WWED quotes
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485 sourced public quotes. Each quote links to its own page with the original source; X posts link to the post on X instead. No login is required. The raw data is at quotes.jsonl.
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Talk or event
“In fact, most of the venture capitalists that I talked to hadn't even heard of the internet which sounds bizarre on Sand Hill Road.”Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner talk by Elon Musk (Career Development)
Talk or event
“The only way to get involved in the internet in '95, that I could think of, was to start a company.”Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner talk by Elon Musk (Career Development)
Talk or event
“I mean if you calculate how much it costs to bring either the photons from space solar power back to earth or the raw material back to earth, the economics don't make sense. They just can't close the economic case.”Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner talk by Elon Musk (Space Mining vs. Human Space Flight)
Talk or event
“So I think probably the biggest thing that could happen is if we decide to establish a base on the moon or a base on Mars and particularly, if we attempt to make a self-sustaining base, self-sustaining civilization on the moon or Mars, that is an enormous opportunity on probably the trillion-dollar level because then you have basically interplanetary commerce going on.”Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner talk by Elon Musk (Space Mining vs. Human Space Flight)
Press
“There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”Fast Company, 'Hondas in Space' by Jennifer Reingold (quoting Elon Musk)
Press
“You can have a cheap car that's reliable, and the same applies to rockets.”Fast Company, 'Hondas in Space' by Jennifer Reingold (quoting Elon Musk)
Press
“A small group of very technically strong people will always beat a large group of moderately strong people”Fast Company, 'Hondas in Space' by Jennifer Reingold (quoting Elon Musk)
Press
“The pace of execution is really the fundamental [advantage]”Fast Company, 'Hondas in Space' by Jennifer Reingold (quoting Elon Musk)
Master plan
“The strategy of Tesla is to enter at the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model.”Tesla blog, The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)
Master plan
“In keeping with a fast growing technology company, all free cash flow is plowed back into R&D to drive down the costs and bring the follow on products to market as fast as possible.”Tesla blog, The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)
Master plan
“When someone buys the Tesla Roadster sports car, they are actually helping pay for development of the low cost family car.”Tesla blog, The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)
Master plan
“Almost any new technology initially has high unit cost before it can be optimized and this is no less true for electric cars.”Tesla blog, The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)
Master plan
“Don't tell anyone.”Tesla blog, The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)
Press
“There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important.”Elon Musk, all-hands email 'Acronyms Seriously Suck' (SpaceX, May 2010)
Press
“VTS-3 is four syllables compared with "Tripod", which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name!”Elon Musk, all-hands email 'Acronyms Seriously Suck' (SpaceX, May 2010)
Press
“The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication.”Elon Musk, all-hands email 'Acronyms Seriously Suck' (SpaceX, May 2010)
Earnings call
“In fact, I think on this point, this is probably the most important point, I think, for the ultimate value of any company, is that it is in any given company is kind of the vector sum of the people within it. We're just really adding unbelievable talent.”Tesla Q3 2010 earnings call
Earnings call
“Rod, as you know, we've always been a little reticent to make any kind of predictions or forecasts on the powertrain side of things because it's so dependent on the decisions of like maybe 1,000 OEM CEOs and their associated teams.”Tesla Q3 2010 earnings call
Earnings call
“You know, if we take on too much business too soon, we won't be able to do a good job for everyone and still keep the Model S on track.”Tesla Q3 2010 earnings call
Earnings call
“That's, that's I think, although somewhat of a nebulous answer, that's really I think what I would consider to be the timing risk is that we won't ship the car unless it's, unless it's really great.”Tesla Q3 2010 earnings call
Earnings call
“We really put together a team and we're making a panoramic roof that's really, again, I think gonna be best in class or best in best really, not best in class, best.”Tesla Q3 2010 earnings call
Earnings call
“For those that think it's that there's a larger format cell that's better, I would simply ask, "What is the cost per kilowatt hour, and what is the energy density?" Until some cell supplier comes back to us with a number that is better than the 18650. It's really as simple as that.”Tesla Q4 2010 earnings call
Earnings call
“I You know, some will disagree with this strategy, but I think vertical integration is a smart move. It allows us to adapt quickly, to maybe, you know, rapidly innovate, and also to control our unit costs.”Tesla Q4 2010 earnings call
Earnings call
“It's important for us to be able to say, "Okay, if you as a supplier are not gonna do a great job for us here, we will insource," and have that be a credible threat.”Tesla Q4 2010 earnings call
Earnings call
“The basic philosophy for insourcing is to, if we need to be able to do almost anything in-house.”Tesla Q4 2010 earnings call
Earnings call
“Our hiring standards at Tesla are extremely high. I mean, that's unequivocally the highest in the car business, and that tends to be the getting factor on hiring decisions more than anything else.”Tesla Q1 2011 earnings call
Earnings call
“If you think of the way I think of the Roadster and the Model S, it's kind of like, you know, if the Roadster is kind of like the Apple I, and the Model S is a bit like sort of the Apple II. It makes a huge difference to lower the price. Basically, car sales increase exponentially as you lower the price.”Tesla Q2 2011 earnings call
Earnings call
“We'd like to be able to use the free cash flow from existing sales of, say, Model S and Model X to sort of then leap up to the next level without having to go through a significant dilutive event. That's our strategy.”Tesla Q2 2011 earnings call
Earnings call
“I think that's a high-class problem because, if there are that many EVs, it pretty much means we won. We're selling so many cars that it actually matters to the grid.”Tesla Q3 2011 earnings call
X post
“Not that this really matters. All current rocket tech, including ours, sucks. Only when it becomes fully reusable, will it not suck.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“We'll be able to go to a third-generation vehicle, which would be a mass market vehicle with the price in the kind of $30,000 range.”Tesla Q4 2011 earnings call
Earnings call
“Previously, we were going to do a next-generation roadster after the Model X. I've sort of gained enough confidence that the technology will be scalable to higher volume, maybe a bit sooner.”Tesla Q4 2011 earnings call
Earnings call
“You may have heard me say on a few occasions that the goal of Tesla is to serve as a catalyst for electric vehicles. We want to do everything we can to advance the course of electric cars, whether that's cars we make ourselves or cars that we help others make.”Tesla Q4 2011 earnings call
X post
“10 years ago today, SpaceX was founded. Many battles fought. Physics always won.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Press
“When something is important enough you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”CBS News / 60 Minutes, SpaceX (Scott Pelley interview)
Press
“The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds are in my favor.”CBS News / 60 Minutes, SpaceX (Scott Pelley interview)
Press
“I don't ever give up. I mean, I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.”CBS News / 60 Minutes, SpaceX (Scott Pelley interview)
Press
“If that fourth launch hadn't worked, that would have been it. We would have not had the resources to mount a fifth.”CBS News / 60 Minutes, SpaceX (Scott Pelley interview)
Press
“It's like a little kid fighting a bunch of sumo wrestlers. Usually, the sumo wrestlers win. We're a little scrappy company. Every now and again, the little scrappy company wins.”CBS News / 60 Minutes, SpaceX (Scott Pelley interview)
Press
“I think it's important that humanity become a multi-planet species.”CBS News / 60 Minutes, SpaceX (Scott Pelley interview)
Press
“So what that means is raw metal comes in and then we build the engines, the frame, the electronics and we integrate all of that together and that's all done more or less under one roof.”CBS News / 60 Minutes, SpaceX (Scott Pelley interview)
Press
“Well, I do have a physics background. That's helpful as a foundation. And then I read a lot of books and talked to a lot of, a lot of smart people.”CBS News / 60 Minutes, SpaceX (Scott Pelley interview)
X post
“Also dig Mass Effect. It's all fun & games until the AI decides people suck. Maybe we can be their limbic system.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Besides ensuring the continuance of life, creating a base on Mars would be the most exciting adventure ever!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“We really want to be super sensitive to the quality of the product, and our aspiration is to deliver cars that have zero defects.”Tesla Q1 2012 earnings call
Earnings call
“I don't think we'll ever stop iterating on improving the vehicle.”Tesla Q1 2012 earnings call
Earnings call
“Yeah, it is kind of intense right now, I have to admit. I'm not getting a lot of sleep. My time is generally, on average, split roughly 50/50 between Tesla and Space X. SolarCity is less than a day a month, so that doesn't take much time at all.”Tesla Q1 2012 earnings call
Earnings call
“I think I'm primarily an email processing device. That's really helpful to be able to run both companies simultaneously. When I'm with my kids, when they don't need my direct attention, then I'm on email as well.”Tesla Q1 2012 earnings call
X post
“Will publish something on the Hyperloop in about four weeks. Will forgo patents on the idea and just open source it. Not a vac tunnel btw.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“But if humanity wishes to become a multi-planet species, then we must figure out how to move millions of people to Mars.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“And, yes, I do in fact know that this sounds crazy. That is not lost on me. Nor I do think SpaceX will do this alone.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“That's why I'm a believer in solar power. We have a giant fusion reactor conveniently located in the sky.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Talk or event
“Generally I think there are -- what I mean by that is, boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Talk or event
“The goal of Tesla has always been to have a sort of three-step process, where version one was an expensive car at low volume, version two is medium priced and medium volume, and then version three would be low price, high volume.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Talk or event
“And I really think there's a fundamental difference, if you sort of look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that's out there exploring the stars, on multiple planets, and I think that's really exciting, compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Talk or event
“SpaceX, or some combination of companies and governments, needs to make progress in the direction of making life multi-planetary, of establishing a base on another planet, on Mars -- being the only realistic option -- and then building that base up until we're a true multi-planet species.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Talk or event
“The goal of SpaceX is to try to advance rocket technology, and in particular to try to crack a problem that I think is vital for humanity to become a space-faring civilization, which is to have a rapidly and fully reusable rocket.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Talk or event
“Every mode of transport that we use, whether it's planes, trains, automobiles, bikes, horses, is reusable, but not rockets.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Talk or event
“Since our primary competitors are national governments, the enforceability of patents is questionable.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Talk or event
“In fact, even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we're going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Talk or event
“I mean, it's really indirect fusion, is what it is. We've got this giant fusion generator in the sky called the sun, and we just need to tap a little bit of that energy for purposes of human civilization.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Talk or event
“So, in order to accelerate the advent of electric transport, and I should say that I think, actually, all modes of transport will become fully electric with the ironic exception of rockets.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Talk or event
“We dressed a cowboy as Johnny Cash and bolted the mannequin to the rocket.”TED2013 interview with Chris Anderson, The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity
Earnings call
“Despite all that, due to an enormous amount of hard work by a really dedicated group of people at Tesla, we're gonna be profitable.”Tesla Q4 2012 earnings call
X post
“.@joshj777 It has always been my dream to produce a low cost, compelling electric car. We are 3 to 4 years away. Wish it could be sooner.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Maybe a v long time from now. Paying div is a sign that a company cannot find good ways to spend money.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Forgot to say one thing at Tesla annual shareholders meeting: just as my money was the first in, it will be the last out.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Interview
“just work like hell I mean you just have to put in you know 80 hour 80 to 100 hour weeks every week”Vator, 'Elon Musk: Work twice as hard as others' (interview clip with Bambi Francisco)
Interview
“I mean if if if other people are putting in 40-hour work weeks and you're putting in 100h hour work weeks then even if uh you're doing the same thing you know that in in one year you will achieve what they achieve you you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve”Vator, 'Elon Musk: Work twice as hard as others' (interview clip with Bambi Francisco)
X post
“Am happy to hear that GM plans to develop an affordable 200 mile range electric car. Right target. Hope others do same.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“If the best case, in our opinion, the best case fuel cell car, and obviously the current fuel cell cars are far from best case, cannot beat the current case electric car, well, why even try? That just makes no sense. Success is not one of the possible outcomes.”Tesla Q2 2014 earnings call
Earnings call
“It's heading to a place of no contest with respect to gasoline, we're trying to make it go there as fast as possible because time is important here. The sooner this can be done, the sooner we can reduce carbon output and reduce the probability of a catastrophe.”Tesla Q2 2014 earnings call
X post
“Worth reading Superintelligence by Bostrom. We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Hope we're not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Well, our definition of far is other people's definition of not that far.”Tesla Q3 2014 earnings call
X post
“Full RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) event. Ship is fine minor repairs. Exciting day!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Reasons I like tunnels: you still travel in 3D fast, but immune to weather, quiet and no risk cars fall on your head” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Essentially the, you know, the production ramp goes according to the unluckiest and worst-performing supplier or product of Tesla.”Tesla Q1 2015 earnings call
Earnings call
“Assume full electrification of transport, electrification of all heating and cooling, and then the current, you know, industrial and commercial uses of electricity, like basically to go fully electric, transport is about half the size of everything else. That was sort of our global macro calculations. Ultimately we think things will get there.”Tesla Q1 2015 earnings call
Earnings call
“There's, like, all these things which are big on promise and short on delivery when it comes to battery chemistry and it's just a real hard problem. You know, hardly a week goes by that there's not some alleged breakthrough in batteries.”Tesla Q1 2015 earnings call
Earnings call
“We do wanna set the expectation that it's much like the Autopilot in a plane where you turn the Autopilot on in a plane, but there's still an expectation that the pilot will pay attention to what the plane is doing, and, you know, won't sort of go to sleep or just disappear from the cockpit.”Tesla Q2 2015 earnings call
Earnings call
“In fact, I mean, our view is that the whole industry will go electric. Eventually, they really won't have much choice. The sooner they go electric, the better.”Tesla Q2 2015 earnings call
Earnings call
“It looks like we don't really have much choice but to create our own data set for driving, in order to in the long term, in order to provide a high-quality Autopilot experience.”Tesla Q2 2015 earnings call
Earnings call
“If you have buffering, which is what stationary storage allows for, then you only need your power plants to operate at the average energy usage, which means that you can basically, in principle, shut down half of the world's power plants if you had stationary storage. This is independent of renewable energy.”Tesla Q2 2015 earnings call
Earnings call
“I do remain confident about half a million cars in 2020, and, you know, maybe being able to exceed that. I mean, it's worth noting that if, you know, so 2020, that's five years from now. If you go five years in the past for Tesla, we were producing 600 cars per year. Now we can produce 600 cars in three days.”Tesla Q2 2015 earnings call
Earnings call
“Frankly, the main thing is we don't wanna set, you know, high expectations and then the only way for us to feel good about the future is that if we exceed really high expectations. It's sort of like, winning needs to feel like winning, if that makes any sense.”Tesla Q2 2015 earnings call
Earnings call
“You basically think of like the production will move as fast as the least lucky supplier that we have in our network.”Tesla Q3 2015 earnings call
X post
“Interesting to think of physics as a set of compression algorithms for the universe. That's basically what formulas are.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Tickets to orbital hotels, the moon and Mars will be a lot less than people think.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“It's always tempting for people to reason by analogy instead of first principles. That would be the mistake of assuming that anything to do with the Model X production has bearing on Model 3.”Tesla Q1 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“I think Tesla is gonna be hell-bent on becoming the best manufacturer on Earth. You know, thus far, I think we've done a good job on design and technology of our products.”Tesla Q1 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“We believe that manufacturing technology is itself subject to a tremendous amount of innovation. In fact, we believe that there's more potential for innovation in manufacturing than there is in the design of the car, by a long shot.”Tesla Q1 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“I have a sleeping bag in a conference room adjacent to the production line, which I use quite frequently.”Tesla Q1 2016 earnings call
X post
“control of super powerful AI by a small number of humans is the most proximate concern” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Creating a neural lace is the thing that really matters for humanity to achieve symbiosis with machines” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Hence the urgency of making life as we know it multiplanetary as soon as possible” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“RUD = Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly :)” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Master plan
“The reason we had to start off with step 1 was that it was all I could afford to do with what I made from PayPal.”Tesla blog, Master Plan, Part Deux
Master plan
“I thought our chances of success were so low that I didn't want to risk anyone's funds in the beginning but my own.”Tesla blog, Master Plan, Part Deux
Master plan
“Starting a car company is idiotic and an electric car company is idiocy squared.”Tesla blog, Master Plan, Part Deux
Master plan
“The point of all this was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good.”Tesla blog, Master Plan, Part Deux
Master plan
“What really matters to accelerate a sustainable future is being able to scale up production volume as quickly as possible.”Tesla blog, Master Plan, Part Deux
Master plan
“That is why Tesla engineering has transitioned to focus heavily on designing the machine that makes the machine -- turning the factory itself into a product.”Tesla blog, Master Plan, Part Deux
Master plan
“A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a 5 to 10 fold improvement is achievable by version 3 on a roughly 2 year iteration cycle.”Tesla blog, Master Plan, Part Deux
Master plan
“It would no more make sense to disable Tesla's Autopilot, as some have called for, than it would to disable autopilot in aircraft, after which our system is named.”Tesla blog, Master Plan, Part Deux
Earnings call
“The Model 3, I mean, the internal name for the designing the machine that makes the machine is, we call it the Alien Dreadnought. At the point at which the factory looks like an Alien Dreadnought, then you know you've won.”Tesla Q2 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“If it's cutting-edge technology, it's really hard to scale up production because you gotta design the machine that makes the machine, not just the machine itself.”Tesla Q2 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“I mean, all I would say is that full autonomy is gonna come a hell of a lot faster than anyone thinks it will. I think what we've got, under development is gonna blow people's minds. Blows my mind.”Tesla Q2 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“I want to emphasize narrow AI. It's, like, not gonna take over the world, but it needs to be really good at driving a car.”Tesla Q2 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“I mean, basically, we were in production hell for the first six months of this year. I mean, man, it was hell. Then we just managed to sort of climb out of hell, and like basically fought way through June.”Tesla Q2 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“I'll get a whole lot of mental scar tissue from the first six months this year.”Tesla Q2 2016 earnings call
X post
“Sure feels weird to find myself defending the robots” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Interview
“But in terms of things that I think are most likely to affect the future of humanity, I think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near term that’s likely to affect humanity.”Y Combinator, Elon Musk on How to Build the Future (interview with Sam Altman)
Interview
“It’s very important that we have the advance of AI in a good way that is something that if you could look into a crystal ball and see the future you would like that outcome.”Y Combinator, Elon Musk on How to Build the Future (interview with Sam Altman)
Interview
“It’s fine, they don’t have to have a sense of urgency, but Open AI does because I think people really believe in the mission. I think it’s important and it’s about minimizing the risk of existential harm in the future.”Y Combinator, Elon Musk on How to Build the Future (interview with Sam Altman)
Interview
“If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear.”Y Combinator, Elon Musk on How to Build the Future (interview with Sam Altman)
Interview
“Area under the curve would actually be roughly similar for those two things, so it’s actually really about trying to be useful.”Y Combinator, Elon Musk on How to Build the Future (interview with Sam Altman)
Interview
“If you’re doing something that has high value to people and frankly, even if it’s something just a little game, or you know, some improvement in photo sharing, if it has a small amount of good for a large number of people, that’s fine.”Y Combinator, Elon Musk on How to Build the Future (interview with Sam Altman)
Interview
“So if we can effectively merge with AI by improving the neural link between your cortex and the digital extension of yourself, which already exists, it just has a bandwidth issue.”Y Combinator, Elon Musk on How to Build the Future (interview with Sam Altman)
Interview
“We don’t have to worry about some evil dictator AI because we are the AI, collectively.”Y Combinator, Elon Musk on How to Build the Future (interview with Sam Altman)
Earnings call
“You really start to get quite statistically significant at that point, and can make quite a strong argument, I believe at that point, that it would be, you know, morally wrong not to allow autonomous driving.”Tesla Q3 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“I personally probably took a year off my life or more, camping out in the Fremont factory, solving that along with a number of other members of the Tesla team, went through bloody hell in the first half of this year.”Tesla Q3 2016 earnings call
X post
“Mars is critical for the long-term survival of humanity and life on Earth as we know it” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“I've refocused most of Tesla engineering, including design engineering, into designing the factory. I think in the future, the factory will be a more important product than the car itself.”Tesla Q4 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“It's sort of just applying the rocket equation to manufacturing. You know, essentially, well, the rocket equation is taking its mass efficiency, but, like volumetric efficiency of the factory, as Jason was mentioning, and exit velocity of product from the factory.”Tesla Q4 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“There are new issues that pop up every week, and we attack them and get them to solve the schedule. Another issue will pop up in the following week. It's schedule Whac-A-Mole.”Tesla Q4 2016 earnings call
Earnings call
“Although I think a Mars initiative would be amazing, and really energize the public, domestically and worldwide, just as the Apollo mission to the Moon did almost half a century ago.”Tesla Q4 2016 earnings call
X post
“The number of extinct single planet civilizations probably exceeds live civs by at least a thousand to one. I'm being optimistic.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Talk or event
“The whole road system is meant to be navigated with passive optical, or cameras, and so once you solve cameras or vision, then autonomy is solved. If you don't solve vision, it's not solved.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“You can absolutely be superhuman with just cameras.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“And to some degree that will be true, but once you have shared autonomy where it's much cheaper to go by car and you can go point to point, the affordability of going in a car will be better than that of a bus.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“I think there's -- I look at the future from the standpoint of probabilities. It's like a branching stream of probabilities, and there are actions that we can take that affect those probabilities or that accelerate one thing or slow down another thing.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“I think the value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“I think it's important to have a future that is inspiring and appealing.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“The sustainable energy future I think is largely inevitable, but being a space-faring civilization is definitely not inevitable.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“If you don't have sustainable energy, it means you have unsustainable energy. Eventually you will run out, and the laws of economics will drive civilization towards sustainable energy, inevitably.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“The fundamental value of a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy, faster than it would otherwise occur.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“I think we need to have at least a tenfold improvement in the cost per mile of tunneling.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“But if you shrink that diameter to what we're attempting, which is 12 feet, which is plenty to get an electric skate through, you drop the diameter by a factor of two and the cross-sectional area by a factor of four, and the tunneling cost scales with the cross-sectional area.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“So Gary is capable of -- currently he's capable of going 14 times faster than a tunnel-boring machine.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“We want to beat Gary.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
Talk or event
“That's a real fake house.”TED2017 interview with Chris Anderson, The future we're building -- and boring
X post
“Exactly. Tesla is absurdly overvalued if based on the past, but that's irrelevant. A stock price represents risk-adjusted future cash flows.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Model X became kind of like a technology bandwagon of every cool thing you can imagine all at once. It's like everything all at once. That is a terrible strategy.”Tesla Q1 2017 earnings call
X post
“It's starting to feel kinda normal to reuse rockets. Good. That's how it is for cars & airplanes and how it should be for rockets.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Tim's piece on AI is excellent, but we actually face a double exponential rate of improvement. AI hardware & software are both exponential.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“I would like to thank my executive team for stopping me from being a fool.”Tesla Q2 2017 earnings call
Earnings call
“Well, as you know, I'm terrified of AI.”Tesla Q2 2017 earnings call
X post
“Nobody likes being regulated, but everything (cars, planes, food, drugs, etc) that's a danger to the public is regulated. AI should be too.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Press
“Earth is the wrong planet for single stage to orbit. No problemo on Mars.”TechCrunch report on Elon Musk's Reddit AMA answers
Press
“The objective is to meet or exceed passenger airline levels of safety.”TechCrunch report on Elon Musk's Reddit AMA answers
X post
“Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“It is high time that humanity went beyond Earth. Should have a moon base by now and sent astronauts to Mars. The future needs to inspire.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“We’re doing ok for a bunch of monkeys. Humanity rocks!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“The most fundamental difference is thinking about the factory as really as a product, as a quite vertically integrated product.”Tesla Q4 2017 earnings call
Earnings call
“Like grandma with a walker can exceed the speed of the fastest production line on Earth. Really not that fast. Walking speed is 1 meter per second, so 5 x faster than the fastest production line on Earth.”Tesla Q4 2017 earnings call
Earnings call
“I'm really excited about Model Y manufacturing and the design for manufacturing. Like, essentially, how do we design out all the pain that we're currently going through? We do not wanna experience it again.”Tesla Q4 2017 earnings call
Earnings call
“Now, perhaps I am wrong, in which case I'll look like a fool. I am quite certain that I'm not.”Tesla Q4 2017 earnings call
Earnings call
“You know, I'm reminded of, I think it may have been Churchill's line about sausage. If you like sausage and respect the lawyer, you should watch neither being made. And to some degree, that is true of a production ramp.”Tesla Q4 2017 earnings call
Earnings call
“I think in part we were probably a little overconfident, a little complacent in thinking that this is something we know and understand and put a lot of attention on other things and just got too comfortable with our ability to do battery modules since we've been doing that since the start of the company.”Tesla Q4 2017 earnings call
X post
“Why Falcon Heavy & Starman? Life cannot just be about solving one sad problem after another. There need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity. That is why we did it. We did for you.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“However, as I mentioned in a tweet, a few months ago, we did go too far on the automation front and automated some pretty silly things.”Tesla Q1 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“I think in general, our understanding of production is improving dramatically, exponentially in fact. We are seeing ways to achieve improved volume with dramatically less CapEx by simplifying the production line by really engaging all of our associates, no matter how junior, in improving the way the parts are made. It's amazing how everybody's got good ideas, just need to solicit those ideas and implement them.”Tesla Q1 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“Well, the hardest thing to predict about the timing is regulatory approval. You know, there's the thing that's tricky with autonomous vehicles is that autonomy doesn't reduce the accident rate or fatality rate to zero. It improves it substantially.”Tesla Q1 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“If I could kinda say from a technical standpoint, I think we'll probably be ready by the end of next year.”Tesla Q1 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“We have no interest, we have no interest in satisfying the desires of day traders. Like, couldn't care less. Please sell our stock and don't buy it.”Tesla Q1 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“First of all, I think moats are lame. I mean, they're like nice in sort of a quaint, vestigial way. Like if your only defense against like invading armies is a moat, you will not last long. What matters is the pace of innovation. That is the fundamental determinant of competitiveness.”Tesla Q1 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“We need to become a profitable company. That is a good criticism that has been leveled at Tesla, an accurate one. It's high time we became profitable. You know, and the, and the truth is, like, you're not a real company until you, until you are, frankly.”Tesla Q1 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“Really the pros, like, people get too focused on, like, what's happening in the space of a few weeks or a few months. This is, you know, an old maxim of investing. You should not be focused on short-term things. You should be focused on long-term things.”Tesla Q1 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“Like, the idea is, idea generation far exceeds the ability to execute it, we just need to stay focused and not divide our attention on too many products at one time.”Tesla Q1 2018 earnings call
X post
“Saying you like “moats” is just a nice way of saying you like oligopolies” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Yeah, I heard this so many times. In the future, it will seem bizarre that we used to crash rockets into the ocean instead of reusing them.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Exactly. Gasoline cars will be like steam engines — quaint, but not something you’d actually use to get around. Btw, I like steam engines & trains in general.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“That’s quite a blast from the past! After my Zip2 experience w patents, I felt that patents (particularly software) inhibited innovation, instead of fostering it. I aspired to file zero patents after that. In 2014, we open-sourced all Tesla patents” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“The future is a set of branching probability streams. Some actions by humanity have an extremely leveraged effect on shape & size of those streams.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“It’s actually pretty fun building electric cars. Product is useful to other people & good for environment. I think that’s fundamental goodness.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“If I am a narcissist (which might be true), at least I am a useful one” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Interview
“Now the thing that’s going to be tricky here is that it’s going to be very tempting to use AI as a weapon.”The Joe Rogan Experience #1169 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“I tried to convince people to slow down. Slow down AI, to regulate AI.”The Joe Rogan Experience #1169 (Elon Musk)
X post
“Physics can be thought of as the compression algorithms of reality” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Pace of innovation is all that matters in the long run” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“People sometimes forget that a company is just a group of people gathered together to make products. So long as it makes great products, it will have great value.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Punctuality is not my strong suit” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“The advantage that Tesla will have is that we'll have millions of cars in the field with full autonomy capability, and no one else will have that. I think that will end up putting us in the strongest competitive position long term.”Tesla Q3 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“Maybe this has happened before, but I've never heard of a case where a company's customers actually cared about the future of the company so much that they volunteered their time to help the company succeed. I think that's amazing. Just don't see that anywhere. Yeah, it's like really makes me choked me up actually.”Tesla Q3 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“I mean, it occurs to me that even if the only thing, like even if this was the only thing that Tesla did different was to shorten the time from factory to the end customer, any given company that did that would outcompete all other companies over time. It would not be a contest.”Tesla Q3 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“Our goal really is to make electric cars that everyone can afford, not to sort of mine high, you know, high option value cars. It's like if we could produce a $35,000 car today, we would do it.”Tesla Q3 2018 earnings call
X post
“There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Love that people are buying a Tesla for the product itself, even if they don’t believe in climate change. Not everyone can be convinced about global warming, but if an electric car is simply the best product, they don’t need to be.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Anxiety is a scalar, fear is a vector” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“I mean, in a nutshell, when do we think that the capability will be there for when will we think it's safe for Full Self-Driving? It's probably towards the end of this year. It's up to regulators to decide when they wanna approve that.”Tesla Q4 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“The fundamental goodness of Tesla that, you know, like, the why of Tesla, the relevance, what's the point of Tesla comes down to two things, acceleration of sustainable energy and autonomy. Acceleration of sustainable energy is absolutely fundamental 'cause this is an existential risk for humanity.”Tesla Q4 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“Also very important is autonomy. This has the potential to save millions of lives, tens of millions of serious permanent injuries, and give people their time back so that they don't have to drive.”Tesla Q4 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“And getting those costs down, variable cost and fixed cost is what allows us to lower the price and be financially sustainable and achieve our mission of environmental sustainability. We have to be absolute zealots about this.”Tesla Q4 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“The, you know, we have to be relentless about costs in order to make affordable cars and not go bankrupt. That's, that's what our headcount reduction is about. Yeah, we have to It's, we have to be super hardcore about it. It's the only way to make affordable cars.”Tesla Q4 2018 earnings call
Earnings call
“SpaceX actually has two absolutely insane projects that would normally bankrupt a company, is Starship and Starlink. SpaceX has to be incredibly spartan with expenditures until those programs reach fruition.”Tesla Q4 2018 earnings call
X post
“Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Well, my past mistakes do seem extremely dumb, especially the ones where I mistakenly thought I was smart” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Fate *loves* irony. Frankly, too much.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Probably right. Starship rate of progress far exceeds Falcon & Dragon, although they’re critical to getting there. dInnovation/dt is what matters long-term.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“In recent years, hours were much higher. Don’t recommend though — bad for health & happiness. But no choice or Tesla would die. Hope to reduce to 80 hours next year.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“That was our last chance to reach orbit. If it had failed, SpaceX would have died.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Talk or event
“if the schedules long it's wrong and if it's tightest right”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
Talk or event
“the best part is no part the best process is no process it weighs nothing costs nothing can't go wrong”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
Talk or event
“we also need things that make us excited to be alive that make us glad to wake up in the morning and be fired up about the future”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
Talk or event
“which future do you want do you want the future where we've become a spacefaring civilization and are in many worlds and now out there among the stars or one where we are forever confined to earth and I say it is the first”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
Talk or event
“it appears that consciousness is a very rare and precious thing and we should take whatever steps we can to preserve the light of consciousness”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
Talk or event
“the window has been open only now after four and a half billion years is that window open”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
Talk or event
“I think we should become a multi planet civilization while that window is open”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
Talk or event
“we should really do our very best to become a multi-planet species and to extend consciousness beyond Earth and we should do it now”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
Talk or event
“the critical breakthrough that's needed for us to become a spacefaring civilization is to make space travel like air travel”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
Talk or event
“the critical breakthrough that's necessary is a rapidly reusable orbital rocket this is this is basically the holy grail of space”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
Talk or event
“is the fastest path to a self-sustaining city on Mars this is the this is the fundamental thing”SpaceX Starship Update presentation (Elon Musk, Boca Chica)
X post
“Cybertruck doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen bouncing around the Internet. It’s closer to an armored personnel carrier from the future.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“That transition, that sort of flipping of the switch from a car that is from not robotaxi to robotaxi, I think will probably be the biggest step change increase in asset value in history, by far.”Tesla Q3 2019 earnings call
X post
“So true. Imagine if phones were gasoline powered. Total sales would be like 14 units worldwide! Using oil/gas & being forced to constantly visit toxic chemical dispensing stations will seem so insane in the future!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Right now, trajectory of neuro-silicon symbiosis doesn’t appear to intersect trajectory of AGI. Goal of Neuralink is to raise this probability above 0.0%.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Electric motors also have insane torque. If we load both trucks to the max, electric still wins. Physics is the law, everything else is a recommendation.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“If Tesla & SpaceX go bankrupt, so will I. As it should be.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“New technology development schedules tend to exhibit a version of Zeno’s Paradox — at any given point, you’re halfway there” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Biting off more than I can chew. Because I’m an optimistic fool.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“From a financial standpoint, that's the real mind-blowing situation, is high volume, high margin because of autonomy.”Tesla Q4 2019 earnings call
X post
“What if there was an AI programmed to want to pick as many strawberries as possible, and so it cultivated nothing but strawberries on all of Earth’s land? Then it would be Strawberry Fields Forever!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“These problems are fundamentally intertwined. Building many rockets allows for successive approximation. Progress in any given technology is simply # of iterations * progress between iterations.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“No matter what, we need to pressurize the production system. Rocket design is relatively easy, making one is hard, making many is extremely hard. Manufacturing is underrated.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Also, when tech is new, catalog engineering isn’t possible, as there is no catalog. Has to be first principles.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“In the future, it will be as strange to have expendable rockets as it would be to have expendable airplanes today. All will be reusable.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Good progress, but 18 years to launch our first humans is a long time. Technology must advance faster or there will be no city on the red planet in our lifetime.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Yeah, and whole lot more! Aargh, I’m dying to make Cybertruck like yesterday!!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“No, good chance of RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) event, but landing pad is separated from launch pad” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“I believe as everything I've ever said would come true, did come true. It may have come true late, but it did come true. You know, punctuality is not my strong suit, but I always come through in the end.”Tesla Q1 2020 earnings call
Earnings call
“It's any fool can take cost out of a car and make it worse. We wanna take cost out of the car, figure out how to make it lighter, and simpler.”Tesla Q1 2020 earnings call
Earnings call
“I should mention, like, at a high level, our overall goal is to maximize the area under the curve of customer happiness. That is our goal.”Tesla Q1 2020 earnings call
Earnings call
“We, you know, came to the conclusion that the right move is actually to continue to expand rapidly, continue to invest in the future in new technologies, even though it is risky.”Tesla Q1 2020 earnings call
X post
“5 years ago. We need to accelerate progress towards fully reusable rockets. Cost per ton to orbit needs to improve by >1000% from where Falcon is today for there to be a self-sustaining city on Mars.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Who controls the memes, controls the Universe” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Only $69.420!!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“We will not succeed in our mission if we do not make cars affordable.”Tesla Q2 2020 earnings call
X post
“It is unfortunately common for many in academia to overweight the value of ideas & underweight bringing them to fruition. For example, the idea of going to the moon is trivial, but going to the moon is hard.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Shareholder meeting
“The good will by how many years did we accelerate sustainable energy? That's the true metric of success. It matters if sustainable energy happens faster or slower, and so that's really how I think about Tesla and how we should assess our progress.”Tesla 2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Battery Day
Shareholder meeting
“I think manufacturing is underappreciated in general, and the difficulty of designing the machine that makes the machine is vastly harder than the machine itself.”Tesla 2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Battery Day
Shareholder meeting
“It's just at least 10 to 100 times harder to do the factory than the prototype, and that's why you see a lot of companies out there or startups they'll bring out a prototype, but they just can't get it over the hump for who manufacturing, because manufacturing of new technology especially is the hardest thing by fa.”Tesla 2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Battery Day
Shareholder meeting
“I think one of the things that troubles me the most is that we don't yet have a truly affordable car, and that is something that we will make in the future.”Tesla 2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Battery Day
Shareholder meeting
“I should say, I try to view the whole climate thing as a science question as much as possible. Science, you always question your hypothesis, is it true? Is not true? Or assign a probability to a given hypothesis.”Tesla 2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Battery Day
Shareholder meeting
“And I should say that my original interest in electric vehicles predates the climate issue. When I was in high school, I thought, "Man, if we don't figure out electric cars, the whole economy's going to collapse when we run out of oil." So we better figure out electric cars and sustainable energy or civilization's going to crumble.”Tesla 2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Battery Day
Shareholder meeting
“And the reality, as Drew was saying, is that sustainable energy is going to be lower cost, not higher cost than fossil fuels.”Tesla 2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Battery Day
Shareholder meeting
“So to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy, we must produce more EVs that need to be affordable and a lot more energy storage, while building factories faster and with far less investment.”Tesla 2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Battery Day
Earnings call
“Just in general, manufacturing follows the S-curve. You know, I think sometimes people that haven't spent a lot of time in manufacturing kind of think that once you have a factory, you can just sort of turn it on and it's at capacity.”Tesla Q3 2020 earnings call
Earnings call
“A comment I made in the past is that I think Tesla's long-term competitive strength will be primarily manufacturing. This is counterintuitive, but I am quite confident this will be what happens.”Tesla Q3 2020 earnings call
Earnings call
“It's difficult to say that, you know, are we really changing the world if we're not switching out 1% of the global fossil fuel vehicles? I mean, it's, I'm not sure that we can make that argument unless we change at least 1% of the vehicles per year.”Tesla Q3 2020 earnings call
Earnings call
“The thing I think that people just don't really understand about Tesla is that it is a whole chain of startups.”Tesla Q3 2020 earnings call
X post
“Legs would certainly work, but best part is no part, best step is no step” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“The most entertaining outcome is the most likely” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Battery cell production is the fundamental rate-limiter slowing down a sustainable energy future. Very important problem.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Indeed. The economy — making useful products & providing great services — is what actually matters.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Fuel cells should be called fool sells! Such a silly choice for cars. Not great even for a rocket upper stage imo, but at least not absurd.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Green flame in this context means engine is burning internal components made of copper. This is usually followed by a RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly).” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“They are aiming too low. Only rockets that are fully & rapidly reusable will be competitive. Everything else will seem like a cloth biplane in the age of jets.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“When radar and vision disagree, which one do you believe? Vision has much more precision, so better to double down on vision than do sensor fusion.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“A major part of real-world AI has to be solved to make unsupervised, generalized full self-driving work, as the entire road system is designed for biological neural nets with optical imagers” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Physics is simply the search for truth. Nothing is more rigorous.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“I think the U.S. has an overallocation of talent in finance and law. It's both a criticism and a compliment. I'm not saying we shouldn't have people in finance and law. I'm just saying maybe we have too many smart people in those arenas.”Tesla Q2 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“I'm highly confident that the cars will be capable of Full Self-Driving. If they have a Full Self-Driving computer and the cameras, I'm confident that they will be able to drive themselves with a safety level substantially greater than that of the average person.”Tesla Q2 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“Autonomy will become so safe that it will be unsafe to manually operate the car, relatively speaking.”Tesla Q2 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“I'm fond of saying that prototypes are easy and production is hard. Arguably, the really remarkable thing that Tesla's done is not to make an electric car or to be a car startup, because there have been hundreds of car startups in the United States and outside the United States. The thing that's remarkable is that Tesla didn't go bankrupt in reaching volume production.”Tesla Q2 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“To the first approximation, there are 10,000 unique parts and processes that have to work, and the rate of growth of production goes as fast as the least lucky and dumbest of those 10,000 things. A bunch of them are not even in our control. It's insanely difficult.”Tesla Q2 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“A factory is like a giant cybernetic collective, you can't just hire 10,000 people and have it working smoothly. It's just not possible.”Tesla Q2 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“Really, the value of a fully electric autonomous fleet is insanely gigantic. Boggles the mind, really. That will be one of the most valuable things that is ever done in the history of civilization.”Tesla Q2 2021 earnings call
Interview
“everyone's wrong no matter who you are everyone's wrong some of the time”Everyday Astronaut, Starbase Tour with Elon Musk, Part 1
Interview
“possibly the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize the thing that should not exist”Everyday Astronaut, Starbase Tour with Elon Musk, Part 1
X post
“It is hard to overstate criticality of reusable rockets. No less important than reusable aircraft, cars or bicycles. Essential for humanity to become a multiplanet species & backup the biosphere.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Most big companies in tech have turned into places where talent goes to die” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Cybertruck is intentionally an insane technology bandwagon” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“The overarching problem is that we need better mental firewalls for the information constantly coming at us. Critical & first principles thinking should be a required course in middle school. Who wrote the software running in your head? Are you sure you actually want it there?” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“People are able to break any laws made by humans, but none made by physics” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Interview
“and that the question is the really the hard part and if you can properly frame the question then the answer relatively speaking is easy”Lex Fridman Podcast #252 (Elon Musk)
Earnings call
“In terms of priority of products, I think the most important product development we're doing this year is actually the Optimus humanoid robot. This I think has the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time.”Tesla Q4 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“If you think about the economy, it is the foundation of the economy is labor. Capital equipment is distilled labor. What happens if you don't actually have a labor shortage? I'm not sure what an economy even means at that point.”Tesla Q4 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“I would be shocked if we do not achieve Full Self-Driving safer than a human this year. I would be shocked.”Tesla Q4 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“Really the thing that overwhelmingly matters is when is the car autonomous? At the point at which it's autonomous, the cost of transport drops by, I don't know, a factor of four or five.”Tesla Q4 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“You know, the cars in the fleet essentially becoming self-driving via software update, I think might end up being the biggest increase in asset value of any asset class in history.”Tesla Q4 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“Just in general, societally, there's way too much value placed on the idea. It's like, you know, like, you can have the idea of going to the moon. That's not the hard part. Okay? Going to the moon is the hard part by far.”Tesla Q4 2021 earnings call
Earnings call
“You actually have to reach scale production, and have cash in exceeds cash out. That's the super hard part.”Tesla Q4 2021 earnings call
X post
“I was at a lunch with Munger in 2009 where he told the whole table all the ways Tesla would fail. Made me quite sad, but I told him I agreed with all those reasons & that we would probably die, but it was worth trying anyway.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Self-driving cars & useful humanoid robots require a sophisticated understanding of reality. I am increasingly convinced that they are on the path to solving AGI. Should AGI be solved? I don’t know, but humanity is moving rapidly in this direction whether I like it or not.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Working hard to make useful products & services for your fellow humans is deeply morally good” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Talk or event
“I don't love being regulated, but I think this is an important thing for public safety.”TED2022 interview with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works
Talk or event
“At this point, I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on Earth.”TED2022 interview with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works
Talk or event
“I don't care about the economics at all.”TED2022 interview with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works
Talk or event
“I, you know, I love humanity, and I think that we should fight for a good future for humanity.”TED2022 interview with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works
Talk or event
“I think one of the things that's going to be important is to have a localized ROM chip on the robot that cannot be updated over the air.”TED2022 interview with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works
Talk or event
“But this really will be a world of abundance. Any goods and services will be available to anyone who wants them. It'll be so cheap to have goods and services, it will be ridiculous.”TED2022 interview with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works
Talk or event
“But, you know, you can make a triangle with 42 degrees and two 69s.”TED2022 interview with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works
Talk or event
“And then actually, I ended up reading "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which is actually a book on philosophy just sort of disguised as a silly humor book.”TED2022 interview with Chris Anderson, Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works
X post
“69.420% of statistics are false” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Actually, when you think about it, in order to solve Full Self-Driving, we have to solve neural nets and cameras to a degree of capability that is on par with and/or really exceeds humans. I think we will achieve that this year.”Tesla Q1 2022 earnings call
Earnings call
“Well, with respect to Full Self-Driving, of any technology development I've ever been involved in, I've never really seen more kind of false dawns or where it seems like we're gonna break through, but we don't, as I've seen in Full Self-Driving.”Tesla Q1 2022 earnings call
X post
“The failures are mine, the successes belong to others” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“My true moral error was creating Tesla & SpaceX at same time, while avoiding general mgmt chores at Tesla (focusing only on product & engineering). Tried to have my cake & eat it too, which failed.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Since I’ve been asked a lot: Buy stock in several companies that make products & services that *you* believe in. Only sell if you think their products & services are trending worse. Don’t panic when the market does. This will serve you well in the long-term.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“I strongly believe that all managers in a technical area must be technically excellent. Managers in software must write great software or it’s like being a cavalry captain who can’t ride a horse!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Tesla is to protect life on Earth, SpaceX to extend life beyond.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“I mean, there's some Platonic ideal of the perfect product, where the atoms, you have exactly the right atoms in there in exactly the right position, and you asymptotically approach this Platonic ideal.”Tesla Q2 2022 earnings call
Earnings call
“If those three things are solved, we have a sustainable future for civilization. The fundamental good of Tesla, and the reason we're doing this, or certainly my primary motivation here, is to have the day of sustainable energy come sooner.”Tesla Q2 2022 earnings call
Earnings call
“Even if you rail value for money to infinity, if consumers do not have enough money to buy it, even a product where the desirability is railed to infinity, they basically cannot buy it. This is why you cannot just raise prices to some arbitrarily high level, because you pass the affordability boundary and then the demand falls off a cliff.”Tesla Q2 2022 earnings call
Earnings call
“Well, I think it's very difficult to predict anything 10 years from now. I hope civilization is still around, frankly. I would count that as a win.”Tesla Q2 2022 earnings call
X post
“Solar panels, ground mount & rooftop, paired with stationary batteries, will be civilization’s primary source of energy, as sure as day follows night. Mark these words.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Yes, the fundamental error is reasoning by analogy, rather than first principles” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“We'll achieve full self-driving, full autonomy. Our probability of that occurring is 100%. I think you know, we're almost there.”Tesla Q3 2022 earnings call
Earnings call
“There is a longer process of like what we call the march of nines, of like how many nines reliability do you need before you can really be comfortable saying that the car could drive with no one in it.”Tesla Q3 2022 earnings call
Earnings call
“Whatever the limiting factor is, we'll do. We do not artificially constrain ourselves. We don't vertically integrate just for the hell of vertically integrating.”Tesla Q3 2022 earnings call
Earnings call
“Like one Nikola Tesla is frankly worth an infinite number of dollars of engineering. Well you could have like an almost infinite number of good engineers and they would not be able to do what one Nikola Tesla could do. You can't make it up in volume.”Tesla Q3 2022 earnings call
X post
“Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Comedy is now legal on Twitter” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Output of any company is the vector sum of people within it. Someone may be a strong vector, but negatively affect those around them to such a degree that they are a net negative.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“The most entertaining outcome is the most likely – my variant on Occam’s Razor” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“No matter how smart someone is, they are always some % wrong” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“You know, I think something that still a lot of people out there don't quite appreciate is that Tesla, which I've always said, like Tesla is as much a software company as a hardware company, but Tesla is really one of the world's leading AI companies.”Tesla Q4 2022 earnings call
Earnings call
“I think there's just a vast number of people that want to buy a Tesla car but can't afford it, these price changes really make a difference for the average consumer. It's sometimes, you know, for people who are well, you know, have a lot of money, they sort of forget about how important affordability is.”Tesla Q4 2022 earnings call
Earnings call
“Long-term, I am convinced that Tesla will be the most valuable company on Earth.”Tesla Q4 2022 earnings call
X post
“You’re not gonna believe this, but we’re running a little late! Presentation starts in ~5 mins.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“This pervasive cultural pessimism is at the heart of societal dysfunction. Better to be optimistic and wrong, than pessimistic and right!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Maximum truth-seeking is my best guess for AI safety” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Master plan
“This paper finds a sustainable energy economy is technically feasible and requires less investment and less material extraction than continuing today's unsustainable energy economy.”Tesla, Master Plan Part 3 white paper (company-published paper; not individually signed)
Earnings call
“The trend is very clearly towards Full Self-Driving, towards full autonomy. You know, I hesitate to say this, but I think we'll do it this year. That's what it looks like.”Tesla Q1 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“However, we expect our vehicles over time will be able to generate significant profit through autonomy. We do believe we're, like, laying the groundwork here, and that it's better to ship a large number of cars at a lower margin and subsequently harvest that margin in the future as we perfect autonomy. This is an extremely important point.”Tesla Q1 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“We're the only ones making cars that technically we could sell for zero profit, for now, and then yield actually tremendous economics in the future, but through autonomy. No one else can do that. I'm not sure how many of you will appreciate the profundity of what I've just said. It is extremely significant.”Tesla Q1 2023 earnings call
X post
“I’ve seen quite a few technologies develop, but none with this level of risk. AGI is significantly higher risk than nuclear weapons, in my opinion. Super smart humans have trouble imagining something vastly smarter than themselves.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Would explain why the most entertaining outcome is the most likely – more interesting to the simulators” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Let that sink in” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“The most entertaining outcome (as if we were in a movie) is the most likely” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“3 more engines for the meaning of life” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Now, I know I'm the boy who cried FSD. I think we'll be better than human by the end of this year.”Tesla Q2 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“The reason I've been optimistic is what it tends to look like is the, we'll make rapid progress with a new version of FSD, but then, it will curve over logarithmically.”Tesla Q2 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“The FSD will go from being as good as a human to then being vastly better than a human. We see a clear path to Full Self-Driving being 10 times safer than the average human driver.”Tesla Q2 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“If, if I may, look, it's like, look, the short-term variances in gross margin and profitability really are minor relative to the long-term picture. Autonomy, it will make all of these numbers look silly.”Tesla Q2 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“I think it does make sense to sacrifice margins in favor of making more vehicles because we think in the not-too-distant future, they will have a dramatic valuation increase.”Tesla Q2 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“You just, there's just no substitute for a massive amount of data. Obviously, Tesla has more vehicles on the road, that are collecting this data than all other companies combined by, I think, maybe even an order of magnitude.”Tesla Q2 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“It's a game of pennies. It's like Game of Thrones, but pennies.”Tesla Q2 2023 earnings call
X post
“I’m not a fan of acronyms, as they worsen signal/noise in organizational communications” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“A moral civilization, by which I mean one where individuals act for the collective good, will outcompete an immoral civilization. Said another way, teamwork is power!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“I would characterize our progress in real-world AI as a series of stacked log curves. I think that is also true in other parts of AI, like LLMs and whatnot. Series of stacked log curves.”Tesla Q3 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“As I mentioned before, you know, given that economic output is number of people times productivity, if you no longer have a constraint on people, effectively, you've got a humanoid robot that can do as much as you'd like, your economy is quasi infinite or, you know, infinite for all intents and purposes. And I don't think anyone's gonna do it better than Tesla, not by a long shot.”Tesla Q3 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“That is why I say prototypes are easy, production is hard. People think it's the idea, or you make a prototype, you design a car, and as soon as they're designing a car, just anyone can do it.”Tesla Q3 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“But the difficulty of going from a prototype to volume production is like 10,000% harder to get to volume production than to make the prototype in the first place. Then it is even harder than that to reach positive cash flow. That is why there have not been new car startups that have been successful for 100 years, apart from Tesla.”Tesla Q3 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“But I am still somewhat scarred by 2009 when both General Motors and Chrysler went bankrupt. So while that's now 14 years ago, it's, that is seared into my mind with a branding iron.”Tesla Q3 2023 earnings call
X post
“Every year that passes comes with more rules. And while all humans die, laws and regulations are immortal. So each passing year, we tie ourselves down with more and more strings, until, like Gulliver, we can no longer move.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Company post
“Grok is an AI modeled after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask!”xAI, 'Announcing Grok' (company announcement, published under xAI; not individually signed)
X post
“We worked hard to ensure Grok was funny. If AI is going to take over, please let it at least make us laugh.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Interview
“Well, I mean I’ve been pushing for some kind of regulatory oversight for a long time. I’ve been somewhat of a Cassandra on the subject for over a decade. I think we want to be very careful in how we develop AI. It’s a great power and with great power comes great responsibility.”Lex Fridman Podcast #400 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“And I would say that forms the basis of my philosophy, which is that we don’t know the meaning of life, but the more we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, digital and biological, the more we’re able to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. So I have a philosophy of curiosity.”Lex Fridman Podcast #400 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“I mean, I try to think about, what is going to affect the future in a good way? And holding onto grudges does not affect the future in a good way.”Lex Fridman Podcast #400 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“Our AI, Grok, is modeled after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is one of my favorite books, which it’s a book on philosophy.”Lex Fridman Podcast #400 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“You may think you want a magic genie, but once that genie’s out of the bottle, it’s hard to say what happens.”NYT DealBook Summit 2023, interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin
Interview
“I’ve been the one banging the drum the hardest, by far the longest, or at least one of longest for AI danger, and these regulatory things that are happening, the single biggest reason they’re happening is because of me.”NYT DealBook Summit 2023, interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin
Interview
“Well, the whole arc of OpenAI, frankly is a little troubling, because the reason for starting OpenAI was to create a counterweight to Google and DeepMind, which at the time had two-thirds of all AI talent and basically infinite money and compute.”NYT DealBook Summit 2023, interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin
Interview
“But if we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we are better able to figure out what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe.”NYT DealBook Summit 2023, interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin
Interview
“Physics is unforgiving. Physics is unforgiving. I have these various little sayings that I’ve come up with, that physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation.”NYT DealBook Summit 2023, interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin
Interview
“In the sense that you can break any law made by humans, but try breaking a law made by physics.”NYT DealBook Summit 2023, interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin
Interview
“The best interface would be a neural interface directly to your brain. So that would be a neural link.”NYT DealBook Summit 2023, interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin
X post
“We like to put little fun Easter eggs our cars. Small, unexpected delights are part of what makes life worth living.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Optimus, obviously, is a very new product, an extremely revolutionary product, and something that I think has the potential to far exceed the value of everything else that Tesla combined. And when you think of an economy, economy is productivity per capita times capita. But what if there's no limit to capita? There's no limit to the economy.”Tesla Q4 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“A nd to sort of change the perception of Tesla, as people think of Tesla as a car company, when they should be thinking of Tesla as an AI robotics company.”Tesla Q4 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“It does make it very hard to copy us, because you have to copy the machine that makes the machine, that makes the machine.”Tesla Q4 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“It's important to emphasize that, I mean, Model 3 production was three years of hell, honestly, three of the worst years of my life, frankly. I still have mental scar tissue from those three years, as do many.”Tesla Q4 2023 earnings call
Earnings call
“I just wanna be an effective steward of very powerful technology.”Tesla Q4 2023 earnings call
X post
“My estimate of the probability of success at the beginning of both Tesla and SpaceX was less than 10%. The reason people telling me we would probably fail didn’t dissuade me was that I already agreed with them!” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“AI will probably be smarter than any single human next year. By 2029, AI is probably smarter than all humans combined.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“The most entertaining outcome – as if we’re in a soap opera – is the most likely ERM” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“I'll go back to something I said several years ago, that in the future, gasoline cars that are not autonomous will be like riding a horse and using a flip phone. That will become very obvious in hindsight.”Tesla Q1 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“As I've said before, I think Optimus will be more valuable than everything else combined because if you've got a sentient humanoid robot that is able to navigate reality and do tasks at request, there is no meaningful limit to the size of the economy.”Tesla Q1 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“A company is kind of like a creature growing. And if you don't reorganize it for different phases of growth, it will fail. You can't have the same organizational structure if you're 10 cells versus 100 versus 1 million versus 1 billion versus 1 trillion, where humans are around 35 trillion cells.”Tesla Q1 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“If you value Tesla as just an auto company, you would just have the fundamentally it's just the wrong framework. It will come to be. If you ask the wrong question, then the right answer is impossible.”Tesla Q1 2024 earnings call
X post
“15 years ago … before S3XY & Cybertruck” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Obviously, my predictions on this have been overly optimistic in the past.”Tesla Q2 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“But I've said this before in these calls, the value of Tesla overwhelmingly is autonomy. These other things are in the noise relative to autonomy. So I recommend anyone who doesn't believe that Tesla will solve vehicle autonomy should not hold Tesla stock.”Tesla Q2 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“And I think we kind of have no choice because the demand for NVIDIA is so high, and because it's obviously their obligation essentially to raise the price of GPUs to whatever the market will bear, which is very high. So, I think we've really got to make Dojo work, and we will.”Tesla Q2 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“I mean, at that point, I'm not sure what money even means, but, you know, in the benign AI scenario, we're headed for an age of abundance, where there is no shortage of goods and services. Everyone can have pretty much anything they want. It's a wild, very wild future we're headed for.”Tesla Q2 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“I tried to recruit them to Tesla, including to say, like, "You can work on AGI if you want," and they refused. Only then was xAI created.”Tesla Q2 2024 earnings call
X post
“Intelligence seems to be about how tightly you can compress reality and, from that compression, predict the future” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Interview
“As Douglas Adams pointed out in his book, sometimes the answer is arguably the easy part, trying to frame the question correctly is the hard part. Once you frame the question correctly, the answer is often easy.”Lex Fridman Podcast #438 (Elon Musk and the Neuralink team)
Interview
“I have this very basic first principles algorithm that I run kind of as a mantra, which is to first question the requirements, make the requirements less dumb.”Lex Fridman Podcast #438 (Elon Musk and the Neuralink team)
Interview
“If the AI can communicate at terabits per second, and you’re communicating at bits per second, it’s like talking to a tree.”Lex Fridman Podcast #438 (Elon Musk and the Neuralink team)
Interview
“We could better align collective human will with AI if the output rate especially was dramatically increased.”Lex Fridman Podcast #438 (Elon Musk and the Neuralink team)
Interview
“We would be something different. I mean, some sort of futuristic cyborg, I mean, we’re obviously talking about, by the way, it’s not like around the corner.”Lex Fridman Podcast #438 (Elon Musk and the Neuralink team)
Interview
“And if you’re not forced to put back at least 10% of what you delete, you’re not deleting enough.”Lex Fridman Podcast #438 (Elon Musk and the Neuralink team)
Interview
“Frankly, I do have to go I'm engaged in some degree of deliberate suspension of disbelief with respect to AI in order to sleep well, and even then.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Interview
“I think actually the good future of AI is one of immense prosperity where There is an age of abundance, no shortage of goods and services.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Interview
“But anything that is a manufactured good or provided service will, I think, with the admin of AI plus robotics, that the cost of goods and services will to zero.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Interview
“The fundamental Holy Grail breakthrough for Rocketry, the fundamental breakthrough that is needed for life to become multi-planetary is a rapidly reusable, reliable rocket.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Interview
“At this rate, we're never going to get to Mars.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Interview
“I've discovered that really that anything made in sufficient volume will asymptotically approach the cost of its materials.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Interview
“I think the useful humanoid robot opportunity is the single biggest opportunity ever.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Interview
“Yeah, I think the number of robots will vastly exceed the number of humans.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Interview
“Because if you assume like, I mean, the ratio of humanoid to humans is going to be at least two to one, maybe three to one, because everybody will want one.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Interview
“It really should not be possible to build a giant rocket faster than the paper can move from one desk to another.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Interview
“There's no garbage collection for rules.”All-In Summit 2024, conversation with the All-In hosts
Earnings call
“Our internal estimate is Q2 next year to be safer than human, and then to continue with rapid improvements thereafter.”Tesla Q3 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“But we showed in that Master Plan that it is possible to take all of Earth to a fully sustainable energy situation, using sustainable energy power generation, and batteries, and electric transport. And there are no fundamental material limitations, like there's not some very rare material that we don't have enough of on Earth.”Tesla Q3 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“You know, one way to think of the progress of a civilization, this may sound a little esoteric, but is percentage completion of Kardashev Scale. So, Kardashev Scale one would be you're using all the power of a planet. We're currently less than 1% on Kardashev level one.”Tesla Q3 2024 earnings call
X post
“You can predict the future accurately with many orders of magnitude less precision than that. The best definition of ntelligence is simply the ability to predict the future imo.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Some of these things I've said for quite a long time, and I know people have said, well, Elon's the boy who cried wolf, like several times, but I'm telling you, there's a damn wolf this time, and you can drive it. In fact, it can drive you. It's a self-driving wolf.”Tesla Q4 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“I'm highly confident that all transport will be autonomous, electric, including aircraft, and that it's simply, it's, it can't be stopped any more than one could have stopped the advent of the external combustion engine, steam engine, or one could have stopped the advent of the internal combustion engine.”Tesla Q4 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“Prototypes are easy. Production is hard. I've said that for many years. The problem is that there's like those who've never been involved in production or manufacturing somehow think that once you come up with some Eureka design that you magically can make a million units a year. And this is totally false.”Tesla Q4 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“We tried desperately with Optimus to use any existing motors, you know, any actuators, sensors, nothing worked for a humanoid robot at any price. We had to design everything from physics first principles to work for a humanoid robot.”Tesla Q4 2024 earnings call
Earnings call
“Actually no, the problem is that the media reports on when I'm late, but never reports when I'm early. So sure, I'm optimistic, but I'm not that optimistic.”Tesla Q4 2024 earnings call
X post
“I have great respect for anyone who makes useful products or provides useful services to their fellow human beings” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“The Tesla Optimus hand is so sophisticated that it makes a Fabergé seem simple. And it gives you a whole new appreciation for how incredible the human hand is.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“All you need to know to understand which company will win a technology competition is look at the first and second derivatives of the rate of innovation” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Interview
“Well, in terms of silicon consciousness, I think we’re trending toward having something that’s smarter than any human, smarter than the smartest human by maybe next year or a couple years.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2281 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“I wanted to start something that was the opposite of Google because I was concerned about Google – Google wasn’t paying enough attention to AI safety, in my opinion.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2281 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“We should have a second planet to preserve civilization.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2281 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“I think we at least want to build a city on Mars, and become a multi-planet civilization, which I think would be incredibly important in ensuring the long-term survival of civilization.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2281 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“We should make sure that we make life multiplanetary and make consciousness multiplanetary while it’s possible.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2281 (Elon Musk)
X post
“Fate loves irony” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Don’t Panic” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“That's why I feel confident in predicting large-scale autonomy around the middle of next year, certainly the second half of next year. Meaning, I predict that there will be millions of Teslas operating fully autonomously in the second half of next year.”Tesla Q1 2025 earnings call
Earnings call
“I said this many years ago, in the future, in the not too distant future, buying a gasoline car that is not autonomous will be like riding a horse while using a flip phone. Some people still do it, but it's rare.”Tesla Q1 2025 earnings call
Earnings call
“No car is made like this anywhere in the world. The factory is the product as much as the car is the product. It is really just the first principles approach to manufacturing that will ultimately allow us, I think, to—I'm trying to think.”Tesla Q1 2025 earnings call
Earnings call
“When you have a new complex manufactured product, it'll move as fast as the slowest and least lucky component in the entire thing. As a first-order approximation, there's like 10,000 unique things.”Tesla Q1 2025 earnings call
Earnings call
“If you say, "What's the happiest future you can imagine?" One that would be a future where there's sustainable abundance for all. Closest thing to heaven we can get on Earth, basically.”Tesla Q1 2025 earnings call
Earnings call
“I continue to believe that Tesla, with excellent execution, will be the most valuable company in the world by far. That's an important if. We must execute well. If we do execute well, I think Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world by far.”Tesla Q1 2025 earnings call
X post
“By enabling high-speed, low-latency and affordable Internet globally, Starlink will do more to educate and lift people out of poverty than any NGO ever” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“They said I scored the highest for engineering aptitude that they had ever seen. Or, in other words, not bad for a human, as a future AI might say.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Interview
“I just think about making, what we want to achieve is the platonic ideal of the perfect product.”CNBC, David Faber interview with Elon Musk
Interview
“I don't really think about competitors. I just think about making the product as perfect as possible.”CNBC, David Faber interview with Elon Musk
Interview
“We're trying to go after every part of the budget.”CNBC, David Faber interview with Elon Musk
Interview
“I think, I think humanoid robots will be the biggest product ever. The demand will be insatiable.”CNBC, David Faber interview with Elon Musk
Interview
“I think there's certain threshold breakthroughs that that we think we can achieve, where, if, if optimus can watch videos, YouTube videos, or how to videos, or whatever. And based on that video, just like a human can learn how to do that thing, then you really have task extensibility that is dramatic, because then it can learn anything very quickly.”CNBC, David Faber interview with Elon Musk
Interview
“Then where I think it gets very interesting, and very much like humans, is that you want the robot to self-play. So you say, how does a child learn? Well, a child has toys and a child plays with the toys.”CNBC, David Faber interview with Elon Musk
Interview
“Once you have a lot of robots, you can do this self-play, which is that you just put the robot in a room with toys and have the robot, literally have the robot play with toys.”CNBC, David Faber interview with Elon Musk
Interview
“Yeah, I think we're, I mean, a few years ago, I made a very obvious prediction which is that the limitation on AI will be chips. And it's still chips, kind of chips today, then it will be electrical equipment for the because you need to take power at that might be at 300,000 volts, all the way down to 400 volts for the for the computer.”CNBC, David Faber interview with Elon Musk
Interview
“And that's why, I'd say, consider it sort of, sort of a business model that's similar to some combination of of Airbnb and Uber. Just like Airbnb, you can rent out your spare bedroom or your your house if you're not using it, and make money on it.”CNBC, David Faber interview with Elon Musk
X post
“Most entertaining outcome is most likely” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Being useful at scale is the hardest thing in the world” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“LLM is an outdated term. “Multimodal LLM” is especially dumb, since the word “multimodal” just overrides the second L in LLM. It’s just a model, which is a big file of numbers. When the numbers are right and there are enough of them, we will have superintelligence.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Really, what's going to happen over the next several years is a fundamental transformation of the company from a pre-autonomy world to a post-autonomy. I'm working on a new master plan to articulate that as a team.”Tesla Q2 2025 earnings call
Earnings call
“Obviously, I am extremely optimistic about the future of the company. The best way to predict the future is to make it happen. We are making it happen here with the Tesla team.”Tesla Q2 2025 earnings call
X post
“This false nomenclature of “researcher” and “engineer”, which is a thinly-masked way of describing a two-tier engineering system, is being deleted from @xAI today. There are only engineers. Researcher is a relic term from academia.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“No, it’s 69.420%” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Best part is no part” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Best part is no part @Grok” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“With rare exception, ideas really are trivial compared to execution. For example, the idea of going to the Moon is simple, but ACTUALLY going to the Moon is staggeringly difficult.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Starship was made using zero AI. Future digital superintelligences would have to admit that it’s pretty good for a bunch of monkeys.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Optimus at scale is the infinite money glitch.”Tesla Q3 2025 earnings call
Earnings call
“I think it's important to emphasize that Tesla really is the leader in real-world AI. No one can do what we can do with real-world AI.”Tesla Q3 2025 earnings call
X post
“A tweet/post is how I initiated the dozen or so startups that constitute Tesla. Tesla has made very few acquisitions. Our growth is ~90% organic. We didn’t “play to our core strengths”, we created core strengths from nothing.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Interview
“I mean, I don’t think anyone’s ultimately going to have control over digital superintelligence, any more than, say, a chimp would have control over humans. Chimps don’t have control over humans, there’s nothing they could do.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2404 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“Yeah, you want a curious truth-seeking AI. And I think a curious truth-seeking AI will want to foster humanity because we are much more interesting than a bunch of rocks.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2404 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“And ultimately working will be optional because you’ll have robots plus AI and we’ll have, in a benign scenario, universal high income. Not just universal basic income. Universal high income, meaning anyone can have any products or services that they want, but there will be a lot of trauma and disruption along the way.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2404 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“Well, I can tell you where I think things are going to go, which is that we’re not going to have a phone in the traditional sense. What we call a phone will really be an edge node for AI inference, for AI video inference with radios to obviously connect.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2404 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“You’ll get everything through AI, everything through AI.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2404 (Elon Musk)
Interview
“The most interesting and usually ironic outcome is the most likely. That’s a good predictor of the future.”The Joe Rogan Experience #2404 (Elon Musk)
Shareholder meeting
“Well, I mean, I think actually long term, uh, the AI is going to be in charge to be totally frank, not humans.”Tesla 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting (official livestream)
Shareholder meeting
“what we're about to embark upon is not merely a new chapter of the future of Tesla, but a whole new book”Tesla 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting (official livestream)
Shareholder meeting
“Tesla is already the biggest robot manufacturer in the world because every car we make is a robot.”Tesla 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting (official livestream)
Shareholder meeting
“obviously now with with AI and robotics uh we need to update our mission.”Tesla 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting (official livestream)
Shareholder meeting
“I often ask people like what is the future that you want? What's the best future you can imagine?”Tesla 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting (official livestream)
Shareholder meeting
“I mean, if somebody can think of a better future, I'm all ears.”Tesla 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting (official livestream)
Shareholder meeting
“like Optimus is kind of like an infinite money glitch.”Tesla 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting (official livestream)
Shareholder meeting
“if you're like saying what what what does Elon think the future probably will be like for AI and robots it's kind of banksian”Tesla 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting (official livestream)
X post
“The most advanced rocket engine ever made by far. Raptor 3 and subsequent versions will make life multiplanetary and progress civilization towards Kardashev II.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“I came to the (obvious) conclusion that a radical improvement in rocket technology was needed to make life multiplanetary. That required creating a company, as success was not in the set of possible outcomes for the existing rocket companies.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“The most entertaining outcome, especially if ironic, is the most likely” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car. Congrats to the @Tesla_AI team! If you’re interested in solving real-world AI, which is likely to lead to AGI imo, join Tesla AI. Solving real-world AI for Optimus will be 100X harder than cars.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“I always think of Andy Grove's famous statement, "Only the paranoid survive." You know, why did he come up with that statement at Intel? Hmm, let's think. So I think there's a lot of wisdom in that statement.”Tesla Q4 2025 earnings call
Earnings call
“And I think with the advent or with the continued growth of AI and robotics, I think we actually are headed to a future of universal high income. Not universal basic income, but universal high income.”Tesla Q4 2025 earnings call
Earnings call
“And Tesla's obviously not, never, never been a company to shy away from solving some of the hardest problems. You know, that it's, I think that's kind of how you build value in a company is you solve hard problems. It's like I don't know how you create value by solving easy problems.”Tesla Q4 2025 earnings call
X post
“Understand the Universe is the xAI mission and the reason our AI is called Grok” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“Yes. Optimus will be the first Von Neumann machine, capable of building civilization by itself on any viable planet.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“AI must pass, in general, the “Galileo” test: even if almost all the training data repeats falsehoods, it must nonetheless see the truth” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“The Meaning of Life” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
Earnings call
“Unfortunately, Hardware 3, I wish it were otherwise, but Hardware 3 simply does not have the capability to achieve unsupervised FSD. We did think at one point it would have that, but relative to Hardware 4, it has only 1/8 of the memory bandwidth of Hardware 4.”Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call
Earnings call
“Well, we certainly hope to have unsupervised FSD or Robotaxi operating in, I don't know, a dozen or so states by the end of this year. Initially, we're taking a very cautious approach to the rollout here. We haven't had any injuries and certainly no fatalities to date with the unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion. We want to keep it that way.”Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call
Earnings call
“I think a lot of what limits wider deployment of Robotaxi are actually not safety issues, but convenience issues, or the car basically gets paranoid and gets stuck. Because it's programmed for maximum safety. The problem is that then it sometimes gets scared to do things.”Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call
Earnings call
“As you've heard me say a few times, I think Optimus will be our biggest product, not just Tesla's biggest product ever, but probably the biggest product ever. I remain convinced of that conclusion.”Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call
Earnings call
“I don't know what the production rate of Optimus will be this year. It is impossible to predict these things. When you have a brand-new product and an entirely new production line, and you have 10,000 unique items, all of which have to go right to ramp production, it'll move as fast as the least lucky, slowest, dumbest part in the entire 10,000.”Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call
Earnings call
“It's just literally we don't see a path to having enough sufficient quantity of AI chips down the road as we scale production to high levels. Just the rate at which the industry is growing, in logic but even more so in memory, we just anticipate hitting the wall if we don't make chips ourselves.”Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call
X post
“Any technology invention can be assessed in terms of how it improves fundamental metrics. It is impossible to become a multiplanet civilization without reusable rockets, just as it would have been impossible to colonize America with expendable boats.” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) events are not unusual in the rocket world” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)
X post
“The most entertaining outcome is the most likely, especially if ironic” (opens on X)Elon Musk on X (@elonmusk)