On December 9th, American news program 60 Minutes on CBS aired an interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk conducted by renowned journalist Lesley Stahl. Stahl has been the host of CBS 60 Minutes since 1991 and is one of the most well-known journalists in the United States.
In 2008, she conducted an interview with then-Tesla Chairman Elon Musk about the delivery of their first electric sports car, the Roadster. Ten years later, the production of the Model 3 once again put Tesla’s entire destiny at risk. What will be different in this interview?
Translated by Garage Number 42 with original meaning preserved. Enjoy it.
Elon Musk: 60 Minutes Interview
Elon Musk, CEO of electric car company Tesla, is known as a genius and a dreamer, but this year his controversial behavior has garnered more attention than his talent. He has some self-destructive stories: tweeting erratically and smoking marijuana in public. The 47-year-old billionaire said 2018 was “an incredibly difficult year” and “the most painful year of his career.”
Fourteen years ago, when he became a co-founder of Tesla, he had no experience in the automotive industry. His dream was to make cars that wouldn’t harm the environment to save the earth, but this year Elon had to save his company. Tesla has almost always been losing money, with debt of several billion dollars, and cash flow has been greatly outflowing. Everything depends on the company’s ability to produce new mass-market vehicles: the Model 3, a lower-priced “car for the people.”
But this summer, when Elon entered what he called “Production Hell,” to make as many Model 3s as possible, he worked tirelessly day and night and began to behave, well, a little strangely.
LS: Some people say that without you, Tesla would be bankrupt, and then …
Elon: Oh, I don’t think so, no.
LS: Some people say that because of you, Tesla will eventually go bankrupt.
Elon: Ahahaha, that’s hilarious.
LS: They say your impulsive behavior this summer was not like a CEO.
Elon: First of all, I’m a little impulsive, and I don’t want to follow the typical CEO’s way of doing things.He did do that, especially this year, he began to provoke unnecessary disputes on social media. He called the Thai cave rescuer a “Pedo”, sold 20,000 flamethrowers online, and openly smoked marijuana on podcasts.
LS: What about smoking marijuana?
Elon: Well, I’m not a regular smoker of weed. I don’t actually notice any effect…but I’m not sure I’d be here if I smoked some weed then. It’s not like I find that it’s very good for productivity. That’s definitely a problem.
LS: And some of these words around you this summer: bizarre, unstable, erratic, melodramatic.
Elon: Melodramatic, that sounds pretty good. I like that one. I’m just being me. I mean, I went through severe emotional pain, but I didn’t express that. Instead, I expressed myself by working a lot, and by putting my energy into making Tesla successful, and SpaceX successful, and boring successful, and Neuralink successful, and solving the problem of sustainable energy. That’s what I focused on.
LS: And that’s what you’ve been focusing on now?
Elon: Yeah.
LS: But you’ve tweeted a lot.
Elon: I use my tweets to express myself.
LS: Yes, my god.
Elon: Some people use their hair to express themselves, I use Twitter.
LS: Oh, but you also use Twitter to clap back at the critics.
Elon: Very rarely.
LS: You’ve had some run-ins with some media.
Elon: Twitter is a warzone, if somebody jumps in the warzone, it’s like, “OK, you’re in the arena.”
In August of this year, his tweet about taking Tesla private at $420 sparked a firestorm on Twitter. He wrote, “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.”
The SEC then questioned his statement and charged him with securities fraud. The case was eventually settled, and Elon agreed that his communication with the company, including tweets, would be overseen by the board of directors.
LS: After the settlement, will your tweets be reviewed before you post them?
Elon: No.
LS: No? Does anyone get to preview them before you post them?
Elon: No.
LS: So there’s no oversight of your tweets?
Elon: The only tweets that would have to be, say, reviewed, would be if a tweet had a probability of causing a movement in the stock.
LS: That’s it?
Elon: Yeah. Essentially anything that would be a material impact on the company, I think, is obviously something that would get reviewed.Elon: Well, I think we might make mistakes too, who knows.
LS: Are you serious?
Elon: Nobody’s perfect. I want to clarify one thing: I do not respect the SEC, I do not respect them.
LS: But you’re complying with the agreement, aren’t you?
Elon: Because I respect the U.S. judicial system.
He had to give up his position as chairman of the Tesla board, which was taken over by Tesla board member Robyn Denholm.
Robyn Denholm (left four)
LS: Did you personally choose her?
Elon: Yes.
LS: The impression is that she was sent to watch over you.
Elon: Well, that’s not realistic. What I mean is that I’m the largest–
LS: Like a babysitter.
Elon: I’m the largest shareholder of the company, that’s just not realistic. I can initiate a shareholder vote and do whatever I want.
LS: Do you still want to be chairman of the board?
Elon: No, I don’t want to. In fact, I prefer to have no title at all.
Whether or not he has a title, there are things that are more important than life to Elon. He has a group of followers. As one of Silicon Valley’s most successful and talented entrepreneurs, he has not only created powerful rockets with reusable boosters but also launched a record-breaking 64 satellites into orbit. He is digging a tunnel deep underground to combat traffic jams. He even opened a company for every project.
LS: Do you have a lot of money? Did your family give you a lot of money to start all this?
Elon: No.
LS: You grew up in South Africa.
Elon: Yes. But I left South Africa at the age of 17. I brought a backpack of clothes and a box of books. That’s it.
LS: Was your childhood happy?
Elon: No, it was too terrible.
LS: Are you serious?
Elon: Yes.
LS: Why was it so bad?
Elon: Full of violence. It’s not a happy childhood.
LS: I know you were bullied in school.
Elon: I almost got beaten to death, if you call it being bullied.
Elon: My father had a serious problem.
LS: Okay, so you didn’t have a happy childhood.
Elon: No.Undoubtedly, as an adult, he is a warrior determined to succeed and prove everyone wrong. Like this year, he launched a battle to stop Tesla from going bankrupt by increasing the production capacity of the latest electric car Model 3 under Tesla. In California, he painfully fought against all his opponents and critics.
Elon: There is ruthless criticism, ruthless, shameless, and unfair. Because what is happening here is an incredible American success story. All these people work day and night to achieve this goal. They believe in the dream, and it is a story that should be widely publicized.
The story is how he set and achieved a production target of 5,000 cars/week, and pushed Tesla to profitability. But these efforts almost bankrupted the company.
Elon: If you work hard for the set target, you know, 1000% higher than anything you have ever done before, then you must bet the fate of the entire company on this goal. There is no other choice.
LS: In other words, if you don’t achieve the goal, will Tesla die?
Elon: It’s either live or die. We burn 50 million dollars a week, sometimes 100 million dollars. We’re out of money.
LS: Losing 100 million dollars a week?
Elon: Yes, it’s terrible.
His two final assembly lines were not fast enough to manufacture cars. Failure was imminent until he ushered in a highlight moment: creating a third final assembly line in a big tent in the Tesla parking lot.
Elon: Everything you see here is the miracle of the Tesla team building the final assembly line from scratch in just three weeks.
LS: Built from scratch in three weeks.
Elon: Yes. So, if you look at it from the perspective of the traditional car industry, those who firmly believed that Tesla would go bankrupt were right. But they didn’t consider this unconventional situation, building a final assembly line in a tent in a parking lot.
LS: This is a do-or-die sprint.
Elon: It increased our production capacity by 50%.
Elon is an expert in automation. So, his original final assembly line was filled with robots, but the robots kept breaking down. Walking through this new final assembly line in the tent, you only see humans. He wrote on Twitter: “Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, it was my mistake. Humans are underrated.”
Elon: Humans are better than robots at dealing with unexpected situations, as you know.
He pushed Tesla workers to strive for the deadline of 5,000 vehicles per week, but he pushed himself even harder, troubleshooting and repairing production line capacity issues day and night in the factory workshop.
Elon: “There was one week where I worked 120 hours, there was no time off, I didn’t even go outside the factory. I want people to understand that no matter how hard work may be on them, the hardest worker of all is me.”
The efforts of the Tesla team paid off: Tesla announced its first profit in years in October. The electric sedan Model 3 can accelerate from 0 to 96 km/h in 3 seconds, and has a range of 300 miles on a single charge.
Elon showed us the Autopilot feature: autonomous driving.
LS: “But for now, you’re driving?”
Elon: “Yeah.” (One second later) “But I’m not now.”
LS: “You’re not driving now?”
Elon: “Not involved.” (Neither) “hands nor feet.”
LS: “So do you feel safe?”
Elon: “Yeah.”
Just as I was slowly getting used to automatic driving–
Elon: “It’s not me, it’s changing lanes by itself.”
LS: “Oh! Oh my god.” (Laughs)
Elon: “Yeah, it’s pretty wild.”
Another wow-worthy thing is the price of the Model 3 – only $35,000. This is a goal that has not yet been achieved: the starting price is around $49,000 and if you choose some customization packages like most users, the price will quickly reach $60,000.
LS: “This is not an affordable car for everyone, which is what you originally set out to do.”
Elon: “It’s pretty close. We’re not that far from being able to produce a $35,000 car, probably within five or six months to start producing it.”
LS: “Okay. Good job. So you’ve set a new deadline, right? Five to six months.”
Elon: “That’s just my guess.”
LS: “Okay. This is not–“
Elon: “This is not a promise – or, God forbid, a death wish.”LS: You are known to be fond of setting goals for yourself that no one thinks you can complete on time, and in fact, you often do not complete them on time. I just want to know why you like to do that?
Elon: Well, I would say punctuality is not my strong suit. I mean, I’m thinking, why do people think that just because I’ve been late on all my other projects, suddenly, on this project, I’m going to come in on time?
LS: Opponents say you are lying, that’s how they see it.
Elon: “People shouldn’t ascribe to malice that which is easily explained by stupidity.” (laughs) So, it’s like, just because I’m dumb about predicting dates doesn’t mean I’m untruthful. I mean, I don’t know, we’ve never made a mass-production car before. How can I possibly know when it’s going to get done?
He also has to deal with complaints about conditions at Tesla factories.
LS: There are some unreported allegations of workers being injured, long working hours, and poor working environment.
Elon: Well, what’s emphasized is that UAW (United Automobile Workers) has been inciting workers to carry out an intense campaign, using a bunch of nonsense noise to attack Tesla and force the Tesla factory to join the union.
LS: So you think they are instigating these accusations?
Elon: Yes. It’s complete nonsense.
LS: The California press and regulatory agencies are conducting some investigations into work-related accidents. Toxic smoke, work injuries, and over 100 ambulance calls.
Elon: I don’t think that’s true. I personally live in the factory. If these things were true – toxic smoke – then I’m breathing them, right, is that possible?
But there are other questions. A group of executives and engineers have left this year, and Tesla still has billions of dollars in debt. Yet Tesla is still expanding, with competitor General Motors announcing plans to cut around 14,000 employees and close idle factories.
LS: Are you going to buy those factories, those that are being closed by them?
Elon: We might be interested. If they’re going to sell the factory or abandon it, we’ll take it over.
General Motors also announced that it will double its investment in the development of electric vehicles, and Elon is celebrating.
LS: Why are you eager to compete?
Elon: The whole point of Tesla is to accelerate the advent of electric vehicles and sustainable transport and to try to reduce the impact of the transportation sector and energy sector on the environment. We think that’s the most serious problem that humanity faces. I don’t know if you know this, but we opened up all our patents, so anybody that wants to use our patents can use them for free.LS: Is your patent open source?
Elon: Yes. If someone can make a much better electric car than Tesla and we go bankrupt because we can’t sell our cars, I still think it’s a good thing for the world.
LS: So you can still sleep at night.
Elon: Yes, because someone has made some really great cars. Hmm, yes.
Autopilot 9.0 release, Tesla’s first step towards Level 4.
Elon Musk and Tesla, can they reshape the way cars are manufactured?
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.