JUST RECORDED: Elon Musk Drops News About CyberCab, FSD and Optimus

Welcome Elon and thanks for taking the time. I really understand that time is precious. There's a ton of things to do to build a world of amazing abundance and so many things I can hardly imagine what's on your mind SpaceX, Starlink, AI, safe AI for the future, autopilot, so many things. But what is in your view still exciting about Tesla and why? Well I think Tesla is one of the most exciting companies in the world. You know it's perhaps the most exciting but you know Tesla and SpaceX let me say are the two most exciting companies. So we're you know we're obviously expanding production, making more cars, we're gonna you know we're gonna roll out Tesla full self-driving which is really an AI driven car. So it's Tesla AI software that that drives the car just by looking like a human does. So Tesla has the most advanced real-world AI and hopefully it will be approved soon in Europe. We're told by the authorities that March 20th it'll be approved in the Netherlands was what I was told. Hopefully that date remains the same. But I think people in Europe are gonna be pretty blown away by how good the Tesla car AI is and in being able to drive. So and I think this year really it will be the case that you from a technical standpoint you'll be able to fall asleep in the Tesla and wake up at your destination. So that's very exciting. We've got the Optimus program which is gonna be the first humanoid robot and I think you know sometimes people say well what would that be useful like well who wouldn't want their own personal C3PO R2D2 but even better. You know and you can think of like all the reasons like you know do you want someone do you need a robot to you know take care of your kids or walk the dog or you know take care of elderly parents or something like that then Optimus can do those things. So that's very exciting and yeah yeah we're gonna be starting production of the Tesla cyber cab here at Geely, Texas. We have started production I should say but we'll go to scale production in April or start pulling production April and have significant production towards the end of the year and you know if things go well we would probably manufacture cyber cab in Europe as well and also manufacture Optimus in Europe. So we've got the Tesla semi coming up so the Tesla heavy truck and that will be going to Europe hopefully next year. There's so many things happening it's a long list. It's a long list to make it an exciting company. Yeah and battery cell production. We're gonna start making battery cells at Giga Berlin. We have the Tesla lithium refinery that started up in Texas and the Tesla nickel cathode refinery that's started up here in Austin. It's really this year is a tremendous number of things. We've got five factories starting volume production this year. Five major production lines. We look forward to extending that to Europe as well. And I guess looking a little bit back Tesla hasn't done anything less but really transforming a whole industry. I think without us taking that brave step or Tesla taking a brave step to electrify mobility the industry wouldn't be where it is today. What would you want people to say about Tesla let's just say in 10 or 20 years from now? In 20 years I'd say Tesla's got factories on the moon actually. Basically I see a very prosperous future for Tesla. It's difficult to predict anything in 20 years but if you say like I think five years to ten years I could say Tesla has an extremely bright future. And I would say like hold on to your Tesla stock you know it's gonna be worth a lot I think you know. That's my bet. Very cool. Coming back to the present if you look I mean you're always very well informed if you look to the European industry especially to the automotive sector or even the German industry and automotive sector and what do you think about it? What do you believe are the main reasons for their current state? Well I think there's not been enough innovation in automation. Automotive innovation has been relatively low. So the cars that are being produced are very much like the cars that were produced five years ago. There's not they're not big differences. You know I've said for a long time really that the automotive industry I said this for 20 plus years needs to go towards electrification. And this would be true even without environmental concerns. So it's just an electric vehicle is a fundamentally better architecture than a gasoline combustion vehicle. It is much simpler. It is more efficient. It's quieter. There's no pollution within cities. So really all ground transport should be electric. And I think all ships and eventually all planes should be electric. But the automotive industry has strongly resisted electrification. They've dragged their feet and they had to be pushed there by government. And then whenever they've had any opportunity to reduce the production of electric vehicles they've done so. So this is just this is not a good strategic. It doesn't make sense. And also making vehicles autonomous is critical. Like I think it was like 10 years ago I said that you know in the future any vehicle that is not electric and autonomous like if you're riding a vehicle you have to drive yourself that is gasoline powered it's gonna be like riding a horse and using a flip phone. Which is to say that there's still some people somewhere that ride horses but not zero horses. It's just rare. And some people somewhere are still using flip phones but there's not many you know. It's gonna be a niche thing. So the future does not contain combustion vehicles and there will be very few vehicles that are not autonomous. The future is autonomous electric vehicles. Sure. And so if the automotive industry does not move in that direction they will be left out. So it doesn't really sound like we should or could even be learning much from the legacy automakers. And I guess it really sounds like we should be focusing on us and what we believe the future looks like right? Yes I mean there's you can always learn something from some competitor but the strategically they're just headed in the direction of the dinosaurs. So they're not headed for a good place you know dinosaurs are not around anymore. So they really we certainly are gonna we're going a very different path like you said electric autonomous is the obvious to me it's been blindingly obvious for you know 20 years plus. So but you know you can't sometimes with what I found with the competitors is in the automotive industry it's not that they're gonna steal our ideas you know. You can't cram a good idea down their throat okay. Like if you say like you must take this good idea it's like they're not gonna steal our ideas. They weren't even we can't even force feed them our good ideas. That's been my experience. So we need to do what's logical what's sensible and you know at Tesla we're essentially creating the future and it's a good future. We are building the future they just build cars. Yeah it's a good future it's a future with electric vehicles that don't emit poison gas literally. That quiet efficient and and and like said autonomous the car instead of having to be stuck in traffic driving through you know busy roads and you know sometimes also people sometimes they you know they may fall asleep or they may have a medical emergency and and then if you if you're driving yourself and you're on the Autobahn going super fast and you have like a you know a seizure or heart attack or something then you could die and but if you're the car's autonomous it can take you to a hospital. In fact this has actually happened many times with Tesla cars. Right really cool so if we if we look at gigabillion specifically but six years ago nearly we broke ground four years ago we started production I have a ton of memories I know you have memories about it as well and what are like the greatest memories what do you tell people when I ask you about gigabillion and the people of gigabillion? Well I mean first of all I'd like to say thank you very much to everyone that's helped build gigabillion yeah thank you Andre and thank you to the whole team because we've gotten an amazing factory built in a very short period of time and gotten to high volume production with good quality and good cost control so I'm very proud of the of gigabillion and all the people in it. Thank you. Yeah it's just it's cool I like the art too you know the art and that people have some fun you know so you know like coming to work should be you should look forward to it you know so you're coming to work with people that you enjoy working with you're doing useful things you're making things you know so I have a lot of respect for makers like you actually make something you build something useful build something useful that you know that that people enjoy that like I'm a big fan of makers and you know this there's a lot of people who I don't know they're like they don't make things I don't know they just hang around yeah they don't make things or they don't provide useful services whereas I like I think I'm I have huge respect for people who make things and provide useful services and there's an honest day's work you know so thank you yeah I mean I don't know if you do have but if you have a vision for Giga Berlin what would it be and what do you think would have to happen for it to become true? Yeah I think ideally we would significantly expand production at Giga Berlin so we would we'd also do high-volume production of battery cells probably also the cathode anode lithium so there's become vertically integrated and you know produce things like the cyber cab or optimus and other products that Tesla will develop so I think the exciting future vision for the future of Giga Berlin is massively expanding it to do many more projects. Very cool. Do you have any advice for the team at Giga Berlin to basically you know work towards a vision? Well things certainly get harder if there are sort of outside organizations that are pushing Tesla in the wrong direction if the outside organizations that are pushing Tesla in the wrong direction in Giga Berlin it's difficult to say that then we would expand if we have to you know outside organization yeah that's making things very difficult I mean I'm just this is the truth yeah it is the truth I mean we're not gonna shut down the factory but we're not gonna expand it either realistically so as I said I have a bunch of I have a bunch of questions so I just turn my tablet around and then yeah feel free to comment on them. Sure. Hi Elon, which is your favorite factory? Maybe Giga 4? Well you know a favorite factory is like saying what's your favorite child you know. It's not a fair question. It's a question. You know the thing is that I I love factories honestly it's you know I think a lot of people these days you know don't love factories or they haven't even been to a factory you know but whereas I've walked the line in you know every factory and I'm big fan of factories. I love factories. This is a great place to be. Yeah it's like you make things that have good utility people like love the product making a product building a product people love is that's great. Makes you proud. Yeah so Giga Portland is an awesome factory yeah so the vibe in there is cool like you walk around you know it's it's it's very clean it's like it's quite beautiful inside and outside and it's like people seem quite happy and we're making cars and soon battery cells you know hopefully many more things yeah many things to be proud of yeah yeah that's a great factory it is yeah all right I think it's one of the coolest factories in the world really honestly Hey Elon, which is the next product we will be building here in Giga Berlin? Well I I think there's a lot of exciting possibilities for that what next part is that will be built in Giga Berlin. We've started now building up production of the battery cell and we're going to be expanding production of the Model Y especially once we as we get approval for supervised full self-driving then from a product next major product standpoint I think most likely is the Tesla cyber cab but then there's also possibilities of Tesla Optimus and the Tesla semi-heavy truck so like Tesla has a lot of products coming out so there's a lot of potential I think if things go are looking good I think we would expand Giga Berlin to whatever the most that we could you know gigantic manufacturing so yeah we have a lot of space well assuming that the you know authorities are supportive and the people are supportive yeah then we would expand to probably make it the biggest factory complex in Europe very cool that's a cool future yeah all right then we have Akhil he's got a interesting question hi Elon so when do you realistically think we can have Optimus in the Giga factories so we don't have to worry about ergonomics and stuff well we have to be a little careful about that one I don't want people to worry about their job you know no so I mean the honest answer for AI and robotics is long-term working will be optional like long term you know which is 10 years from now or less work it will be optional like if you want to work you can like kind of like if you grow vegetables you can grow vegetables in your garden or you can get them from the store it's optional to grow vegetables in your garden yeah but some people still like to do it yeah it's extra work to grow your own vegetables but it's you know people enjoy the process that's gonna be how work is in the future it'll be like you can work if you want it very cool yeah how can we make sure that the adoption of new technologies like Optimus reach countries in the third world I think it's an interesting question generally well I think for Optimus we first have to succeed in making a useful robot so the this is a hard thing to solve nobody's solved making a truly useful humanoid robot and then you you have to make useful and you have to scale production and it's an entirely new supply chain you know the for Optimus we've had to design the whole robot from physics first principles so that we you know we're designing the every motor every gearbox or not a gearbox every gear really and the that the hands are extremely difficult to design to have a properly dexterous robot hand is very very difficult one of the hardest things to engineer so it's it's we actually first need to have at least one that is useful and then we can scale production and it's at first the tasks will be pretty simple that Optimus is and they will gradually get more sophisticated I think eventually Optimus could do medical work like it could do be a doctor be like us like do surgery and there's long-term potential for everyone in the world to have access to incredible medical care like better medical care than anyone receives today from humans so I think long-term like Optimus as a surgeon would be incredibly good super super competent and and everyone in the world would get better medical care than anyone currently in the world gets yeah hey Leon what advice would you give young people for life what advice would I give young people for life well I would say one thing is to be to err on the side of optimism to be optimistic about the future I think it's better to be it's better to err on the side of being optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right your quality of life will be much better so so I would urge people to be excited about the future I'm excited about the future I I'm confident the future will not be boring they put it that way it's gonna be very interesting and and I think it's like most likely to be great you know in terms of like general advice I mean I guess I advise people to like learn as much as possible read a lot of books try a lot of things and I guess you know I mean I guess enjoy life just enjoy life but like working is also part of enjoying life you know totally so find a job that you can actually enjoy yeah I think if if you will drive satisfaction from building things then like Tesla is an awesome place to be because we build things we make useful products and that's that's a great thing what is the most inspiring moment in your life you know I guess when my kids were born that would be the most inspiring moment you know in terms of work stuff I guess it's a when we had the first production Roadster at Tesla that was really it was like hard to believe that we actually made a car that passed all of the regulatory requirements and you could actually go on the road with it legally yeah because when we started out we didn't even know how to make a car and you know on the rocket side the first time getting to orbit was was a huge relief we're using you know getting the rocket to come back and land was very cool the self-driving stuff I think is pretty amazing it's amazing yeah the first time somebody experiences self-driving where they're just sitting there and the car takes them all the way from their home to their work and parks yeah it's mind-blowing it is I'm using it when I'm in the US all the time it is a lot better than people can actually imagine I think it's like magic it is yeah well cool then I thank you so much for your time really good having you here and yeah hopefully we see you soon in Berlin again yeah and show you around we have done since you visited us last time yeah and once again to you know the people of Giga Berlin dankeschön für eure harte Arbeit dankeschön thank you Elon thanks for your time cool that was fun