we should do it carefully, we should do it thoughtfully.
Elon paused here while Ro Khanna, a U.S. representative from California and Mike Gallagher U.S. representative for Wisconsin spoke. In response to their conversation, Elon added,
“It’s difficult to think of, I can’t think of a good movie or TV example of Ai that’s the benign scenario. There are some books. The Ian Banks Culture books are the best imagining of a positive AI future that I’ve read. I think the Isaac Asimov Foundation series books have somewhat of a benign AI center (the TV series divulges quite far from the books). But the most sophisticated or perhaps the most accurate view of an AI future is the Ian Banks Culture books which I highly recommend. It would be helpful for Hollywood to articulate that vision in a way that the public can understand.
INSIGHT, FOLLOWED BY OVERSIGHT
Elon said
“I think the right sequence to go with here is insight, followed by oversight. At first, it’s really just for the government to try to understand what’s going on and I think there’s some merit to an industry group, like the Motion Picture Association that I think actually should be formed so I think we’ll try to take some steps in that direction because there’s some amount of self-regulation that I think can be good here.
CHINA WILL REGULATE AI
Elon Musk in China meeting with Qin Gang, foreign minister. May, 2023.
Elon Musk is generally pro-China, he thinks China is underrated and he truly agrees the people are China are really wonderful. When he was in China, he experienced a lot of positive energy there and he noticed the Chinese people generally want the same things that people in America want. He admits there are many political challenges. He praises China for how much they have accomplished to further the electrification of vehicles and implement solar and wind power. He spoke about his trip to China,
“When I was on my recent trip to China, I did spend a fair amount of time with the Senior leadership there, talking about AI safety and some other potential dangers and pointing out that if a digital superintelligence is created that that could very well be in charge of China instead of the Chinese communist party. I think that did resonate. No government wants to find itself unseated by a digital superintelligence. So I think they actually are taking action on the regulatory front and are concerned about this as a risk and I’ve seen some comments internally within China that the companies are a bit unhappy about the government wanting to put regulatory oversight on AI. So this is something that does actually resonate even in China because when I was in China I said one of the biggest obstacles to AI regulation outside of China is the concern that China will not regulate AI and then will get ahead and they took that point to heart, it’s a logical point, I think. And I highlighted that, if you make superintelligence, the superintelligence could actually run China and that also resonated.
“So I think, try to shed as much light on this subject. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Be as open about things as possible, going from insight for a few years to oversight with consultation with the industry, is the sensible approach.
“I think the public is starting to understand the potential of AI with ChatGPT, something the public can interact with. I’ve understood the power of AI for a while, and until you have some sort of easy to use interface it’s difficult for the public to understand. It’s also the case with stable diffusion and Midjourney, you can see the incredible art that AI can create, it’s really amazing.
“I’m actually somewhat of an optimist in general, but like I said, the best way to ensure a good future is to worry about a bad one. So I think that’s the sensible thing to do, and to have discussions like this, and continue to have discussions like this.
TEAM HUMANITY
Elon spoke about how easy it is to demonize an organization or a person if you have never met them in person, saying, “When you meet with them you’re like, well, there’s not that bad! You can understand where they’re coming from and at the end of the day, we’re all part of Team Humanity, hopefully! I think we should all aspire to be part of Team Humanity! We’ve got one planet only, so far, and we don’t want to lose it. There’s that famous quote – think it might be Einstein but could be one of those internet things where you think its Einstein but its not, where it says, it doesn’t matter how WW3 was fought except that WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones.” Haha, there’s not going to be anything left! So we really want to aspire to avoid global thermonuclear warfare. We really want to avoid that, Bigtime! Hopefully, we’ll focus on positive things like becoming a spacefaring civilization, becoming a multi-plantary species, hopefully going out there and visiting other star systems, but we may discover many long-dead one-planet civilizations that never got beyond their original planet.
“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” – Albert Einstein.
Elon continued,
“On the xAI front. If I speak to my personal motivations here, is that I’ve always just wondered what is really going on in reality. Are the aliens? Where are they? Like the Fermi paradox, I find to be intriguing and troubling if the standard model of physics is correct, the universe has been around for many billions of years, so why haven’t we seen aliens? Many members of the public are convinced the government is hiding evidence of aliens and I have not seen any evidence of aliens which is a concern. I might feel better if I saw some aliens. I have not seen one shred of evidence of aliens which is a problem. It means that life & consciousness might be incredibly rare. Maybe we are it, at least in this galaxy. The light of consciousness seems to be this tiny candle in a vast darkness and we should do our absolute best to make sure that candle does not go out.”
ELON’S THEORY ABOUT OUTCOMES RELATING TO CHINA – TAIWAN
“The most entertaining outcome is the most likely (as seen by a 3rd party, not the participants. Like, you could be watching a WW1 movie about getting blown to pieces while sipping a soda and eating popcorn. Not so great for those in the movie, but it is entertaining which does suggest it’s probably going to get hot in the Pacific. Hopefully not too hot. But it’s going to get hot. Hopefully, we can get past that and get to a positive situation for the world in the spirit of, aspirationally, we are all on Team Humanity. But it’s going to get spicey. But the most concerning thing is probably the Taiwan question over the next 3 years and the next 3 years after that I’d be surprised if there is not digital superintelligence in roughly the 5 or 6-year timeframe. If this was a Netflix Series, I’d say the season finale would be a showdown between the West and China and the Series finale will be AGI.”
ELON’S ADVICE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE (AND ANYONE)
“If someone is able to contribute to building AI in a positive way, if someone has that technical ability, that is probably the right thing to work on. For your average citizen, I think the future is definitely going to be interesting. Things get very strange in a future where the AI can basically do everything. In the benign scenario, I guess we will look for personal fulfillment in some way. I think between now and then it’s just trying to be useful. On the manufacturing front, I do think we should place much greater weight on the importance of manufacturing. I think things are shifting in that direction. Generally, when somebody asks me for advice, my advice is to try to be as useful as possible. It’s actually quite hard to be useful. If you can be of use to your fellow humans and contribute more than you take then I think that’s a great thing! I have a lot of respect for those who work hard and do make goods, and provide services, in excess of what they take. That is just a fundamentally good thing.
Elon explains the advent of AGI is often referred to as the singularity. A singularity is like a black hole. You just don’t know what happens after that. “We are on the event horizon of the singularity of digital superintelligence.”
One of the most interesting parts of all of history is the time we live in now, and Elon Musk is optimistic, he says,
“I think if I was to assign probabilities, I think it is more likely to be a positive scenario than a bad scenario, it’s just that the bad scenario is not 0% and we want to do everything we can to minimize the probability of a bad outcome with AI. I think it is maybe 70-80% likely to be a good future. Maybe a great future even! I think of the future in probabilities, nothing is for sure. The future is a set of branching probability streams.
What is the Turing Test? The Turing Test is a deceptively simple method of determining whether a machine can demonstrate human intelligence: If a machine can engage in a conversation with a human without being detected as a machine, it has demonstrated human intelligence.
Elon explains he thing we are well past The Turing Test with AI. He says,
“ChatGPT is well past the Turing Test so really we are on our way to digital superintelligence, I think it’s 5 or 6 years away. The definition of superintelligence is that it’s smarter than any human at anything. It’s not necessarily smarter than the sum of all humans, that’s a higher bar, to be smarter than the sum of all humans. Especially given that it’s the sum of all humans that are machine augmented in that we will have computers and phones and software applications. We are already defacto cyborgs, it’s just that the computer is not integrated with us. But one’s phone is already an extension of one’s self. If you leave your phone behind it feels like missing limb syndrome. You’re patting your pockets like -where did my phone go? It’s crazy the degree to which our phone is basically a supercomputer in your pocket. It is an extension of yourself. So there is a higher bar to be smarter than the sum of all humans that are computer augmented”
Elon explained this concept has caused him stress and many sleepless nights. He tries to figure out how we navigate through these facts to the best possible future for humanity as it may be the hardest problem humans have ever faced and it deserves, or rather, it demands our attention. He adds,
“I think ultimately the nation-state battles will seem parochial compared to digital superintelligence. Of all the risks that we face, there are ones that are dangerous at an individual level and dangerous at a state level and there are things dangerous at a civilizational level. Global thermonuclear warfare is dangerous at a civilizational level, some supervirus that has high mortality rates would be dangerous. I think it’s crazy to do gain-of-function research. Gain of function research is like saying – death maximization! Haha, like I don’t know who came up with this gain-of-function model!? Haha. AI is also a civilizational risk, but the thing about AI is that is has the potential to be amazing if it’s done right.
THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT
The hour-long talk ended with Elon Musk reminding listeners that,
“We want to maximize the collective happiness of humanity and the freedom of action of humanity. You want to look forward to the future and say that is the future I want to be a part of! And I’m excited about the future. That’s actually incredibly important in general. I’m actually concerned that there’s a pervasive pessimism in the world about the future and that’s part of what’s leading to a low birthrate in many parts of the world. I advocate for optimism. I think it’s generally better to be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right!
“You look up at the night sky, and see all those stars, and I wonder what’s going on up there. Are there alien civilizations? Is there life up there? Hopefully one day we find out!”
Elon Musk
This article by Gail Alfar. Please credit accordingly. Since January 2022, I have been writing and recording many of Elon Musks’ talks on my blog and here in order to preserve his important words in writing. My blog link is on my Twitter bio and I thank you for reading and for your support. You rock and you are part of Team Humanity! Thank you!
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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