Author: Chang Yan
Undoubtedly, Musk is the most popular entrepreneur nowadays, whether it’s the title of the world’s richest person or the deeds of a startup idol, coupled with the sky-high decision of acquiring Twitter, he can make headlines in the media with every move he makes.
And this “Future of Cars” summit interview by the Financial Times is undoubtedly one of Musk’s most valuable recent sharing. After all, Musk’s sharing frequency has increased recently. However, it is necessary to have an appropriate time and a professional stage.
In terms of timing, the two major factories were put into operation one after another, the Twitter transaction came to an end, FSD became popular, and the Master Plan 3.0, which was conceived, is also about to be released. This is the key node that connects the past and the future.
On the stage, the Financial Times has almost captured all the CEOs of car companies that you can think of. This guest lineup can be said to be the highest combination that I can imagine in this industry except for the gathering of national leaders.
Musk also counts as a buy one get one free. At this stage, he appeared together with JB Straubel, the co-founder and former CTO of Tesla, which as the host said, is also the first time in the history of the media.
Making Tesla is Hard, Making Electric Cars is Even Harder
According to the host’s plan, this interview will include two parts:
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The history of Tesla’s entrepreneurship;
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Tesla’s past and present, and other topics related to Musk.
In the part of discussing Tesla’s entrepreneurial story, the two recalled a lot of stories about the difficulties of entrepreneurship.
At that time, they and other startup teams thought that they should do something that could change the future of transportation. After considering things like a spaceship and a hydrogen-powered plane, they gradually focused on producing electric cars powered by lithium batteries.
At that time, they test drove the T Zero electric vehicle built by Ac Propulsion. After obtaining the commercial authorization, they thought of using the chassis of the Lotus Elise and the powertrain of the T Zero to create a market-oriented electric vehicle, which later became the Roadster.
But it was far from being smooth sailing as it appears today.# Translation in English using Markdown
Elon Musk used two numbers to illustrate his “did not expect”: the final Roadster is 40% heavier than the Elise, and only 6% of the components are completely identical between the two cars.
JB added that the Roadster was almost a completely rebuilt car, and although the T Zero technology was very good, it could not be mass-produced.
He gave an example of how the powertrain set behaves completely differently in hot and cold weather.
Musk said that the decision to use the Elise as a chassis now seems unwise, the car is too small, the space given to the battery is not large, and it is also difficult to fit in.
Here, I think their summary of themselves can make people laugh out loud, they said they were “absolute fools and completely wrong.”
And they encountered more problems in the manufacturing process without experience in making cars.
They had to pay more to Lotus, which led to an increase in the cost of the car.
“The supply chain is completely chaotic,” they talked about how they ended up buying batteries from a BBQ company in Thailand, and finally decided to develop and produce their own batteries.
Therefore, when asked whether it is easier or harder to start an electric car startup today, Musk and JB both chose the “harder” answer.
Starting a car industry startup did not start now, it was the wave of electrification that made everyone pay attention to this trend. Musk said that there were hundreds of automotive startups in history, but they all died.
JB said that many companies are seeing Tesla 8-10 years later, they don’t know how difficult Tesla was in the first 8-10 years, and now startups need to understand where their segmentation is.
Musk talked about how starting a car company requires huge pain and finding “hard-coming money,” and he sees many new car companies jumping into the abyss and trying to produce large quantities of cars they have never made before.
Musk made an analogy, it’s like an untrained person going directly to participate in the Olympics – it’s really crazy.And he also mentioned that the reason why many people didn’t anticipate the difficulty of starting a car business is that they neglected the fact that the automotive industry is naturally a super-divisional industry. There will not be a giant that is self-sufficient like other industries. You naturally have to have relationships with many industries. This is also why automotive companies are not easy to operate.
Unfortunately, JB was asked to step down here. In an interview of one hour and 20 minutes, he only got 20 minutes of time.
What is Musk’s ultimate dream
As expected and reasonable, the interview with Musk began with Twitter.
Musk talked about his evaluation of Twitter: Twitter is currently the least bad public square; it does need to get rid of robots, scammers, etc.; it needs to establish more trust with users.
It was also at this point that he expressed his opinion on Twitter permanently banning Trump’s account: he thinks it is inappropriate.
Musk believes that unless it is proven that the account behind it is a robot, it should not be permanently banned. However, hiding a tweet or temporarily banning an account is a feasible approach.
Here, he said a phrase “Transparency can build trust”, and he said that he will open-source the Twitter algorithm on GitHub where anyone can give suggestions.
Finally, we can talk about cars.
The host asked a strange question that I think is whether you think acquiring Twitter will affect people’s purchase of Tesla?
Musk may also think it is strange, and he directly said that it won’t.
Then he explained: now people’s demand for Tesla is far greater than production capacity.
“Demand exceeds production capacity to an absurd degree. We may stop accepting orders after a period of time (due to long waiting times).”
Therefore, he thinks that he is not worried about Tesla’s sales at all, and he only cares about engineering and supply chains.
Tesla’s goal of producing 20 million electric cars in the year 2030 was repeatedly mentioned later, which means that Tesla will achieve the combined production capacity of the two giants Volkswagen and Toyota, and at least 20 factories are needed to support it.
Musk said that this is a vision, not a commitment.
“We may or may not achieve it.”The calculation method of this goal is that there are currently 2 billion working cars in the world, and Tesla wants to replace 1% of them in one year, which is equivalent to 20 million cars.
The important reason for setting such a goal, as he stated, is that he knows that the entire transportation industry on the earth can be driven by sustainable energy. Specifically, electric cars + energy storage batteries + solar/wind energy are enough to achieve this transformation.
“If you want to use solar energy to supply Europe with electricity, you only need a small piece of land in Spain; if you want to use solar energy to supply the United States, you only need a small piece of land in Utah/Texas.”
“Making the entire automotive industry switch to electric is what he wants to do.”
In this regard, Musk gave two important evaluations of Tesla’s achievements:
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Tesla’s current speed is faster than the classic Model T period;
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Tesla is faster than any large car manufacturer in history.
And Musk’s other wish is naturally the aerospace dream carried by SpaceX. He said, “I think we should be able to send unmanned spacecraft to Mars in 3 to 5 years; then maybe carry out a manned mission within this decade; we have made great progress in Starship and hope to launch it in 2-3 months. Starship will change the existing rules of the game.”
He even said that “Starship’s impact on the industry will be 1000 times greater than all other rockets combined.”
And all of these are things that Musk believes he is doing “for everyone.”
When asked how long he would continue to work at Tesla, Musk replied, “As long as I am useful (I will continue to work).”
Let’s Talk about China
This part is actually a bit inexplicable, and the host’s fox tail is exposed.
The first question was very gentle: How important is China to Tesla?
Musk said that China is an important market, “but in the long run, it may only account for 25-30% of Tesla’s market share, at most one-third.”
After that, the next two questions were clearly unfriendly towards China. The first one was, “Do you think China may intervene or ban Tesla because you have Twitter, as they have also banned Twitter?”
Musk only said one sentence, “I don’t see this sign.”The second question is how close is your relationship with the Chinese government? They modified the policy for sole foreign investment in car manufacturing just for you.
Musk said that while they did express disagreement with the requirement for a local partner to hold a 51% stake in joint ventures, the policy they were lobbying for was for all car companies, not just Tesla, and he added that “I think we’ve done reasonably well in China.”
At this point, the host turned the tables and asked Musk if he planned to build more factories in China.
Musk, looking to play it cool, said they weren’t currently planning on building new factories but would focus on expanding the Shanghai plant. He then shifted the conversation to new factories in Berlin and Texas, which he said would be production-focused and of higher value.
“Tesla is about to move at several times the pace of before,” Musk declared.
The host then asked two juicy questions: would Tesla build a factory in Indonesia, and would they build one in the UK?
Musk once again played it cool, saying it wasn’t appropriate to discuss the company’s plans in public.
Later on, China came up again twice. We’ll get to that in a moment.
“I think there are going to be some very powerful Chinese companies,” Musk said. “There are a lot of super talented and hardworking people in China with a strong belief in manufacturing.”
According to Musk, “They not only work until midnight, but they work until 3 a.m. and even sleep in the factory. In the US, people try to avoid going to work.”
Finally, the host persisted until the end, asking Musk why he had been so vocal in opposition to the closure of the Fremont plant while he had complied with the shutdown of the Shanghai plant. How did he view the issue?
Musk replied that he had opposed the Fremont plant’s closure because the US government was allowing other carmakers to continue operating while not allowing Tesla to do so despite having a better safety record. But in Shanghai, he said, the policy was citywide and fair.
Musk’s Odyssey
Following this segment, the show entered a quickfire round, and while the content was no less enthralling, it felt a bit like playing Super Mario Odyssey. The graphics were similar, and there was a sense of chaos. (The following is not 100% verbatim.)
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When do you think autonomous driving will reach human-level intelligence?1. Driving doesn’t require reaching the full level of human intelligence, and we are actually very close to achieving autonomous driving that achieves better safety levels than humans. My best guess is that we will reach that point this year. The progress has been dramatic.
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Tesla repeats the most important reminder to pay attention to safety. People whose lives are saved by Autopilot don’t know that their lives are saved; if you save 90% of people who would otherwise die, the remaining 10% who die will still sue you.
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Skateboards are very dangerous, and we don’t recommend anyone to ride them.
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Actually, Tesla has opened up all of our patents, but it is unlikely that OEM will use the Tesla platform. I am considering opening up Autopilot to other OEMs.
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Although Volkswagen is not a startup, they are similar in many ways. They have done many things, and we will encounter many powerful companies in China.
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I am not worried. In fact, the number of orders for Cybertruck has exceeded the total production capacity of the first three years.
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From the beginning, Tesla has been a software company rather than a hardware company. Our AI team is solving real-world problems, and I haven’t seen any other company doing this.
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No, on the contrary, we have already opened up supercharging in Europe and will soon expand it globally. It is a bit difficult to open up supercharging in the United States because our interface is different, but we will soon provide usable interfaces in the United States.
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My companies have different shareholder bases and different objectives, so I don’t think there is any benefit to combining them under a holding company. But some technology teams can collaborate with each other, such as Tesla and SpaceX both having the best material teams.“`
10、你觉得下一个交通世界的机会在哪？
答：我认为隧道交通被低估了，隧道永远不会让你失望。交通世界会转向 3D，比如飞行汽车和隧道交通什么的，隧道交通不是一层，可以是很多层。
11、为什么不看好垂直起降飞行器？
答：首先它的体积相比无人机大了很多，需要很大的空间，其次它的噪音很大，很多地方都会禁止，再次很容易受到恶劣天气影响。
12、特斯拉会进入采矿业或者收购一家矿场吗？
答：特斯拉有可能会进入采矿业，如果这是加速过渡（向可持续能源）的唯一途径，那么我们将这样做。
13、你会让你的孩子在特斯拉工作吗？
答：我的孩子说他们希望做自己的事情，我支持。他们想为自己做点什么，在这个世界上走自己的路；小 X 比我见过的任何孩子都更喜欢火箭。
最后，马斯克说的，特斯拉的未来，会超级强。
对于马斯克的这些思考及其引导下的行动，我们尤为钦佩。
毕竟也是在这次采访中，他说到：从周日到周一，我几乎都在工作，我基本不睡觉。
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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.