Category: Elon Musk

Read Elon Musk’s essay on technology for a better future

Gail Alfar13 Comments
Elon Musk, Legendary Bomber Jacket, Gigafactory Texas, August 19, 2022. credit: Gail Alfar

It’s mid-August and school is starting up for many and this is a great time to read this inspiring essay by Elon Musk.

I hope you’ll relax with me and have a snack & a cold drink, may I suggest a KIND bar and a Coke Zero? This is what I enjoyed at Giga Texas right before briefly meeting Elon Musk and going on a tour of the gigafactory with brilliant Tesla engineers. I can tell you that after meeting Elon Musk, what he shares on Twitter is essentially the same as he talks about when meeting. He spoke about how important it is to get Starship into orbit and how important solving autonomy is.

I asked Elon if it was okay for me to take his picture, “Aren’t there already enough of me?”, “No, there isn’t one of you like this, alone, with Giga Texas in the background.”

Elon Musk is optimistic, lives with a sense of urgency, and takes action daily to make the future good. Yang Liu gave me permission to re-post this from his substack, Beijing Channel. 请用中文查看整篇文章。点击这里。 Elon Musk recognized Liu’s work in a tweet, “Reasonably accurate translation.”

BELIEVING IN TECHNOLOGY FOR A BETTER FUTURE 相信科技创造美好未来

Thank you for the invitation from China Cyberspace magazine. I am pleased to share with my Chinese friends some of my thoughts on the vision of technology and humanity.

As technology accelerates, it may one day surpass human understanding and control. Some are optimistic and some are pessimistic. But I believe that as long as we are not complacent and always maintain a sense of urgency, the future of humanity will be bright, driven by the power of technology. It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy: if humans want to make the future good, they should take action to make it good.

I want to do everything we can to maximize the use of technology to help achieve a better future for humanity. To that end, any area that contributes to a sustainable future is worthy of our investment.

Whether it’s Tesla, Neuralink, or SpaceX, these companies were all founded with the ultimate goal of enhancing the future of human life and creating as much practical value for the world as possible—Tesla to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, Neuralink for medical rehabilitation, SpaceX for making interstellar connections possible.

CLEAN ENERGY: THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABILITY

Tesla Megapack and Solar. credit: Tesla

The starting point for my thinking about clean energy is how to create and store energy sustainably and for the long term, and how to provide a constant source of power for the future of productive life. In my view, the future of sustainable energy involves three components.

The generation of sustainable energy. The sun is like a giant fusion generator, from which mankind currently exploits a tiny amount of energy. In the long run, solar energy will become the main source of energy for human civilization. Of course, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and nuclear power are also useful energy supplements.

The storage of sustainable energy. Given the change of day and night and the change of weather, we need a lot of fixed battery banks to store solar and wind energy, because the sun does not shine all the time, and the wind does not blow all the time, energy needs to be stored in a large number of fixed battery banks.

Electrified transportation. Full electrification of transportation, including cars, planes, and ships. Electric rockets may be more difficult, but we may be able to manufacture the propellant used in rockets from sustainable energy sources. Eventually, the world economy will be run entirely by sustainable energy sources.

The world is on track for a sustainable energy transition, and humanity should continue to accelerate the process. The faster this transition is achieved, the less risk humanity poses to the environment and the more it will gain. When clean energy is available, carbon sequestration and desalination will be cheaper, climate change and water shortages will be solved, and when fossil fuels are out of the picture, the skies will be cleaner, the world will be quieter, the air will be fresher, and the future will be brighter.

Tesla Solar Roof. credit: Tesla

Solar power, battery packs, and electric vehicles paint a rosy picture. Next, we need to focus on the limiting factors. The electrification of cars has become a consensus among nations, but battery support on a terawatt-hour scale is needed to roll out pure electric vehicles around the globe. According to our estimates, the world needs about 300 TWh of battery storage to achieve a transition to sustainable energy. The biggest difficulty in advancing sustainable energy lies in the large-scale production of lithium battery cells. Specifically, from the mining and element refining to battery cells coming off of the production line and finally assembled into battery packs, this is a complex process that is restraining the rapid development of a sustainable energy economy.

As a pioneer and innovator focusing on energy innovation technology, Tesla was founded to solve the problem of energy innovation. On the one hand, we create integrated sustainable energy products from the three segments of energy: production, storage and use; on the other hand, we are committed to redefining battery manufacturing by innovating and developing advanced battery technology to remove restrictions on battery capacity.

I believe that the world will transition to a sustainable future through a combination of solar and wind energy plus battery storage and electric vehicles. I am pleased to see more and more companies joining this field. Chinese companies will be a force to be reckoned with in the cause of energy innovation.

HUMANOID ROBOTS: DOING WHAT HUMANS DO

Tesla humanoid robot prototype, Tesla Bot. credit: Barbara @bmt094

Today’s cars are increasingly like smart, web-connected robots on wheels. In fact, in addition to cars, humanoid robots are also becoming a reality, with Tesla launching a general-purpose humanoid robot (Tesla Bot) in 2021. The Tesla Bot is close to the height and weight of an adult, can carry or pick up heavy objects, walk fast in small steps, and the screen on its face is an interactive interface for communication with people. You may wonder why we designed this robot with legs. Because human society is based on the interaction of a bipedal humanoid with two arms and ten fingers. So if we want a robot to adapt to its environment and be able to do what humans do, it has to be roughly the same size, shape, and capabilities as a human.

Tesla Bots are initially positioned to replace people in repetitive, boring, and dangerous tasks. But the vision is for them to serve millions of households, such as cooking, mowing lawns, and caring for the elderly.

Achieving this goal requires that robots evolve to be smart enough and for us to have the ability to mass produce robots. Our “four-wheeled robots” – cars – have changed the way people travel and even live. One day when we solve the problem of self-driving cars (i.e., real-world artificial intelligence), we will be able to extend artificial intelligence technology to humanoid robots, which will have a much broader application than cars.

We plan to launch the first prototype of a humanoid robot this year and focus on improving the intelligence of that robot and solving the problem of large-scale production. Thereafter, humanoid robots’ usefulness will increase yearly as production scales up and costs fall. In the future, a home robot may be cheaper than a car. Perhaps in less than a decade, people will be able to buy a robot for their parents as a birthday gift.

It is foreseeable that with the power of robots, we will create an era of extreme abundance of goods and services, where everyone can live a life of abundance. Perhaps the only scarcity that will exist in the future is for us to create ourselves as humans.

NEURALINK: EMPOWERING THE DISABLED

Image credit: Neuralink

Some of our Chinese friends may not be as familiar with Neuralink as with electric cars. These companies focus on developing computer-human brain fusion technologies, developing brain chips the size of coins, similar to wearable devices such as smartphones, except that they integrate more deeply with the user’s body—recording and stimulating brain activity through implants in the cerebral cortex.

At this stage, the technology is helping injured people on an individual level. We have received many saddening letters: a 25-year-old young man was in the prime of his life when he had a motorcycle accident that left him unable to eat on his own, which is a great grief for the individual and the family. In light of this, brain-machine interface technology will be focused on curing or alleviating brain injury and other related disorders in the years to come. For example, it could help restore sensory or motor function to limbs of those with spinal injuries and mental system disorders or allow quadriplegics to use their brains to easily operate computers or cell phones.

This technology can also improve a wider range of brain injury problems, whether these disorders are congenital or accidental, or caused by age and external stressors, including severe depression, morbid obesity, sleep problems, and underlying schizophrenia, all of which are expected to be alleviated by human-computer devices.

With the development of brain-machine interface technology, in the long term, this connection is expected to expand the channels of communication between the outside world and the human brain, “accessing” more brain regions and new neural data. This technology could allow humans to effectively integrate with artificial intelligence and ultimately expand new ways for humans to interact with the world, themselves and others. Even if the goal of human-machine integration is difficult to achieve, brain-machine interface technology could be of great value in the field of medical rehabilitation.

SPACE EXPLORATION: THE POSSIBILITY OF CROSS-PLANET HABITATS

SpaceX team, Starship, and booster in Starbase, Texas, Feb 16, 2022. credit Austin Barnard

Finally, my greatest hope is that humans create a self-sustaining city on Mars. Many people ask me why I want to explore outer space and turn humans into multi-planetary creatures. In the vast universe, human civilization is like a faint little candle, like a little shimmering light in the void. When the sun expands one day and the Earth is no longer habitable, we can fly to a new home in a spaceship. If humans can inhabit other planets, it means that they have passed one of the conditions of the great screening of the universe, then we will become interplanetary citizens, and human civilization will be able to continue.

The first step toward interplanetary habitat is to reduce the cost of travel, which is what SpaceX was founded to do – first by building recoverable rockets and then by building reusable mega-ships with ever-increasing carrying capacity. As of earlier this year, SpaceX had successfully reused 79 rockets to deliver cargo to the space station and send ordinary people into space. We have also designed and built the largest launch vehicle in history, the Starship, which can carry 100 passengers and supplies at a time. In the future, we plan to build at least 1,000 Starships to send groups of pioneers to Mars to build a self-sustaining city.

As technology continues to change lives at an accelerating pace and the world evolves, life is more than simply solving one problem after another. We all want to wake up in the morning full of anticipation for the future and rejoice in what is to come. I hope more people will join us in our fight to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. I also welcome more like-minded Chinese partners to join us in exploring clean energy, artificial intelligence, human-machine collaboration, and space exploration to create a future worth waiting for.

CONCLUSION

Elon Musk wrote about the future of humanity in four critical areas

1. Clean Energy. Elon Musk envisions a thriving future that is powered by the sun. “Eventually, the world economy will be run entirely by sustainable energy sources.”

2. Humanoid Robots, “The Tesla Bot is close to the height and weight of an adult, can carry or pick up heavy objects, walk fast in small steps, and the screen on its face is an interactive interface for communication with people.”

3. Neuralink’s great potential to improve physical and mental health and eventually serve millions of households, especially the elderly.

4. Space exploration is the last topic and Elon’s words describing his greatest hope inspire us, “In the future, we plan to build at least 1,000 Starships to send groups of pioneers to Mars to build a self-sustaining city.”

Photo Cyber Rodeo. credit Ross Gerber

Underpopulation is very real, and Elon Musk has ideas on how to tackle this problem, you can read about what he thinks in my article, “Elon Musk: Discussion About Underpopulation,” which is highly acclaimed and noticed by Elon Musk who tweeted in response to it, “Children are essential to the future” on July 11, 2022.

Fun Sidestory: I am humbled and honored to have had the opportunity to get to know some of the Dogecoin community including Gary Lachance. I met Gary in Austin and I was excited to find out there were T-shirts with the Doge drone show from Cyber Rodeo and Texas Rodeo Doge shirts. Later when I was invited to meet Elon Musk at Giga Texas, I asked Gary if he had any extra shirts. Eventually, I met a friend of Gary’s in Austin who passed me a box of shirts and a ceramic tile. Elon received the Rodeo Doge and Drone Doge t-shirts and was appreciative and grateful for them.

Article by Gail Alfar. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. August 21, 2022. Featured banner photo of Elon Musk in the Legendary Bomber Jacket on August 19, 2022, credit: Gail Alfar

Reasons Why Tesla Has the Best Factory Safety in the Industry 

Gail Alfar4 Comments

This article will bring you along with me as we look into how Tesla has become a leader in job site safety in manufacturing.  Our focus will be on statements about workplace safety from Elon Musk at the 2022 Shareholder’s meeting and the Tesla 2021 Impact Report.  You’ll look at Tesla’s approach to software as a way to improve safety. Finally, we’ll see how Tesla is making an extraordinary effort to protect over 5000 contractors. 

For fun, I share what it was like walking through Tesla’s employee cafeteria, where Elon says, “Everyone eats same food, uses same restrooms, etc – no executive chef or other ivory tower stuff.” You’ll see 2 rare pictures of the cafeteria area at the end of the article.

“In 2021, our focus remained on protecting people, the planet, our property and products.”

Tesla 2021 Impact Report

Elon Musk Spoke about Factory Safety on August 4th at the 2022 Shareholder’s Meeting

Elon Musk at Shareholder’s Day, credit: Tesla

While sharing a chart titled “Safety Records Continue to Improve,” Elon said,

“We’ve also made a lot of improvement with factory safety, so I believe we now have the best factory safety in the industry.
We are excited to have very good safety, and getting better, and a bunch of this is driven by just encouraging people in the factory to submit ideas for safety improvement.
We have passed our goal of three suggestions per employee this year.  This really is a game changer for improving safety.”
Elon Musk

“Safety Records Continue To Improve” credit: Tesla 2022 Shareholder’s Meeting

Tesla featured employee Sherry Ihrig in the 2021 Impact Report. Sherry made over 1,800 improvement suggestions using the “Take Charge” software.  Her suggestions were to safety, processes, cost-savings, and more since the program’s start in early 2021. Sherry stated,

“The Take Charge program encourages associates to increase their awareness of the work environment. 

When these and other potential safety hazards are noticed and resolved, it allows associates to improve their overall work performance.” 

“Driven by Increasing Employee Engagement” credit: Tesla 2022 Shareholder’s Meeting

Giant Cybernetic Collective Where Everyone is a Worker

I think the most important aspect of humans working alongside big machines is safety.  Software should be designed to improve processes and ensure safety instead of stagnating.  Elon Musk likens his factories to giant cybernetic collectives,

“You can think of the factory as a giant cybernetic collective.
So the factory is just an enormous cybernetic collective of humans and machines and software, and the better that software is, the better that cybernetic collective works.
I don’t think other OEMs think like that, but that’s what it is!”
Elon Musk, 2022 Shareholders Meeting

I think safety processes can improve when all workers operate at the same level.  On June 2, Elon Musk described this in a tweet,

“Everyone eats same food, uses same restrooms, etc – no executive chef or other ivory tower stuff.
There shouldn’t be this workers vs management two-class system. Everyone is a worker.”
Elon Musk

When I visited Gigafactory Texas on August 4th for the Shareholder’s Meeting, all participants got to walk through the employee coffee shop/cafeteria, food truck area, and use the company restrooms and it is true, there are no special areas for any executives, including Elon himself.

Tesla Builds New Software to Improve Safety

In Early 2021, Tesla developed new software to help workers build capacity to ensure safeguards are in place and functioning. 

“In order to build capacity and allow our workers to fail safely, we needed a more dynamic approach to how we collect and manage data that allows us to make decisions that reduce risk.

In response to that need, we developed an internal Environmental, Health Safety & Security [EHS&S] tool named MyEHS to help drive execution and improve outcomes by allowing the intake and visualization of data globally.

We designed and deployed 11 modules in 2021, allowing us to better manage our EHS&S information, identify emerging risks and take action to implement improvements suggested by our employees. 

Foremost in this effort was our improvement suggestion module — Take Charge.

Combined with Action Tracker, this module allows workers to submit improvement suggestions in various categories, including environment, health, safety, security, people and accuracy, while connecting with their supervisors and other work groups to identify and implement solutions to improve the presence of safeguards.” – Tesla 2021 Impact Report, p.48

Tesla Extends Safety Protection to over 5000 Contractors

Solar Roof Install credit: Tesla 

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the civilian occupations with the highest rates of fatalities include roofers and construction trade helpers.  Tesla employs solar roof installers and construction workers and contracts with over 5000 contractors.  Tesla is making an extraordinary effort to protect contractors and keep them safe through a new program they developed called ‘Constructing Our Future’ led by 87 Tesla Responsible Persons [TRP] and Contractor Responsible Persons who are all trained in the new process that includes meeting a TRP and EHS&S professional at the location of work to complete a Pre-Work Risk Assessment.

“We are on schedule to release the new and improved supplier and contractor onboarding and management system, Workforce Management, in the second quarter of 2022.

This simple, scalable, centralized system will build on the efficiencies of the interim onboarding process and provide better visibility for managers and engineers to track performance.

We will report our contractor injury rates in the 2022 Impact Report.”

Tesla 2021 Impact Report, p.54

CONCLUSION

Elon Musk called Tesla’s new improvement suggestion module, Take Charge, a “game changer for improving safety.”

One employee said Take Charge “encourages associates to increase their awareness of the work environment.”

When I toured Gigafactory Texas, it was easy to see why Elon Musk referred to it as an “enormous cybernetic collective.”  Within this gigantic space, Elon stated “Everyone eats same food, uses same restrooms, etc – no executive chef or other ivory tower stuff. There shouldn’t be this workers vs management two-class system. Everyone is a worker.”  

Safety is an integral part of this collective because it is based on humans and machines and software all working in symphony, and that includes Tesla’s over 5000 contractors.  In fact, Tesla will include contractor injury rates in the 2022 Impact Report. 

FUN FACT:  

At the Tesla 2022 Shareholder’s Meeting, all participants got to walk through the employee coffee shop/cafeteria area and it is true, there is no executive chef area, not even for Elon Musk.

The cafeteria was stunning with a beautiful clean white design featuring floor-to-ceiling glass on both sides. One side has a view of the City of Austin in the distance and the other side overlooks Model Y production. Also featured near the Coffee Bar were Model Y seats mounted on a structural battery pack, Model Y frame with castings, and a drive train!

Tesla Coffee Bar, credit: the author
Model Y structural frame by Coffee Bar at Tesla Giga Texas Cafeteria by glass overlooking Model Y production. credit: the author.

Article by Gail Alfar. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. August 14, 2022. Featured banner photo, credit: Tesla Media

5 Takeaways from Tesla’s 2022 Shareholder Meeting

Gail Alfar6 Comments

Elon Musk spoke at the 2022 Annual Shareholder Meeting on August 4th. I attended in order to experience the event firsthand so I could write about my impressions for you.

This article features highlights of what Elon Musk said about Tesla Gigafactories, AI, Cybertruck, Optimus robot, how we can help support the mission, and more.

Elon Musk at GIgafactory Texas, credit: Tesla

Elon Musk and Tesla, Inc. are grateful to you as a Shareholder

The Cyber Roundup was Tesla’s kind way of saying thanks to you as a retail TSLA shareholder. This year’s meeting was the largest in-person meeting ever and it provided an opportunity to see products up close, take a factory tour, and even speak with Elon Musk.

Towards the end of this article, I will share info with you on how you can attend in the future. Martin Viecha, Tesla’s Investor Relations, opened the meeting and he later joked on Twitter, “It’s not a Shareholder Meeting, it’s really a rock concert for TSLA supporters.” 

Cyber Roundup felt like this because it was a way for Tesla supporters to thank Elon Musk and Tesla directly.  This was evident as I observed many people cheering, clapping [sometimes standing], and even whistling after every informational slide, statement, or joke that Elon Musk made.  

A new way of thinking about a factory

Model Y front hoods as Art Installation at Gigafactory Texas, credit: the author

Cybernetics is a term coined by American mathematician Norbert Wiener to refer to the general analysis of control systems and communication systems in living organisms and machines. At the meeting, Elon explained how Tesla went from a small start-up to what it is today, with factories as a giant cybernetic collective,

“When we started out here, we were told electric cars were impossible and if you could make an electric car with a couple hundred miles range then nobody would buy it anyway because people just love gasoline cars.

You know, when we started out it was down to a start-up company and then down a square to an electric car company, and we were told you are never going to make money, etc. and we didn’t for a while, but now we have the highest operating margin in the whole industry. 

Tesla is not just a car company, Tesla is many companies in one and we’re as much a software company as we are a hardware company and that’s really going to be obviously essential for the future.

Software in the car, and in neural net training, but also software in the factory as well.

You can think of the factory as a giant cybernetic collective. So the factory is just an enormous cybernetic collective of humans and machines and software, and the better that software is, the better that cybernetic collective works. I don’t think other OEMs think like that! but that’s what it is.” – Elon Musk at 2022 Shareholders Meeting

Tesla is close to solving an important part of AI and Welcomes Talented People to Apply 

Elon Musk shares the hands of the Tesla Optimus robot for the first time. credit: the author

Fully autonomous driving is an incredibly difficult problem to solve.  Elon‘s positive outlook at the meeting gives us hope that autonomy will be solved.  Elon stated, 

“It’s really interesting because we are effectively solving an important aspect of artificial intelligence, real-world AI for self driving, which, when you think about it, is what’s needed to solve self-driving because how was the road system designed?

Its designed for a biological neural net and eyes, and so naturally the thing that would therefore work for the silicon analog is therefore cameras and silicon neural net.

So, sort of by accident, we’re actually solving an important and very useful element of artificial intelligence.

I definitely want talented people who are working on AI to consider working at Tesla because I think we’re solving an important part of AI, and one that can ultimately save millions of lives and prevent tens of millions of serious injuries by driving an order of magnitude safer than people.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk talks about upcoming products Cybertruck and Optimus

Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas, credit: the author

On Cybertruck, Elon said,

“What I can say is that the Cybertruck will be one hell of a product, and it’s going to be like a damn fine machine, and we’re on track to be in production middle of next year from this factory. 

So we’re going to be installing the production equipment, the tooling and all starting the next couple months we will begin the installation so aiming to be in volume production middle of next year.” – Elon Musk

Elon Musk spoke about Optimus,

“I’m sort of surprised that people, or at least analysts out there are not understanding the importance of the Optimus robot. 

My guess is that Optimus will be more valuable than the car long term. 

In fact, I think it will turn the whole notion of what an economy is on its head. 

The point at which you have no shortage of labor.  You know, the economy is capita, if you don’t have capita constrain then the economy will be arbitrarily huge, so it’s crazy.” – Elon Musk 

The Mission to Accelerate the Transition to Clean Energy and How you Can Help

Tesla let shareholders sign a Model Y, credit: the author

The shareholder’s meeting took on a Town Hall vibe towards the end, where people formed two lines and were given microphones to ask Elon questions.  That portion starts at 51 minutes into the video, and it was delightful to experience.  A total of nine lucky people had the chance to comment, suggest, and or ask Elon a question. 

The last question was by a young man who said he simply wanted to thank Elon for everything he has done for the earth and the community and ask, aside from working for Tesla, being a shareholder, or purchasing a Tesla, how can the masses help push your vision? Elon replied,

“Well I think just generally encouraging sustainable energy and being supportive of that, I think is really helpful.

I say, you’re doing great so far! Without your support, Tesla wouldn’t be where it is.

Its people like yourself, and everyone in this room and out there and the 3 million people who bought our cars, and the millions who have gotten solar, that all really helps make the world a better place for the future. 

I’d like to sort of convey a message about optimism about the future. If we work really hard to accelerate sustainable energy and sustainable transport, the future will be good!

Just make sure people know that, I’m not suggesting complacency at all, I’m literally saying, if we work hard towards a sustainable future, we will achieve it!

And the future is bright!” – Elon Musk

CONCLUSION

5 Takeaways

  • Tesla goes above and beyond to show appreciation to shareholders, the Cyber Roundup was a unique event that was well planned out and a delight to attend in person.
  • Elon Musk is advancing the concept of a giant cybernetic collective, saying, “the factory is just an enormous cybernetic collective of humans and machines and software, and the better that software is, the better that cybernetic collective works.” 
  • Once again, Elon asked for people talented in the field of AI to consider applying to work at Tesla. Elon also said, “I think we’re solving an important part of AI, and one that can ultimately save millions of lives and prevent tens of millions of serious injuries by driving an order of magnitude safer than people.”
  • The exciting news about Cybertruck was that the production equipment will be installed in the next couple of months. About Optimus, Elon said it, “will turn the whole notion of what an economy is on its head.  The point at which you have no shortage of labor.”
  • Finally,  Elon thanked all of Tesla’s customers and shared a positive message about the future, “I’d like to sort of convey a message about optimism about the future. If we work really hard to accelerate sustainable energy and sustainable transport, the future will be good!”

As a Tesla shareholder, you can become involved by voting.  Tesla has shared information about how you can vote on their website. 

Tesla Investor Relations has shared that the new Tesla Shareholder Platform has been launched.  You can join the program to participate in Tesla events and receive updates about events by logging into your account at this link.

Tesla Semi awaits outside the doors of Gigafactory Texas, credit: the author

Article by Gail Alfar. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. August 7, 2022.

As Batteries begin to replace fossil fuel power plants, what are 4 challenges to overcome?

Gail Alfar19 Comments
Tesla Megapacks at Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. Credit: Tesla

You are living in the early stages of the transition to clean energy.  In the coming years, expect most gas and coal peaker plants to close.  These will be replaced with battery storage of mostly solar energy. 

This article is about four challenges that will be overcome for this incredible transition to succeed.

UPDATE: Elon Musk saw this article on Twitter, and replied to it on July 25, 2022, calling it a “Good article.” I hope that you’ll enjoy it as well!

#1 Increasing Supply of Refined Lithium

There is currently not enough refined Lithium, and this provides a challenge in the transition to clean energy. Tesla is working to scale battery production with refined Lithium at Giga Nevada and the new Megafactory in Lathrop, California.

At the Q2 2022 Earnings call, Elon Musk emphasized the need for more refined Lithium, the component needed for batteries.  Elon said, 

“I’d like to, once again, urge entrepreneurs to enter the lithium refining business.”  Elon Musk

Elon Musk revealed in a recent interview with Johnna Crider that extremely pure battery-grade lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate is needed to prevent breakdown in the battery cell, 

“For example, with lithium, it’s more lithium refinement than it is the actual mining. So you better take the ore that contains lithium, and you’ve got to refine it and get it to battery-grade lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate. And it has to be extremely pure. Otherwise, you could have a breakdown in the cell.” Elon Musk

#2 Scaling Battery Manufacturing

Scaling battery production is a constant challenge as processes must always be flexible enough to improve.

Building batteries faster and at larger scale will occur in order for our world to transition to clean energy. Tesla is addressing this challenge and currently building batteries ranging in size from 13.5 kWh Powerwall to 3000 kWh (3 MWh) Megapack.  Large and small batteries are needed to combine with others to form massive power plants, replacing old-style gas and coal energy with solar. 

Tesla Energy Engineer Mike Snyder speaks against the backdrop of 256 Tesla Megapack battery units on 33 concrete slabs at Moss Landing

Mike Synder of Tesla Energy, spoke at the opening of Moss Landing Elkhorn Battery last month, saying Megafactory Lathrop will produce ~ 40 GW hours of Megapacks a year,

“The Megafactory fully ramped can produce up to 40 GW hours of Megapacks per year.  For context, 40 Gigawatt hours is approximately 50 of the projects you see behind us here, being produced each year here in California and really around the world.”

#3 Working with Existing Infrastructure to Streamline Clean Energy Installations

Tesla Megapacks, Angleton, Texas. cr: Tesla

It is difficult to integrate the existing older infrastructure seamlessly with Tesla’s new hardware and software system, and it has to be done.  Moss Landing near Monterey, California is a location known for decades as exclusively a gas peaker plant site. Thus, it contains physical infrastructure needed to wire energy to customers. Snyder spoke about this challenge,

“There’s a lot of work and figuring out how to integrate these large projects into our existing infrastructure.

As the projects become larger and larger and more powerful those problems become more nuanced and more complicated to solve, and we all have to work to do that together.

Its about landing the wires here at a critical substation, like Elkhorn, or it’s about assessing the grid impacts at different interconnection points in the grid.

All of those problems become much more interesting for engineers and much more complicated to solve, and we need to be doing that together.

And really, as we grow we need to collectively assess how best to leverage such a flexible, fast-acting, bidirectional resource like we’ve never really had. It’s truly an exciting time to be in the industry!”

#4 Updating Local Policy to Encourage Virtual Power Plants

As Tesla Energy works to meet the demand for battery storage systems with Megapacks, another way to meet demand is through aggregating together Tesla Powerwalls that individual people like you and I own to form Virtual Power Plants.

It takes time and effort to change old ways of thinking at state and local levels.  Tesla’s Energy Policy team is working in my home state of Texas to help get virtual power plants online.  I wrote about that last month in “Tesla’s Texas Virtual Power Plant ASAP.”  Although the process might seem slow as molasses in wintertime, eventually it will happen, and there are things you can do to support these efforts! (I list some at the end of this article).

It was a change in policy for PG&E to allow ~1500 California residents who own home Tesla Powerwall batteries to volunteer to join together to form a virtual power plant.  PG&E announced they will “call load management events for participating customers, directing their battery to discharge when there is high demand for electricity.” 

A positive policy change led to the “Emergency Load Reduction Program [ELRP]” which aims to discharge stored battery energy to the grid during high electricity demand. Tesla Powerwall owners are the foundation of this program. According to a news release, the ELRP is managed by PG&E, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Edison. 

These programs and similar ones will eventually be seen in many states and in countries around the world over time.

CONCLUSION

  • Having a constant and reliable source of refined grade lithium is a challenge.  This must be achieved in order to scale battery manufacturing.
  • Tesla Energy leader Mike Synder voiced the challenge of working with existing infrastructure.   “There’s a lot of work and figuring out how to integrate these large projects into our existing infrastructure. As the projects become larger and larger and more powerful those problems become more nuanced and more complicated to solve, and we all have to work to do that together.” 
  • Local policies are a challenge.  Transitioning to clean energy means giving up the old ways of relying on gas peaker plants.  Tesla Energy Policy team aims to continue to work with local policy leaders in order to speed up the transition to sustainable energy.

Here are a few ways you can help:

If you own a Tesla Powerwall, sign up to participate in a pilot program if it is available in your state.  Currently, Texas has a three-year pilot program in the planning stages!

Join the Bros. for Decarb. Their motto is “just a group of Bros who care about decarbonizing the global economy as fast, cheap and reliable as possible.”  They can be found on twitter and they also sell t-shirts with LFDECARB to subtly remind us that the Southeast is often ignored in DECARB.  All their profits go to @energyalabama

Photo in downtown Austin, Texas by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

I would love to share a few more interesting articles with you that relate to Tesla Energy!

Article by Gail Alfar. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – This blog post was created utilizing STARLINK satellite services. All Rights Reserved. July 24, 2022. If you can support this blog financially, info is at “How You Can Support.”

Elon Musk: Discussion About Underpopulation

Gail Alfar27 Comments

With the hot weather we are having this summer, why not grab a cold beverage, and join me to soak in what I think might be Elon Musk’s “first principles” approach to addressing today’s declining birthrate?

A Model S Family in S. Korea. Credit: Tesla

Historically, Being Wealthy Has Led to Having Fewer Kids

Elon Musk was asked about the declining birthrate on Johnna Crider’s podcast. 

Elon said,

“The declining birthrate is somewhat counterintuitive, but generally, the wealthier someone is, the fewer kids they have. 

I’m an exception, but it’s quite rare.  Basically, the higher the education level and the wealthier people are, the fewer kids they have. 

So it’s not a money thing.  In fact, it seems the opposite, like the more money that someone has, the fewer kids they have. 

Somebody who is living as the 2022 standard for the poverty level would be really, I mean they have access to things that the richest person didn’t have 100 years ago.”  

Population COLLAPSE is Coming. Credit: After Skool, see https://youtu.be/zC1khWr7wg8

Elon’s approach: Correcting the false perception that there are too many people

Johnna asked, “Do you have any other thoughts or ideas on how to reverse population decline?”

“The population decline problem, I think is possibly the biggest risk to civilization or its certainly one of the biggest risks. 

First of all, a lot of people think that there’s too many humans on the planet and the planet can’t sustain this number of humans.  This is absolutely not true. 

We could double the population without any meaningful damage to the environment. You can put all the humans on earth in the city of New York.  That’s the cross-sectional area of humans. They could literally fit in the city of New York on one floor, you don’t even need high-rises.  And if you’re on a plane flight and you look down and you say, “what percentage of the time, if I were to drop a ball, would that ball hit a person?”  Basically zero.

Even in a city like LA, where we think, “oh, that’s a crowded city,” looking at it from above, what’s the cross-sectional area of humans relative to the rest of the ground?”  It’s much less than 1%, even in LA. 

So if you’re in a big city environment and you see a lot of people you sort of extrapolate that to everywhere, but it’s actually very rare to see a concentration of humans. 

Earth is very sparsely populated with humans.  There’s not enough humans, far from being too many.  I think people are still sort of operating on the assumption that the population is growing like crazy when in fact the opposite is occurring.  These numbers are easy to look up, they’re just on the internet.  We had the lowest birthrate in recorded history last year.” – Elon Musk

“Far too many people are under the illusion that Earth is overpopulated, even though birth rate trends are so obviously headed to population collapse” – Elon Musk

False perceptions persist that fewer kids are better for the earth’s environment. Credit: Elon Musk on After Skool’s video “Population COLLAPSE is Coming.”

Supporting Families at Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Co.

In addition to being very vocal about underpopulation, Elon Musk is making sure families get needed financial support at all four of his companies. The Musk Foundation is also now tasked with donating directly to families.

“Kids are worth it if at all possible. I’m planning to increase childcare benefits at my companies significantly. Hopefully, other companies do same. Also, Musk Foundation plans to donate directly to families. Hopefully, details to be announced next month.” – Elon Musk

(article update, July 12) Elon Musk responded on Twitter to this article, saying “Children are essential to the future.” His comment led to over 2000 people giving their opinions on underpopulation.

Conclusion

Elon Musk carefully explains that wealthier people have fewer kids.  In a sense, even people living at the 2022 poverty level are better off than wealthier people in times past. 

Oddly, this counterintuitive situation has parallelled a lower overall birthrate.

There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who lack literacy and/or access to the internet, but for those who do have it, you can learn almost anything online.

When asked if he has any other thoughts or ideas on how to reverse population decline, Elon Musk uses the first-principles approach in correcting the false notion that there are too many humans on the planet for the earth to sustain, “I think people are still sort of operating on the assumption that the population is growing like crazy when in fact the opposite is occurring.”

Finally, Elon Musk has directed both the Musk Foundation and his companies to directly support families with children.

My thoughts

Most people are surprised to find out I have 5 kids. I do, and they are all amazing! After we had our 5th, my husband and I wanted more. My husband’s logic was that the USA is wealthier than most countries and he liked my parenting style. Kids really DO grow up fast, making parenting easier and less of a challenge than I once thought.

I think first-principle thinking can be applied to population collapse.  Here are a few of my observations:

  • Raise awareness that population decline is a real problem, in the process people, will stop thinking that there are too many people
    • After Skool created a great education video featuring Elon Musk, Chamath Palihapitiya, Dr. Shanna Swan, Jodan B. Peterson, Chris Williamson, and Dave Chappelle, you can view it on Youtube
  • Change the fact that wealthier people have less kids.  As world literacy and education and internet connectivity rise, this will become more important
  • The Tesla Optimus Bot can help relieve the difficulty we will face with too few young people to care for older people
  • Optimus can also perform tedious jobs that people find unattractive

Though it may be inevitable that we will experience population collapse, we as a society can still work towards lessening the severity of it.  We can work towards correcting misunderstandings about it. Companies can increase childcare benefits, encouraging and supporting their families.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you agree with Elon Musk?

Downtown Austin, Texas at night. Credit: David Gallentino on Unsplash

In addition to solving the problem of underpopulation, Elon Musk said, “I want to do everything we can to maximize the use of technology to help achieve a better future for humanity. To that end, any area that contributes to a sustainable future is worthy of our investment.” You can read more about this in my article, “Read Elon Musk’s essay on technology for a better future.”

Gail Alfar. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – This blog post was created utilizing STARLINK satellite services. All Rights Reserved. July 9, 2022

Header photo by Tyler Nicks on Unsplash

Cyber Rodeo Anthology Part #3: Body and Paint [multi-part series]

Gail Alfar3 Comments
Elon Musk with Black Original Roadster at Giga Texas’ Cyber Rodeo on April 7, 2022 [credit Josh West]

A few days ago Tesla released a video that featured the Giga Texas Cyber Rodeo and it included these words from Elon Musk,

“When we first started out at Tesla, I thought optimistically there was a 10% chance of succeeding, and here we are today, damn!

“We are really entering a new phase of Tesla’s future, with six giant factories around the world, and scaling to extreme size, as you can see from this building, it’s not small.

“This is the machine that builds the machine, and it’s the latest version of the machine that builds the machine. I’ve said it before, that the factory is the product. You know, prototypes require imagination, and they’re not easy, but relative to production, prototypes are easy. Production is hard.

“And this building is the most advanced car factory that earth has ever seen.

 

 

Cyber Rodeo was a wonderful Celebration!

Cyber Rodeo was a celebration of the opening of Giga Texas, the most advanced car factory in the world today. When I walked up the entrance stairs into Giga Texas on April 7, what impressed me was that Tesla made a complex manufacturing process look simple. So, I created this three part article series, in the hopes that it will help in understanding Giga Texas.

Tesla builds one car body every 45 seconds

Model Y body in white will head to the paint shop [credit: Tesla Q1 2022 Update]

At the Cyber Rodeo, Tesla explained,

Giga Texas has the highest capacity line for building the car body that Tesla has ever built.

Robots conduct highly precise and rapid movements in an extremely dense space.

Tesla can build one car body every 45 seconds.

This is twice as many vehicles per week compared to previous lines that took up much more space.

 

Giga Texas’ Paint Shop is Optimized for Speed & Scalability

Model Y Paint Shop at Giga Texas [credit: Tesla Q4 2021 Shareholder’s Deck]

At Cyber Rodeo, the paint shop was explained,

Tesla’s paint shop is at the center of a highly integrated manufacturing process.

Tesla has reduced time and space between each step

The paint shop is designed and optimized for speed and scalability

The paint shop is nearly 10% denser, requiring fewer vehicle turns than current lines

Layers of paint that are thinner than a human hair form a colorful skin to protect the Model Y

 

Walking around the Gigafactory

Tesla allowed visitors to walk along the manufacturing line at Cyber Rodeo on April 7, 2022 [credit: Gail Alfar]

Cyber Rodeo was an opportunity to explore most of the robotic assembly areas. This experience was explained by Chris Anderson of TED Talks, who also interviewed Elon Musk at the gigafactory. Chris said,

This is Elon Musk‘s famous machine that builds machine and his view, the secret to a sustainable future!

Its not just making an electric car its making a system that churns out huge numbers of electric cars with a margin so that they can fund further growth.

 

You can watch Chris’ full interview of Elon Musk at Giga Texas here [recorded on April 6, 2022].

Tesla Thanks Supporters

Since 2003, Tesla employees have defied the odds by accomplishing what others have deemed impossible. By working from first-principles and ignoring bureaucratic conventions, the Tesla team has come together in an effort to accomplish our global mission of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy. We’ve been supported by thousands of fans and customers along the way. Thank you all for believing in us.

 

My thoughts

Elon Musk was not exaggerating when he said, “And this building is the most advanced car factory that earth has ever seen.” According to my estimation after I discussed with Joe Tegtmeyer, [he has documented progress since the beginning], Cyber Rodeo likely only included 1/3 of just one of four floors of Giga Texas. I think the gigafactory will exceed production expectations because of its size and ability to adapt fast. I like that the Model Y is such a fun car, as this makes the transition to all-electric vehicles enjoyable. Thanks to Elon Musks’ vision, Tesla cars make people happy and joyous. I love this quote from Elon Musk,

What really gets me excited is when people experience delight with the product. I don’t think there are all that many things where you really experience delight and if you can make the product good enough that it far exceeds peoples expectations, I think that’s amazing.

 

The Tesla Cyber Rodeo inspired me to create this series. Part #1 shows details on how Giga Texas makes front and rear castings and seats.  Part #2 explains how Tesla builds batteries into assemblies to form a structural pack to connect the front to the rear casting. Thank you for reading the final part of my series and for being an amazing supporter of Tesla and Elon Musk!

Photo of Austin, Texas by Carlos Alfonso on Unsplash

Gail Alfar [edited by Sarah Alfar], Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – May 1, 2022 –  All Rights Reserved

 

Cyber Rodeo Anthology Part #1: Casting and Seats [multi-part series]

Gail Alfar7 Comments

Welcome back to my blog and to Part #1 of Cyber Rodeo Anthology.

Cyber Rodeo took place on April 7, 2022, at Tesla Gigafactory Texas. The rodeo showcased all aspects of how Tesla is mass-producing electric vehicles in order to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. Using color, lights, music, and the help of Tesla’s expert employees, different aspects of the gigafactory were presented in a truly unique way.

Cyber Rodeo marked the opening of Giga Texas, and thus it is a very important historical event. For that reason, I am creating a multi-part series of articles and will publish them over the coming weeks.

Tesla provided this map for the event, as you can see, there are a lot of areas to be covered between Entry 1 and Entry 3. The yellow pathway that held the exhibits was probably about 1/3 a mile long.

Map of Cyber Rodeo exhibits [courtesy: Tesla]

Casting Exhibit: Manufacturing is Beautiful

The rodeo gave the gigapresses the royal treatment. They are gigantic and produce what could be Tesla’s most innovative manufacturing feat ever. They create front and rear castings simultaneously for Model Y at the rate of 0.13 seconds per casting or 130 milliseconds. In fact, they created so many castings that they were used throughout the gigafactory for other purposes, as I’ll share later.

Gigafactory Texas Casting photo by @Brandonee916, April 7, 2022

The above exhibit is an example of a Model Y rear casting. What once took over 70 parts laboriously put together, Tesla has condensed into just one part.

Gigafactory Texas Casting photo by G. Alfar, April 7, 2022

The two largest parts of an Austin-made Model Y, the front and rear casting are produced by injecting 700° C molten aluminum into a high-pressure die-cast mold that is clamped shut with 6,100 tons of force. It is filled with liquid metal in just 130 milliseconds, producing a durable shape and giving each car body its strength. This process has left Tesla with 168 fewer parts to assemble and a much more efficient casting process for the car.

During a casting, giant heat release conduits and valves are used to make sure pressure is perfect and heat is released in a precisely measured way. When inspecting the vertices that the aluminum is fed into, employees wear protective space-like suits to ensure safety from the radiant heat of the molten metal used for the castings.

Gigafactory Texas casting machine, photo by G. Alfar at Gigafactory Texas, April 7, 2022

At the rodeo, hundreds of additional castings were available to be used as decorations in the main entrance of the Gigafactory and throughout the building because of the speed and efficiency of this machine and Tesla’s overall manufacturing process. An employee explained that using front and rear castings in this way was a natural choice because there were so many extra ones, they needed a good place to put them!

Tesla Gigafactory main entrance Cyber Rodeo, credit: Elon Musk

Seats Exhibit: Fully Assembled at Gigafactory Texas

At Tesla, the first and second-row seats are fully assembled right at the gigafactory.

Model Y Seats assembly exhibit sign and photo by G. Alfar at Gigafactory Texas, April 7, 2022

The Tesla Model Y seat exhibit was presented in three parts. Part One shows the pretensioner, two side shields, seat buckle, suspension, sandwich, wire harness, happy basset, and ocs. Part Two reveals the Model Y seat back cover, trim, headrest, back frame, lumbar support, seat cushion, and seat frame. Part Three reveals the Tesla “T” in an incredible display of fully assembled seats.

Model Y Seats assembly exhibit photo by G. Alfar at Gigafactory Texas, April 7, 2022

A Symphony of Seats

Model Y Seat exhibit photo by G. Alfar at Gigafactory Texas, April 7, 2022

After Model Y seats are assembled and inspected, they come together as part of the structural battery as seen here. Future parts of Cyber Rodeo Anthology will go into more detail on this miracle of manufacturing.

This article is Part #1 of a multi-part series titled Cyber Rodeo Anthology. Part #2 can be found here.

My thoughts

I chose to start “Cyber Rodeo Anthology” because the opening of Giga Texas marks a major shift in mass vehicle production capabilities. I want to spend time with you to understand how this “Machine that Makes the machine” works, and it will take multiple articles to do so.

I decided to start with my favorite parts of Giga Texas: Seats and Casting.

I agree with Elon Musk that chairs are underappreciated. The seats in the Tesla are incredibly comfortable!

Front & rear simultaneous casting begins here in Texas with Model Y. This difficult process had to be created to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.

I know you join me in having a deep respect for Elon Musk because he is doing phenomenal work to make our world a better place. Hope you enjoyed this first part!

Read the rest of this three-part series here:

Photo of Ladybird Lake in Austin by Trac Vu on Unsplash

Gail Alfar [edited by Sarah Alfar], Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – April 16, 2022 –  All Rights Reserved

Get Ready, Elon Musk’s Magnum Opus is Coming!

Gail Alfar3 Comments

Welcome back to my blog, I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s post. I’m posting most of Elon Musk‘s remarks given on April 7, 2022 at Gigafactory Texas at Cyber Rodeo.  The reason I am solely focusing on this is that I believe Elon’s words hold a lot of value. We all want a better future, and I hope reading this will inspire you to look toward a positive future for our world.  So relax and enjoy it and get ready for Elon’s Magnum Opus! 

Elon Musk at Cyber Rodeo with first production Roadster [photo courtesy Vinny Lingham]

Below is a transcription of Elon Musk’s words at Cyber Rodeo:

Welcome, welcome to Cyber Rodeo. Are you guys having a good time? 
We’re going to talk about the past, present, and future. This is the first production car Tesla ever made. It’s where we started. We started off with a very simple car, the Tesla roadster. We manufactured this thing, believe it or not, in an old car dealership in Menlo Park, California.

We made the powertrain, Lotus made the non-powertrain portion, and we did the final assembly and check out, literally in an old car dealership in Menlo Park! And here we are today, damn! 

Elon Musk at Gigfactory Texas Cyber Rodeo
When we first started out at Tesla, I thought optimistically there was a 10% chance of succeeding. When people say car companies are dumb, I’m like “I know.” But, thanks to the incredible work of the Tesla team, over many years, we got here.

So we now have, and it shows you where we are today, we’ve got the Model S, we’ve got the Model 3, we have the Model X, we’ve got the Model Y. We’ve got the most expensive joke in the world! But we did bring sexy back! 

Elon Musk
So we’ve got cars in major vehicle segments, we’ve got residential and commercial energy products. We’ve got powerwalls, Megapacks, yes, it’s insane! Thanks to the incredible work of the Tesla team, two thirds of the electric vehicles in the United States are made by Tesla and the hard work of the Tesla team.  This is Omead (Afshar). Omead has managed the construction of the Gigafactory here, thanks Omead! 

Elon Musk anounces that Full Self Driving beta may be released to all FSD customers by end of 2022

And we have full self-driving in Beta.  Does anyone here use the full self-driving beta? Great. You can really get a feeling for how much full self-driving is going to transform society. The car will be able to take you anywhere you want. Its ultimately ten times safer than if you were driving it yourself. It’s going to completely revolutionize the world. This is one of those things that comes along very rarely. The Tesla autopilot team and AI [Artificial Intelligence] team have done an incredible job solving real-world AI. We are aiming to go to wide beta for all FSD customers in North America this year. [applause] To the moon!

Giga Texas ushers in the new phase of Tesla’s future

This is now our sixth major factory. We are now on three continents. It’s great to have two major vehicle plants in North America. So, an Austin factory, and China, and one in Europe that I was just at recently. This is going to be a huge improvement for Tesla. It’s also going to be better for your environment. You want to make the cars for where the customers are, and not put them onto ships and over the oceans. It’s going to be way better to make cars locally. We are really entering a new phase of Tesla’s future, with six giant factories around the world, and scaling to extreme size, as you can see from this building, it’s not small. And this is also Tesla’s global headquarters. 

Why Austin? Actually, I asked the Tesla team. California’s great, we’re continuing to expand in California, but we ran out of room and so we need a place where we can be really big.
And there’s no place like Texas! 

Elon Musk
Gigafactory Texas Render [credit Tesla on youtube]

Elon Musk thanks Austin, Travis County, and all the builders

Here we are, we are 10 minutes from the airport, 15 minutes from downtown, a central logistics hub, and we’ve got access to awesome talent. Thank you Austin, thank you Travis County! 

It wasn’t easy building this humongous building and getting all of this equipment here. I just cannot express enough appreciation and gratitude for the Tesla team that built Giga Texas. let’s give them a hand! We went through the deep freeze, rain, quicksand, and incredibly fast build, it was very difficult, but it’s done.

I just cannot express enough appreciation and gratitude for the Tesla team that built Giga Texas. let’s give them a hand!

Elon Musk

Giga Texas is the machine that builds the machine

I want to give you a sense of the size of this thing. It’s not small. What we have here is, if you put the building on its side, it’s taller than the Burj Khalifa, that’s to scale. It’s equivalent to three pentagons. When a building is measured in units of pentagon, you know it’s quite large! This is the largest factory building in the world by volume. How many hamsters fit in it? [yells someone in the audience] I’m glad you asked that, according to our calculations, 194 billion hamsters could fit in this building!  

This is the machine that builds the machine, and it’s the latest version of the machine that builds the machine. I’ve said it before, that the factory is the product. You know, prototypes require imagination, and they’re not easy, but relative to production, prototypes are easy. Production is hard. And this building is the most advanced car factory that earth has ever seen. Alien Technology. You know a factory is advanced if it feels like an alien dreadnought landed!  

The team is doing great work in Fremont, California, but we took a lot of lessons and learned from that. The buildings were all separate, there was a lot of movement between the buildings, Think of us like a chip, an integrated circuit. You combine everything in one package, and now this is what you get. 

This is a case of raw materials coming in one side, they get formed into a cell, they get formed into a pack, then we cast the front and rear body.  The pack itself is structural, and the outcome is a finished product. So it’s raw materials in one side, and cars out the other side.
We’re building our own battery cells, we think the most advanced cell in the world, here at Giga Texas. All the footage you see here is from this factory and we think, over time, this will be the biggest cell factory in the world. 

Revolutionary manufacturing: Making a car out of three major parts

Largest casting machine ever made [photo by Gail Alfar at Gigafactory Texas]
Another major innovation is the structural pack. So we are basically bringing into fruition the things that we said we would do. We said we would basically make the car out of three major pieces. A real body casting and a structural pack with the cells themselves carrying the load. 

Just like in airplanes where the wing is a fuel tank in wing shape, with the new Model Y architecture, the cells themselves carry the load. And that results in a car that is lighter, has a smaller number of parts, costs less, and improves the crash performance. 

Its a safety advantage too. As I was saying, its revolutionary for car manufacturing to basically make your car out of three major parts. A cast rear, a structural pack, and a cast front. 

What you are looking at is the biggest casting machine ever made [see above photo]. And it’s kind of a crazy thing to make a car this way, it’s never been done before. When we were trying to figure this out, there were six major casting manufacturers in the world. When we called all six, five said no, and one said maybe. I was like, that sounds like a “yes!”  It was a lot of effort and great ideas from the team. We’ve made the world‘s biggest casting machine work very efficiently to create and radically simplify the creation of the car.  Raw materials in, a bunch of stuff happens, and then car out. [audience screams, 'if you don’t make stuff there is no stuff']  Yes exactly, if you don’t make stuff there isn’t any stuff.
We are aiming, just with the Model Y program alone, to get to ½ million units a year and then we’re going to start manufacturing Cybertruck here next year. The Model Y line will be the highest capacity line, I think, of any line in the world. In fact, I’m confident it will be. Half a million units per year in a single factory of one product is the biggest thing in the world. Definitely, this will be the highest volume car factory in America.  

Cybertruck always looks like CGI in real life, but that is not CGI, that is an actual Cybertruck driving around. I can’t wait to have this baby in production, it’s going to be epic!  

Tesla has a long road ahead

Elon Musk explaining bar chart showing Tesla has 1% of total vehicle output in the world [cr: Tesla]
Tesla is growing at the fastest pace of any large manufacturing object in history. In twelve months, we’ve delivered over a million cars worldwide. 

Now that said, there’s still a long way to go because that red bar chart is Tesla and then the blue is global vehicles. So you can see, even though we did one million cars in the last twelve months, we’re still maybe, a little over 1% of total vehicle output in the world. We want to try to get to, I don’t know, about  20% or as much as we can, to move the needle. 

This is why scale matters. In order to make a really big difference to sustainability, we have to make a lot of cars, we have to make a lot of stationery packs, to transition the world to sustainable technology as quickly as possible.

What’s next? Futuristic Robotaxis and an Age of Abundance

Sunset Optimus by Ryan on Twitter
What’s next?  I’m not going to spill all the beans right now. What I can say, is we’re going to move to just a truly massive scale. Scale that no company has ever achieved in the history of humanity. 

That has to happen, in order to transition the world to sustainable energy. Massive scale, full self-driving, there’s going to be a designated Robotaxi that’s going to look quite futuristic. 

And, of course, we’ve got the Tesla robot, Optimus and this is, I think, Optimus will obviate what an economy really means. Basically, anything that humans don’t want to do, Optimus will do it.

It’s going to be an age of abundance. It may be hard to imagine it, but as you see Optimus develop, and everyone will make sure it’s safe, no terminator stuff or that kind of thing, but it’s really going to transform the world, I think to a degree even greater than the cars. And, I think we have a shot at being in production, for version one of the Optimus, hopefully, next year.  And then Cybertruck is coming next year.  We will be in production of Cybertruck next year. We will be in production with the Roaster and with Semi. So, that’s all coming. So this year is all about scaling up, and then next year there’s going to be a massive wave of new products. 
And now, let us deliver our first Tesla cars made in Texas! [numerous Model Y drive onto the stage]

Elon Musk Calls Cybertruck his and Franz’s Magnum Opus – A Masterpiece, the greatest work of a person’s career

Cybertruck drives onstage, “What have we here, Franz, is there anything you want to say about the Cybertruck?” says Elon.

“Cybertruck is going to be awesome, I mean you see it here, you’ve seen it before, you’ve seen it over there [points] it’s worth the wait, believe me. There is no other truck, everything else pales in comparison. This is the only one you need!”  says Franz

“I think this will be our magnum opus, you can see some of the changes we made already, there are no handles. Who needs handles? The car can tell that you’re there, and it just knows that it needs to open. I think we’re going to have an incredible Cybertruck product for you next year. it’s going to blow your mind. 

“I can’t wait to build this here and deliver them to you, sorry for the delay. It’s been an intense couple of years but we’re gonna have this for you next year, and it’s going to be great. Its, going to be one kick-ass product after another. Starting next year, and then, some cool stuff that we haven’t even talked about, so let’s see, thanks again for coming. 

“I hope you’re having a great time. Here at Tesla, we believe in throwing great parties. So, let’s get this party started! Have a fantastic time tonight, I love you guys! 

Royal display of Fireworks by Tesla to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and No. 9, Allegro Con Brio and Ode to Joy [photo by Gail Alfar at Gigafactory Texas]

Cybertruck drives off stage with Elon Musk and Franz von Holzhausen. This is accompanied by a royal display of impressive fireworks. The music choice is loud and important-sounding: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 Allegro Con Brio followed by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Ode to Joy.

My thoughts

Elon Musk’s celebration was larger than life for a good reason. The impact on our world by Giga Texas and its processes will be epic. The road ahead is very long and difficult. The beautiful inspiration of Cyber Rodeo will remain in our hearts for many years to come! I am thankful I could attend the event in person. It will take weeks to process the deep resonance of the event. That will come with time. I look forward to sharing more soon. Meanwhile, enjoy your beautiful life!

Want to read more excellent articles? I suggest…

Gail Alfar, Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – April 10, 2022 –  All Rights Reserved

Tesla in Europe is a Gemstone

Gail Alfar1 Comment

Welcome back to my blog. This past week, Tesla started delivering the first Model Ys following the opening of Giga Berlin-Brandenburg.  

The new German-made Model Y has been handed over to customers in Germany as well as in Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, and Italy.  Soon customers all over Europe will celebrate receiving their Model Ys.

Tesla Model Y delivery in Denmark [credit Lars Strandrider]

Elon Musk compares Giga Berlin to a gemstone for Germany, Europe and the world

These were Elon Musk’s first words when he addressed guests at the Delivery Day event on March 22, 2022.

“And to the community, Tesla will make sure that this is a gem — a gemstone for the area, for Germany, for Europe, and for the world. Every vehicle that we make will be another step in the direction of a sustainable energy future. We will also make battery storage. So this is going to be very important for storing renewable energy — so, for solar and wind. Because it’s intermittent, it needs to be stored, but we’re extremely confident that the world will transition to a sustainable energy future with the combination of solar, plus battery storage, and electric vehicles.”

Elon Musk

German Model Y is High Quality

Alex Voigt, a Munich-based blogger, engineer, and BEV Enthusiast was invited by Tesla to attend Giga Berlin Delivery Day. Alex has spent significant time examining vehicle build quality from Teslas built in California, Shanghai, and now, Berlin. Alex says,

    “What I can say is the cars from Giga Berlin have the best quality, obviously they’ve been selecting them carefully so there is no doubt about it, not every car made it, but if you look at the panel gaps and the paint and all the details, it’s by a large margin the best quality I’ve seen so far from Tesla.

    I know the critical areas for instance at the charging port but also other places where usually you have fit and finish problems, regardless if you go inside or outside I definitely couldn’t find any flaws.”

Alex and other people I spoke with observed that it appears Tesla has chosen black paint, the most difficult color to paint a car because if you are excellent at painting black, you can be good at about any color.  I asked my friend Johnna Crider, writer for Clean Technica, for her opinion on the video that Alex created. She compared the Model Y in the sunlight to the gemstone black obsidian. Johnna custom wraps gemstones. Getting Stoned is her online store. Here is the video she watched, see what you think,

Link to video on twitter by Alex Voigt

Elon Musk makes it clear that he considers Giga Berlin to be a gemstone for the world.  The analogy is significant.  Gemstones are something that is both sought after and protected by humans.  Here’s what Johnna Crider had to say about this in her article for Clean Technica,

    When we think of something precious, we often compare that thought to rare gems, minerals, or something of high value.

    And what is more valuable than a fully sustainable future, a goal that Tesla and its employees globally, including Elon Musk, seem to be passionately working toward?

    This is worth more than any beryl, corundum, carbon (diamond or rare shungite), or natural Moissoanite from a meteorite. We can’t enjoy these gems or life if we are not here — or if we don’t have a planet with the capabilities of supporting human life. Right now we have a planet, but our dependence on fossil fuels is wreaking havoc on our environment.

    And I’m not naive to think that mining the actual gems and minerals doesn’t have an effect. In the end, people with good hearts and who passionately care about our world do what we can to help as well as what we can to offset our own negative impacts.
Giga Berlin Model Y manufacturing [credit: Tesla]

My feeling is that our world needs Tesla in order to make the transition to sustainable energy as fast as possible. Tesla makes cars that are better than all other cars, regardless if they are electric or not.

Other vehicle manufacturers are acutely aware they will need to mass-produce cars as good as Tesla in order to survive.

The transition to all-electric vehicles is imminent, and that’s worth celebrating.

Gail Alfar, [edited by Sarah Alfar], Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. April 2, 2022

Elon Musk Speaks on Giga Berlin Delivery Day 

Gail Alfar1 Comment
“Tesla will make sure that this is a gem, a gemstone for the area, for Germany, for Europe, and for the world” – Elon Musk [photo courtesy Tesla Welt Podcast]

Welcome back to my blog, I hope you’ll enjoy this week‘s post. I am posting part of Elon Musk‘s speech given on March 22, 2022 at Giga Berlin Brandenburg. The reason I am focusing on his speech in this blog post is that I believe it is a historically significant speech.  It contains a roadmap for the future of our world as we transition away from fossil fuels and into a clean energy future, involving solar, wind, and battery storage and electric vehicles.

Elon’s speech inspires us to look towards a more positive future. So grab a warm blanket, a good beverage, and enjoy! 

Thank you for your hard work which has led to this great day, and it was amazing to see how excited the customers were to receive their cars. It was just super good vibes and it bided very well for the future of Giga Berlin Brandenburg. 

I think it’s worth remembering that every car that we make is a step in the direction of a sustainable future. The thing about this factory and the cars that we make is that it gives people hope about the future and it’s like it’s very important to have reasons to be excited about the future. Often people are depressed or sad about the future because they think it won’t be good but what we’re doing here is with every car we make, with every battery we make, we’re making the future better. So what you are doing really matters, it makes a difference.

“I’m sort of working on the Master Plan Part 3”

Elon Musk
I’m sort of working on the Master Plan Part 3. Yes, it’s going to be good. But a huge part of that is scaling to high volume. So in order for us to really affect the world in a positive way- because we get a lot of press, we get a lot of attention- but say how many vehicles have we made as a percentage of total vehicles in the world? Because there are 2 billion vehicles in the world. Well, so far, we’re actually well below 1% and not even 1/2 a percent. So, it’s essential for us to really affect the future in a positive way. We have to make a lot of cars. It’s the only way. So that’s why we call it a Gigafactory, it’s very big.  

We’re starting off with the Model Y and we’re going to do a number of exciting additional vehicles here. So I think this overall is going to be a center of excellence for sustainable energy in general, and it’s really going to help the world. I look forward to doing it with you and once again, thanks for everything!

“At Tesla, we really try to do the right thing. We want to be a company that you can believe in, in your heart and soul.”

Elon Musk
In addition to the work that we do here, we also inspire and encourage the rest of the industry to go towards electrification. I think it’s fair to say that without Tesla, without the work that the Tesla team has done, the rest of the industry would not be moving so quickly towards electrification. That’s also why we open-sourced our patents. We have made our patents freely available to the other car makers, because it was the right thing to do.  No other company has done that far as I know. At Tesla, we really try to do the right thing. We want to be a company that you can believe in, in your heart and soul. In order to do that, we must be a company that does the right thing.

In response to a question about when Tesla would go to South America, and maybe some other markets, Elon stated,

We definitely want to go to the world, the challenge we have right now-  it’s a high-class problem - the orders we have are well in excess of our production, so sometimes people will say, “why aren’t you in all these other markets and why don’t you make all these other different versions of the product like different cars like where is the Tesla semi-truck and the Cybertruck and the Roadster?”  The challenge we have is that our orders far exceed our production, so, you know… ‘ A high-class problem.’ But we need to have our production get to the point where it exceeds our current orders and then it makes sense to expand to additional markets and to have additional products. Because, if we add complexity and we don’t add production volume, then we’ve not actually done anything more. 

The good is a function of how many vehicles we are able to make. As we are able to ramp up production and satisfy demand in our existing markets, then we will expand to other markets and we will also add additional products. Last year there were a lot of supply chain challenges with chips, everyone knows about the chip shortage. This year there are still some chip shortages. Next year, I think will be a challenge with total battery production. Certainly, if you start going, like 2 to 3 years out, it’s all about how many gigawatt-hours of battery are produced. That will be the limiting factor. 

And then going even further down into the supply chain, what is the right battery materials that are being mined and refined? And obviously, you want to do that in an environmentally sensitive way. In the grand scheme of things is “how many terawatt hours of battery can be produced per year.”  Our rough calculation is that about 300 TWHR  is needed to transition the world to a sustainable energy economy. This is a lot of batteries basically. So we want to try to do as much of that as possible. I think we are doing a pretty good job, we are growing by 70% to 80% per year on average and maybe even faster than that in the future. So that is, I think, the answer to ‘why not more markets, and why not more products?’

When asked what he was most proud of, Elon responded,

I am most proud of the amazing work done by the Tesla team, to scale at the rate that we are scaling and make compelling products that people love. You know, you think about, how many products can you buy that you really love? It’s so few, you know, and it would be great if people made more products that you love.

“At Tesla, we really focus on making products that people love.”

Elon Musk
And Tesla is a rare company that actually makes products you love. It brings you joy every day, that’s great.  If you look at our rate of growth, Tesla is the fastest-growing company in history that makes a large manufactured product. So the next fastest was the Ford Model T and that was 100 years ago and we are actually growing faster than the Ford Model T, which is crazy!

Elon Musk explains Giga Berlin Model Y will be offered in a deep complex red and liquid silver

With respect to colors, which colors will be available from this factory? 

Colors are always a challenge because when you think about You do not only need to manufacture it but you need to service it and fix it for like 20 years. You have to think about what are we going to put the service team through? You know, managing all these colors? So we have to be careful with a total number of colors but, we obviously are going to make some special colors here because  - and it’s more than just color itself but it’s the layers of paint to get the dimensionality -  we’re going to make a really special red, which I think a lot of people have seen. It’s like 13 layers of paint. The layers give you dimensionality. It makes the color look deep and complex. and then we will also have silver. It will have maybe eight layers, and it’s going to be really special. Like kind of liquid silver and a deep red. A deep complex red. In a few months, we will make this special deep dark red and quicksilver. 

I think it will be the best paint on any production car that is not made for a show or something like that.  And you have to design the paint job especially for 13 steps.

Elon answered questions about battery composition, as well as when FSD beta might come to Europe, 

I think will be ready to show it to regulators in the European Union, maybe in two or three months. But then we have got to do quite a lot of work for all of the special use cases in Europe. As you know, the roads vary quite a lot by country. The road rules, and the way the lines are painted, are different. And then you have to recognize all the different languages. It’s quite difficult to do full self-driving in Europe. Much more complex than say, the USA or Canada. There are a lot of little tricky things, the rules are not the same. But I think, probably, we can start doing FSDbeta maybe later this year in Europe. Depending on regulatory approval. Things are different in the USA, in the USA, things are legal by default. In Europe, they are illegal by default.
So, we have to get approval beforehand, whereas in the USA, you can do it on your own cognizance, more or less.

But as for what the next target is, Elon responded

I guess the next target is, to really scale production this year, and try to make as many cars as we can. We want to complete the development of the Cybertruck and be ready for production next year. Hopefully, have enough battery pack capability to start the Tesla semi-truck. Hopefully, we may complete the engineering of the new roadster, and then there are some future products that are also pretty important. There’s also stationary storage, new versions of the Tesla solar roof and Powerwall 3. There are a lot of things. So we have a very exciting product pipeline.

When asked what makes him happy, Elon responded with,

“It makes me happy to see you guys happy“

Elon Musk

There was a question from the audience was about production capacity and Elon responded,

Twenty million cars in 10 years. And that would be a good number because there are 2 billion cars and trucks in the world that are in active use. So 20 million would be one percent of the global fleet per year.

Waving goodbye, Elon said,

“Thanks again guys, love you.”

Elon Musk

This was my eleventh blog post and one of my favorite.  I am extremely thankful that Tesla Giga Berlin-Brandenburg is open and producing wonderful electric vehicles.  Each vehicle will bring happiness and joy to its owners.  I have owned a Tesla since December 2019, and I love driving it around Austin.  I went to see Gigafactory Texas a few days ago, and I am very excited about the future of electric vehicles made in Texas.  I hope to learn more about both Gigafactories over time. I know that you also share this enthusiasm with me and many others.  We are truly living in exciting times. 

Elon Musk delivers an inspiring speech at Giga Berlin Brandenburg [credit Tesla]

Gail Alfar, [edited by Sarah Alfar], Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. March 26, 2022