The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity ... | Elon Musk — Transcript

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1. 0:00Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
2. 0:15Chris Anderson: Elon, what kind of crazy dream
3. 0:18would persuade you to think of trying
4. 0:20to take on the auto industry and build an all-electric car?
5. 0:24Elon Musk: Well, it goes back to when I was in university.
6. 0:27I thought about, what are the problems that are most likely
7. 0:29to affect the future of the world or the future of humanity?
8. 0:32I think it's extremely important that we have sustainable transport
9. 0:36and sustainable energy production.
10. 0:38That sort of overall sustainable energy problem
11. 0:40is the biggest problem that we have to solve this century,
12. 0:43independent of environmental concerns.
13. 0:45In fact, even if producing CO2 was good for the environment,
14. 0:48given that we're going to run out of hydrocarbons,
15. 0:51we need to find some sustainable means of operating.
16. 0:55CA: Most of American electricity comes from
17. 0:59burning fossil fuels.
18. 1:01How can an electric car that plugs into that electricity help?
19. 1:05EM: Right. There's two elements to that answer.
20. 1:08One is that, even if you take the same source fuel
21. 1:11and produce power at the power plant
22. 1:13and use it to charge electric cars, you're still better off.
23. 1:16So if you take, say, natural gas,
24. 1:18which is the most prevalent hydrocarbon source fuel,
25. 1:21if you burn that in a modern
26. 1:24General Electric natural gas turbine,
27. 1:26you'll get about 60 percent efficiency.
28. 1:28If you put that same fuel in an internal combustion engine car,
29. 1:30you get about 20 percent efficiency.
30. 1:32And the reason is, in the stationary power plant,
31. 1:34you can afford to have something that weighs a lot more,
32. 1:36is voluminous,
33. 1:38and you can take the waste heat
34. 1:39and run a steam turbine and generate
35. 1:41a secondary power source.
36. 1:43So in effect, even after you've taken transmission loss into account and everything,
37. 1:46even using the same source fuel, you're at least twice as better off
38. 1:50charging an electric car, then burning it at the power plant.
39. 1:52CA: That scale delivers efficiency.
40. 1:54EM: Yes, it does.
41. 1:56And then the other point is, we have to have sustainable means
42. 1:59of power generation anyway, electricity generation.
43. 2:02So given that we have to solve sustainable electricity generation,
44. 2:05then it makes sense for us to have electric cars
45. 2:08as the mode of transport.
46. 2:11CA: So we've got some video here
47. 2:12of the Tesla being assembled,
48. 2:15which, if we could play that first video --
49. 2:17So what is innovative about this process in this vehicle?
50. 2:22EM: Sure. So, in order to accelerate the advent of electric transport,
51. 2:26and I should say that I think, actually,
52. 2:28all modes of transport will become fully electric
53. 2:30with the ironic exception of rockets.
54. 2:35There's just no way around Newton's third law.
55. 2:38The question is how do you accelerate
56. 2:42the advent of electric transport?
57. 2:43And in order to do that for cars, you have to come up with
58. 2:46a really energy efficient car,
59. 2:48so that means making it incredibly light,
60. 2:50and so what you're seeing here
61. 2:51is the only all-aluminum body and chassis car
62. 2:54made in North America.
63. 2:55In fact, we applied a lot of rocket design techniques
64. 2:58to make the car light despite having a very large battery pack.
65. 3:02And then it also has the lowest drag coefficient
66. 3:04of any car of its size.
67. 3:05So as a result, the energy usage is very low,
68. 3:09and it has the most advanced battery pack,
69. 3:11and that's what gives it the range that's competitive,
70. 3:14so you can actually have on the order of a 250-mile range.
71. 3:16CA: I mean, those battery packs are incredibly heavy,
72. 3:20but you think the math can still work out intelligently --
73. 3:23by combining light body, heavy battery,
74. 3:25you can still gain spectacular efficiency.
75. 3:28EM: Exactly. The rest of the car has to be very light
76. 3:30to offset the mass of the pack,
77. 3:31and then you have to have a low drag coefficient so that you have good highway range.
78. 3:34And in fact, customers of the Model S
79. 3:38are sort of competing with each other
80. 3:39to try to get the highest possible range.
81. 3:42I think somebody recently got 420 miles out of a single charge.
82. 3:46CA: Bruno Bowden, who's here, did that,
83. 3:49broke the world record.EM: Congratulations.
84. 3:51CA: That was the good news. The bad news was that
85. 3:53to do it, he had to drive at 18 miles an hour constant speed
86. 3:56and got pulled over by the cops. (Laughter)
87. 4:00EM: I mean, you can certainly drive --
88. 4:04if you drive it 65 miles an hour,
89. 4:06under normal conditions,
90. 4:08250 miles is a reasonable number.
91. 4:10CA: Let's show that second video
92. 4:11showing the Tesla in action on ice.
93. 4:14Not at all a dig at The New York Times, this, by the way.
94. 4:17What is the most surprising thing about the experience
95. 4:19of driving the car?
96. 4:21EM: In creating an electric car,
97. 4:22the responsiveness of the car is really incredible.
98. 4:25So we wanted really to have people feel as though
99. 4:27they've almost got to mind meld with the car,
100. 4:29so you just feel like you and the car are kind of one,
101. 4:32and as you corner and accelerate, it just happens,
102. 4:37like the car has ESP.
103. 4:38You can do that with an electric car because of its responsiveness.
104. 4:41You can't do that with a gasoline car.
105. 4:43I think that's really a profound difference,
106. 4:45and people only experience that when they have a test drive.
107. 4:48CA: I mean, this is a beautiful but expensive car.
108. 4:52Is there a road map where this becomes
109. 4:56a mass-market vehicle?
110. 4:57EM: Yeah. The goal of Tesla has always been
111. 5:00to have a sort of three-step process,
112. 5:02where version one was an expensive car at low volume,
113. 5:06version two is medium priced and medium volume,
114. 5:09and then version three would be low price, high volume.
115. 5:11So we're at step two at this point.
116. 5:13So we had a $100,000 sports car, which was the Roadster.
117. 5:16Then we've got the Model S, which starts at around 50,000 dollars.
118. 5:19And our third generation car, which should hopefully
119. 5:21be out in about three or four years
120. 5:23will be a $30,000 car.
121. 5:25But whenever you've got really new technology,
122. 5:28it generally takes about three major versions
123. 5:30in order to make it a compelling mass-market product.
124. 5:33And so I think we're making progress in that direction,
125. 5:36and I feel confident that we'll get there.
126. 5:38CA: I mean, right now, if you've got a short commute,
127. 5:40you can drive, you can get back, you can charge it at home.
128. 5:44There isn't a huge nationwide network of charging stations now that are fast.
129. 5:48Do you see that coming, really, truly,
130. 5:51or just on a few key routes?
131. 5:53EM: There actually are far more charging stations
132. 5:56than people realize,
133. 5:58and at Tesla we developed something
134. 6:01called a Supercharging technology,
135. 6:03and we're offering that if you buy a Model S
136. 6:06for free, forever.
137. 6:08And so this is something that maybe a lot of people don't realize.
138. 6:10We actually have California and Nevada covered,
139. 6:13and we've got the Eastern seaboard
140. 6:15from Boston to D.C. covered.
141. 6:18By the end of this year, you'll be able to drive
142. 6:19from L.A. to New York
143. 6:21just using the Supercharger network,
144. 6:23which charges at five times the rate of anything else.
145. 6:27And the key thing is to have a ratio of drive to stop,
146. 6:31to stop time, of about six or seven.
147. 6:34So if you drive for three hours,
148. 6:37you want to stop for 20 or 30 minutes,
149. 6:38because that's normally what people will stop for.
150. 6:41So if you start a trip at 9 a.m.,
151. 6:43by noon you want to stop to have a bite to eat,
152. 6:45hit the restroom, coffee, and keep going.
153. 6:47CA: So your proposition to consumers is, for the full charge, it could take an hour.
154. 6:50So it's common -- don't expect to be out of here in 10 minutes.
155. 6:54Wait for an hour, but the good news is,
156. 6:56you're helping save the planet,
157. 6:58and by the way, the electricity is free. You don't pay anything.
158. 7:00EM: Actually, what we're expecting is for people
159. 7:02to stop for about 20 to 30 minutes, not for an hour.
160. 7:06It's actually better to drive for about maybe 160, 170 miles
161. 7:14and then stop for half an hour
162. 7:16and then keep going.
163. 7:17That's the natural cadence of a trip.
164. 7:20CA: All right. So this is only one string to your energy bow.
165. 7:25You've been working on this solar company SolarCity.
166. 7:27What's unusual about that?
167. 7:30EM: Well, as I mentioned earlier,
168. 7:32we have to have sustainable electricity production
169. 7:36as well as consumption,
170. 7:38so I'm quite confident that the primary means
171. 7:41of power generation will be solar.
172. 7:44I mean, it's really indirect fusion, is what it is.
173. 7:46We've got this giant fusion generator in the sky called the sun,
174. 7:49and we just need to tap a little bit of that energy
175. 7:52for purposes of human civilization.
176. 7:55What most people know but don't realize they know
177. 7:57is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already.
178. 8:01If the sun wasn't there, we'd be a frozen ice ball
179. 8:04at three degrees Kelvin,
180. 8:06and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation.
181. 8:10The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.
182. 8:12CA: But in a gallon of gasoline, you have,
183. 8:15effectively, thousands of years of sun power
184. 8:17compressed into a small space,
185. 8:19so it's hard to make the numbers work right now on solar,
186. 8:22and to remotely compete with, for example, natural gas,
187. 8:25fracked natural gas. How are you going to build a business here?
188. 8:29EM: Well actually, I'm confident that solar
189. 8:32will beat everything, hands down, including natural gas.
190. 8:36(Applause)CA: How?
191. 8:38EM: It must, actually. If it doesn't, we're in deep trouble.
192. 8:42CA: But you're not selling solar panels to consumers.
193. 8:45What are you doing?
194. 8:46EM: No, we actually are. You can buy a solar system
195. 8:49or you can lease a solar system.
196. 8:51Most people choose to lease.
197. 8:53And the thing about solar power is that
198. 8:55it doesn't have any feed stock or operational costs,
199. 8:58so once it's installed, it's just there.
200. 9:01It works for decades. It'll work for probably a century.
201. 9:05So therefore, the key thing to do is to get the cost
202. 9:08of that initial installation low,
203. 9:10and then get the cost of the financing low,
204. 9:13because that interest -- those are the two factors that drive the cost of solar.
205. 9:16And we've made huge progress in that direction,
206. 9:20and that's why I'm confident we'll actually beat natural gas.
207. 9:23CA: So your current proposition to consumers is,
208. 9:26don't pay so much up front.
209. 9:28EM: Zero.CA: Pay zero up front.
210. 9:31We will install panels on your roof.
211. 9:34You will then pay, how long is a typical lease?
212. 9:37EM: Typical leases are 20 years,
213. 9:41but the value proposition is, as you're sort of alluding to, quite straightforward.
214. 9:45It's no money down, and your utility bill decreases.
215. 9:49Pretty good deal.
216. 9:51CA: So that seems like a win for the consumer.
217. 9:53No risk, you'll pay less than you're paying now.
218. 9:56For you, the dream here then is that --
219. 9:58I mean, who owns the electricity from those panels for the longer term?
220. 10:03I mean, how do you, the company, benefit?
221. 10:06EM: Well, essentially,
222. 10:10SolarCity raises a chunk of capital
223. 10:15from say, a company or a bank.
224. 10:19Google is one of our big partners here.
225. 10:21And they have an expected return on that capital.
226. 10:24With that capital, SolarCity purchases and installs the panel on the roof
227. 10:28and then charges the homeowner or business owner
228. 10:32a monthly lease payment, which is less than the utility bill.
229. 10:35CA: But you yourself get a long-term commercial benefit from that power.
230. 10:39You're kind of building a new type of distributed utility.
231. 10:43EM: Exactly. What it amounts to
232. 10:44is a giant distributed utility.
233. 10:48I think it's a good thing, because utilities
234. 10:50have been this monopoly, and people haven't had any choice.
235. 10:53So effectively it's the first time
236. 10:55there's been competition for this monopoly,
237. 10:59because the utilities have been the only ones
238. 11:02that owned those power distribution lines, but now it's on your roof.
239. 11:04So I think it's actually very empowering
240. 11:06for homeowners and businesses.
241. 11:09CA: And you really picture a future
242. 11:10where a majority of power in America,
243. 11:14within a decade or two, or within your lifetime, it goes solar?
244. 11:19EM: I'm extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power,
245. 11:25and most likely a majority,
246. 11:27and I predict it will be a plurality in less than 20 years.
247. 11:32I made that bet with someone —CA: Definition of plurality is?
248. 11:35EM: More from solar than any other source.
249. 11:37CA: Ah. Who did you make the bet with?
250. 11:41EM: With a friend who will remain nameless.
251. 11:44CA: Just between us. (Laughter)
252. 11:49EM: I made that bet, I think, two or three years ago,
253. 11:51so in roughly 18 years,
254. 11:53I think we'll see more power from solar than any other source.
255. 11:57CA: All right, so let's go back to another bet that you made
256. 11:59with yourself, I guess, a kind of crazy bet.
257. 12:01You'd made some money from the sale of PayPal.
258. 12:06You decided to build a space company.
259. 12:08Why on Earth would someone do that?
260. 12:10(Laughter)
261. 12:12EM: I got that question a lot, that's true.
262. 12:15People would say, "Did you hear the joke about the guy
263. 12:17who made a small fortune in the space industry?"
264. 12:20Obviously, "He started with a large one," is the punchline.
265. 12:24And so I tell people, well, I was trying to figure out
266. 12:27the fastest way to turn a large fortune into a small one.
267. 12:29And they'd look at me, like, "Is he serious?"
268. 12:32CA: And strangely, you were. So what happened?
269. 12:37EM: It was a close call. Things almost didn't work out.
270. 12:41We came very close to failure,
271. 12:42but we managed to get through that point in 2008.
272. 12:45The goal of SpaceX is to try to advance rocket technology,
273. 12:52and in particular to try to crack a problem
274. 12:54that I think is vital
275. 12:55for humanity to become a space-faring civilization,
276. 12:57which is to have a rapidly and fully reusable rocket.
277. 13:02CA: Would humanity become a space-faring civilization?
278. 13:05So that was a dream of yours, in a way, from a young age?
279. 13:09You've dreamed of Mars and beyond?
280. 13:13EM: I did build rockets when I was a kid,
281. 13:15but I didn't think I'd be involved in this.
282. 13:16It was really more from the standpoint of
283. 13:18what are the things that need to happen in order for
284. 13:22the future to be an exciting and inspiring one?
285. 13:25And I really think there's a fundamental difference,
286. 13:29if you sort of look into the future,
287. 13:30between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization,
288. 13:34that's out there exploring the stars, on multiple planets,
289. 13:37and I think that's really exciting,
290. 13:39compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth
291. 13:42until some eventual extinction event.
292. 13:45CA: So you've somehow slashed the cost of building
293. 13:46a rocket by 75 percent, depending on how you calculate it.
294. 13:50How on Earth have you done that?
295. 13:52NASA has been doing this for years. How have you done this?
296. 13:55EM: Well, we've made significant advances
297. 13:57in the technology of the airframe, the engines,
298. 14:00the electronics and the launch operation.
299. 14:03There's a long list of innovations
300. 14:06that we've come up with there
301. 14:08that are a little difficult to communicate in this talk, but --
302. 14:14CA: Not least because you could still get copied, right?
303. 14:17You haven't patented this stuff. It's really interesting to me.
304. 14:20EM: No, we don't patent.CA: You didn't patent because you think it's
305. 14:22more dangerous to patent than not to patent.
306. 14:25EM: Since our primary competitors are national governments,
307. 14:28the enforceability of patents is questionable.(Laughter) (Applause)
308. 14:32CA: That's really, really interesting.
309. 14:36But the big innovation is still ahead,
310. 14:38and you're working on it now. Tell us about this.
311. 14:41EM: Right, so the big innovation—
312. 14:43CA: In fact, let's roll that video and you can talk us through it, what's happening here.
313. 14:47EM: Absolutely. So the thing about rockets is that
314. 14:51they're all expendable.
315. 14:52All rockets that fly today are fully expendable.
316. 14:55The space shuttle was an attempt at a reusable rocket,
317. 14:57but even the main tank of the space shuttle was thrown away every time,
318. 15:00and the parts that were reusable
319. 15:02took a 10,000-person group nine months to refurbish for flight.
320. 15:07So the space shuttle ended up costing a billion dollars per flight.
321. 15:11Obviously that doesn't work very well for —
322. 15:13CA: What just happened there? We just saw something land?
323. 15:16EM: That's right. So it's important that the rocket stages
324. 15:20be able to come back, to be able to return to the launch site
325. 15:24and be ready to launch again within a matter of hours.
326. 15:27CA: Wow. Reusable rockets.EM: Yes. (Applause)
327. 15:31And so what a lot of people don't realize is,
328. 15:35the cost of the fuel, of the propellant, is very small.
329. 15:37It's much like on a jet.
330. 15:39So the cost of the propellant is about .3 percent
331. 15:42of the cost of the rocket.
332. 15:44So it's possible to achieve, let's say,
333. 15:46roughly 100-fold improvement in the cost of spaceflight
334. 15:49if you can effectively reuse the rocket.
335. 15:52That's why it's so important.
336. 15:54Every mode of transport that we use,
337. 15:56whether it's planes, trains, automobiles, bikes, horses,
338. 15:59is reusable, but not rockets.
339. 16:01So we must solve this problem in order to become a space-faring civilization.
340. 16:05CA: You asked me the question earlier
341. 16:06of how popular traveling on cruises would be
342. 16:10if you had to burn your ships afterward.EM: Certain cruises are apparently highly problematic.
343. 16:16CA: Definitely more expensive.
344. 16:18So that's potentially absolutely disruptive technology,
345. 16:22and, I guess, paves the way for your dream to actually take,
346. 16:26at some point, to take humanity to Mars at scale.
347. 16:30You'd like to see a colony on Mars.
348. 16:32EM: Yeah, exactly. SpaceX, or some combination
349. 16:36of companies and governments, needs to make progress
350. 16:39in the direction of making life multi-planetary,
351. 16:42of establishing a base on another planet,
352. 16:46on Mars -- being the only realistic option --
353. 16:48and then building that base up
354. 16:49until we're a true multi-planet species.
355. 16:52CA: So progress on this "let's make it reusable,"
356. 16:55how is that going? That was just a simulation video we saw.
357. 16:59How's it going?
358. 17:00EM: We're actually, we've been making some good progress recently
359. 17:03with something we call the Grasshopper Test Project,
360. 17:06where we're testing the vertical landing portion of the flight,
361. 17:10the sort of terminal portion which is quite tricky.
362. 17:13And we've had some good tests.
363. 17:16CA: Can we see that?EM: Yeah.
364. 17:18So that's just to give a sense of scale.
365. 17:20We dressed a cowboy as Johnny Cash
366. 17:21and bolted the mannequin to the rocket. (Laughter)
367. 17:25CA: All right, let's see that video then,
368. 17:27because this is actually amazing when you think about it.
369. 17:29You've never seen this before. A rocket blasting off and then --
370. 17:34EM: Yeah, so that rocket is about the size
371. 17:36of a 12-story building.
372. 17:39(Rocket launch)
373. 17:50So now it's hovering at about 40 meters,
374. 17:54and it's constantly adjusting
375. 17:56the angle, the pitch and yaw of the main engine,
376. 17:59and maintaining roll with cold gas thrusters.
377. 18:09CA: How cool is that? (Applause)
378. 18:15Elon, how have you done this?
379. 18:20These projects are so -- Paypal, SolarCity,
380. 18:25Tesla, SpaceX, they're so spectacularly different,
381. 18:28they're such ambitious projects at scale.
382. 18:30How on Earth has one person
383. 18:33been able to innovate in this way?
384. 18:35What is it about you?
385. 18:37EM: I don't know, actually.
386. 18:43I don't have a good answer for you.
387. 18:45I work a lot. I mean, a lot.
388. 18:48CA: Well, I have a theory.EM: Okay. All right.
389. 18:51CA: My theory is that you
390. 18:54have an ability to think at a system level of design
391. 18:58that pulls together design, technology and business,
392. 19:02so if TED was TBD, design, technology and business,
393. 19:06into one package,
394. 19:08synthesize it in a way that very few people can and --
395. 19:10and this is the critical thing -- feel so damn confident
396. 19:15in that clicked-together package that you take crazy risks.
397. 19:19You bet your fortune on it, and you seem to have done that multiple times.
398. 19:24I mean, almost no one can do that.
399. 19:26Is that -- could we have some of that secret sauce?
400. 19:29Can we put it into our education system? Can someone learn from you?
401. 19:33It is truly amazing what you've done.
402. 19:35EM: Well, thanks. Thank you.
403. 19:37Well, I do think there's a good framework for thinking.
404. 19:41It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning.
405. 19:44Generally I think there are -- what I mean by that is,
406. 19:49boil things down to their fundamental truths
407. 19:52and reason up from there,
408. 19:54as opposed to reasoning by analogy.
409. 19:56Through most of our life, we get through life
410. 19:58by reasoning by analogy,
411. 19:59which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations.
412. 20:03And you have to do that.
413. 20:04Otherwise, mentally, you wouldn't be able to get through the day.
414. 20:09But when you want to do something new,
415. 20:11you have to apply the physics approach.
416. 20:15Physics is really figuring out how to discover
417. 20:17new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics.
418. 20:20It's really counterintuitive.
419. 20:22So I think that's an important thing to do,
420. 20:24and then also to really pay attention to negative feedback,
421. 20:29and solicit it, particularly from friends.
422. 20:31This may sound like simple advice,
423. 20:34but hardly anyone does that,
424. 20:37and it's incredibly helpful.
425. 20:39CA: Boys and girls watching, study physics.
426. 20:42Learn from this man.
427. 20:44Elon Musk, I wish we had all day, but thank you so much for coming to TED.
428. 20:47EM: Thank you. CA: That was awesome. That was really, really cool.
429. 20:51Look at that. (Applause)
430. 20:53Just take a bow. That was fantastic.
431. 20:58Thank you so much.