Elon Musk, great to see you. How are you?
Good. How are you?
I mean, we're here at the Texas Gigafactory the day before this thing opens. It's been pretty crazy out there. Thank you so much for making time. Very welcome. Busy day. I would love you to help us kind of cast our minds, I don't know, ten, twenty, maybe thirty years into the future and and help us try to picture what it would take to build a future that's worth getting excited about. You've often said it. The last time you spoke at Ted, you said that that was really just a big driver. It's you know, you talk about lots of other reasons to do the work you're doing, but fundamentally, you want to think about the future and not think that it sucks.
Yeah. Absolutely. I think in general, know, there's there's a lot of discussion of of, like, this problem or that problem, and a lot of people are sad about the future and and that they're pessimistic. And I think this is not great. I mean, really want to wake up in the morning and look forward to the future. We want to be excited about what's going to happen. And life cannot simply be about of solving one miserable problem after another.
So if you if you look forward thirty years, you know, this year the year 2050 has been labeled by scientists as this kind of almost like this doomsday deadline on climate. There's a there's a consensus of scientists, a large consensus of scientists who believe that if we haven't completely eliminated greenhouse gases or offset them completely by 2050, effectively we're inviting climate catastrophe. Do you believe there is a pathway to avoid that catastrophe, and what would it look like?
Yeah. Yeah. So I am not one of the doomsday people, which may surprise I I actually think we're on a good path. But at the same time, I I want to us to caution against complacency. So so long as we are not complacent, as long as we are have a high sense of urgency about moving towards a sustainable energy economy, then I think things will be fine. So I I I can't emphasize that enough. As long as we push hard and are not complacent, the future's gonna be great. Don't worry about it. I mean, worry about it, but if you worry about it, ironically, it will be a self unfulfilling prophecy. So, like, there there are there are three elements to a sustainable energy future. One is, obviously, sustainable energy generation, which is primarily wind and solar. There's also hydro, geothermal. I'm actually pro nuclear. I think I think nuclear is fine. And but it's gonna be primarily solar and and wind as these the the the primary generators of energy. The second part is you need batteries to to store the solar and wind energy because the sun doesn't shine all the time, the wind doesn't blow all the time. Mhmm. So you use a lot of stationary battery packs. And then you need electric transport. So electric cars, electric planes, boats, and then ultimately, you if you it's not really possible to make electric rockets, but you can make the propellant used in in in rockets, using sustainable energy. Right. So, ultimately, we can have a fully sustainable energy economy, and and it's it's those three things, solar wind, stationary battery pack, electric vehicles. So so then, like, what what what are the limiting factors on progress? The limiting factor really will be battery cell production. So that's the that's gonna that's gonna really be the fundamental rate driver. And then whatever the slowest element of the whole lithium ion battery cell supply chain from mining and the many steps of refining to ultimately creating a battery cell and putting it into a pack, that will be the limiting factor on progress towards sustainability.
Alright. So we need to talk more about batteries because the key thing that I want to understand like, there seems to be a scaling issue here that is kind of amazing and alarming. You have said that you have calculated that the amount of battery production that the world needs for sustainability is 300 terawatt hours of batteries.
It it it that's the the the That's
the end goal.
Rough very rough numbers, and I certainly would invite others to check our calculations because they may arrive at a different a different conclusions. But, in order to, transition, not just, current electricity production, but also, heating, and transport, which roughly triples the amount of electricity that you need, it amounts to approximately 300 terawatt hours of installed capacity.
So we need to give people a sense of how big a task that is. I mean, here we are at the Gigafactory. You know, this is what this is one of the biggest buildings in the world. When what I've read, and tell me if this is still right, is that the goal here is to eventually produce 100 gigawatt hours of batteries here a year.
We'll probably do more than that, but yes, that's hopefully, get there within a couple of years.
Right. But I mean, that so that is One point point one terawatt hours. But that's still one one hundredth of what's needed. How much of the rest of that 100 is is Tesla planning to take on between, let's say, now and 2030, 2040, when when, you know, we really need to see the scale up happen?
I mean, these are just guesses. I mean so please, people just shouldn't hold me to these things. It's not like this is like some what what tends to happen is I'll I'll I'll I'll make some, like, you know, best guess, and then people will in five years, there'll be some jerk that writes an article, Elon said this would happen, and it didn't happen. He's a liar and a fool. Yeah. It's very annoying when that happens. So these are just guesses. This is a conversation. Right. I I like, I think Tesla probably ends up doing 10% of that, roughly.
20 Yes. Let's say 2050, we have this amazing, you know, 100% sustainable electric grid made up of, you know, some mixture of the the sustainable energy sources you talked about, that that same grid probably is offering the world really low cost energy, isn't it, compared compared with now? Yeah. I'm I'm curious about, like, should people are people entitled to get a little bit excited about the possibilities of that that world?
People should be optimistic about the future. The humanity will solve sustainable energy. It will happen. If we are you know, continue to to push hard, the future is bright and good from an energy standpoint. And then it it will be possible to also use that that energy to do carbon sequestration. It takes a lot of energy to pull carbon out of the atmosphere just as a because in in in putting it in the atmosphere, releases energy. Now Right. You know, well, obviously, in order to pull it out, you need to use a lot of energy. But if you've got a lot of sustainable energy from wind and solar, you can actually sequester carbon, you can reverse the CO2 Right. Parts per million of the atmosphere and and and oceans. And and also, can really have as much freshwater freshwater as you want. Earth is mostly water. We should call Earth water. It's 70% water by surface area. Now, most of that's seawater, but it's still it's like we just have it to be able to but that's land.
Right. And and with energy, can turn seawater into
Yes.
Irrigating water or
whatever water you Absolutely. At at very low cost. Things will be good.
Things things will be good.
Yes. Things will be good.
And also, there's other benefits, right, to this non fossil fuel world where where the air is cleaner and
Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Because, like, like, when you when you burn fossil fuels, there's all there's all these, like, side reactions and and and and toxic gases of various kinds and, like, sort of little particulates that that are bad for your lungs. True. Like, there's there's all sorts of bad things that are happening that will go away. Okay. And and the sky will be cleaner and quieter. The future's gonna be good.
I want us to switch now to to think a bit about artificial intelligence. And but the segue there, let you you mentioned how how annoying it is when people haul you up for bad predictions in the past. So I'm I'm possibly gonna be, annoying now. But I'm I I I'm curious about your timelines and how you predict, and how come some things are so amazingly on the money and some aren't. So when it comes to predicting sales of Tesla vehicles, for example, I mean, you've kind of been amazing. I think in 2014, when Tesla had sold that year 60,000 cars, you said, 2020, I think we will do half a million a year.
Yeah. We did almost exactly half a million.
You did almost exactly half a million. You were scoffed in 2014 because no one
Yeah.
Since Henry Ford with the Model T had had come close to that kind of growth rate
Yes.
For for cars. You were scoffed, and you actually hit 500,000 cars and and 510,000 or whatever it produced. But five years ago, last time you came to TED, we I asked you about full self driving, and you said, yep. This very year, I'm confident that we will have a car going from LA to New York without any intervention.
Yeah. I I I don't wanna blow your mind, but I'm not always right.
But so talk talk what's the difference between those two? Why why why has full self driving in particular been so hard to predict?
I mean, the thing that really got me, and I think it's gonna get a lot of other people, is that there there are just so many false storms with with self driving, where you think you think you've got the problem, have a handle on the problem, and then it nope. It turns out you you just hit a ceiling. And and because what if you if you were to plot the progress, the the progress looks like a log curve. So it's like yeah. A series of log curves. So most people don't know what a log curve is, I suppose. But
Show show the shape of your head.
It goes it goes up sort of a, you know, sort of a fairly straight way, and then it starts tailing off.
Right.
And and and you start And
there's a kind of ocean
getting diminishing returns. Yeah. And and you're like, uh-oh. This, It was trending up, and now it's sort of curving over and not and and you you start getting to these, what I call, local local maxima, where you you don't realize basically how dumb you were. That's and then and then and then it happens again. So and I I ultimately now that these things in in in, you know, in retrospect, they seem obvious, but in in order to solve full self driving properly, you actually just you have to solve real world AI. You you you know, because you say, like, what are the road networks designed to to work with? They're designed to work with a biological neural net, our brains, and with vision, our eyes. And so in order to make it work with computers, basically need to solve real world AI and vision. Because because we we we need we we need cameras and silicon neural nets in order to have to have self driving work for a system that was designed for eyes and biological neural nets. Mhmm. You know, when you I guess when you put it that way, it's sort of like quite obvious that the only way to solve full self driving is to solve real world AI and sophisticated vision.
What do you feel about the current architecture? Do you think you have an architecture now where where there is a chance for the logarithmic curve not to tail off any anytime soon?
Well, I mean, admittedly, these these may be infamous last words, but I I actually am confident that we will solve it this year, that we will exceed you're saying, like, what the the probability of an accident, at what point do you exceed that of the average person? Right. I think we will exceed that this year.
What are you seeing behind the scenes that gives you that confidence?
We're we're almost at the point where we have a high quality unified vector space. Like, in the beginning, we were trying to do this with image recognition on individual images. But if you look at one image out of a video, it's actually quite hard to see what's going on with with that ambiguity. But if you look at a at a at a video segment of a few seconds of video, that ambiguity resolves. Mhmm. So the so the first thing we had to is tie all eight cameras together so they're synchronized, so that all all the frames are looked at simultaneously and labeled simultaneously by by one person, because we still need human labeling. Mhmm. So so that at least they're not labeled at different times by different people in different ways. And then so so it's it's it's sort of a surround picture. Then then a very important part is to add the time dimension so so that you're you're looking at surround video and you're labeling surround video. And this is actually quite difficult to do from a software standpoint. We had to write our own labeling tools and then create an auto labeling create auto labeling software to amplify the efficiency of human labelers because it's quite hard to label video. It takes in the beginning, it was taking several hours to label a ten second video clip. Mhmm. This is not scalable. So so basically, what what you have to have is you have to have surround video, and the the that surround video has to be primarily, automatically labeled with humans just being editors of and making slight corrections to the to the labeling of the video, and then feeding back those corrections into the future auto labeler so you get this this flywheel eventually where the auto labeler is able to take in vast amounts of video and with high accuracy automatically label the video for cars, lane lines, drive space.
What you're saying is that that you you think that I mean, the the result of this is that you're effectively giving the car a three d model of the actual objects that are all around it. It knows what they are, and it knows how fast they are moving. And the the remaining task is to
Yes.
Is to predict what the quirky behaviors are that that, you know, that when a pedestrian is walking down the road with a smaller pedestrian, that maybe that smaller pedestrian might do something unpredictable or like, things like that that you you to build into it before you can really call it safe.
You you basically you need to have memory across time and space. So what I mean by that is if if you because you you you can't the the memory can't be infinite because it's using up a lot of of of the computer's RAM, basically. So you have to say how much are you going to try to remember. But, like, if it's very common for things to be occluded. Right. Like, you talk about, say, a pedestrian walking past a a truck where you saw the pedestrian start on one side of the truck, then they then they're occluded by the truck.
Right.
You need but but you need you would know intuitively, okay, that pedestrian's gonna pop out the other side most likely. And and A computer doesn't know how it's slow down.
I mean, a skeptic is gonna say that every year for the last five years, you've you've kind of said, well, no, this is the year. Oh, I mean, we're confident that it we'll be there in a year or two or, you know, like, it's it's always been about that that far away. But you're we've got a new architecture now. You're you're you're seeing enough improvement behind the scenes to to make you not certain, but but pretty confident that that this by by the end of this year, what in most, not in every city, in every circumstance, but in many cities and circumstances, basically, the the car will be able to drive without interventions safer than a human.
Yes. I mean, car currently drives me around Austin most of the time with no interventions. So it's not like and and and we we have over 100,000 people in our full stop driving theater program. So you can look at the videos that they post online. I do. Okay. Great. And
Some of them are great, and some of them are a little terrifying. I mean, occasionally
Yes.
The car seems to sort of, like, veer off and scare the hell out of people. But It's
still better.
It's still better. But but you but the the number but you're behind the scenes looking at the data, you're seeing enough improvement to to to believe that this year timeline is real.
Yes. That's what it seems like. Mean, I'd like to say, you know, we could be here talking again in a year. It's like, well, yet another year went by and it didn't happen. But I think this I think this is the year.
And so in general, when when people talk about Elon Elon time, I mean, it sounds like like you can't just have a general rule that if you predict that something will be done in six months, actually, what you we should imagine is it's going be a year or it's like 2x or 3x. It depends on the type of prediction. Some things, I guess things involving software, AI, whatever, are fundamentally harder to predict than others. Is there an element that you actually deliberately make aggressive prediction timelines to drive people to be ambitious? Without that, nothing gets done.
Well, I I generally believe in terms of internal timelines that we wanna set set the most aggressive timeline that we can because there's sort of like a law of gases expansion where for schedules where whatever time you set, it's it's not gonna be less than that. It's very Right. Rare that it'll be less than that. But and as far as my predictions are concerned, what what tends to happen in the media is that they will report all the wrong ones and ignore all the right ones. Right. And or or, you know, when when when writing an article about me, I've had a long career in multiple industries. If you if you list my sins, I sound like the worst person on earth. But if you put those against the my you know, the things I've done right, it it makes much more sense. You know? So essentially, like, the longer you do anything, the the more mistakes that that that you will make cumulatively, which if you sum up those mistakes, will sound like, I'm the worst predictor ever. But for example, for Tesla vehicle growth, I I said, I think we're doing 50%, and we've we've we've done 80%. Yes. So but they don't mention that one. So it I mean, I'm not sure what my exact track record is on predictions. They're more optimistic than pessimistic, but they're not all optimistic. Some of them are exceeded. Probably more are later. But they they they do come true. It's very rare that they do not come true. It's sort of like, you know, you know, if if if there's some radical technology prediction, point is not that it was a few years late, but that it happened at all. That's the that's the more important part.
So it's it feels like at some point in the last year, seeing the progress on understanding that your that the AI the Tesla AI understanding the world around it led to a kind of an moment in Tesla. Because you really surprised people recently when you said probably the most important product development going on at Tesla this year is this robot, Optimus.
Yes.
Many companies out there have tried to put out these robots. They've been working on them for years. And so far, no one has really cracked it. There's no mass adoption robot in people's homes. There are some in in manufacturing. But it like, I I would say that no one's kind of really cracked it. What is it something that happened in the development of full self driving that gave you the confidence to say, you know what? We could do something special here.
Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, it took me a while to sort of realize this that that that in order to solve self driving, you really needed to solve real world AI. And at the point at which you solve real world AI for a car, which is really a robot on four wheels, you can then generalize that to a robot on legs as well. The the two hard parts, I think like, it's not obviously, companies like Boston Dynamics have shown that it's possible to make quite compelling, sometimes alarming robots. Right. You you know, so so this is from a sensor and actuator standpoint, it's certainly been demonstrated by by many that it's possible to make a humanoid robot. The thing that the things that are currently missing are enough intelligence enough intelligence for the robot to navigate the real world and do useful things without being explicitly instructed. So so the the missing things are basically real world intelligence and scaling up manufacturing. Those are two things that Tesla is very good at. And so then we we basically just need to design the the specialized actuators and sensors that are needed for a humanoid robot. People have no idea. This is this is gonna be bigger than the car.
So let's dig into exactly that. I mean, in one way, it's actually an easier problem than force of driving because you instead of an object going along at 60 miles an hour, which Yeah. If it gets it wrong, someone will die, This is an object that's engineered to only go, what, three or four or five miles
Yeah. An For walking speed, basically.
And so a mistake isn't there aren't lives at stake. Might be embarrassment at stake.
As long as the AI doesn't take it over and Murder us in our sleep or something. Right.
But so so talk about I mean, I I think the first applications you you've mentioned are probably gonna be manufacturing, but eventually the vision is to to have these available for people at home. Correct?
Yes.
If you had a robot that really understood the three d architecture of your house and knew where every object in that house was or was supposed to be and could recognize all those objects, I mean, that that's kind of amazing, isn't it? Like like, that the kind of thing that you could ask a robot to do would be what? Like, tidy up?
Yeah. Absolutely. Or Make dinner. I guess, mow the lawn.
Take take a cup of tea to grandma and show her family pictures.
Exactly. Take care of my grandmother and make sure yeah. Exactly.
I mean, it could recognize obviously, recognize everyone in the home. Yeah. Could play catch with your kids.
Yes. I mean, obviously, we need to be careful that this doesn't become a dystopian situation. Like, I think one of the things that's gonna be important is to have localized ROM chip on the robot that cannot be updated over the air, where if you, for example, were to say, stop, stop, that would if anyone said that, then the robot would stop, you know, type of thing. And that's not updatable remotely. I think it's gonna be important to have safety features like that.
Yeah. That that sounds wise.
And I do think there should be a regulatory agency for AI. I've said this for many years. I don't I don't love being regulated, but I, you know, I think this is an important thing for public safety.
Let let let's come back to that. But I'm I'm just I I don't think many people have really sort of taken seriously the notion of, you know, a a robot at home. I mean, at the the start of the computing revolution, you know, Bill Gates said, there's gonna be a computer in every home. And people at the time said, yeah. Whatever. Right. Who who would even want
computer in our pocket.
Do do you think there will be, basically, like, in, say say, twenty fifty or whatever, that that, like, a robot in most homes is is what there will be? And people
will think they probably
them and count on them. You'll have your own butler, basically.
Yeah. You'll have your sort of buddy robot, probably. Yeah.
I mean, how much of a buddy? Do like, do you do you how how many applications do you thought? Is there you know, can you have a romantic partner, a sex partner?
I mean,
a lot of learning
I mean, I did promise the Internet that I'd make catgirls, how we could make a robot catgirl. I mean, I I I mean, this.
The Internet.
You know? So yeah. I I I guess it'll be what what whatever people want, really, you know?
What what sort of timeline should we be thinking about of the first the first models that are actually made and sold?
Well, you know, the the the first units that that we tend to make are for jobs that are dangerous, boring, repetitive, and things that people don't wanna do. And, you know, I I think we'll have, like, an interesting prototype sometime this year. We we might have something useful next year, but I think quite likely within at least two years. And then we'll see rapid growth year over year of the usefulness of the humanoid robots and decrease in cost and scaling up production.
Initially, just selling to businesses? Or when when do you picture you'll you'll sell you'll start selling them where you can buy your parents one for Christmas or something?
I'd say less than ten years.
Yeah. How how how help me on the economics of this. So what what do you picture the cost of one of these being?
Well, think the cost is actually not gonna be crazy high, like less than a car. Initially, things will be expensive because it'll be new technology at low The production complexity and cost of a car is greater than that of a humanoid robot. So I would expect that it's gonna be less than a car or at least equivalent to a cheap car.
So even if it starts at 50 k, within a few years it's down to 20 k or lower or whatever. And and maybe for home they'll get much cheaper still. But but think about the economics of this. If you can replace a 30,000, $40,000 a year worker, which you have to pay every year, with a one time payment of $25,000 for a robot that can work longer hours, a pretty rapid replacement of certain types of jobs. How worried should the world be about that?
I wouldn't worry about the the sort of putting people out of a job thing. I think we're we're actually going to have and and already do have a massive shortage of labor. So I I I think we'll we will have, not not people out of work, but actually still a shortage of labor even in the future. But the this really will be a world of abundance. Any goods and services will be available to anyone who wants them. That it'll be so cheap to have goods and services, it'll be ridiculous.
And presumably, should be possible to imagine a bunch of goods and services that can't profitably be made now, but could be made in Sure. In that world courtesy of of legions of robots.
Yeah. It it will be a world of abundance. The only scarcity that will exist in the future is that which we decide to create ourselves as humans.
Okay. So AI is is allowing us to imagine a a differently powered economy that that will create this abundance. What are you most worried about going wrong?
Well, like I said, AI and robotics will will bring bring out what might be termed the age of abundance. Other people have used this word. And and that this is my prediction of being an age of abundance for everyone. The the the the I guess there's the the dangers would be the artificial general intelligence or digital superintelligence decouples from a collective human will and goes in a direction that, for some reason, we don't like, for whatever whatever direction it might go. You know, that's sort of sort of the the idea behind Neuralink is to try to more tightly couple collective human will to the to to digital superintelligence. And also along the way solve
a lot
of brain injuries and spinal injuries and that kind of even if it doesn't succeed in the greater goal, will I think it will succeed in in the goal of alleviating brain and spine damage.
So the the spirit there is that if we're going to make these AIs that are so vastly intelligent, we ought to be wired directly to them so that we we ourselves can have those superpowers more more directly. But that doesn't seem to avoid the risk that those superpowers might turn ugly in unintended ways.
No. Think it's a risk. I agree. I I I don't I I'm not saying that I have some certain answer to that risk. I'm I'm I'm just saying, like like, maybe one of the things that would be good for ensuring that the future is one that we want is to more tightly couple the human world collective human world to digital intelligence. Mhmm. The the issue that we face here is that we're already, a cyborg, if you think about it. The computers, are an extension of ourselves. And when we die, there's like we have, like, a digital ghost, you know, all of our text messages and social media and emails. And it's it's quite eerie actually when someone dies and and they're but everything online is still there. But but you say, like, what what's the limitation? What what is it that inhibits human machine symbiosis? It's the data rate. When you communicate, especially with a phone, you're moving your thumbs
Right.
Very slowly. So you're, like, moving your two little meat sticks
Right.
At at a rate that's maybe 10 bit per second, optimistically a 100 bits per second. And computers are are communicating at the gigabit level and beyond.
Have you seen evidence that the technology is actually working, that you've got you've got a richer sort of higher bandwidth connection, if you like, between external electronics and a brain than has been possible before?
Yeah. So the I mean, the the fundamental principles of of reading neurons so doing readwrite on neurons with tiny electrodes have been demonstrated for decades. So it's not like this is the concept is new. The problem is that there's no product that works well that you can go and buy. So it's it's all sort of in research labs. Right. And it's it's not it's like, there's there's always like some cord sticking out of your your head and it's it's quite gruesome and it's it's really there's there's no good product Mhmm. That that that actually does a good job and is high bandwidth and safe and something you'd actually that you could buy and would want to buy. So but but in it, the the the way to think of the Neuralink device is kind of like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch that's where where we we we take out a a sort of a a small section of skull about the size of a quarter, replace that with what in many ways really is very much like a Fitbit Apple Watch or some kind of smartwatch thing. And and but but with with tiny tiny wires, very very tiny wires, wires so tiny it's hard to even see them. And it's very important to have very tiny wires that you when they're implanted, they don't they don't damage the brain.
How far are you from putting these into humans?
Well, we have put in our FDA application to aspirationally do the first human implant this year.
The first uses will be for neurological injuries of different kinds.
Yes.
But rolling the clock forward and imagining when when people are actually using these for their own enhancement, let's say, and for the enhancement of the world, how clear are you in your mind as to what it will feel like to have one of these inside your head.
Well, I I do wanna emphasize we're we're we're at a at at an early stage, and so it really will be many years before we have anything approximating a high bandwidth neural interface that allows for AI human symbiosis. For many years, we will just be solving brain injuries and spinal injuries for probably a decade. Mhmm. And this is not something that will suddenly one day, it'll we'll have this incredible sort of whole brain interface. It's going to be, like I said, at least a decade of really just solving brain injuries and spinal injuries. Really, I think you can solve a very wide range of brain injuries, including severe depression, morbid obesity, sleep, potentially schizophrenia, like a lot of things that cause great stress to people, restoring memory older people.
If you can pull that off, that that's the app I will sign up for. I I I would please hurry, actually.
Yeah. No. I mean, the the the the emails that we get at Neuralink are heartbreaking. I mean, they they they'll send us just tragic, you know, where where someone was was sort in the prime of life and and and they had an accident on a motorcycle and and and someone who's 25 is is, you know, can't even feed themselves. And this is something we could fix.
But but you have you have said that AI is one of the things you're most worried about and that Neuralink may be one of the ways where we can keep abreast of it or I Yes.
It's it's there's there's the the the short term thing, which I think is helpful on an individual human level with with injuries, and then the long term thing is an attempt to address the civilizational risk of AI by bringing digital intelligence and biological intelligence closer together. I mean, you think of how the brain works today, are really kind of two layers to the brain. There's the limbic system and the cortex. You've got the kind of anal brain where it's kind of like the fun part, really.
That's where most of Twitter operates, by the way.
Yeah. I mean, we're I think Tim Woven said this. We're like somebody stuck a computer on a monkey. Right. You know? So we're we're like, if if if you gave a monkey a computer, that's our cortex. But we still have a lot of monkey instincts. Right. Which we then try to rationalize is, no, it's not a monkey instinct. It's something more important than that. But it's often just really a monkey instinct. We're in this we're we're just monkeys with a computer stuck in our brain. But even though the cortex is sort of the smart or the intelligent part of the the brain, the thinking part of the brain, people are quite I have not yet met anyone who wants to delete their limbic system or their cortex. They're quite happy Everyone having wants both parts of their brain. And people really want their phones and their computers, which are really the tertiary, the third part of your intelligence. It's just that it's it's like I said, the the bandwidth, the rate of communication with that tertiary layer is is slow, and it's just a very tiny straw to to this tertiary layer, and and we want to make that tiny straw a a big highway. And I'm definitely not saying that this is going to solve everything or this is you know, it's the only thing it's it's it's something that might be helpful. Worst case scenario, I think we solve some important brain injury, spinal injury issues, and that's still a great outcome.
Right. Best case scenario, we may discover new human possibility. Telepathy you've spoken of in a way total connection with Yes. With with with a loved one, you know, full memory Yes. And and much faster thought process than may maybe. Yes. All these things. It's very cool. If AI were to take down Earth, we need a plan b. Let's let's shift our attention to to to space. We we spoke last time about reusability, and you you had just demonstrated that spectacularly for the first time. Since then, you've gone on to build this monster rocket, Starship, which kind of changes the rules of the game in in spectacular ways. Tell us tell us about Starship.
Yes. Starship is fundamental. So the the holy grail of of rocketry or space transport is full and rapid reusability. This has never been achieved. The closest that anything has come is our Falcon nine rocket where we are able to recover the the the first stage, the the boost stage, which is probably about 60% of the cost of the vehicle or of of the whole launch, maybe 70%. And we've now done that over a 100 times. So with Starship, we will be recovering the entire thing. That's or at least that's the goal. Right. And and and more of a recovering it in such a way that it can be immediately reflown. Whereas with Falcon nine, we still need to do some amount of refurbishment to the booster and to the fairing or nose nose cone. So but with Starship, the design goal is immediate reflight. Right. So you just you just refill propellants and and go again. And the the this is gigantic. It just just as it would be in in any other mode of transport.
And it's and the the main design is is to basically take, what, a 100 plus people at a time
Yeah.
Plus a bunch of things that they need to Mars. So so talk first of all, talk talk about that piece. What what is your latest timeline? One, for the first time a Starship goes to Mars, presumably without people but just equipment. Two, with people. Three, the sort of, okay, a 100 people at a time. Let's let's go.
Sure. Well and and just to put the the the cost thing into perspective, the the the cost of the expected cost of Starship putting a 100 tons into orbit is significantly less than what it would have cost or what it did cost to put out our tiny Falcon one rocket in into orbit. Just as the cost of flying a seven forty seven around the world is less than the cost of a small airplane, small airplane that was thrown away. So it's really pretty mind boggling that the giant thing costs less way less than the small thing. So it doesn't use sort of exotic propellants or things that are difficult to obtain on Mars. It uses methane as fuel, and it's primarily oxygen. It's sort of roughly 77, 78% oxygen by weight. And Mars has a CO2 atmosphere and has water ice, which is CO2 plus H2O, so you can make c h four methane and o two oxygen on Mars.
Presumably one of the first tasks on Mars will be to create Yes. A fuel plant that can create the fuel for the return trips of many starships.
Yes. And and actually, it's it's mostly gonna be an oxygen plant, but it but it's it's because it's it's it's, call it, 78% oxygen, 22% fuel. Mhmm. But but but the fuel is a simple fuel that is is easy to create on Mars and and and to build up many other parts of the solar system. So basically, it's and it's all propulsive landing, no parachutes, nothing thrown away, that has a heat shield that's capable of entering on Earth or Mars. We could even potentially go to Venus, but it's not you don't wanna go there. Venus is hell, almost literally. But you you you could it's a generalized method of transport to to anywhere in the solar system because the point at which you have a propellant depot on Mars, you can then travel to the asteroid belt and to the moons of of Jupiter and then to Saturn and and ultimately anywhere in the solar system.
Right. But but your main for your main focus and SpaceX's main focus is still Mars. Like, that that is that is the that is the mission. That is that is where most of the effort will will go? Or or you imagining a much broader array of uses even in in the coming, you know, the first decade or so of uses of this? These Where we could go, for example, to other places in the solar solar system to explore. Perhaps NASA wants to use the rocket for that reason.
Yeah. NASA NASA is planning to use a Starship to return to the moon, to return Yes. People to the moon. And so we're very honored that NASA has has chosen us to do this. So but I'm saying it is a it is a generalized it's a it's a general solution to getting anywhere in the greater solar system. It's not suitable for going to another star system, but it is a general solution for transport anywhere in the in the solar system.
Before it can do any of that, it's got to demonstrate it can get into orbit, you know, around Earth. What what's what's what's what's your latest advice on the on the timeline for that?
It's looking promising for us to have an orbital launch attempt in in a few months. So we we're actually integrating the we'll be integrating the engines into the booster for the first orbital flight starting in about a week or two. And the the launch complex itself is ready to go. So assuming we get regulatory approval, I think we could have an orbital launch attempt within a few months.
And a radical new technology like this, presumably there is real risk on those early attempts? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Like like I mean, the joke I make all the time is that excitement is guaranteed. Success is not guaranteed, but excitement certainly is.
But but the last the last on your timeline, you you've slightly put back the expected date to put the first human on Mars till 2029, I I wanna say.
Yeah. I mean, so so let's see. I mean, we we we are we have built a production system for Starship. So we're we're we're we're making a lot of ships and boosters.
And How how how many are you planning to make, actually?
Well, we're we're currently expecting to make a booster and a ship roughly every well, initially, every couple months, then hopefully by by the end this year, one every month. So it's it's giant rockets, but a lot and a lot of them. Just in terms talking in terms of rough orders of magnitude, in order to create a self sustaining city on Mars, I I think the we'll need something on the order of a thousand ships. Then we just need a we just need a Helen of of of of Sparta, I guess, on the on Mars.
Is this is not in most people's heads, Elon.
The planet that launches a thousand ships.
That's that's nice. But this is not in most people's heads. This picture that you have in your mind that so there's there's there's basically a two year window. You can only really fly to Yeah. Mars conveniently every two years. Yes. You are still you were picturing that during during the twenty thirties, every couple years, something like a thousand Starships take off, each containing a 100 or more people. I mean, that that that picture is just completely mind blowing to me. Yes. That that sense of this armada of humans going
to Battlestar Galactica, the fleet departs.
And you think that that it can basically be funded by people spending maybe a couple $100 on a ticket to move to Mars. Is that is that price about where where it has been?
Well, I think if you say, what's what's what's required in order to get enough people and enough cargo to Mars to, build a self sustaining city? And it's where you have an intersection of sets of people who want to go, because I think only a small percentage of humanity will wanna go, and can afford to go or get sponsorship in some manner. That intersection of sets, I think, needs to be a million people or something like that. And so it's what what what can a million people afford or get sponsorship for or because I think governments will also pay for it and people could take out loans and but but but I think at the point at which you say, okay. Okay. Like, if if moving to Mars costs, or argument's sake, a $100,000, then I think, you know, almost anyone can can work and save up and and and eventually have a $100,000 and and be able to go to Mars if they want. We wanna make it available to anyone who wants to go.
Yeah.
So it and and and very important to emphasize that Mars, especially in the beginning, will not be luxurious. It will be dangerous, cramped, difficult, hard work. It's kinda like that Shackleton ad for going to the Antarctic, which I think is actually not real, but but it sounds real and it's cool. Yeah. It it it's sort of like the the the sales pitch for going to Mars is it's it's it's dangerous. It's cramped. You might not make it back. It's difficult. It's hard work. That's the sales pitch.
Right.
But but
you will make history.
One one one But it'll be glorious.
Right. Also, on that kind of launch rate you're talking about, over two decades, you could get your million people to to Mars, essentially. Whose city is it? Is it NASA's city? Is it SpaceX's city?
It's the people of Mars's city. The the the the reason for this I mean, I have to say, like, what we feel like, well, why why why do this thing? It's I I think this is important for maximizing the probable lifespan of of humanity or or consciousness. Human civilization could come to an end for external reasons, like a giant meteor or supervolcanoes or extreme climate change or or World War three Right. Or, you know, any one of a number of reasons. And and but the probable lifespan of human of of civilizational consciousness as we know it, which we should really view as this very delicate thing, like a small candle in a vast darkness. That's that's caught that that is what appears to be the case. We're in this vast darkness of space, and there's this little candle of consciousness that's only really come about after four and a half billion years. Yeah. And it could just go out.
I think that's powerful, I think I think a lot of people will be inspired by that vision. And and the reason so the reason you need the million people is because they there has to be enough people there to do everything that you need to survive. It's
The the the really, like, the the the critical threshold is if the ships from Earth stop coming for any reason
Right.
Does it does the Mars city die out or not? Right. And so we have pass that that's you know, people talk about, like, the the sort of the great filters, the things that perhaps you know, when you talk about the Fermi Paradox and where are the aliens and, like, well, maybe the aliens didn't there is various great filters that the aliens didn't pass, and and so they eventually just cease to exist. And one of the great filters is becoming a multi planet species. So we wanna pass that filter. And and I'll be long dead before this is, you know, a real real thing, before before it happens. But I'd I'd like I'd like to at least see us make great progress in this direction.
Given how tortured the earth is right now, how much we're beating each other up, Shouldn't there be discussions going on with everyone who is dreaming about Mars to try to say, we've got a once once in a civilization's chance
Yes.
To make some new rules here. Is that should someone be trying to lead those discussions to figure out what it what it means for this to be the people of Mars' city?
Well, I think ultimately, this will be up to the people of Mars to decide what, how they want to rethink society. Yet there's there's certainly risk there, and, hopefully, the people of Mars will be, more enlightened and will not fight amongst each other too much. I mean, I have some recommendations, but which people of Mars may choose to listen to or not. I mean, I would advocate for more of a direct democracy, not a representative democracy, and laws that are short enough for people to understand. And where it is is harder to create laws than to get rid of them.
Coming back a bit nearer term, I'd love you to just talk a bit about some of the other possibility space that Starship seems to have created. Yeah. So given given suddenly we've got this ability to move a 100 tons plus into orbit
Yes. What
so we've just spent we've just launched the James Webb Telescope, which is an incredible thing. It's unbelievable what happened.
So it's an exquisite piece of technology. It's an
exquisite piece of technology, but people spent two years trying to figure out how to fold up this thing. A three ton it's a three ton telescope.
We can make it a lot easier if you've got more volume and mass.
Well, so so but let's but let's ask a different question, which is what what what how much more powerful a telescope could someone design based on using Starship, for example?
I mean I mean, roughly, I would say it's probably an order of magnitude more resolution if you've got a 100 tons and a thousand cubic meters volume, which is roughly what we have.
And what about other exploration through the solar system? I mean, I'm I'm, you know Europa. Well, Europa is so
question mark.
Right. So so there's an ocean there. Right? Yeah. And and what you really want to do is to drop a submarine into
the ocean. Yeah. Mean, maybe there's like some squid civilization under cephalopod civilization under the ice of Europa. That would be pretty interesting.
I mean, Elon, if if you could take a a submarine to Europa and we see pictures of this thing being devoured by a squid Yeah. That would honestly be the happiest moment of my life.
Pretty wild. Yeah.
That would be what what what are the possibilities are out there? Like, because it it feels like if if you're gonna create a thousand of these things, they can only fly to Mars every two years. What are they doing the rest of the time? It feels like there's this this
Right.
Explosion of possibility that I don't think people are really thinking about.
I mean, I don't know. We've certainly got a long way to go. As you alluded to earlier, we we still have to get to orbit. And and then after we get to orbit, we have to really prove out and refine full and rapid reusability. That'll take a moment. And but but I do think we will solve this. I I'm highly confident we will solve this at this point. Do you
ever wake up with the fear that there's gonna be this Hindenburg moment for SpaceX where
We've had many Hindenburg. Well, we've we've never had Hindenburg moments with people Right. Which is very important. Big difference. Right. There is. We've we've blown up quite a few rockets. So there's we have a there's a whole compilation online that we've put together and others put together. It's showing rockets are hard. Yeah. I mean, the sheer amount of energy going through a rocket is it boggles the mind. So Yeah. You know, getting out of Earth's gravity well is difficult. We have a strong gravity and a thick atmosphere, and and Mars, is less than 40% of it's it's like getting 37% of Earth's gravity and has a thin atmosphere. The ship alone can go all the way from the surface of Mars to the surface of Earth, whereas getting to Mars requires a giant booster and orbital refilling.
So, Elon, as I so think more about this incredible array of things that you're involved with. I keep seeing these synergies, to use a horrible word, between them. You know, for example, the robots you're building from Tesla could possibly be pretty handy on Mars Sure. Doing some of the dangerous work and so forth. I mean, is maybe there's a scenario where your city on Mars doesn't need a million people, it needs half a million people and half a million robots. Sure. And that's a possibility. Maybe The Boring Company could play a role helping create some of those subterranean dwelling spaces that you might need.
Yeah.
Back on planet Earth, it it seems like a partnership between Boring Company and Tesla could offer an unbelievable deal to a city to say, we we will create for you a three d network of tunnels populated by robotaxis Yeah. That will offer fast, low cost transport to anyone. You know, full self driving may or may not be done this year. And then and in some cities, somewhere like Mumbai, I suspect won't be done for a decade.
Some places are more challenging than others.
But Yes. Today today with what you've got, you could put a three d network of tunnels under there.
Oh, if it's just in a tunnel, that's the sole problem, Exactly.
Full self driving is a sole problem. So so to me, there's there's amazing synergy there. You're with with with Starship, know, Gwynne Shotwell talked about by 2028 having from city to city, you know, transport on planet Earth.
This is a a real possibility. It's it's a yeah. The the the fastest way to get from one place to another if it's a long distance is is a rocket. It's Right. It's basically an ICBM Right. With the
But it has to land
landing to lead to nuke.
Because it's an ICBM, it has to land probably offshore.
Yes. It's pretty loud.
Because it's loud. So so why not have a tunnel that then connects to the city That'd cool. With Tesla's and and Neuralink. I mean, if you're gonna go to Mars, having a telepathic connection with loved ones back home, even if there's a time delay.
Mean I I'm not these are not intended to be connected, by the way. They're just but I there should certainly could be some synergies. Yeah.
Surely, there is a growing argument that you should actually put all these things together into one company and just just have a company devoted to creating a future that's exciting and let a thousand flowers bloom. Have you have you been thinking about that?
I mean, is tricky because Tesla's a publicly traded company, and the the investor base of Tesla and SpaceX and and certainly Boring Company and Neuralink are quite different. And Boring Company and Neuralink are are tiny companies. Just Right.
My comparison.
The audience may may yeah. Tesla's got a 110,000 people. SpaceX, I think, is around 12,000 people. Boring Company and Neuralink are both under 200 people. So they're little little tiny companies, but they will probably get bigger in the future. They will get bigger in the future. It's not that easy to sort of combine these things.
Traditionally, you've said that for SpaceX especially, you don't you wouldn't want it public because public investors wouldn't support the craziness of the idea of going to Mars or whatever. And and you want to, you know
Making life multi planetary is is outside of this the normal time horizon of Wall Street analysts to say the least.
I think something's changed, though. What's changed is that Tesla is now so powerful and so big and and throws off so much cash that you actually could connect the dots here. Just tell the public that x billion dollars a year, whatever your number is, will be diverted to the Mars mission, I I suspect you'd have massive interest in that company. And it might it might unlock a lot more possibility for you now.
I mean, would like to give the public access to ownership of SpaceX. But I mean, the thing that like, the the overhead associated with a public company is high. So the I mean, as a public company, you're just constantly sued. It does occupy like a fair bit of, you know, time and effort to deal with these things.
Right. But you would still only have one public company. It would be bigger and have more things going on. But instead of being on four boards, you'd be on one.
I'm actually not even on the the Neuralink or Boring Company boards.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. And I I don't really attend the SpaceX board meetings. We only have two a year, and I I just stop by and chat for an hour. So Okay. The the board overhead for a public company is much higher.
Right. I think some investors probably worry about how your time is being split, and and they would be they might be excited by, you know, that that Anyway, I I just I just woke up the other day think thinking just there are so many ways in which these things connect. And and and, you know, the the just the note the simplicity of that mission of building a future that is worth getting excited about might might appeal to an awful lot of people. Elon, you are reported by Forbes and everyone else as as now, you know, the world's richest person.
That's not a sovereign. You know, I think it's fair to say that if somebody is like the king or de facto king of a country, they're wealthier than I am.
So but but it's just harder to measure. But what people do so so $300,000,000,000, I mean, your your net worth on any given day is rising or falling by several billion dollars. How are you say how am I saying is Yeah. I mean, does that how how do you how do you handle that psychologically? There there aren't many people in the world who have to even think about that.
I I actually don't think about that too much, but the the thing that is actually more more difficult and and that does make sleeping difficult is that, you know, every good hour or even minute of thinking about Tesla and and SpaceX has such a big effect on the company that I I really try to work as as as much as possible, you know, to to the edge of sanity, basically, Because the you know, Tesla's getting to the point where probably will get to the point later this year where every good every high quality minute of thinking is a million dollars to to impact on on Tesla. So which is insane. So, I mean, the basic you know, if Tesla's doing, you know, of a sort of $2,000,000,000 a week, let's say, in revenues, sort of $300,000,000 a day, seven days a week, you know, it it's
If you if you can change that by 5% in an hour's brainstorm, that that those those are pretty valuable that's a pretty valuable hour.
I mean, there there are many instances where a half hour meeting with I was able to improve the financial outcome of the company by a $100,000,000 in a half hour meeting.
There are many other people out there who who who can't stand this world of of billionaires. Like, they they are hugely offended by the notion that an individual can have the same wealth as, say, a billion or more of the world's poorest people.
If they examine sort of I think there's some axiomatic flaws that that are leading to them to to that conclusion. If for sure, it would be very problematic if I was consuming, you know, billions of dollars a year in in personal consumption, but that is not the case. In fact, I don't even own a home right now. I'm literally staying at friends' places. I if I travel to the Bay Area, which where most of Tesla engineering is, I I stay in my I basically rotate through friends' spare bedrooms. I don't have a yacht. I I really don't take vacations. So it's not it's not as though there's that that my personal consumption is is high. With I mean, the one exception is a plane, but if I don't use the plane, then I have less hours to work. Mhmm. So I
mean, I I personally think you have shown that you are mostly driven by really quite a deep sense of moral purpose. Like, you've tried your your your attempts to solve the climate problem have have been as powerful as anyone else on the planet that I'm aware of. And I actually can't can't understand personally, can't understand the fact that you get all this criticism from the left about, oh my god. He's so rich. That's disgusting. Yeah. When when climate is their issue, philanthropy is is a topic that some people go to. Philanthropy is a hard topic. Like, how how do you think about that?
I I think if you if you care about the reality of goodness instead of the perception of it, philanthropy is extremely difficult. SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink and Boring Company are philanthropy. If you say philanthropy is love of humanity, they are philanthropy. Their Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy. This is a love of of full anthropy. SpaceX is trying to ensure the long term survival of humanity with a multi planet species. This is love of humanity. You know, Neuralink is is to help solve brain injuries and existential risk with AI, love of humanity. Warren Company is trying to solve traffic, which is health for most people, and that also there's not a community.
It's like how how upsetting is it to you to hear this constant drumbeat of billionaires, my god, Elon Musk, oh my god. Like, is that do you do you do you just shrug that off, does it does it actually hurt?
I I mean, at this point, it's water if it talks back.
You know, I'd like to as as we wrap up now, just pull the camera back and just think you're a father now of seven surviving kids and and
Well, I mean, I'm I'm trying to set a good example because the birth rate on Earth is so low that we're facing civilizational collapse unless the birth rate returns to a a sustainable level.
Yeah. You've talked about this a lot, that depopulation is a big problem, and we we we
Yes.
People don't understand Population collapse
is one of the biggest threats to the future of human civilization, and that is what is going on right now.
How what what drives you on a day to day basis to do what you do?
I guess, like, I I I really wanna make sure that there is a good future for humanity and that we're on a path to understanding the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, why are we here, how do we get here. And in order to understand the nature of the universe and all these fundamental questions, we must expand the scope and scale of consciousness. Certainly, it must not diminish or go out, we certainly won't understand this. I always say I'm motivated by curiosity more than anything and just a desire to think about the future and not be sad, you know. And
And and are you? Are you not sad?
I'm sometimes sad. I I mostly, I'm I'm I mean, I'm feeling, I guess, relatively optimistic about the future these days. There are certainly some big risks that humanity faces. I think the the population collapse is a really big deal that I wish more people would would would think about because the the birth rate is far below what's needed to sustain civilization at its current at its current level. And, you know, there's obviously and we we need to take action on climate sustainability, which is is is is being done. And we need to secure the future of consciousness by being a multi planet species. We we need to address the essentially, we it's important to take whatever actions we can think of to address the existential risks that affect the future of of consciousness.
There's a there's a whole generation coming through who seem really sad about the future. What would you say to them?
Well, think if you want the future to be good, you must make it so. Take action to make it good, and it will be.
Elon, thank you for all this time. That is a beautiful place to end. Thanks for all that you're doing.
You're welcome.
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