The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1609 - Elon Musk

00:00:02.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:16.000 No, that's the Sasha Baron Cohen movie?

00:00:18.000 Yeah.

00:00:19.000 I never saw that one.

00:00:19.000 Well, there's a scene where he's...

00:00:21.000 They show him the new missile they've developed, but it has kind of a round head.

00:00:28.000 And he says, you need to make it more pointy to his engineers.

00:00:36.000 And actually, that's why I also say the same thing.

00:00:41.000 You know, Starship, we need to make it more pointy.

00:00:43.000 Did you say that?

00:00:44.000 Because of the movie?

00:00:45.000 Yeah.

00:00:46.000 Really?

00:00:46.000 Yeah.

00:00:47.000 Hold on.

00:00:49.000 I just have that main camera on.

00:00:51.000 Okay.

00:00:52.000 Okay.

00:00:54.000 You literally told them to make the starship more pointy because of the movie The Dictator.

00:00:59.000 Yep.

00:01:01.000 And they know it too.

00:01:02.000 It's not like they're unaware of it.

00:01:05.000 Everyone thought it would be funny if we made the rocket more pointy, so we did.

00:01:08.000 Did it have any effect on the aerodynamics?

00:01:10.000 No.

00:01:11.000 Nothing?

00:01:11.000 No, we can make it way blunter and be fine.

00:01:14.000 But is it better to be pointier?

00:01:16.000 If it wasn't for the movie...

00:01:17.000 It's arguably slightly worse.

00:01:22.000 But more fun for you.

00:01:23.000 Yeah, it looks cooler.

00:01:24.000 Well, okay.

00:01:25.000 It does look cool.

00:01:26.000 Yeah.

00:01:29.000 How long do you think it'll be before...

00:01:30.000 Are you good, Jamie?

00:01:31.000 No.

00:01:45.000 How long do you think it's gonna be before you have like regular flights with that where you can take off and land and like an airplane where it would be very consistent with our extra pointy rocket you were your extra pointy rocket Do you mean Earth-to-Earth transport?

00:02:07.000 Just any kind of.

00:02:09.000 Any time where you could just do it with people and have it land.

00:02:13.000 All the time.

00:02:16.000 I think we're probably two years away.

00:02:18.000 Two years away.

00:02:19.000 That's really nice.

00:02:21.000 Two years is pretty cool.

00:02:23.000 Two years for people.

00:02:24.000 We'll have a lot of flights between now and then.

00:02:27.000 That's crazy.

00:02:27.000 2023 is not that far away.

00:02:29.000 That'll be there before you know it.

00:02:31.000 Yeah.

00:02:31.000 Wow.

00:02:32.000 2023. Time flies.

00:02:34.000 How many times have you had explosions with those things?

00:02:36.000 When you're on a rocket.

00:02:37.000 I don't know, like quite a few.

00:02:42.000 Six, maybe?

00:02:42.000 Five or six?

00:02:43.000 What are those like?

00:02:44.000 What is it like when you watch it explode?

00:02:46.000 When it's supposed to land and it just...

00:02:52.000 This is a test program.

00:02:54.000 We expect it to explode.

00:02:58.000 It's weird if it doesn't explode, frankly.

00:03:00.000 Really?

00:03:00.000 Yeah.

00:03:03.000 Because we're trying to develop advanced rockets at a high speed.

00:03:06.000 And if you want to get payload to orbit, you have to run things close to the edge.

00:03:12.000 And the whole rocket is evolving.

00:03:14.000 The engines, the structure, avionics, the software, the ground systems are all evolving simultaneously.

00:03:21.000 And the whole production system, which is actually harder than the rocket design by far.

00:03:24.000 So the rocket and engine and avionics production system and the launch system is...

00:03:32.000 A thousand percent harder than the initial design.

00:03:35.000 Like at least.

00:03:36.000 Really?

00:03:36.000 Yeah.

00:03:38.000 Same with cars.

00:03:39.000 It's like 10,000 percent.

00:03:41.000 It's easy to do a car prototype.

00:03:42.000 It's hard to do production.

00:03:46.000 So when you're looking and you're scaling towards the future and you're looking at mistakes or corrections, improvements, and all these different things, that's how you come up with this figure of approximately two years.

00:04:00.000 If current trends continue, if you plot the points on the curve of progress, then we should be doing regular orbital flights with a high probability of safe landing in two years.

00:04:16.000 We're getting to orbit this year.

00:04:18.000 Our goal is to get to orbit this year.

00:04:20.000 I'm not sure if people totally understand.

00:04:23.000 Starship is the largest flying object ever made.

00:04:28.000 This thing will be over 5,000 tons of weight on liftoff.

00:04:34.000 It's going to go straight up with 5,000 tons.

00:04:39.000 This is much heavier than any aircraft by far.

00:04:42.000 No aircraft even comes close to this weight.

00:04:45.000 And it's going straight up.

00:04:46.000 Aircraft can't go straight up.

00:04:48.000 It will have more than twice the thrust of a Saturn V. Really?

00:04:53.000 Yeah, it's like a big rocket.

00:04:55.000 Why does it need that much thrust?

00:04:58.000 Because you want to go to Mars?

00:05:01.000 We're trying to make life multi-planetary.

00:05:07.000 Extend life beyond Earth.

00:05:09.000 And in order to do that, you have to have high tonnage to Mars.

00:05:12.000 And that means you need a big rocket and you've got to fly a lot.

00:05:14.000 So the reason why it has twice the thrust of the Saturn V is to plan for these interstellar trips.

00:05:22.000 Interplanetary.

00:05:23.000 Interplanetary trips.

00:05:24.000 So when you're doing this and you're developing these systems thinking about regular trips to other planets, but you're not just trying to get into orbit right now.

00:05:36.000 You're trying to get into orbit with something that eventually could scale up.

00:05:40.000 Yeah, we know how to get to orbit.

00:05:41.000 We've done that a lot.

00:05:42.000 So the really hard thing is we need to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket where all elements of the rocket are reused and they're reused quickly, like an aircraft.

00:05:56.000 And this has never been done.

00:05:58.000 This is the holy grail of rocketry, is to have a fully reusable rocket.

00:06:03.000 Then you need to go one step further.

00:06:05.000 It needs to be fully and rapidly reusable.

00:06:07.000 You know, it's like...

00:06:08.000 Like a plane.

00:06:09.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:06:10.000 Like playing lands, you refuel it and take off a game.

00:06:14.000 How do you have time?

00:06:15.000 I never understand you in regards to the way you run multiple businesses simultaneously.

00:06:22.000 I would think that something like this would require so much concentration.

00:06:28.000 I would think this would be your whole being, trying to figure out how to work this.

00:06:33.000 Yeah.

00:06:35.000 Yeah, well, I do work a lot.

00:06:38.000 It's crazy!

00:06:39.000 Yeah, and the reason I was late is I was literally coming from some critical meetings.

00:06:47.000 Normally, I'd be meeting until I work until like 1 or 2 in the morning.

00:06:52.000 Every night?

00:06:53.000 I mean, Saturday and Sunday, usually not, but sometimes.

00:06:58.000 How much do you sleep?

00:06:59.000 About 6 hours.

00:07:01.000 That's pretty good.

00:07:02.000 Yeah, not that crazy.

00:07:03.000 For you, that's...

00:07:04.000 I mean, for someone who does as much as you, that's actually...

00:07:06.000 That's impressive that you can squeeze that in.

00:07:09.000 Yeah.

00:07:11.000 I've tried sleeping less, but then total productivity decreases.

00:07:15.000 Yeah.

00:07:16.000 So you feel like six is the number where it's...

00:07:18.000 Yeah, six or six is...

00:07:21.000 I don't find myself wanting more sleep than six.

00:07:26.000 So when, like, with the Saturn V and the space shuttles and all these other rockets, they would have these parts that would get the ship up into space, but they would descend down to Earth and crash into the ocean and they would never use them again.

00:07:45.000 That's right.

00:07:46.000 How do you avoid that?

00:07:47.000 Like, what is the difference between the way these things are structured?

00:07:50.000 Like, the whole thing goes together?

00:07:54.000 And then it lands together?

00:07:56.000 Well, we're on the wrong planet for a single stage to orbit.

00:07:59.000 Right.

00:08:01.000 I think one thing to appreciate is getting to space is easy.

00:08:04.000 Getting to orbit is hard.

00:08:06.000 So you only need maybe 1% or 2% of the energy to get to space, to where the atmosphere is thin, compared to what you need to get to orbit.

00:08:15.000 And if you get to orbit, now you've got to burn off all that energy, and you're coming in like a meteor.

00:08:19.000 So you need a powerful heat shield.

00:08:20.000 So it's like...

00:08:22.000 Super difficult to get to orbit at all.

00:08:26.000 And then if you get to orbit at all, then making those stages reusable means they've got to come back intact.

00:08:33.000 And then the upper stage is especially difficult because it's got so much energy.

00:08:37.000 All the energy you put into it, you have to take out.

00:08:43.000 You're literally coming in like a flaming meteor.

00:08:46.000 And most things would just melt or vaporize.

00:08:52.000 Like if you as a human tried to come in from orbit, you'd just be pink mist.

00:08:57.000 Yeah.

00:09:00.000 That's a funny way to put it.

00:09:02.000 Now, the space shuttle, they had tiles, right?

00:09:05.000 That was the way they avoided the heat.

00:09:08.000 They had these heat shield tiles.

00:09:10.000 What do you use with the SpaceX rockets?

00:09:13.000 Yeah, we have a more advanced version of the shuttle tile, but you've got to use some kind of ceramic, essentially.

00:09:21.000 It's usually some form of silicon oxide, aluminum oxide, some carbon perhaps thrown in there.

00:09:31.000 And is it like a one-piece?

00:09:33.000 Or is it in tiles?

00:09:35.000 It's in tiles.

00:09:35.000 Yeah, hexagonal tiles.

00:09:37.000 You can see with each Starship, we've actually increased the size of the heat shield.

00:09:41.000 So it's tough because the tiles are...

00:09:49.000 They're kind of like dinner plates.

00:09:54.000 They're brittle, and their coefficient of thermal expansion is different from metal, so metal will expand and contract differently from the tiles.

00:10:06.000 And the tiles also get super hot, while metal can be super cold, because it's got cryogenic fluid behind it.

00:10:14.000 You've got this differential expansion and contraction, which makes the gaps in the tiles expand and contract.

00:10:21.000 But if the gaps get too big, then you get kind of the hot gas, sort of the plasma gets in down, down, get plasma in the crack, and it's not as bad.

00:10:30.000 And then you're going to melt the metal behind it.

00:10:33.000 But if they're too close, then they bang together and they crack.

00:10:37.000 So you've got to get it just right, where the gap's just right, and then they can, the way that they're attached to the body, they can move around a little bit.

00:10:48.000 So there has to be some sort of room to move.

00:10:50.000 It can't be one large piece of ceramic that you fit over the front.

00:10:56.000 Yeah, you can't really make such a giant piece of ceramic, because you've got to, well, I guess you'd have like a super gigantic oven.

00:11:05.000 Yeah.

00:11:07.000 But you really need expansion joints, expansion contraction joints.

00:11:12.000 So it would be quite difficult to do a single piece tile.

00:11:17.000 Think of it like tiles for a roof or something like that.

00:11:21.000 Why don't we just make one tile for a roof?

00:11:23.000 It's like, yeah, it doesn't work.

00:11:25.000 Right.

00:11:25.000 Now, these things have multiple stages.

00:11:28.000 How many stages in the rocket boosters?

00:11:32.000 When things are taking off, how many?

00:11:35.000 Starship has two stages.

00:11:37.000 That's the minimum number that you could do on a planet like Earth.

00:11:42.000 Earth's gravity is quite strong.

00:11:44.000 And we have a thick atmosphere and strong gravity.

00:11:49.000 Whereas if you took off from Mars, it's relatively easy.

00:11:55.000 Mars is around just under 40% of Earth's gravity.

00:11:59.000 The Moon is about a sixth.

00:12:02.000 And getting to lunar orbit from the surface of the Moon is easy.

00:12:09.000 During Apollo, the lunar lander Just the top half of the lunar lander was able to take off and get to lunar orbit.

00:12:18.000 But to get to Earth orbit, you need the giant rocket.

00:12:22.000 It's very non-linear.

00:12:24.000 So what happens to the first, when you take off and it separates into stages, how does the first stage get reused?

00:12:33.000 Well, have you seen how the Falcon 9 stages work, where they come back and land?

00:12:38.000 No.

00:12:38.000 You haven't seen that?

00:12:39.000 No.

00:12:39.000 Wow.

00:12:43.000 Yeah, I mean...

00:12:44.000 Jamie's going to pull it up.

00:12:46.000 So does it come down with parachutes?

00:12:48.000 How does it land?

00:12:52.000 No, it lands propulsively with the thrusters, with the engines.

00:12:56.000 Really?

00:12:57.000 Yeah.

00:12:59.000 So it's designed to take off...

00:13:02.000 Here it is.

00:13:03.000 Yeah.

00:13:06.000 Oh, wow.

00:13:11.000 So that is the bottom of the rocket that launches it straight up and then afterwards it comes down and lands like that.

00:13:19.000 Yeah.

00:13:19.000 That's amazing.

00:13:23.000 And then the top piece can then land separately.

00:13:28.000 Yes.

00:13:29.000 Well, in the case of Falcon 9, the upper stage burns up on re-entry.

00:13:35.000 Falcon 9 has the fairing where the satellites are contained in the top, and once it gets to space where the atmosphere is thin, it's still a long way from orbit.

00:13:47.000 But it's in space, so you no longer need, the satellite doesn't need to be protected by the nose cone, the fairing.

00:13:55.000 And so that, it sort of splits in two and falls away.

00:14:00.000 And then, so with Falcon 9, we recover the fairing halves and we recover the booster, but we lose the upper stage.

00:14:08.000 On purpose?

00:14:09.000 Did you design it that way?

00:14:12.000 Yes, but it's not really possible with Falcon 9. If we made the alpha stage reusable, our payload to orbit would be dramatically less.

00:14:31.000 In order to have meaningful payload to orbit, scale is important.

00:14:35.000 You need to make things big.

00:14:37.000 There is value to scale.

00:14:44.000 For a truck, you wouldn't want everything delivered by a small pickup truck.

00:14:49.000 You want semi-trailers.

00:14:51.000 You don't see...

00:14:55.000 You don't see ships in the ocean, cargo ships, coming along with one sea van with an outboard motor.

00:15:03.000 It's like a giant ship.

00:15:05.000 So scale has value in and of itself.

00:15:09.000 Like the same computer that controls the big rocket controls the tiny rocket.

00:15:14.000 So even just in terms of the computer, the electronics weight becomes vanishingly small in a big rocket, but it is significant in a small rocket.

00:15:25.000 Do you think there'll ever be a time where there's an alternative source of propulsion outside of a burning fuel?

00:15:32.000 Like, is it possible that someone would develop a nuclear propulsion or some other method other than just burning large amounts of gasoline or rocket fuel?

00:15:44.000 There's no way around Newton's third law, really.

00:15:50.000 So...

00:15:52.000 You basically have to expel mass.

00:15:57.000 For a car, you can push against the ground.

00:16:01.000 For an aircraft, you can react against the air.

00:16:06.000 For a boat, you can react against water.

00:16:09.000 In vacuum, there is nothing.

00:16:12.000 So the only way to move is to react against yourself, to essentially shoot out gas at very high velocity and to transfer momentum from, you know,

00:16:28.000 to that gas that is going that way very rapidly.

00:16:32.000 So you want to accelerate a small amount of mass very fast in order to have you, the large amount of mass, accelerate slowly.

00:16:40.000 Momentum is conserved.

00:16:43.000 So, yeah.

00:16:47.000 So we're stuck with gas.

00:16:48.000 Yeah.

00:16:50.000 Until some insane breakthrough dealing with gravity or something.

00:16:54.000 Yeah, I mean, it's not going to happen.

00:16:55.000 Not in our lifetime?

00:16:56.000 Not in our lifetime.

00:16:58.000 No.

00:16:59.000 Yeah.

00:17:01.000 So...

00:17:04.000 So ironically, everything will go electric except for rockets.

00:17:10.000 Now, you can make rockets indirectly electric by using electricity to create the fuel.

00:17:19.000 So you can take CO2 and H2O and create methane and oxygen from that.

00:17:29.000 So methane is CH4 and oxygen is O2. And for example, on Mars, which is a primarily CO2 atmosphere, and there's a lot of water ice, is you can mine the ice, take the ice, And the CO2 from the atmosphere.

00:17:48.000 I'm simplifying this a lot, but run it over a catalyst and give it a lot of energy and you can get CH4 and O2 and you can graciously get your propellant on Mars.

00:18:01.000 The rocket, by the way, is mostly oxygen.

00:18:03.000 So for Starship, we're almost 80% oxygen.

00:18:09.000 It's only just over 20% fuel.

00:18:12.000 Really?

00:18:13.000 Yeah.

00:18:15.000 So, is this as efficient as you anticipate it being, you know, any time in our lifetime?

00:18:22.000 The trip to Mars is like, what, six months?

00:18:25.000 Is that what the idea is?

00:18:26.000 Yeah, it's about six months.

00:18:27.000 Do you ever anticipate it being quicker than that?

00:18:30.000 Is it possible to make these things faster?

00:18:35.000 Would you have to have solar sails?

00:18:37.000 No, solar sail would be very slow.

00:18:39.000 Would it be?

00:18:41.000 I'm trying to think of the way to think about gravity here.

00:18:44.000 There's a lot of analogies.

00:18:52.000 You can think, like, space itself is curved, like it's like a funnel.

00:18:57.000 Like, if there's something that has a lot of mass, it's creating like a funnel.

00:19:03.000 And so, in the same way, like, if you have a coin funnel, and the coin thinks it's going in a straight line, pretty much, you know.

00:19:19.000 I'm trying to convey what gravity is like, like a funnel.

00:19:24.000 If you want to get out of that gravity well, you actually need to go very fast parallel to the Earth's surface.

00:19:32.000 The faster you go parallel to the Earth's surface, the further out you spin.

00:19:35.000 Or you can think of a marble in a funnel.

00:19:37.000 If you want to get that marble to go far out, you just spin it sideways and it'll spiral out.

00:19:44.000 Conversely, if you Just due to the friction of the air friction and the rolling friction, it will slow down a little bit if you don't give it any push, and it will slowly spiral in.

00:19:56.000 As it gets closer, it spins faster and faster.

00:20:00.000 This is how gravity basically works.

00:20:08.000 All the things in the solar system are spinning around this gigantic funnel in space-time called the Sun.

00:20:16.000 And we're like these tiny little dust motes going around the Sun.

00:20:21.000 And the further you are away from the Sun, the slower you move around in terms of degrees per second.

00:20:27.000 So like the orbit of Mars, which is further away from the Sun, is about two years.

00:20:32.000 And Earth's one year.

00:20:36.000 Because Mars is about 50% further away from the Earth, from the Sun than the Earth is.

00:20:43.000 So it's like Mars, we're, Earth is at one astronomical unit, Mars is like one and a half-ish.

00:20:50.000 Astronomical units.

00:20:51.000 So we're about eight light minutes away from the Sun, Mars is about 12. And Yeah, so when you want to go to Mars, you basically accelerate along the same path of Earth going around the Sun.

00:21:07.000 And you time it such that your acceleration gives you an elliptical orbit around the Sun where the tip of the ellipse intersects with Mars.

00:21:17.000 So Mars is going around, and you just time it to coincide with the tip of your ellipse being Mars.

00:21:25.000 And that turns out to be about a six-month journey.

00:21:29.000 Now, you can speed that up.

00:21:30.000 I think, I mean, I could sort of see a way to make it happen in, say, three months, where the intersection with Mars would not be at the tip of the ellipse, but on the edge of the ellipse.

00:21:40.000 Now, that would mean the tip of the ellipse is out near Jupiter.

00:21:43.000 So, if you miss Mars, you're going to end up at Jupiter.

00:21:47.000 Jupiter's orbit.

00:21:50.000 So...

00:21:50.000 That's not good.

00:21:52.000 Yeah.

00:21:53.000 And you're going to be coming in hot.

00:21:55.000 Yeah.

00:21:57.000 But I probably can get down to three months of that big of a problem.

00:22:01.000 Getting down to a month is hard.

00:22:07.000 And then Earth and Mars are only in the same sort of – there's only about a six-month period every two years when Earth and Mars are aligned such that you can do the transfer.

00:22:22.000 You can certainly imagine that if Mars is on the other side of the sun, you can't get there because it's got to go through the sun.

00:22:27.000 That's not going to work.

00:22:31.000 This is like about a quarter of every Mars year is when you can do the transfer.

00:22:37.000 So six months every two years.

00:22:42.000 So if we are able to build or if humanity is able to build a city on Mars, people will probably remember which planetary conjunction they came on.

00:22:54.000 It's not like you can just go all the time.

00:22:57.000 You can only go every two years.

00:22:59.000 When do you anticipate, like, how much time before there's regular travel back and forth to Mars?

00:23:08.000 Roughly.

00:23:11.000 Like a real civilization on Mars?

00:23:18.000 Well, I think it's going to take a while to build a real civilization.

00:23:23.000 The threshold that really matters is If we're getting past the Great Filter, do we have enough resources on Mars such that if the spaceships from Earth stop coming...

00:23:41.000 You can survive.

00:23:42.000 Yeah.

00:23:44.000 So you could only be just missing one little thing.

00:23:47.000 You'd be like, you're on a long sea voyage and the only thing you're missing is vitamin C. It's an only matter of time.

00:23:55.000 You know?

00:23:56.000 Yeah.

00:23:56.000 And then it's going to be curtains.

00:23:57.000 So you've got to have all the things necessary to sustain civilization on Mars.

00:24:04.000 And the reason that the shift stopped coming could be World War III or it could be due to a slow decline of civilization.

00:24:13.000 So civilization here on Earth could end with a bang or a whimper.

00:24:18.000 Or natural disasters.

00:24:20.000 Yeah.

00:24:20.000 Asteroid impact, super volcano.

00:24:22.000 Yeah, that would be up in the bank category.

00:24:23.000 Yeah.

00:24:24.000 But it could also be like a whole series of things.

00:24:26.000 Like, what killed the dinosaurs?

00:24:28.000 Well, it wasn't just one thing.

00:24:29.000 It was like a whole bunch of things happened in a row.

00:24:33.000 And...

00:24:36.000 You know, well, they could have taken any one of those things.

00:24:40.000 They had like three things happen and no dinosaurs.

00:24:43.000 Which is kind of amazing that crocodiles are still here.

00:24:46.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:24:47.000 Those fuckers. 1.00

00:24:48.000 They're resilient. 1.00

00:24:49.000 Crocodiles, they...

00:24:52.000 They live on decayed meat.

00:24:55.000 They love rotten meat.

00:24:56.000 And so in any kind of disastrous situation, there's a lot of dead creatures.

00:25:03.000 And the crocodiles love it.

00:25:05.000 So that's why they're around.

00:25:08.000 Crocodiles and bugs and mushrooms.

00:25:10.000 And shrews. 0.97

00:25:13.000 Shrews, yeah.

00:25:13.000 Which is why we're here.

00:25:15.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:25:16.000 Our great-great-great-great-great grandparents were shrews.

00:25:19.000 What a strange thing to come from.

00:25:22.000 So there's hope.

00:25:23.000 There's hope for all you rodents out there.

00:25:25.000 Yeah.

00:25:26.000 One day you can go to Mars.

00:25:27.000 Just keep doing your homework.

00:25:29.000 Absolutely.

00:25:30.000 So there'll be...

00:25:32.000 You say the great filter.

00:25:34.000 What did you mean by that?

00:25:38.000 Well, so...

00:25:41.000 There's something called, like, the Fermi paradox of, like, where are the aliens?

00:25:44.000 Yeah.

00:25:44.000 So, you know, where are the aliens?

00:25:50.000 And I think it was Carl Sagan that said, like...

00:25:56.000 There either are a lot of aliens or none.

00:26:00.000 And they're equally terrifying.

00:26:05.000 If there are a lot of aliens, well, I mean, the invasion ship slash...

00:26:14.000 You know, bug infestation, just, you know, like...

00:26:18.000 Starship Trooper style?

00:26:21.000 Well, yeah.

00:26:21.000 I mean, it's like an alien civilization might just view us as like a bug infestation.

00:26:26.000 You know, it's like, hey, we left that planet.

00:26:27.000 It was fine.

00:26:28.000 Now it's got a bunch of bugs.

00:26:29.000 Just go fumigate it, you know?

00:26:30.000 We'd fumigate a house. 0.97

00:26:33.000 That's certainly possible.

00:26:36.000 But if there are no aliens, could it be that all civilizations are just destroyed before they become interstellar?

00:26:47.000 I want to be clear, to the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence for alien life on Earth.

00:26:54.000 There's no direct evidence for alien life.

00:26:59.000 No, you know, and if somebody says, oh, what about this alien, you know, sighting or whatever, I'm like, listen, it's got to be at least as good as a 7-Eleven or ATM cam, okay?

00:27:13.000 It's like, if somebody's got at least like an iPhone 1 level camera, like something, you know?

00:27:20.000 The problem with that is it's just too easy to fake things today, too.

00:27:23.000 Yeah, sure.

00:27:24.000 At least try hard in Faking It.

00:27:27.000 Are you familiar with Commander David Fravor's account of the Tic Tac UFO that he encountered off of the coast of San Diego?

00:27:38.000 You know Lex?

00:27:39.000 Lex Friedman?

00:27:40.000 Yeah.

00:27:41.000 Lex Friedman interviewed him on his podcast, and I interviewed him as well.

00:27:44.000 And if you ever get a chance to listen to Lex's conversation with him, it's really excellent.

00:27:49.000 But this guy is a naval fighter pilot, and he talked about this thing that they tracked on radar that went from more than 60,000 feet above sea level to one foot in less than a second.

00:27:59.000 Yeah.

00:28:15.000 Went to it 30 miles away in a couple seconds.

00:28:21.000 They have no idea how it did it.

00:28:22.000 They don't know what it is.

00:28:23.000 And these guys that were working for the Navy off the coast said they encountered them several times.

00:28:30.000 They didn't know what they were.

00:28:31.000 They didn't know what to do.

00:28:32.000 Do they have a photo or something?

00:28:34.000 They do.

00:28:35.000 They have video of it.

00:28:37.000 They have video of it.

00:28:39.000 You ever see the New York Times article that came out in 2017 about this stuff?

00:28:44.000 I don't know.

00:28:45.000 Yeah, there was a New York Times article in 2017 that was detailing this, and there's a couple other different sightings that were very similar.

00:28:54.000 They were trying to figure out what these things were and why, and it was also in the COVID relief package that the CIA was supposed to release.

00:29:03.000 Yeah, the politicians are trying to figure out what all this shit is, and so they tried to get them to release all the information they have within 180 days. 0.95

00:29:11.000 Honestly, I think I would know if there were aliens. 0.98

00:29:14.000 I would hope so.

00:29:15.000 That's why I'm asking you.

00:29:16.000 No.

00:29:17.000 I'd be jumping on that like...

00:29:20.000 You should watch that conversation with Lex.

00:29:22.000 Sure.

00:29:23.000 Here's the thing.

00:29:25.000 Do you think that they would want us to know?

00:29:28.000 Or do you think they would just be observing and making sure we don't blow ourselves up?

00:29:33.000 I don't know, man.

00:29:34.000 If you were an alien civilization.

00:29:35.000 They sure are subtle.

00:29:38.000 I mean, if they wanted us to know, obviously they could just show up and walk down Main Street.

00:29:43.000 Like, hey, I'm an alien.

00:29:44.000 Check me out.

00:29:46.000 Here's my spaceship.

00:29:47.000 I just land in the middle of Times Square.

00:29:48.000 I'd be like...

00:29:49.000 Okay.

00:29:50.000 Or hover over downtown LA. Yeah.

00:29:52.000 Yeah.

00:29:52.000 We were like, okay, we believe you.

00:29:54.000 Yeah.

00:29:55.000 So, whatever, they are very subtle, very subtle with aliens.

00:30:01.000 How often do you think about it?

00:30:03.000 Zero.

00:30:03.000 Zero?

00:30:04.000 Even though you're thinking about interplanetary travel, you don't really think about aliens.

00:30:09.000 No.

00:30:09.000 I mean, if they show up, I'm like, great.

00:30:11.000 Okay, now this is new information.

00:30:13.000 But we...

00:30:14.000 What an interesting way of putting it.

00:30:20.000 This is new information.

00:30:21.000 This is new information.

00:30:22.000 Like, where are you guys up till now?

00:30:23.000 Yeah.

00:30:25.000 So...

00:30:26.000 Anyway, listen, if I see some evidence for aliens, I'll be the first to be like, ah, aliens, you know?

00:30:35.000 Right, then you'll investigate.

00:30:36.000 But until then, you think it's kind of a waste of time?

00:30:38.000 Yeah.

00:30:39.000 Yeah.

00:30:39.000 It definitely seems like a waste of time if nothing's happened so far.

00:30:43.000 You think about all the people that have been researching aliens for their whole life, and they have very little to show for it.

00:30:50.000 Well, you know, there's...

00:30:52.000 Other than cool stories.

00:30:54.000 Yeah.

00:30:56.000 I mean, we have archaeologists going all over the world looking at things.

00:31:01.000 If we were to find something like, let's say, a cube of titanium, just like a one-inch cube of titanium in the middle of the pyramid, I'd be like, aliens for sure.

00:31:11.000 There's no way they could have made titanium back then.

00:31:14.000 There's no way.

00:31:16.000 That's hard.

00:31:17.000 That's all.

00:31:18.000 You don't even need a computer.

00:31:20.000 A computer would be like, hey, wow, computers, they didn't have computers back then, so it must be aliens.

00:31:24.000 But even just some advanced metallurgy.

00:31:28.000 Anything.

00:31:29.000 Anything like that.

00:31:31.000 Right.

00:31:32.000 Nothing like that that we could point to that we can't do.

00:31:38.000 Everything that we found archaeologically is consistent with the time, the technology they had at that time.

00:31:45.000 Archaeologically.

00:31:46.000 Yes.

00:31:46.000 Yeah.

00:31:47.000 So you're just talking about old stuff.

00:31:48.000 Yeah.

00:31:49.000 Yeah, just throughout history.

00:31:50.000 It's not like...

00:31:50.000 Yeah.

00:31:51.000 Like a alien visitor, there'd be something buried somewhere, I think.

00:31:57.000 We haven't seen anything.

00:31:58.000 So...

00:31:59.000 Anyway, maybe they're aliens, but they're very subtle.

00:32:02.000 If they are, they're being pretty shy.

00:32:07.000 As far as we can tell, there's none.

00:32:12.000 Nor are we seeing signals from any other solar system or anything like that.

00:32:20.000 The thing is that on a galactic timescale, even with sublight travel, you could absolutely colonize the whole galaxy, even some of the neighboring galaxies.

00:32:31.000 So if you said a million years and say there's no new physics, could you colonize the galaxy in a million years?

00:32:40.000 Absolutely, the entire galaxy.

00:32:42.000 So you would start with Mars, build bases on Mars, then use Mars to jump off to all these other planets, set up places there, and over thousands of years, easily.

00:32:51.000 Yeah, just kind of like, you know, hop from one solar system to the next, and yeah.

00:32:56.000 That...

00:32:56.000 It seems like that's...

00:33:00.000 Imperative.

00:33:00.000 Like, that has to happen if the human civilization is going to survive.

00:33:03.000 Because our planet is just...

00:33:05.000 We're too subject to natural disasters and our own folly, and if the species is going to survive, we kind of have to escape.

00:33:12.000 It's mostly about the species.

00:33:14.000 I mean, there have been some real doozies of, like, massive meteors and...

00:33:20.000 Super volcanoes and the continents moved all over the place and Earth's been a snowball and super hot.

00:33:27.000 If you read the geological history of Earth, it's very long and complicated.

00:33:35.000 So, and then there have been so many extinction events, not like just a few.

00:33:40.000 Yeah.

00:33:41.000 I mean, the Permian extinction event, that was a real rough one, where it's like well over 90% of all species died out.

00:33:50.000 And that doesn't tell the whole story because a huge chunk of the remaining species were fungi and, you know, like sponges and stuff like that, you know.

00:34:00.000 Are you a sponge?

00:34:04.000 Okay.

00:34:05.000 You're probably doing okay.

00:34:06.000 They're still around.

00:34:08.000 Are you a mushroom?

00:34:09.000 Do you like being in the dark and feasting on dead plant and animal matter?

00:34:15.000 Okay. 1.00

00:34:15.000 But if you're like a human, you're screwed. 1.00

00:34:18.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:34:19.000 Well, didn't, people got down to, there was just a few thousand of us at one point in time because of a super volcano, I think Indonesia.

00:34:27.000 I think it was only 60,000, 70,000 years ago.

00:34:31.000 Yeah.

00:34:32.000 There have been a number of sort of revolutionary choke points.

00:34:36.000 Yeah.

00:34:37.000 And the last ice age must have been pretty rough too.

00:34:40.000 A lot of species got wiped out then.

00:34:43.000 Is that part of what motivates you?

00:34:45.000 What motivates you to want to do this and to put people on Mars and to start traveling, get people traveling through the galaxy?

00:34:57.000 Yeah, so philosophically...

00:35:01.000 I'm in the Douglas Adams sort of school of thought, which is that the universe is the answer, and we need to figure out what questions to ask to better understand the answer that is the universe.

00:35:13.000 So we want to expand the scope and scale of consciousness, increase our understanding of the universe, to understand why are we here, where do we come from, where are we going, what's this all about?

00:35:26.000 And in order to In order to, I don't know, just understand the meaning of life, we have to expand the scope and scale of life and the consciousness, which may be digital and biological in the future.

00:35:49.000 And get past at least one of the great filters, which is to become a multi-planet species.

00:35:56.000 A species that does not become multi-planetary is simply waiting around until there is some extinction event, either self-inflicted or external.

00:36:10.000 We've got to be a multi-planet species.

00:36:13.000 Also, that's way more exciting.

00:36:15.000 Do you want a future where we're out there among the stars exploring the universe, or do you want a future where we're stuck on Earth forever?

00:36:22.000 I think we want the super exciting future where we're out there exploring the galaxy.

00:36:27.000 That sounds great to me.

00:36:31.000 I think it's worth 1% of our resources, something like that.

00:36:36.000 Maybe more, but at least 1%.

00:36:39.000 Well, it's in all the most exciting sci-fi movies.

00:36:42.000 Yeah.

00:36:43.000 If you saw a sci-fi movie and they didn't have spaceships, you'd be like, what's going on there?

00:36:49.000 Something terrible must have happened.

00:36:50.000 Well, we always assumed when we were kids that we would be traveling to the moon and back and traveling all over space by now.

00:37:00.000 Space 1999 was a show when I was a kid.

00:37:02.000 That was interplanetary travel.

00:37:04.000 Remember they had spaceships out there and motherships?

00:37:06.000 They thought 1999, by then, for sure, it would happen.

00:37:11.000 The problem is we need more Elon Musks.

00:37:14.000 There's not a lot of people that really dedicate all their time and energy to do something like this.

00:37:19.000 It's a really fascinating thing about the species.

00:37:22.000 It takes a few unique individuals that are motivated To do something like this and have the resources and the intelligence and you can figure out how to organize people to get something like this done.

00:37:37.000 Not a lot of you.

00:37:39.000 Well, there's a lot of smart, talented people at SpaceX and at Tesla.

00:37:45.000 And that's how we get things done.

00:37:51.000 But, yeah, I mean, part of the reason why SpaceX is still privately held, although we have a lot of investors and everyone at the company has given stock, is that the time horizon for SpaceX is long.

00:38:04.000 You know, it's like, you know, what's the market for transporting things to Mars?

00:38:13.000 Well, no market.

00:38:15.000 There's no one there.

00:38:16.000 So, they were like, that sounds pretty risky.

00:38:21.000 And the public company, you know, the feedback loop tends to be, you know, maybe a year to four years or even quarterly.

00:38:28.000 And it's like, well, this is like 10 years, 20 years out.

00:38:32.000 And I probably answered your question earlier, which is like, when do I think we can go to Mars?

00:38:37.000 I mean, I think possibly as soon as five years from now.

00:38:41.000 Yeah.

00:38:42.000 Really?

00:38:42.000 Yeah, but then you've got to build out the base, and then you've got to build out the city.

00:38:51.000 So the first thing you've got to build is, like, you've got to generate energy, so you've got a giant solar panel farm, and then you've got to have propellant production, so you've got to make the fuel and the oxygen, and you've got to grow food,

00:39:08.000 grow plants, and all the things that are necessary for life support.

00:39:11.000 So does everything have to be done in a greenhouse?

00:39:14.000 Is it some sort of a dome?

00:39:15.000 Yeah.

00:39:16.000 So is there a long-term possibility of terraforming?

00:39:20.000 Yes, long-term we can make...

00:39:23.000 If you just warm Mars up, there's a lot of frozen CO2 and frozen water that would liquefy.

00:39:32.000 The CO2 would densify the atmosphere.

00:39:34.000 The liquid water would form oceans and lakes.

00:39:39.000 So...

00:39:41.000 So basically a lot of frozen water and frozen CO2 on Mars.

00:39:45.000 And how would you warm it up?

00:39:47.000 Well, there's a few ways to tackle that problem.

00:39:51.000 That'll obviously be up to the Martians, but I don't know.

00:39:54.000 You could have giant solar reflectors.

00:39:57.000 You could create miniature suns over the poles or something like that.

00:40:03.000 What?

00:40:04.000 Well, it can be gravitationally contained, but you could just have it do giant thermonuclear explosions every few seconds.

00:40:16.000 The sun is a giant thermonuclear reactor in the sky.

00:40:19.000 If you want to know, hey, what is it like to be exposed to thermonuclear radiation, go stand outside in the middle of the day.

00:40:25.000 My 10-year-old said, If space has no air and fire needs air, how does the sun stay burning?

00:40:34.000 She loves to do that. 1.00

00:40:36.000 She looks at you like she's super smart.

00:40:38.000 Hmm.

00:40:39.000 Right.

00:40:40.000 That's a good question, little one.

00:40:42.000 Yeah, there's a lot of interesting things about the sun.

00:40:46.000 The sun is converting, I think, four or five million tons of mass to energy every second.

00:40:54.000 So, you know, E equals MC squared.

00:40:57.000 So that's a lot.

00:40:59.000 It's a lot.

00:40:59.000 Yeah.

00:41:00.000 And it's not even a big sun.

00:41:01.000 It's not even a big sun.

00:41:03.000 So, yeah, four or five megatons per second, every second, every day, for billions of years.

00:41:10.000 So what kind of engineering would be involved in creating a mini sun that you hover above the poles?

00:41:16.000 The sun is a gravitationally contained reaction, so you need a lot of mass.

00:41:25.000 If you don't have a lot of mass, that's why you'd have explosions, just like little pulsing things, like a pulsing sun.

00:41:33.000 Some people have said, well, if you added up all the nuclear weapons on Earth, that wouldn't even be that much.

00:41:40.000 I'm like, yeah, because they're small.

00:41:41.000 We could make way bigger nuclear bombs than the current ones.

00:41:45.000 It was like, what's the point?

00:41:46.000 They said, well, if you want to make an artificial sun, then you'd just use a lot more hydrogen.

00:41:50.000 That would be something...

00:41:51.000 Prytium or deuterium.

00:41:52.000 They would have to construct on Mars?

00:41:54.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:41:55.000 And then figure out a way to launch it?

00:41:57.000 Yeah.

00:41:58.000 Jesus.

00:41:59.000 Yeah, honestly, not that hard.

00:42:02.000 LAUGHTER I mean, they could do this without really even having computers back in the day.

00:42:14.000 But you can also do it with solar reflectors.

00:42:17.000 I don't know.

00:42:17.000 Somehow, if you want to make it look like Earth, you've got to warm it up.

00:42:20.000 Right.

00:42:23.000 So, in hundreds of years from now, or whatever it would take, people would eventually, you know, figure some way out.

00:42:31.000 Yeah, you could terraform Mars and make it be like Earth.

00:42:34.000 And we could bring, we could take life from Earth and breathe life into Mars.

00:42:39.000 There's nothing living on the surface of Mars.

00:42:43.000 Yeah.

00:42:43.000 Nothing.

00:42:44.000 It's cold.

00:42:46.000 Yeah.

00:42:47.000 There's a lot of ultraviolet.

00:42:49.000 The combination of being cold and having a lot of ultraviolet radiation, that's the killer combo.

00:43:00.000 Just being cold, then bacteria could survive.

00:43:05.000 Or just UV, but warm, the bacteria can repair themselves.

00:43:09.000 But if they're frozen, and they get blasted with the UV, they can't repair themselves because they're frozen.

00:43:15.000 And isn't the speculation that at one point in time Mars did have an atmosphere?

00:43:19.000 Mars was different than it is now?

00:43:22.000 Yeah.

00:43:23.000 It once had quite a dense atmosphere and it seemed most likely to have had oceans and lakes.

00:43:32.000 Now they're frozen and covered in dust.

00:43:38.000 That orange color you see is iron oxide.

00:43:41.000 So there's quite a lot of iron, just rust.

00:43:44.000 You know, for a while there they thought, well, maybe Mars was like some ancient civilization.

00:43:49.000 Do you remember the face on Mars?

00:43:51.000 Sure.

00:43:54.000 There's a guy that was completely...

00:43:57.000 He was fascinating.

00:43:59.000 Richard Hoagland?

00:44:00.000 Is that his name?

00:44:01.000 See if that's the guy's name. 1.00

00:44:03.000 But he's, with all due respect, out of his fucking mind. 0.99

00:44:07.000 And he was making all these incredibly bizarre connections. 0.99

00:44:11.000 Like measurements from this rock to that rock and using all this mathematics to prove that this symmetry was impossible in nature.

00:44:20.000 This was all created by civilization.

00:44:23.000 That this face was like some sort of an ancient shrine to whatever being lived there before.

00:44:32.000 There it is.

00:44:33.000 Monuments to Mars.

00:44:34.000 Richard Hoagland.

00:44:34.000 That's the guy's name.

00:44:35.000 I used to listen to him on Art Bell.

00:44:37.000 It's crazy.

00:44:39.000 It was just...

00:44:40.000 I mean, I don't know if he's schizophrenic.

00:44:42.000 Maybe he's just smarter than all of us.

00:44:45.000 But, uh...

00:44:46.000 Jamie's shaking his head.

00:44:47.000 I think aspirationally, you want to believe things proportionate to the evidence.

00:44:51.000 Not inversely proportionate to the evidence.

00:44:53.000 Well, he was definitely inversely proportionate to the evidence.

00:44:56.000 It was very strange.

00:44:58.000 It was one of those ones where I had to stop listening because I felt like I was going crazy, too.

00:45:02.000 Yeah.

00:45:03.000 He was so invested in this idea...

00:45:07.000 Again, maybe he's right.

00:45:09.000 I don't think so.

00:45:10.000 No.

00:45:11.000 I doubt it.

00:45:12.000 Well, then they had subsequent voyages where they made high-resolution scans of the exact same area and it looked very different without the same shadows.

00:45:21.000 It just looked like rocks.

00:45:25.000 Yeah, Mars kind of looks like, I don't know, like some Arizona desert or something like that.

00:45:30.000 What do they think happened?

00:45:30.000 They think it was hit?

00:45:31.000 Like an asteroid hit?

00:45:33.000 Well, everything got hit with light asteroids over time.

00:45:35.000 Do they think that that's what killed the environment there, the atmosphere?

00:45:39.000 Well, the atmosphere...

00:45:41.000 So Mars has lower gravity than Earth, and it does not have a strong magnetic field.

00:45:47.000 So over time, this is over billions of years, the atmosphere will be gradually eroded by the solar wind and...

00:46:03.000 And having less gravity.

00:46:06.000 So, you know, the smaller you are, the less, generally the less atmosphere you're going to have.

00:46:13.000 So, yeah, so generating an atmosphere on Mars, it would eventually erode, but we're talking about hundreds of millions of years to billions of years type of thing.

00:46:24.000 Plenty of time to figure things out.

00:46:26.000 For us.

00:46:27.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:27.000 Yeah.

00:46:28.000 So, but do you think that Mars' atmosphere eroded quicker because it's just smaller?

00:46:34.000 That's a factor.

00:46:35.000 Yeah.

00:46:36.000 I mean, like if you look at, say, asteroids or, you know, they don't really have, like Sirius is a pretty big asteroid.

00:46:44.000 But it doesn't really have an atmosphere.

00:46:46.000 The moon doesn't really have an atmosphere.

00:46:48.000 So, in fact, it doesn't have an atmosphere.

00:46:51.000 Technically, there's a tiny amount of rarefied gas, but it's not a real atmosphere.

00:46:56.000 Did you pay attention at all to the guy who was the chair of the Harvard Astronomy Department, Avi Loeb, who was recently, there was a bunch of stories in the news because he believes that an object that came through our solar system in 2017 was possibly extraterrestrial in origin.

00:47:14.000 Yeah.

00:47:16.000 The...

00:47:17.000 Whatever.

00:47:18.000 Your mommy burger.

00:47:19.000 Yeah, they don't...

00:47:20.000 He thinks that there's a 90...

00:47:22.000 Apparently there's a 91% possibility that it was shaped like a...

00:47:25.000 Your mama asteroid.

00:47:27.000 Yeah.

00:47:29.000 Yeah, umamao.

00:47:30.000 It was a Hawaiian name.

00:47:32.000 Okay.

00:47:32.000 Yeah, it was a Hawaiian name.

00:47:34.000 It sounds like your mama.

00:47:35.000 Yes, it was like your mama.

00:47:38.000 Umamao or something like that.

00:47:40.000 Yeah.

00:47:40.000 Yeah, because it was discovered in Hawaii.

00:47:43.000 They gave it a Hawaiian name.

00:47:45.000 Yeah.

00:47:50.000 Well, anyway, so I think a fundamental test of human civilization is, are we going to become a multi-planet civilization before something cataclysmic happens?

00:48:01.000 Now, I'll be clear, I'm pretty optimistic about the future, so I'm not thinking like we're, you know, civilization is about to end anytime soon.

00:48:09.000 But there's a chance that it will.

00:48:12.000 Like Stephen Hawking, before he died, he thought it was like around 1% a century, something like that, I believe.

00:48:18.000 So it's not like 1% chance over 100 years.

00:48:24.000 It's like 99% chance of making it.

00:48:29.000 So I think he's probably about right.

00:48:31.000 So, 1% chance per century, so as the centuries go on, there's less of a chance?

00:48:37.000 No, it's...

00:48:38.000 More of a chance.

00:48:38.000 So, because we become more intelligent, more resources, and possibly the ability to escape Earth.

00:48:45.000 Yeah, I mean, it's like...

00:48:48.000 I don't know.

00:48:48.000 Russian roulette with, you know...

00:48:50.000 Asteroids.

00:48:51.000 99 barrels are empty.

00:48:52.000 Click, click, click.

00:48:54.000 Eventually.

00:48:55.000 It's going to get us.

00:48:56.000 Yeah.

00:48:57.000 You said something that I thought was really interesting.

00:49:00.000 The meaning of life.

00:49:02.000 Do you think there is a meaning to life?

00:49:08.000 Well, I think arguably the meaning of life is to understand the nature of the universe and figure out what the meaning of life is.

00:49:20.000 So, like I said, I think we don't quite know the right questions to ask.

00:49:25.000 But if we learn more about the universe, if we expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we are better able to ask the questions about the answer that is the universe.

00:49:36.000 But when you keep going with that, like, where does it go?

00:49:38.000 I don't know.

00:49:39.000 That's why, if I knew, we're like, okay, case closed.

00:49:43.000 We can die now.

00:49:45.000 The problem I always have with that is, do I want there to be a meaning to this?

00:49:50.000 Because it gives sense of purpose to finite life forms.

00:49:54.000 Well, I think there's a lot to understand about the universe that we don't yet understand.

00:50:00.000 Maybe it's a good time to have a beverage.

00:50:01.000 Absolutely.

00:50:02.000 So let's see.

00:50:03.000 Alcohol is hour one.

00:50:04.000 What's hour two?

00:50:05.000 Hour two?

00:50:06.000 Well, I don't think marijuana is legal in Texas.

00:50:08.000 And the last time...

00:50:11.000 I don't have to remind you.

00:50:12.000 There was problems involved.

00:50:14.000 Yes.

00:50:16.000 Ultimately not, though, right?

00:50:19.000 Well...

00:50:20.000 It was, like, temporary.

00:50:21.000 All that soothed over, right?

00:50:23.000 Didn't it?

00:50:25.000 CBD's legal here.

00:50:27.000 CBD. CBD doesn't do anything, does it?

00:50:29.000 No.

00:50:30.000 I think that's fake.

00:50:31.000 Well, no, it definitely does something for inflammation.

00:50:34.000 It does?

00:50:35.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

00:50:36.000 Well, how much CBD do you have to have before you notice it?

00:50:39.000 Well, physically or...

00:50:41.000 Yeah.

00:50:42.000 Yeah.

00:50:42.000 Physically, you don't have to have a lot.

00:50:44.000 Physically, CBD works great for people with arthritis and people with, like, sore muscles and things like that.

00:50:51.000 Cheers.

00:50:52.000 Yeah, no.

00:50:53.000 CBD definitely works for that.

00:50:55.000 But as far as psychoactive effects, not much.

00:50:58.000 It relieves anxiety for people.

00:51:00.000 Okay.

00:51:02.000 It helps people sleep, especially when it's combined with things like melatonin and things along those lines.

00:51:10.000 But it doesn't get you high.

00:51:12.000 Yeah.

00:51:13.000 No.

00:51:17.000 People do mix CBD with THC from muscle creams, though, and that doesn't get you high either, but it increases the effectiveness.

00:51:24.000 Okay.

00:51:24.000 Yeah, there's some creams that are really good that people like that have THC and CBD in it.

00:51:32.000 Alright.

00:51:32.000 So you have sunscreen or something, and then...

00:51:35.000 I mean, why not?

00:51:36.000 Just throw it in there, you know?

00:51:37.000 Why not?

00:51:38.000 Yeah.

00:51:39.000 Well, it's just...

00:51:40.000 It's great for soreness.

00:51:42.000 You just smell like weed all day.

00:51:43.000 Yeah.

00:51:44.000 It doesn't smell like weed, though.

00:51:45.000 It doesn't.

00:51:45.000 No.

00:51:46.000 No.

00:51:46.000 Some of it does, though.

00:51:47.000 Some of it does.

00:51:48.000 That's the thing about anything that's unregulated, right?

00:51:50.000 Like, hippies are making it.

00:51:52.000 That's always the problem.

00:51:53.000 Quality control.

00:51:54.000 Yeah.

00:51:54.000 No quality control.

00:51:55.000 That's the problem with edibles. 1.00

00:51:56.000 They're made by a bunch of crazy people. 0.92

00:51:59.000 Cooking them up in some, you know, Chula Vista apartment somewhere. 0.90

00:52:03.000 You really don't know what's in there.

00:52:07.000 Yeah.

00:52:08.000 Anyway, so we've got to make life multi-planetary before it's too late.

00:52:11.000 Yeah.

00:52:11.000 I think that makes sense.

00:52:13.000 Yeah.

00:52:13.000 I mean, why not?

00:52:14.000 Also, it's going to be fun and exciting, and even if you don't go, you can just watch it on TV. Yeah.

00:52:19.000 Yeah.

00:52:19.000 It feels cool.

00:52:20.000 I mean, like, yeah, I mean, you know, it's not like, you know, attendance is mandatory here.

00:52:26.000 You know, and it'll be dangerous and people might die.

00:52:30.000 Well, for sure they're going to die, right?

00:52:31.000 Yeah. 0.53

00:52:32.000 Yeah.

00:52:35.000 That the idea is like, oh, Mars is going to be an escape hatch, some luxury resort for rich people.

00:52:40.000 I'm like, no, it's like high probability of death relative to Earth.

00:52:44.000 It's a long journey.

00:52:46.000 Food's probably not great.

00:52:48.000 A lot of hard work.

00:52:50.000 No sunlight.

00:52:51.000 Yeah, I mean, it's like, it sounds like, you know, Shackleton's out for the Antarctic, where it's like, it's dangerous.

00:52:58.000 It's a long journey.

00:53:00.000 The food's bad.

00:53:01.000 You know, might not make it back.

00:53:04.000 But if you do, it'll be glorious.

00:53:06.000 Yeah, it's interesting how much people adapt when they're faced with a real problem.

00:53:11.000 Like, if we knew that we only had a certain amount of time left, like if we knew an asteroid was absolutely headed our way and it was going to kill most of the people on this planet, you would see people scrambling for something like that.

00:53:23.000 Like, look, I moved to Texas just to get the fuck out of LA because I felt like that was dying. 0.59

00:53:30.000 I was like, we've got to get out of here. 0.98

00:53:31.000 And I never thought I was going to move out of L.A. like that.

00:53:35.000 It happened very quickly, but people adapt when they realize that you have to do something.

00:53:42.000 If we had to do something, we had to go to Mars and had to set up shop there.

00:53:47.000 Yeah, I think it's important for the future of humanity and consciousness.

00:53:51.000 And like I said, we want to get past the great filter.

00:53:54.000 It might turn out that when we got there exploring the galaxy, we might find a whole bunch of dead one-planet civilizations.

00:54:02.000 And they just never made it to the next planet.

00:54:05.000 Ghost towns.

00:54:06.000 Yeah, strange ghost towns.

00:54:11.000 We'll go through the archaeological ruins of ancient Babylonians and Sumerians and trying to decode their writing, like what the hell would Linear B and hieroglyphics.

00:54:24.000 Isn't that a problem with us now that everything has become digital?

00:54:27.000 Everything's stored on microchips and hard drives and if something catastrophic happened, We're good to go.

00:54:39.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:54:41.000 It's kind of problematic that things aren't chilled in stone.

00:54:43.000 You know, they used to be chilled in stone, and we're like, okay, now, you know, it's kind of a pain in the ass to destroy stone, and stone lasts a long time. 0.65

00:54:50.000 Yeah.

00:54:50.000 So we still have a lot of writing from the ancient Romans, because they chose a lot of stuff in stone.

00:54:55.000 Or the Egyptians. 0.98

00:54:56.000 Or the Egyptians, yeah, exactly. 0.69

00:54:58.000 Man, the Egyptians really went to town with the hieroglyphics. 1.00

00:55:01.000 Even the Sumerians, you know, the cuneiforms carved in the clay tablets.

00:55:05.000 Yeah.

00:55:05.000 Absolutely.

00:55:07.000 We kind of wish they had said more.

00:55:09.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:55:10.000 Like us.

00:55:11.000 Our stuff is...

00:55:13.000 Yeah, it's not going to last for a long time.

00:55:16.000 I mean, there are sort of aspects of our stuff that would last for a long time, but a lot of the interesting things are going to be lost forever.

00:55:24.000 Yeah.

00:55:26.000 When we did the Falcon Heavy test flight...

00:55:31.000 Normally when aerospace companies do like a rocket test flight, they put something boring on like a concrete block because they don't want to risk an expensive satellite.

00:55:42.000 And so I was like, well, we've got to do something that's not very inspiring.

00:55:45.000 You know, concrete blocks are one of the least inspiring things you can do.

00:55:48.000 So I was talking to a friend of mine, and he said, hey, well, what about putting a Tesla on that?

00:55:54.000 You know, I was like, hey, that's not a good idea.

00:55:56.000 I'm going to go in my garage.

00:55:57.000 I'll put that one in there.

00:55:59.000 So I put my car on the rocket.

00:56:01.000 And then we wanted to see how far the rocket could go.

00:56:04.000 So I was like, just, you know, floor it.

00:56:06.000 Let's go.

00:56:07.000 Maximum delta V. So I thought it would probably blow up, and I had this image of, like, man, it was like, you know, this thing could blow up on the pad, and then...

00:56:17.000 And there's like a tire bouncing down the road, and then the Tesla logo just lands, bam, right in front of the camera.

00:56:24.000 It's like one of the things, like this is a movie, you know.

00:56:27.000 That's kind of one of the possible outcomes.

00:56:30.000 And unfortunately, it didn't blow up, and now my car is orbiting Mars.

00:56:34.000 Wow.

00:56:35.000 Yeah.

00:56:36.000 So now in that car, so now hopefully somebody in the alien civilizations in the future could find that, because it'll be like around for like millions of years.

00:56:43.000 I've seen the images of it with the...

00:56:46.000 It looks fake.

00:56:47.000 It looks fake.

00:56:47.000 That's how you know it's real.

00:56:48.000 Is that how you know it's real?

00:56:50.000 Yeah.

00:56:50.000 How do the images get to us?

00:56:52.000 The images are too lame to be fake.

00:56:57.000 I mean, they look good, but for example, the dynamic range of the camera is not enough to pick up the stars and the vehicle.

00:57:08.000 Things are very bright in space.

00:57:11.000 We don't quite realize it, but in the atmosphere, The atmosphere is making everything a little fuzzy.

00:57:17.000 And in space, things are super crisp and really reflective.

00:57:22.000 There it is.

00:57:23.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:57:24.000 So how is that getting to us?

00:57:26.000 The image.

00:57:27.000 Yeah, with a radio.

00:57:30.000 Wow.

00:57:31.000 So the rocket's got a...

00:57:33.000 How many megapixels is that image?

00:57:35.000 Not that many, actually.

00:57:37.000 Really?

00:57:37.000 No, I mean, it's probably a couple megapixels or something like that.

00:57:40.000 So like an old flip phone.

00:57:43.000 Yeah.

00:57:44.000 It's mostly just driven by what's the bandwidth of a video signal.

00:57:49.000 So what do you have?

00:57:50.000 These are frame grabs from the video signal.

00:57:53.000 And where's the camera that's taking this photo?

00:57:56.000 Oh man, our director of photography is awesome.

00:58:00.000 But I mean, when this thing gets sent to us, what is taking an image of this?

00:58:05.000 There's a camera on a stick.

00:58:07.000 Really?

00:58:07.000 Yeah.

00:58:08.000 And it didn't break off?

00:58:09.000 No.

00:58:10.000 I mean, we thought it might, but there's a camera...

00:58:14.000 I mean, it's kind of like a fairly wide angle, and so the camera's actually not that far from the car.

00:58:23.000 What is that one up there that shows the whole car?

00:58:25.000 Is that fake?

00:58:26.000 That's fake.

00:58:27.000 Is that real?

00:58:28.000 That's real.

00:58:29.000 Wow.

00:58:30.000 Is this Don't Panic on the screen?

00:58:31.000 Yeah.

00:58:33.000 Don't Panic.

00:58:35.000 Speaking of the Roadster, when is that thing going to be available?

00:58:40.000 Next Generation Roadster.

00:58:41.000 So we're finishing the engineering of it this year.

00:58:44.000 And so hopefully start shipping them next year.

00:58:46.000 Really?

00:58:47.000 Yeah.

00:58:48.000 And we're going to throw some rocket technology in that car. 0.99

00:58:50.000 Yeah, I've heard about that.

00:58:51.000 What does that mean?

00:58:53.000 So at a minimum it would be...

00:58:57.000 I wanted to hover, and I'm trying to figure out how to make this thing hover without killing people.

00:59:04.000 Right.

00:59:05.000 Yeah, good call.

00:59:06.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:59:07.000 I thought maybe we could make it hover, but not too high.

00:59:11.000 So maybe it can hover a meter above the ground or something like that.

00:59:17.000 If you plummet, you blow out the suspension, but you're not going to die.

00:59:21.000 Maybe you're six feet.

00:59:22.000 I don't know.

00:59:23.000 Six feet, probably okay.

00:59:24.000 You're not going to die either.

00:59:26.000 Probably not.

00:59:27.000 Probably not.

00:59:27.000 So if we just put a height limit on it, it's probably fine.

00:59:31.000 And would it be able to travel while it's hovering?

00:59:34.000 Yeah.

00:59:34.000 So you'll be able to go six feet off the ground and go how fast?

00:59:40.000 Well, you go pretty fast, but you're going to be time-limited.

00:59:44.000 Right.

00:59:45.000 Like a jet.

00:59:47.000 There's going to be a super high-pressure, like ultra-high-pressure air bottle.

00:59:52.000 Oh.

00:59:52.000 So the standard roadster would have like two back seats, two like kid seats, you know, in the back, like small seats like the back of a Porsche or something.

01:00:00.000 Or if you get the, I don't know, the SpaceX option package, then in that place where the two rear seats are would be as a...

01:00:10.000 A high-pressure carbon overwrapped pressure vessel.

01:00:13.000 So, you know, I don't know, 10,000 PSI or something like that.

01:00:19.000 And then a bunch of thrusters. 0.84

01:00:21.000 And so, like, at minimum, I'm confident we could do a thruster where the license plate flips down, you know, James Bond style, and there's a rocket thruster behind it, and that gives you three tons of thrust.

01:00:33.000 Oh, for acceleration.

01:00:34.000 Yeah.

01:00:34.000 So that would be on the ground.

01:00:36.000 That would be on the ground.

01:00:37.000 This thing would move like a bat out of hell. 1.00

01:00:39.000 Jesus Christ, but it already goes 0-60 in 1.9 seconds, right?

01:00:42.000 That's the sedan with the four-door.

01:00:44.000 What?

01:00:46.000 The new Model S Plaid that we start shipping this month, we just tested it on the Motor Trend spec.

01:00:56.000 0-60 is 1.96 seconds. 0.96

01:01:00.000 I have never driven my Tesla and go, why is this thing a little fucking faster? 0.95

01:01:04.000 Yeah.

01:01:04.000 I mean, the one I have, the Model S, is 2.4, right?

01:01:08.000 Yeah.

01:01:08.000 Which is preposterous.

01:01:10.000 It's so crazy.

01:01:10.000 I take people in it.

01:01:11.000 Yeah, they've never experienced anything like it.

01:01:13.000 No.

01:01:14.000 In their entire life.

01:01:15.000 My friend Tim Dillon is like, so what's the deal with these Teslas?

01:01:18.000 And I go, you want to freak out? 0.98

01:01:19.000 You want to see something fucking crazy? 0.98

01:01:20.000 I picked him up at the Improv, and we drove to the comedy store, and I took him up Laurel Kenny. 0.98

01:01:24.000 Are you ready?

01:01:25.000 Yeah.

01:01:26.000 And I never take it out of ludicrous mode, by the way.

01:01:29.000 I keep it in ludicrous mode all the time.

01:01:31.000 Yeah, it's fun.

01:01:31.000 I stomped on the gas, well, not the gas, the accelerator, and he started screaming.

01:01:36.000 He's like, ah! 1.00

01:01:38.000 What the fuck? 1.00

01:01:39.000 I go, yeah, it's what the fuck. 1.00

01:01:40.000 This is crazy. 1.00

01:01:41.000 It's crazy.

01:01:42.000 It's crazy.

01:01:43.000 Yeah.

01:01:43.000 So this is significantly faster than that, just for the Plaid.

01:01:46.000 Yeah, so the new Plaid, yeah.

01:01:48.000 It's a half second quicker to 60. Pretty close, yeah.

01:01:53.000 Every millisecond really matters when you start getting that fast.

01:01:57.000 I thought Plaid was going to ship later in the year.

01:02:00.000 Yeah, we managed to make it go faster.

01:02:04.000 Oh, okay.

01:02:07.000 We're both ways.

01:02:07.000 Plaid to Plaid.

01:02:08.000 And the Plaid has a wider wheelbase too, right?

01:02:11.000 It does.

01:02:11.000 Yeah.

01:02:12.000 And so it handles better?

01:02:12.000 Is that the idea behind that?

01:02:13.000 Yeah, it does have better handling.

01:02:16.000 Like we're trying to get to, on the Nürburgring, get to like the low seven minute mark.

01:02:21.000 Really?

01:02:21.000 Yeah.

01:02:23.000 Yeah, with further improvements, I think we could bust seven minutes on the Nürburgring, which would be a pretty wicked outcome.

01:02:29.000 What is the record right now at the Nürburgring?

01:02:32.000 Is it the Porsche 918?

01:02:33.000 What has the record?

01:02:35.000 Something crazy like that, right?

01:02:37.000 There's no production car.

01:02:38.000 I think no production car has got an under-7.

01:02:41.000 Oh.

01:02:42.000 Really?

01:02:42.000 As far as I know.

01:02:43.000 And even the ones that are close, that they say are production, they do a bunch of changes.

01:02:48.000 Right, like change the tires, aerodynamics.

01:02:52.000 Yeah.

01:02:53.000 But it's like, I think there's potential to have a car that, as delivered, can beat seven seconds on a number of things.

01:03:02.000 Isn't it funny that there's this one track that's the gold standard for almost all vehicles?

01:03:06.000 If you look at road and track or motor trend, you want to find out how badass this new sports car is.

01:03:13.000 It's like, what number does it do in the Nurburgring?

01:03:16.000 Well, yeah.

01:03:17.000 Now, November Green, to be totally frank, is not representative of normal...

01:03:21.000 No.

01:03:21.000 It's not normal.

01:03:22.000 Yeah.

01:03:24.000 It's the hottest one to...

01:03:25.000 You can't game it, you know?

01:03:27.000 Right.

01:03:28.000 So...

01:03:28.000 But I think for everyday driving, it's the acceleration that really matters.

01:03:33.000 Like, it's like, you know, you're at a...

01:03:36.000 You know, the light goes green.

01:03:37.000 Boom.

01:03:37.000 Who's across the intersection fastest?

01:03:41.000 The new Plaid will do...

01:03:43.000 You know, a sub-nine second quarter mile with an extra track speed and a quarter mile of 155 miles an hour.

01:03:51.000 And it's a sedan.

01:03:52.000 Yeah.

01:03:53.000 It's a four-door.

01:03:53.000 It can hit 60 miles an hour before it's cleared the intersection.

01:03:57.000 That's insane.

01:03:58.000 Insane.

01:03:59.000 That's insane.

01:04:00.000 Yeah.

01:04:00.000 Wow.

01:04:02.000 It's uncomfortably fast.

01:04:03.000 Is that steering wheel legit?

01:04:05.000 Yeah.

01:04:05.000 Is it legal?

01:04:06.000 Yeah, I mean, they use a yoke in Formula One.

01:04:11.000 They don't have a steering wheel.

01:04:11.000 Right, but you're not on the highway in a Formula One car.

01:04:15.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:04:15.000 I like driving like this.

01:04:17.000 Like resting my hand on the top of the wheel.

01:04:20.000 Well, I think autopilot's getting good enough that you won't need to drive most of the time.

01:04:25.000 Unless you really want to.

01:04:26.000 I like driving.

01:04:27.000 Okay.

01:04:28.000 Yeah, I use autopilot sometimes.

01:04:30.000 I mean, but most of the time I drive.

01:04:34.000 I find it's like, you can rest your hand on your knee, that kind of thing, and it works great.

01:04:40.000 Anyway, it looks awesome.

01:04:41.000 It does look cool.

01:04:42.000 Yeah.

01:04:43.000 Yeah, it's very spaceship-y.

01:04:45.000 Yeah.

01:04:46.000 It's great.

01:04:46.000 And all the stuff is on the steering wheel now, too, right?

01:04:49.000 The blinkers and all that jazz.

01:04:51.000 Even the horn is like a little button, right?

01:04:55.000 Yeah.

01:04:55.000 And the horn is already kind of the center of the steering wheel anyway, but Is it still the center of the steering wheel as well?

01:05:03.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:05:03.000 But isn't it a button?

01:05:04.000 I thought on the yoke, there's a button for the horn.

01:05:08.000 Yeah.

01:05:09.000 Which you have to really...

01:05:10.000 I used to have a car that had a button for the horn.

01:05:13.000 I think it was an Acura NSX. Okay.

01:05:16.000 And it had, instead of the center hub being the horn, there was a button.

01:05:20.000 Yeah.

01:05:20.000 I never remembered it.

01:05:25.000 Well, there are no yokes.

01:05:27.000 Sorry, there are no stalks.

01:05:30.000 There's a yoke, but there's no stalks.

01:05:32.000 So the car, for example, will default to driving.

01:05:36.000 Like, if you just get in, when you press the brake pedal and then press the accelerator, it will figure out whether you want to go backwards or forwards.

01:05:45.000 That's crazy.

01:05:45.000 How's that possible?

01:05:46.000 Well, it just looks and sees.

01:05:49.000 Is there an obstacle in front?

01:05:51.000 Okay, you probably don't want to wag it, so you probably want to go backwards.

01:05:53.000 Right, but what if you want to go backwards and there's nothing in front of you?

01:05:57.000 Yeah, what if it's ambiguous?

01:05:59.000 Right.

01:06:00.000 So it would default to the inverse of whatever you started.

01:06:06.000 And then you can just swipe on the screen and change direction.

01:06:10.000 But isn't it easier to just hit like that way?

01:06:13.000 Yeah, it's almost never.

01:06:14.000 You'll see.

01:06:15.000 It's like you almost never...

01:06:16.000 Do you do it?

01:06:17.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:06:18.000 So this is something you've driven and it's intuitive?

01:06:21.000 Yeah, once you get rid of the stork and have the car figure it out, it's annoying to have a stork after that.

01:06:27.000 Really?

01:06:28.000 It's annoying.

01:06:28.000 You're talking to a guy who likes manual gearboxes.

01:06:32.000 Sure.

01:06:33.000 I like going...

01:06:34.000 Yeah, I mean, I like to drive on manual, too.

01:06:37.000 It's fun.

01:06:38.000 Yeah, it's cool.

01:06:39.000 Yeah, there's different kinds of cool, though.

01:06:41.000 Like, when I tell people about the Tesla, I go, listen, I love cars.

01:06:47.000 I love all kinds of cars. 0.97

01:06:48.000 But the Tesla makes other cars seem dumb. 0.97

01:06:51.000 It does. 1.00

01:06:52.000 It makes them seem dumb. 1.00

01:06:53.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:06:53.000 It's so fast. 0.99

01:06:55.000 It's so quiet.

01:06:56.000 Yeah.

01:06:56.000 Everything about it, the navigation screen, it's so big.

01:06:59.000 Why wouldn't it be big?

01:07:00.000 It's better.

01:07:01.000 It's better to be big.

01:07:02.000 Yeah, the software keeps getting upgraded.

01:07:04.000 The navigation system, the ability to just press that button and say, navigate to, and then it goes on the internet and finds out what you're looking for, and it finds it, restaurants, whatever you're looking for. 0.84

01:07:13.000 It's fucking amazing. 0.66

01:07:14.000 Oh, there's like a little tip for the Tesla. 0.99

01:07:17.000 If you just swipe down on the Navigate button, it automatically figures out if you want to go to home or work and navigates there.

01:07:25.000 So if you're at home, and obviously you know how to get to work, but do you know the fastest way to get to work?

01:07:32.000 So to use like Waze-type technology?

01:07:34.000 Yeah, like on a traffic-adjusted basis, what's the best way to go to work?

01:07:38.000 But how does it adjust?

01:07:39.000 Like, what is it getting your data from?

01:07:41.000 It's downloading traffic data from the internet.

01:07:43.000 Okay, so Waze uses traffic data from the internet plus user input.

01:07:47.000 So, like, it takes an extra beat to get the traffic data from the internet.

01:07:52.000 The idea of Waze is that you're getting it from users in real time.

01:07:56.000 Like, there's a car accident, people program it in, hey folks, there's a fucking car accident here, and then you get it right away, whereas on the internet, you're a couple beats behind.

01:08:04.000 Yeah, I mean, we get the traffic data from Google.

01:08:07.000 Okay.

01:08:08.000 Oh, so it is for Waze?

01:08:09.000 Because Google owns Waze.

01:08:10.000 Well, Waze and Google are slightly different, but they have similar datasets.

01:08:13.000 Yeah.

01:08:14.000 So basically, let's say there's an accident on the way to work or road closure or something like that.

01:08:19.000 It would be helpful to know that before you encountered it.

01:08:21.000 So if you just swipe down, it will automatically navigate to work.

01:08:25.000 And then also the autopilot will work basically seamlessly.

01:08:31.000 We have the beta out, and the beta's working pretty well.

01:08:36.000 It's going to get super good, and it'll basically be able to drive you all the way to work.

01:08:41.000 Automatically.

01:08:42.000 You basically just get in, and it'll assume you're going to work if it's Monday to Friday in the morning.

01:08:49.000 Or you could, say, program maybe go to school, drop the kids off at school, then go to work.

01:08:54.000 You just do this stuff automatically.

01:08:56.000 You want to take the perspective of all input is error.

01:09:00.000 If you have to do something, it's an error.

01:09:02.000 Make the error smaller.

01:09:05.000 All input is error.

01:09:07.000 Unless it's a game.

01:09:08.000 All input is error.

01:09:11.000 Well, that's the other thing, too.

01:09:12.000 It has games.

01:09:14.000 Like, you can play chess.

01:09:16.000 Yeah, you can play chess.

01:09:17.000 We got the backgammon with the aesthetic described in Lost.

01:09:23.000 J.J. Abrams asked for backgammon, so we put backgammon in with the Lost aesthetic.

01:09:29.000 It's got this really fun game called Polytopia.

01:09:33.000 I would say that's my top recommendation for any game in the car is play Polytopia.

01:09:37.000 What is that?

01:09:39.000 It's a real fun strategy game.

01:09:44.000 You'll see.

01:09:45.000 It's the top of the list.

01:09:46.000 This is not something you can play while you're driving.

01:09:50.000 Well, I mean, you're not supposed to play while you're driving.

01:09:52.000 That would be illegal.

01:09:54.000 But will it work while you're on autopilot?

01:09:57.000 So if you're on autopilot, can you also play chess?

01:09:59.000 Well, you have to tap a button that says you're the passenger.

01:10:04.000 Kind of like Waze.

01:10:06.000 Okay, kind of like Waze.

01:10:08.000 Yeah, so it's open for interpretation.

01:10:11.000 So if you are some chess freak, you could literally play chess on your way to work.

01:10:18.000 Yeah.

01:10:19.000 Wow.

01:10:21.000 I mean, in the future, as the car becomes more and more autonomous, it's going to be really about entertainment.

01:10:29.000 Entertainment, productivity.

01:10:31.000 Yeah.

01:10:31.000 So it's just probably entertainment first and foremost, and then productivity as well.

01:10:37.000 Do you have specific things that you do on your way?

01:10:40.000 Do you listen to books on tape?

01:10:41.000 Do you listen to music?

01:10:43.000 Yeah, I usually listen to music. 1.00

01:10:46.000 Oh, those fucking pirate songs you like. 1.00

01:10:49.000 The Sea Shanty? 1.00

01:10:50.000 Yeah.

01:10:53.000 We're good to go.

01:11:08.000 Jamie, do you know?

01:11:09.000 Do you know about the sea shanties?

01:11:11.000 Oh my god.

01:11:13.000 This is actually something really appealing about people singing in harmony.

01:11:18.000 It's actually way better than you think.

01:11:20.000 It's got a weird renaissance fair type thing to it.

01:11:23.000 You feel like you're all together in this old timey thing.

01:11:29.000 Pretending.

01:11:29.000 Very strange.

01:11:33.000 It's very odd.

01:11:36.000 It seems like one of the top reasons to be a pirate would be sea shanties, and we have tropical taverns, and I don't know.

01:11:45.000 Cool outfits, I guess?

01:11:46.000 Cool outfits, yeah.

01:11:47.000 You get to dress up.

01:11:49.000 Yeah, you get to dress weird.

01:11:51.000 If you lose your leg, they got pegs for you.

01:11:53.000 Yeah, you got a parrot.

01:11:54.000 Yeah, a parrot.

01:11:56.000 How did that happen?

01:11:56.000 Now, what about the truck?

01:11:59.000 When is that thing going to happen?

01:12:02.000 Cybertruck?

01:12:03.000 Yeah, so we're building a big factory here in Austin.

01:12:05.000 That's where we'll make the Cybertruck.

01:12:06.000 Yeah.

01:12:08.000 Now, did you decide to do this in Austin from the jump, or did along the way you decide to move the Cybertruck factory here?

01:12:17.000 Yeah, well, frankly, Austin is a bit like many California.

01:12:23.000 So I was asking the team in California, all right, what's your top choice for the next big U.S. factory location?

01:12:34.000 Where do you want to spend time?

01:12:36.000 And the number one choice was Austin.

01:12:40.000 And then I was like, okay, okay, what's number two?

01:12:42.000 Silence.

01:12:43.000 Silence.

01:12:48.000 Yeah.

01:12:48.000 So many California here in Austin.

01:12:50.000 It is a lot, right?

01:12:51.000 Yeah.

01:12:52.000 I mean, I hesitate talking about it because I've talked about it too much.

01:12:58.000 It's very utopian.

01:13:00.000 Yeah.

01:13:03.000 I think Austin is going to be the biggest hometown that America has seen in half a century. 0.96

01:13:08.000 I think it's a great response to the fucked up government in some of the other cities. 0.96

01:13:13.000 Yeah. 0.95

01:13:13.000 I mean, I think, you know, yeah. 0.95

01:13:18.000 I think we do need to make sure that people moving from California don't inadvertently recreate the issues that caused them to move in the first place.

01:13:30.000 The balance of Austin is a blue city and a red state.

01:13:34.000 It's almost like it kind of has to stay read.

01:13:37.000 Not kind of has to.

01:13:39.000 I think it does.

01:13:39.000 You need a certain amount of freedoms, but then you need the philosophical.

01:13:44.000 There's a bend to Austin that's very progressive and open-minded and artistic.

01:13:49.000 The restaurants are amazing.

01:13:51.000 The people are really cool.

01:13:52.000 But it needs to be sort of embraced by...

01:13:56.000 Guns and God. 0.93

01:13:59.000 Freedom.

01:14:00.000 That's part of the whole mixture that makes it work.

01:14:06.000 There's a metaphor to life in there somewhere.

01:14:09.000 It's protected by the rest of the philosophy of Texas, which is a wild, crazy place that has more tigers in private collections than in all of the wild of the world.

01:14:23.000 Really?

01:14:23.000 Yes.

01:14:24.000 I had a bit about it in my 2016 special.

01:14:28.000 Texas has more tigers in captivity than all of the wild of planet Earth.

01:14:37.000 Okay.

01:14:37.000 Yeah.

01:14:38.000 These are people's yards.

01:14:40.000 They've got a tiger in the backyard. 1.00

01:14:41.000 In your place, wherever you live, you could get a fucking zebra. 1.00

01:14:47.000 I have a friend who lives out in Dripping Springs. 1.00

01:14:49.000 He saw a zebra.

01:14:51.000 Okay.

01:14:51.000 A zebra got loose.

01:14:53.000 There's elk out there.

01:14:55.000 Wild elk.

01:14:56.000 Just roaming around.

01:14:57.000 Somebody had an elk.

01:14:58.000 It jumped the fence.

01:14:59.000 Now there's an elk out there.

01:15:00.000 There's an axis deer.

01:15:01.000 In my neighborhood, I saw an axis deer.

01:15:03.000 I didn't see it.

01:15:04.000 My wife saw it.

01:15:04.000 She described it to me.

01:15:05.000 I know what it is.

01:15:06.000 She's like, it had white spots like a fawn, but it was really big.

01:15:10.000 I'm like, that's an axis deer.

01:15:12.000 So there's Axis deer.

01:15:13.000 Yeah.

01:15:14.000 They're from India.

01:15:15.000 Okay.

01:15:15.000 And tigers eat them.

01:15:16.000 Okay.

01:15:17.000 Wow.

01:15:18.000 But these animals are, they're wild here.

01:15:21.000 Okay.

01:15:21.000 Because people bought them and they put them in the yard and they jump the fence.

01:15:25.000 This place is crazy.

01:15:27.000 But that's why it works.

01:15:28.000 The reason why it works is because people have so much freedom, and then you have the University of Texas, you have Austin, which has a long history of art and music, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Sixth Street, and so many great musicians have come from here, that it's got both of these things together.

01:15:45.000 It's got this wild freedom, and they embrace both parts of it.

01:15:50.000 That's the cool thing about this place.

01:15:52.000 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

01:15:53.000 I've never felt more at home. 0.59

01:15:55.000 I fucking love it here. 0.84

01:15:56.000 It's a cool city. 0.96

01:15:58.000 Like I said, it's going to be the biggest boom town that America has seen in 50 years, at least.

01:16:03.000 Yeah, I agree.

01:16:04.000 Yeah.

01:16:05.000 I think so.

01:16:06.000 Mega boom.

01:16:07.000 Comedy clubs are moving here like crazy.

01:16:09.000 They're moving here left and right.

01:16:10.000 Cap City's reopening.

01:16:11.000 The Creek and the Cave just announced they're going to open here.

01:16:14.000 That's cool.

01:16:14.000 I'm trying to open up a place here.

01:16:15.000 There's other clubs I'm trying to open up here.

01:16:18.000 Comedians are moving in here by the droves.

01:16:20.000 It's a wild place.

01:16:22.000 Yeah, well, I went and saw you and Dave Chappelle.

01:16:27.000 That was great.

01:16:28.000 That was fun.

01:16:28.000 That's a great venue.

01:16:29.000 Yeah, we did that Monday and Tuesday, too.

01:16:31.000 That's cool.

01:16:31.000 It's just, there's something special going on.

01:16:35.000 It just feels fun.

01:16:36.000 It feels fun to be a part of the escape from this wretched dreariness of the COVID pandemic.

01:16:44.000 It was just like this horrible feeling of having no power and no autonomy and being controlled by the government.

01:16:50.000 Yeah.

01:16:50.000 and being told what to do and it didn't seem logical and you're watching all these businesses fail and you're like there's got to be a better way and like there is no better way wear an extra mask three masks wear three masks and stay indoors and holy shit yeah yeah it didn't make any sense no you can't talk people out of a good panic they sure love it they love panic porn yeah fear porn is like that's people's favorite indulgence Yeah,

01:17:19.000 that's what I say. 0.88

01:17:19.000 Rule number one. 0.88

01:17:20.000 Just like Douglas Adams.

01:17:21.000 Don't panic.

01:17:22.000 But there's always people that don't. 0.99

01:17:25.000 And those people, they get together and they take solace in the fact there's other people that also don't want to buy into this shit. 1.00

01:17:32.000 Sure. 1.00

01:17:33.000 You know?

01:17:34.000 Yeah.

01:17:35.000 Anyway, so Orson's cool.

01:17:38.000 So the Cybertruck.

01:17:39.000 Yeah, so we're going to build it.

01:17:42.000 Our factory is only like two miles away from the airport.

01:17:45.000 Oh.

01:17:46.000 Probably shouldn't tell people that.

01:17:47.000 No, I mean, you can literally drive.

01:17:48.000 You can see it from the highway.

01:17:51.000 Do you anticipate visitors?

01:17:53.000 Sure.

01:17:54.000 I mean, we'll offer tours and that kind of thing.

01:17:56.000 Will you offer, like, if someone wants to come and get their truck from the factory and drive it off the floor?

01:18:01.000 You bet.

01:18:01.000 Ooh, that's exciting.

01:18:03.000 Yeah.

01:18:03.000 That's exciting.

01:18:04.000 We've got a lot of land.

01:18:06.000 Yeah.

01:18:07.000 For 2,500 acres right next to the airport. 0.99

01:18:09.000 That's fucking cool. 0.99

01:18:10.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:18:11.000 That's amazing.

01:18:12.000 It's cool.

01:18:13.000 So when you're designing this Cybertruck, you had your launch and you showed the shape of it.

01:18:20.000 There was a lot.

01:18:21.000 I sent you a picture.

01:18:22.000 I remember I sent you a picture. 0.98

01:18:23.000 I was like, this is fucking cool. 0.83

01:18:24.000 And you're like, that's not real. 0.97

01:18:25.000 And I was like, oh, okay.

01:18:27.000 There's a lot of fake pictures before the initial launch.

01:18:31.000 Oh, yeah.

01:18:31.000 You tricked a lot of people because people thought it was going to look much...

01:18:37.000 Even though the picture that I sent you was pretty fucking cool. 0.64

01:18:40.000 Yeah.

01:18:40.000 What you designed was...

01:18:42.000 Is that ultimately going to be what it really looks like?

01:18:45.000 Is it going to be that shape?

01:18:46.000 Has there been any revisions?

01:18:48.000 Yeah.

01:18:50.000 No, that's pretty much what it'll look like with very small differences.

01:18:55.000 You know, we adjusted the size a few percent.

01:19:00.000 In what way?

01:19:01.000 Well, it's, I don't know, like I think around 3% smaller.

01:19:05.000 Why did you decide to do that?

01:19:09.000 Well, you know, it would be a couple inches too big for the tunnel.

01:19:12.000 Oh, okay.

01:19:14.000 For the boring tunnel.

01:19:15.000 Well, I mean, we did actually drive through the boring tunnel in a Cybertruck with Jay Leno, which was a hair-raising.

01:19:24.000 Because it was a little bit too big?

01:19:25.000 It was pretty snug.

01:19:27.000 Oh, no. 0.99

01:19:28.000 Imagine if you killed Jay Leno. 0.98

01:19:30.000 Yeah, that'd be awkward.

01:19:33.000 How do we ever explain that?

01:19:35.000 He's the biggest petrol head ever, and he even loves your car.

01:19:38.000 Yeah.

01:19:39.000 The Cybertruck is like CGI in real life.

01:19:43.000 You're standing right in front of it and it looks like this is special effect.

01:19:48.000 So that's cool.

01:19:49.000 It'll change the look of the roads.

01:19:52.000 It doesn't look like anything.

01:19:53.000 It looks like alien technology.

01:19:54.000 Yeah, and when is that coming out?

01:19:57.000 We'll have probably limited production end of this year and volume production hopefully next year.

01:20:02.000 Have you ever considered something alternative to air inflated tires?

01:20:07.000 Have you seen some of these alternatives that have essentially spaces in between the upper wall and the wheel?

01:20:14.000 Have you thought about that?

01:20:16.000 Yeah, we haven't found a tire that Because you've got to worry about road noise.

01:20:26.000 You've got to take out potholes and bumps.

01:20:32.000 You've got to have good grip, but you also want to have low rolling resistance so that you get good range.

01:20:39.000 Those are a lot of things to try to put into one tire.

01:20:44.000 Then if you also say, and it can't have air, it's like, this is hard.

01:20:49.000 But you're talking, I'm talking to a guy who's putting people on Mars.

01:20:53.000 You can't figure out an airless tire?

01:20:56.000 It's just, it's an incremental constraint.

01:20:58.000 Yeah.

01:21:00.000 I'm not saying there won't be such a thing.

01:21:02.000 I think there will be, to be precise.

01:21:04.000 Because it seems like we've just gotten way too comfortable with this idea that tires blow out.

01:21:08.000 And you get flats.

01:21:10.000 It's very annoying.

01:21:11.000 Flats are annoying.

01:21:12.000 Yeah.

01:21:12.000 Very annoying.

01:21:13.000 Yeah.

01:21:17.000 Non-sport tires, by the way, are much less likely to have flats.

01:21:20.000 Sure.

01:21:21.000 They have more bounce.

01:21:22.000 Yeah.

01:21:23.000 Let's say you hit the edge of a pothole.

01:21:25.000 If you've got more rubber wall, you've got a longer way to go before you pinch the tire.

01:21:33.000 Sport tires tend to have more flats, especially in LA potholes.

01:21:38.000 That's the worst.

01:21:39.000 There was one particular pothole on Sunset Boulevard that It would just take out so many Model S, like a boom, boom, both sides of the car.

01:21:48.000 Really?

01:21:48.000 Yeah.

01:21:49.000 Damn. 0.99

01:21:52.000 Yeah, Steven Spielberg was actually, it's like, hey, Steven Spielberg is like, two times when I was like, goddammit, I know that pothole. 0.99

01:22:02.000 Yeah.

01:22:06.000 I feel like you can pay to fix that.

01:22:07.000 I mean...

01:22:08.000 Fix that pot hole. 1.00

01:22:09.000 It seems like that.

01:22:09.000 That's actually...

01:22:10.000 It would be like, man, there sure are a lot of taxes in California for roads this bad.

01:22:14.000 No.

01:22:16.000 The place is a mess.

01:22:17.000 Yeah.

01:22:18.000 So ultimately, one day, that's a possibility of having some sort of an airless tire.

01:22:23.000 Because I've seen prototypes.

01:22:24.000 I've never seen one on an actual car in physical...

01:22:27.000 In real life.

01:22:28.000 Yeah, I think the technology is gradually getting there.

01:22:32.000 And I think for something like a robo-taxi, where you want to have the tires last for a long time and not go flat, it's going to make a lot of sense.

01:22:40.000 Yeah.

01:22:41.000 But other than that, essentially most of what we saw in the demo is the same.

01:22:47.000 It's still going to have...

01:22:48.000 Oh, yeah.

01:22:49.000 There was the issue with the glass when it accidentally shattered.

01:22:54.000 How annoying was that?

01:22:56.000 That was shocking.

01:22:58.000 I mean, we literally spent hours beforehand with lots of people throwing steel balls at the window.

01:23:07.000 Right.

01:23:09.000 I mean, we must have thrown at least a dozen people must have thrown steel balls at the window.

01:23:14.000 At the same window, though? 0.99

01:23:14.000 Yeah, same damn window. 0.99

01:23:15.000 Isn't that the problem? 0.99

01:23:16.000 Yeah, it turns out that might be the problem.

01:23:20.000 If you keep throwing steel balls, eventually it's going to break.

01:23:24.000 And I did ask Franz to really wind up and give it all.

01:23:28.000 I should have like, take it easy.

01:23:32.000 Give me a fake wind up.

01:23:33.000 Yeah, we don't need the fastball.

01:23:35.000 But I did ask for the fastball.

01:23:37.000 I'm like, okay, let's go for the slightly slower ball.

01:23:41.000 Do you think it was because you guys were hitting the sidewall with a sledgehammer first?

01:23:44.000 Yeah, yeah, that could be...

01:23:46.000 Like, we're trying to figure out how the hell did this thing break because, I mean, we were just bouncing steel balls off it all day.

01:23:52.000 Right.

01:23:53.000 And I think possibly what might have happened there was that hitting it with a sledgehammer might have cracked the base of it, and once you crack the base of it, it loses all its strength.

01:24:02.000 Right.

01:24:03.000 And then it would just have a hairline fracture, and then you hit it anywhere, it's going to shatter.

01:24:09.000 Did you recreate that?

01:24:11.000 We didn't.

01:24:14.000 It's also hard with test glass.

01:24:17.000 When you actually do production glass, it's much more robust than demo glass.

01:24:24.000 Because production glass...

01:24:30.000 Demo glass, you have to have massive tools and ovens and everything to make the production glass.

01:24:39.000 That takes a while to do.

01:24:41.000 So the production glass is always better than demo glass.

01:24:47.000 Nonetheless, it should have worked.

01:24:49.000 And it was probably because we racked it with a sledgehammer and then threw the steel bull at it.

01:24:57.000 But it will be bulletproof to a handgun.

01:24:59.000 Now, why did you decide to do all that, make it bulletproof and make it like you could hit it with a sledgehammer?

01:25:05.000 Like, what was the motivation to make it different than just like a Model S? I mean, I think, you know, it's like, what's cool about a truck?

01:25:12.000 Trucks are tough.

01:25:12.000 And like, okay, what's tougher than a truck?

01:25:14.000 A tank.

01:25:15.000 What about a tank from the future?

01:25:17.000 Okay, now you have a tank from the future.

01:25:20.000 Okay.

01:25:21.000 Yeah.

01:25:22.000 That's bulletproof.

01:25:23.000 Yeah.

01:25:24.000 And how does that compare to, you know, it's way tougher than a regular truck. 0.97

01:25:30.000 Look, it's fucking cool. 0.97

01:25:31.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:25:32.000 There's no doubt.

01:25:32.000 I mean, having something's bulletproof.

01:25:34.000 That should be like Halo with a rocket launcher in the back.

01:25:37.000 Have you thought about doing something like that?

01:25:39.000 Somebody's going to do it for sure.

01:25:40.000 For military use?

01:25:41.000 Yeah.

01:25:41.000 Seems like it.

01:25:42.000 I mean, I don't know.

01:25:43.000 That sounds like it would be fun.

01:25:44.000 I mean, you should, like, you know, cruising around the field and, like, loving shooting rockets.

01:25:49.000 Yeah.

01:25:49.000 Now, is there ever a possibility that these things are going to be solar powered?

01:25:54.000 Is that someday, is this solar technology going to get to a point where...

01:25:58.000 It's kind of a surface area issue.

01:25:59.000 So, I mean, I think we could possibly put the cover of the truck bed, you know, put some solar cells in that.

01:26:06.000 So if you just leave it out in the sun, you know, probably, you know, recharges a few miles a day type of thing.

01:26:13.000 Oh, it would only be a few miles?

01:26:14.000 Yeah.

01:26:15.000 But what about one day?

01:26:16.000 Is it possible that technology could evolve to the point where they could extract more?

01:26:19.000 No.

01:26:20.000 No?

01:26:20.000 Really?

01:26:21.000 No, so there's about one kilowatt per square meter of solar energy, and then you're going to get, I don't know, probably 20%, 25% efficiency, so you get 200 watts per square meter, and then that's assuming that you're normal to the sun, so, you know,

01:26:36.000 like you're, you know, at the right angles, basically, like, are you facing the sun or not?

01:26:43.000 So, when you add all those things up, you say, how many square meters can you really get?

01:26:46.000 And then, how many watt hours per mile?

01:26:50.000 So, Basically, if you could do 10 miles a day, you'd be lucky.

01:26:56.000 Really?

01:26:57.000 Yeah.

01:26:57.000 And that's not going to change?

01:26:59.000 No.

01:27:00.000 Wow. 1.00

01:27:01.000 That sucks. 0.99

01:27:02.000 It'd be cool if it just ran... 0.97

01:27:05.000 I mean, is it possible to make a car entirely of solar panels?

01:27:08.000 Like, the entire surface of it?

01:27:10.000 Solar panels?

01:27:11.000 Like, in a place like LA or somewhere where it's never cloudy?

01:27:15.000 And drive around in that thing?

01:27:17.000 Yeah.

01:27:19.000 No, you're going to burn off energy faster than you can drive.

01:27:21.000 If you don't drive that often, that's a different story.

01:27:23.000 The only option is to have a solar paneled home and extract the power that way and charge your car.

01:27:28.000 Yeah, solar paneled house has got a lot of area.

01:27:31.000 Yeah.

01:27:35.000 You could possibly have some solar thing that unfurls that has a lot more surface area.

01:27:42.000 So when you park it at work or something like that, it would unfurl.

01:27:45.000 Yeah.

01:27:46.000 But it just needs area.

01:27:48.000 Like I said, think about maybe 200 watts a square meter, maybe 20 watts a square foot, something like that.

01:27:58.000 Now, the range of the new cars is much longer.

01:28:03.000 Yes.

01:28:04.000 Like, what is the range of the standard Model S that's available right now?

01:28:08.000 It's like 300 and...

01:28:10.000 Yeah, 350, 360. I don't know.

01:28:12.000 It's a lot.

01:28:13.000 Actually, the new long-range Model S is over 400-mile range.

01:28:18.000 The new one.

01:28:19.000 Even the old one.

01:28:20.000 The old one was even 400 miles.

01:28:22.000 The new one is 400 miles, too.

01:28:23.000 But the Plaid will get you up to...

01:28:25.000 So, the current Plaid is going to be around 400 miles range.

01:28:30.000 There's Plaid Plus.

01:28:33.000 That's maybe a year from now.

01:28:35.000 That'll be on the order of 500 miles.

01:28:38.000 That's a lot.

01:28:39.000 I hear drive 500 miles, anyway.

01:28:41.000 Well, if you drive it across the country.

01:28:43.000 Yeah.

01:28:44.000 It's pretty rare.

01:28:45.000 I mean, like...

01:28:46.000 Yeah, for most commuters.

01:28:48.000 Yeah.

01:28:49.000 I mean, even if you're driving 100 miles an hour, you're still going to drive for a while before you run out of battery.

01:28:59.000 And the truck, what is the Cybertruck's range going to be?

01:29:04.000 We have to pick a range, actually, for the initial version.

01:29:10.000 It'll be some number over 300 miles.

01:29:12.000 Now, when you say pick a range, is it in terms of the battery array that you put in?

01:29:18.000 Yeah, so what's the pack size?

01:29:19.000 So do you have to take into account how much weight it's going to add, how long it's going to take to charge?

01:29:26.000 Yeah.

01:29:27.000 Basically, the things that matter are the frontal area times the drag coefficient for aerodynamic drag, and then rolling resistance, which is a function of mass, and the tire efficiency...

01:29:41.000 So...

01:29:44.000 This has a big frontal area.

01:29:46.000 It's not very aerodynamic.

01:29:48.000 And the tires are not super...

01:29:51.000 They're not optimized for long range.

01:29:54.000 It looks very aerodynamic, the truck. 1.00

01:29:57.000 As a moron? 1.00

01:29:59.000 You don't want sharp angles? 1.00

01:30:00.000 You don't want sharp angles.

01:30:01.000 See, that's the problem.

01:30:02.000 To me, I'd be like, yeah, that's slicing right through like a knife.

01:30:08.000 You want it rounded.

01:30:09.000 You want it rounded.

01:30:10.000 So...

01:30:13.000 You want the air to have like smooth, like if you're a little air particle, you don't want the bumps.

01:30:18.000 Right.

01:30:19.000 You want like smooth, just like you're driving over the car, no bumps.

01:30:23.000 Right.

01:30:24.000 Just, you know, easy going.

01:30:27.000 Sharp angles are bad for aero.

01:30:29.000 So that aero will contribute to the lack of range.

01:30:33.000 So it'll minimize the range somewhat.

01:30:35.000 It'll have a drag coefficient that's pretty good for a truck.

01:30:39.000 Because enclosing the bed at an angle, that helps a lot.

01:30:44.000 Like normal trucks going down the highway, it's like a barn door.

01:30:47.000 Right.

01:30:48.000 I mean...

01:30:49.000 It's like having a parachute in the back.

01:30:51.000 You might as well be flying it, yeah.

01:30:53.000 It's like not far different from driving with a parachute.

01:30:57.000 So you can think of like drag as basically, it's like the integrated pressure profile over the car.

01:31:01.000 So if you create a low pressure zone in the back of your car where you don't like fill in the gap, like you're cruising through the air, you're making a hole through the air, and the air is trying to fill in the gap.

01:31:13.000 And if you've got a sharp transition into the truck bed, it's a big low pressure zone, basically.

01:31:22.000 And that's bad for drag. 0.98

01:31:26.000 So having the sloped back where that's got the truck bed cover, that's very helpful.

01:31:36.000 But the sharp angles are not helpful.

01:31:37.000 So the range of that truck is yet to be determined?

01:31:42.000 You're trying to figure it out.

01:31:44.000 It'll be over 300 miles.

01:31:45.000 What about the Roadster?

01:31:53.000 I mean, some of these things, we've got to decide, like, what's actually the best product?

01:31:58.000 You know, how much range do you really want, you know?

01:32:03.000 If you ask people, I say, well, I want...

01:32:06.000 You know, 600 miles range.

01:32:07.000 I'm like, okay, well, that means most of the time you're holding around a battery pack you're not going to use.

01:32:13.000 And it'll slow you down.

01:32:15.000 It'll inhibit handling.

01:32:17.000 Yeah.

01:32:17.000 It's like, why not have a car that's got a fuel tank that has 2,000 miles range?

01:32:21.000 You know, like, go and fill it up, like, once every six months or every three months or something.

01:32:26.000 Right.

01:32:26.000 But people, they basically figured out, like, actually carrying that much fuel around is not worth it.

01:32:34.000 Right.

01:32:34.000 So...

01:32:37.000 So I think, you know, there's some of the stuff you can do for kind of like bragging rights and like, but then, you know, bragging rights are going to get old fast.

01:32:44.000 So it's more like, what are you going to like on a day-to-day basis?

01:32:48.000 What's like, what maximizes the area under the curve of owner happiness?

01:32:52.000 So it'll have enough range that you'll never have to worry about range.

01:32:56.000 Let me put it that way.

01:32:58.000 Okay.

01:32:58.000 Yeah.

01:32:59.000 So somewhere...

01:33:00.000 You can drive from LA to San Francisco, no problem.

01:33:03.000 Austin to Dallas, no problem.

01:33:05.000 So a few hours of driving.

01:33:07.000 Easy.

01:33:08.000 Many hours of driving.

01:33:09.000 Many hours of driving.

01:33:10.000 Now, I heard you talk recently about the possibility of a van, like sprinter van style.

01:33:17.000 Yeah.

01:33:18.000 Now, a van, because you've got a big, flat area, that's actually where solar could start to make a little more sense.

01:33:28.000 You know, because you could have a lot of area.

01:33:30.000 So for the roof.

01:33:31.000 Yeah.

01:33:33.000 And I think you also have like maybe a roof where, you know, it's solar and then when it's stationary, like maybe...

01:33:40.000 Awnings.

01:33:40.000 Yeah, it like, it goes out and provides shade and maybe triples your area or something like that.

01:33:46.000 Now, if you go like, okay, now triple the area and you've got a big flat surface, now you could start having, maybe having charging enough that you, you know, you could start getting like 30 miles a day, that kind of thing.

01:33:59.000 That's interesting because there's a lot of people that use those for camping.

01:34:03.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:34:03.000 Like my friend Tom Green.

01:34:04.000 You know Tom Green?

01:34:05.000 I think so, yeah.

01:34:07.000 He used to be on MTV and actor and comedian.

01:34:10.000 He's traveling across the country right now in one of those vans.

01:34:14.000 Like, style van.

01:34:15.000 I think he got a Ram, a Dodge Ram.

01:34:17.000 Sprinter van style.

01:34:19.000 Yeah.

01:34:19.000 And if you had something like that, he has an awning that extends and he's got a bunch of camping and he does a podcast out of it.

01:34:27.000 If you had something like that, it seems like...

01:34:29.000 I think that would be great.

01:34:31.000 You could have a van that just...

01:34:33.000 Even if the apocalypse came around, you can still drive.

01:34:37.000 Yeah.

01:34:37.000 And maybe you can even have some sort of an external tent that you could set up that's just a solar tent that could juice you up during the day or something along those lines.

01:34:50.000 Yeah.

01:34:50.000 For solar, it's all about area.

01:34:52.000 Yeah.

01:34:53.000 Yeah.

01:34:53.000 It's called 200 watts a square meter, maybe 20 watts a square foot, something like that.

01:34:57.000 But I don't understand that there's no way that that's ever going to get more efficient?

01:35:02.000 No.

01:35:04.000 Really?

01:35:05.000 No.

01:35:06.000 I mean, the solar incidence is, somewhat coincidentally, roughly 1,000 watts per square meter.

01:35:16.000 Or, you know...

01:35:23.000 In a 10 square feet-ish, there's a thousand watts.

01:35:31.000 That includes all the heating and everything else.

01:35:34.000 So then you have to say, okay, for a photoelectric effect, You're going to capture photons within a certain band and you're not going to get them all because basically what happens with the photon hits the electron and gets it to jump over a gap and run around to the other side.

01:35:53.000 That's what happens with the photoelectric effect.

01:35:56.000 It just hits a It hits the photon with the right energy, hits the electron, the electron gets excited, jumps over a gap in the semiconductor, and races around to the other side.

01:36:10.000 That creates an electric circuit.

01:36:14.000 So, you have to say, okay, well, how are you going to get those, you know, electrons, just the right energy?

01:36:22.000 Like, what kind of photon incoming energy you've got?

01:36:26.000 Yeah, it pretty much tops out around 30% efficiency for a silicon system.

01:36:32.000 Now, if you have triple junction gallium arsenide, you can do a lot better, but that's very expensive.

01:36:38.000 So, but if you're talking about, like, How much better could it do?

01:36:43.000 In the mid-30s, maybe.

01:36:45.000 40. A big price increase.

01:36:48.000 But still not enough to actually power the entire vehicle?

01:36:52.000 No.

01:36:53.000 You're talking about for practical purposes.

01:36:56.000 How's it going to do?

01:37:00.000 Because you can't have, like, crazy money stuff in a car, you know?

01:37:03.000 When you say big money, like, how much more?

01:37:06.000 Like, ten times the cost, at least.

01:37:07.000 Oh, wow.

01:37:08.000 Yeah.

01:37:09.000 I mean, you don't see anyone...

01:37:10.000 I mean, the only thing...

01:37:11.000 Like, there's satellites that have, like, the triple junction gallium last night stuff, you know?

01:37:15.000 But, frankly, even for satellites, it's questionable.

01:37:18.000 For our satellites, for Starlink, we don't bother with that.

01:37:21.000 That's another thing I want to talk to you about, Starlink.

01:37:25.000 Starlink is semi-controversial, right?

01:37:28.000 Because on one hand, people think it's great that you're going to provide the internet through these satellites that are flying around.

01:37:35.000 Sure.

01:37:35.000 But astronomers and a lot of people that are, you know, amateur astronomers.

01:37:40.000 Mostly the amateurs.

01:37:43.000 We've talked with the professional astronomers and assuaged their concerns.

01:37:48.000 Yeah?

01:37:49.000 Yeah.

01:37:49.000 But the amateurs are pissed.

01:37:51.000 Yeah, they're like, you know, they don't know what they're talking about.

01:37:57.000 They're pro-level guys.

01:37:58.000 They know what they're talking about.

01:38:01.000 So, we'll make sure that this is not like an obstacle to science.

01:38:09.000 The obstacle would be the visual aspect of it, right?

01:38:12.000 Seeing these things flying around, that would be it?

01:38:17.000 Yeah, honestly, it's pretty hard to find our satellites.

01:38:19.000 Once they've reached orbit, it's hard to find them.

01:38:21.000 And we have trouble finding our satellites.

01:38:23.000 They were like, uh-oh, we got like...

01:38:25.000 But I've seen pictures of them.

01:38:27.000 Yeah.

01:38:28.000 Well, first of all, during the initial...

01:38:32.000 When they get tossed out of the rocket, briefly, they're tumbling.

01:38:38.000 And so when they're tumbling, they'll twinkle.

01:38:40.000 And then you'll see them.

01:38:42.000 Oh, so this was just the initial...

01:38:44.000 Yeah, it's just the initial...

01:38:45.000 They just got tossed out of the, you know, off of stage deploys.

01:38:49.000 The way we deploy them, we don't even really have a separation mechanism.

01:38:53.000 You can see the video online.

01:38:54.000 But we kind of tie them down like a bundle of hay.

01:38:57.000 And then we let go of the rods that are holding this big bundle of satellites down.

01:39:02.000 But before that, we rotate the stage.

01:39:05.000 So the stage is rotating, and the satellites get just like, if you took a deck of cards, and they all get thrown out.

01:39:12.000 Because they have different amounts of rotational inertia.

01:39:17.000 And what kind of bandwidth are these going to provide?

01:39:20.000 Oh, so...

01:39:22.000 Yeah, I mean, I think long term we're talking about gigabit level.

01:39:27.000 Really?

01:39:27.000 Yeah, gigabit low latency.

01:39:28.000 So you could play like a fast twitch video game, download a movie super fast.

01:39:33.000 It'd be great.

01:39:34.000 And this is going to be global?

01:39:36.000 Yeah.

01:39:37.000 And is it global by the satellites that you've already launched initially, or will it require a series of satellites in different parts of the country or different parts of the world?

01:39:48.000 Well, these satellites are actually zooming around the Earth at 25 times the speed of sound.

01:39:52.000 And there's currently 36 planes.

01:39:56.000 I mean, to the satellite, the satellite feels like it's going in a circle, but the Earth's rotating underneath the satellite.

01:40:04.000 So the ground track looks like a sine wave.

01:40:09.000 From the ground perspective, the satellite's doing this sine wave with a peak at 53 degrees.

01:40:15.000 And then there's 36 planes, so they're all doing like a sine wave, you know, just offset by a little bit.

01:40:27.000 But like I said, space is real big.

01:40:30.000 So they're not in danger of whacking into each other.

01:40:33.000 It's super big up there.

01:40:35.000 They don't really even get close.

01:40:39.000 Anyway, so they were zooming around Earth.

01:40:41.000 We got a lot of coverage, around 53 degrees.

01:40:45.000 And then we just started to launch some polar satellites, which will have an orbital inclination that allows them to have visibility to the poles. 0.99

01:40:58.000 Who the fuck is that for? 0.98

01:41:01.000 Just in case? 0.99

01:41:02.000 I mean, the best people that live up there, you know?

01:41:05.000 I guess a few.

01:41:06.000 Yeah.

01:41:07.000 There's Antarctic Research Station.

01:41:09.000 Okay.

01:41:09.000 So they're going to have internet access.

01:41:11.000 It's spectacular.

01:41:13.000 They can play Halo up there.

01:41:14.000 Yeah, they're going to go from having trash for internet to having incredible internet.

01:41:17.000 Wow.

01:41:17.000 Yeah.

01:41:18.000 So it'll be the whole world?

01:41:19.000 Yeah.

01:41:20.000 Wow.

01:41:22.000 Wow.

01:41:23.000 Yeah, everywhere on Earth will have high bandwidth, low latency internet.

01:41:29.000 And will you be able to increase the bandwidth over time through software?

01:41:35.000 There's a lot that can be improved with software.

01:41:37.000 But I should say that there's going to be a role for many different types of connectivity.

01:41:44.000 So Starlink is great for low to medium population density.

01:41:51.000 But the satellites are actually not great for high density urban.

01:41:57.000 So you're actually better off having 5G for that.

01:42:01.000 Really?

01:42:01.000 Yeah.

01:42:03.000 Because the other thing is, that satellite is pretty far away.

01:42:04.000 Right.

01:42:06.000 So, you got that satellite.

01:42:11.000 Over 500 kilometers away, even if it's right above you.

01:42:14.000 On a slant distance, it could be 1,000 kilometers away.

01:42:20.000 So this would be fantastic for rural areas?

01:42:23.000 Yeah.

01:42:24.000 It will provide some amount of connectivity in dense, open environments.

01:42:32.000 Equivalent to, what, 3G? No, it's more like, so I think, like, basically, like, what's the spot size of a satellite?

01:42:39.000 Like, when it's putting a beam down in a location, and how big is that beam?

01:42:45.000 And that's, so it's got a certain amount of bandwidth for that beam.

01:42:50.000 And that beam is just like, it's a pretty big, like, think of it like a flashlight or something.

01:42:54.000 Right, and what is it?

01:42:55.000 It's the same thing.

01:42:56.000 It reaches a few blocks?

01:42:57.000 Like, if you had a flashlight up there and you're pointing down, it's like, okay, you're going to illuminate an area.

01:43:03.000 Right.

01:43:04.000 So, a flashlight's just shooting out photons in the visible spectrum.

01:43:08.000 We're shooting out photons in the KUK event.

01:43:12.000 So, much bigger wavelength than visible light.

01:43:19.000 So, anyway, so these things...

01:43:22.000 So we got a bunch of spot beams basically.

01:43:27.000 But these beams are giant by cellular standards.

01:43:31.000 Like they might be several miles diameter on that beam.

01:43:38.000 So then you got, for argument's sake, 10 mile diameter, 16 kilometer diameter, This is a lot of area.

01:43:48.000 And all of the terminals in that area will get the same information because it's got that beam that's just going down that spot.

01:43:57.000 So, whereas you could have like a 5G tower that's the ones that aren't causing corona.

01:44:11.000 Kidding!

01:44:12.000 Kidding!

01:44:15.000 5G, of course, Corona.

01:44:16.000 It's a fact.

01:44:17.000 Oh, my God.

01:44:18.000 Have you seen any of that stuff?

01:44:20.000 That's one of the most disturbing things about the Internet.

01:44:24.000 Anyway, go ahead.

01:44:24.000 Well, I mean, when technology is magic, then you don't know what to believe.

01:44:27.000 Right. 1.00

01:44:27.000 And when you're a moron, you believe anything. 1.00

01:44:32.000 Well, so a cell tower could have a range of, you know, a mile or, you know, mile slash one and a half kilometers. 0.99

01:44:45.000 It basically could have like 1% the area of a satellite beam.

01:44:52.000 So, like, if you had something that was, you know, one mile or if I can say kilometer or 10, it's going to be the square of that.

01:45:04.000 That is the area.

01:45:06.000 So, satellites are great for low to medium density.

01:45:16.000 5G is ideal for high density.

01:45:18.000 I see.

01:45:19.000 And also because you could distribute the towers every mile or so easily and dress them up like trees.

01:45:27.000 That always bothers me.

01:45:30.000 I think they should do better at the fake trees.

01:45:32.000 I feel like, come on, somebody doesn't care enough.

01:45:35.000 You could definitely have a way better fake tree than that.

01:45:37.000 They're so bad.

01:45:38.000 They're so bad. 0.96

01:45:39.000 They look terrible.

01:45:40.000 Who are they tricking?

01:45:41.000 No one.

01:45:42.000 No one.

01:45:42.000 Right?

01:45:43.000 No, I'm like, what is this farce?

01:45:45.000 Yeah, they're offensive. 1.00

01:45:47.000 They're more offensive than, like, the most ridiculous fake tits. 1.00

01:45:50.000 You know, like the big ones that look like basketballs? 1.00

01:45:54.000 We cleaved a melon in, too.

01:45:55.000 Yeah, they have no shape that resembles a breast at all.

01:45:58.000 Yeah.

01:45:59.000 Yeah.

01:46:00.000 There's something weird about them, too.

01:46:02.000 It's like, I'm not offended by a tower.

01:46:05.000 Yeah.

01:46:05.000 That is the fake.

01:46:08.000 Well, the Christmas tree part at the bottom was kind of sweet.

01:46:11.000 You could put ornaments on it.

01:46:12.000 Is that one at the top right?

01:46:14.000 That palm tree one?

01:46:15.000 Is that fake?

01:46:16.000 No, that's a good fake if that's a...

01:46:18.000 The left side, Jamie?

01:46:19.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:46:19.000 I'm sorry.

01:46:20.000 Scroll.

01:46:20.000 Keep scrolling.

01:46:21.000 The palm tree one looks pretty good.

01:46:22.000 Is that real?

01:46:23.000 Wow, that's kind of not bad.

01:46:25.000 That's not bad.

01:46:26.000 Yeah, that one's pretty good.

01:46:27.000 It's not bad.

01:46:28.000 Yeah, if you were driving by that, that wouldn't be offensive.

01:46:31.000 Yeah.

01:46:32.000 But the one in the middle's not bad either.

01:46:33.000 That's kind of a pine tree looking thing.

01:46:35.000 It looks like some sort of demented Christmas tree.

01:46:37.000 That's a tower?

01:46:38.000 Go back to the one you just had, that far left.

01:46:42.000 That's probably the most impressive.

01:46:43.000 The one on the left-hand side.

01:46:45.000 The far left one.

01:46:47.000 Because if you had a forest full of those, you would just go, these are just weirdly trimmed trees.

01:46:55.000 Yeah, it's not that hard to have a fake tree.

01:46:56.000 You could definitely have a little bit of effort.

01:46:58.000 I don't need that.

01:46:59.000 Just like I don't need when I pass by a telephone pole.

01:47:03.000 I don't need to pretend it's something different. 0.99

01:47:05.000 It's a fucking cell phone tower. 0.99

01:47:07.000 Who decided to make those things into fake trees? 1.00

01:47:10.000 When did this become a precedent?

01:47:12.000 I don't know.

01:47:13.000 But you can definitely make a fake tree that is convincing.

01:47:18.000 So, maybe just a bit more effort in the fake tree.

01:47:22.000 Yeah.

01:47:22.000 Or just make them look cool.

01:47:23.000 Make them look like robots.

01:47:25.000 Yeah.

01:47:26.000 Yeah.

01:47:26.000 Have a big Ultraman out there.

01:47:28.000 I mean, some people are, like, really worried about, like, cell phone towers.

01:47:31.000 Thinking they cause, like, radiation or something.

01:47:33.000 Poisoning.

01:47:33.000 This is not true.

01:47:35.000 Yeah, people are worried about 5G, right?

01:47:37.000 Don't worry about it.

01:47:38.000 No?

01:47:39.000 Not at all?

01:47:39.000 I mean, no.

01:47:42.000 Like, if I had cell phones, if I had a helmet of cell phones, strap around my head, and around my nuts, I would not worry.

01:47:52.000 Yeah, I met a dude once who had ball cancer who was convinced that his cell phone was in his pocket, and that's what gave him ball cancer.

01:47:59.000 Nope.

01:47:59.000 No?

01:48:00.000 No.

01:48:00.000 Okay.

01:48:01.000 Hey, buddy.

01:48:02.000 Sorry.

01:48:03.000 Yeah.

01:48:04.000 No, it's not...

01:48:05.000 The cell phone is not...

01:48:06.000 No.

01:48:09.000 Yeah, I didn't know this guy very well, but he was pretty convinced.

01:48:13.000 Meanwhile, he kept the phone on the same side.

01:48:15.000 He was one of those dudes that had the phone on the little hip thing.

01:48:18.000 You know, a little bracket on his hip.

01:48:22.000 Kept his phone there, even after it killed one of his nuts in his eyes.

01:48:26.000 He's like, well, damage is done. 1.00

01:48:29.000 Your phone or your balls. 0.99

01:48:31.000 Yeah, he gave up. 1.00

01:48:33.000 They got me.

01:48:35.000 Yeah.

01:48:38.000 Yeah, don't worry about it.

01:48:39.000 Phones are not causing cancer.

01:48:40.000 So there's no concern whatsoever with the radiation that's caused by those things?

01:48:45.000 No, first of all, when people say radiation, they're conflating this term from nuclear bombs.

01:48:55.000 Technically, we are currently bathed in radiation right now.

01:49:01.000 This table has radiation, right?

01:49:02.000 Everything produces radiation.

01:49:04.000 Everything.

01:49:04.000 Everything's emitting photons all the time.

01:49:07.000 So it's just a question of what wavelength.

01:49:10.000 And if you have a very short wavelength or high-frequency photon, that is capable of causing DNA damage.

01:49:19.000 But we're talking about, like, ultraviolet and beyond.

01:49:21.000 Your phone's not even close.

01:49:24.000 So, yeah.

01:49:28.000 And then the thing that really causes problems in Let's say a nuclear explosion are alpha particles.

01:49:37.000 So it's basically helium nuclei.

01:49:39.000 So those things, they're like tiny cannonballs.

01:49:41.000 So those will rip right through you.

01:49:43.000 It's like if you got shot with tiny cannonballs, bad things would happen.

01:49:46.000 So that's also cold radiation, but it's really particles.

01:49:50.000 So you don't want to be bombarded with high-speed helium nuclei.

01:49:55.000 That's going to be bad.

01:49:56.000 How does that happen?

01:49:57.000 Well, that happens in a nuclear explosion.

01:49:59.000 Oh! 0.60

01:50:00.000 Okay, avoid those.

01:50:01.000 Yeah, that's bad.

01:50:02.000 But cell phones are okay.

01:50:04.000 Yeah, cell phones are not emitting particles.

01:50:06.000 So if it's like, if my cell phone is going to cause brain cancer, I'm like, because of radiation, I'm like, do you mean photons or particles?

01:50:12.000 And it's like, it's not emitting particles, so we can just put that aside, don't worry about the particles.

01:50:17.000 Then the photons that are emitting, the most they can do is slightly warm up your ear.

01:50:23.000 Only by a tiny amount.

01:50:25.000 It's like, okay, if you had an ear warmer that was very mild, that's your phone.

01:50:31.000 Mm-hmm.

01:50:33.000 That's all.

01:50:34.000 It's emitting photons at a frequency that is not going to cause DNA damage.

01:50:44.000 So don't worry about it.

01:50:45.000 Sleep easy at night.

01:50:47.000 Don't worry about your phone.

01:50:48.000 It's fine.

01:50:49.000 David Icke does not believe you.

01:50:50.000 He's doing backflips right now. 1.00

01:50:52.000 You fucking shell. 1.00

01:50:55.000 So what concerns people is the unknown, right? 1.00

01:50:57.000 They hear about 5G, and then they hear about radiation, and they're like, wait a minute, should I? Is this safe?

01:51:02.000 What are we doing?

01:51:03.000 Are we just ruining everything?

01:51:05.000 No, it's fine.

01:51:07.000 Totally fine.

01:51:09.000 Thank you.

01:51:10.000 Now I feel good about my 5G phone.

01:51:12.000 If you had a helmet that was made of cell phones, you'd be fine. 0.98

01:51:16.000 Yeah, but this is coming from a guy who wants to stick a quarter-sized hole in your head and shove wires into your brain.

01:51:22.000 Yeah, so I know a few things about what causes a brain damage. 0.98

01:51:26.000 I know, but that Neuralink concerns the shit out of people. 0.97

01:51:32.000 That scares folks. 0.96

01:51:33.000 That's the ultimate unknown.

01:51:35.000 Well, I think it would be problematic if we punt you to the ground and put it in.

01:51:39.000 Yes.

01:51:40.000 I agree.

01:51:41.000 And said like, okay, you're going to get this.

01:51:43.000 We're going to chip you whether you like it or not.

01:51:45.000 The chip you thing.

01:51:46.000 We're going to chip you.

01:51:47.000 That's the other thing that people are scared of, right?

01:51:51.000 You will have to sign a million disclosures and this is not going to be something where it just suddenly pounces on you like, ah, everyone's getting chipped.

01:52:02.000 No.

01:52:03.000 It's a very slow process of, okay, let's first try to help people who have serious brain injuries.

01:52:09.000 Like if somebody got a spinal cord injury or something like that, that's one of the first things we're looking at doing is somebody, maybe a quadriplegic, tetraplegic, how do we give them an implant that allows them to use their computer or their phone?

01:52:29.000 And have it be wireless and, you know, like they look totally normal.

01:52:33.000 You wouldn't even know that they had a chip in their head.

01:52:36.000 And they can just charge it inductively like you charged like a Fitbit or something like that or Apple Watch or something.

01:52:44.000 And that's kind of like one of the first applications we're thinking of.

01:52:47.000 It's like, let's restore functionality someone has had a serospinal injury or a serous brain injury or some other kind.

01:52:55.000 So this is going to be like a very gradual process.

01:52:57.000 You'll see it coming.

01:52:59.000 But I was playing Cyberpunk, the game, and I'm like, eh, jeez.

01:53:03.000 Are you worried about what you're doing?

01:53:05.000 Yeah, it's like, this is pretty close to home here, you know?

01:53:11.000 Like, oh man.

01:53:14.000 Yeah.

01:53:15.000 Like, is this where it leads?

01:53:17.000 It might lead there eventually.

01:53:19.000 I'm just saying for right now, it's going to help people who really need it.

01:53:23.000 Well, you know, we had this discussion before that we're all basically already cyborgs, right?

01:53:27.000 We're already relying upon our phones.

01:53:29.000 They're connected at the hip to them.

01:53:31.000 People are relying on glasses and all sorts of other technology to improve their life.

01:53:36.000 This is another gradual step in that direction.

01:53:39.000 And if you just keep going in that way, it seems like I like being a human.

01:53:45.000 And I think, you know, look here, we're drinking whiskey, we're talking, we're at a wood table.

01:53:49.000 This is a very human experience.

01:53:50.000 Yeah.

01:53:51.000 But ultimately, we are archaic.

01:53:53.000 And we will eventually be aliens.

01:53:56.000 We're going to be those dudes with the big heads and the little tiny bodies.

01:54:02.000 But we still need to feel.

01:54:05.000 For now.

01:54:06.000 Until it becomes more efficient to do it inside the mind.

01:54:10.000 Yeah, but then once it becomes virtual, once virtual supersedes whatever, like imagine if the virtual orgasm was a hundred times better than a regular orgasm.

01:54:23.000 I got news for you on that front.

01:54:24.000 Oh.

01:54:25.000 It is.

01:54:30.000 It's disturbingly good.

01:54:32.000 The way you're rubbing your chin.

01:54:34.000 Disturbingly good.

01:54:36.000 Get my little dog in it. 0.99

01:54:38.000 Stroke his head.

01:54:39.000 Oh, you'll love it.

01:54:41.000 Money back guarantee.

01:54:45.000 You'll love it.

01:54:46.000 It's a snap.

01:54:47.000 There was a woman who, it was in the 1970s, who had some sort of analogy to pain pills.

01:54:53.000 And they did some experiment with her where they put wires into her brain and gave her a device. 0.97

01:55:02.000 Do you know this story?

01:55:04.000 There are a few stories like this, yeah.

01:55:07.000 Where it actually hits the pleasure center and then you're like, my god, this is the best thing ever.

01:55:11.000 She just kept hammering it.

01:55:12.000 She developed blisters on her finger that she used to hit the button.

01:55:17.000 She never stopped hitting that button with the same finger. 0.99

01:55:19.000 Didn't give a fuck about those blisters. 0.99

01:55:21.000 She was just cumming constantly. 1.00

01:55:22.000 Yeah. 0.92

01:55:23.000 And then she started adjusting.

01:55:25.000 She tried to tamper with the device to increase the amplitude. 0.73

01:55:28.000 She became just an orgasm junkie. 1.00

01:55:31.000 She was crazy. 0.99

01:55:33.000 She was begging them to take it away from her.

01:55:36.000 And then when they tried to take it away from her, she would fight them.

01:55:39.000 It's madness.

01:55:42.000 I researched this extensively because I was fascinated by the idea that this could eventually become a part of your phone.

01:55:49.000 We could definitely make that happen.

01:55:50.000 That's a real issue with people.

01:55:53.000 The instantaneous desire for pleasure.

01:55:55.000 We wouldn't do it because it's bad.

01:55:55.000 You wouldn't do it, but the Chinese.

01:55:59.000 Sure.

01:55:59.000 I don't know, man.

01:56:00.000 Huawei phones immediately with a come button.

01:56:05.000 As soon as you log on, you give them your fingerprint, you come.

01:56:08.000 We could just put it in there with some software limits.

01:56:12.000 Easily.

01:56:13.000 But software limits could easily be worked around.

01:56:15.000 Someone's going to come up with it.

01:56:16.000 Someone on the dark web.

01:56:18.000 Well, I mean, your phone is, if you're carrying a phone around, you're carrying a microphone, GPS, camera, every day, everywhere.

01:56:27.000 Everything.

01:56:27.000 Orwell would be losing his mind.

01:56:29.000 And it answers questions.

01:56:30.000 Yeah.

01:56:31.000 Yeah, and he knows where you are.

01:56:32.000 Yeah, it's like you can just have it.

01:56:34.000 That phone, by the way, if you say, please turn off, it just says that it's off.

01:56:40.000 It's not actually off.

01:56:41.000 It's lying.

01:56:41.000 It could totally lie.

01:56:42.000 Yeah.

01:56:43.000 And you can't take the battery out anymore.

01:56:44.000 Basically, Apple or Android, anytime they want, they can just turn your mic on.

01:56:48.000 Yeah.

01:56:49.000 Or your camera, your GPS, everything.

01:56:51.000 Yeah.

01:56:52.000 And just tell you it's off.

01:56:54.000 I looked at the setting, it says it's off.

01:56:55.000 Yeah, and some people are like, that's not good enough.

01:56:57.000 I want it strapped to my wrist.

01:56:59.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:57:00.000 I need one on me all the time.

01:57:03.000 Yeah, I mean, these days, like a modern smartphone, it's like a tiny cell phone on your wrist, basically.

01:57:08.000 It is, yeah.

01:57:09.000 It even has the cellular connectivity and everything.

01:57:10.000 Everything.

01:57:11.000 It has everything.

01:57:12.000 You leave your house, you make phone calls like Dick Tracy.

01:57:14.000 Yeah, come on. 0.77

01:57:16.000 Yeah.

01:57:16.000 Better than any Dick Tracy even imagined.

01:57:18.000 Yeah, fuck Dick Tracy. 1.00

01:57:19.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:57:20.000 Nothing. 0.99

01:57:20.000 He didn't know shit. 0.99

01:57:21.000 The stock truck communicator. 1.00

01:57:22.000 I know, it was ridiculous. 0.71

01:57:23.000 It looks like a cheesy flop button. 0.94

01:57:24.000 It's a walkie-talkie.

01:57:25.000 You have to say over.

01:57:26.000 Kirk over.

01:57:27.000 A big walkie-talkie.

01:57:28.000 Kirk out.

01:57:28.000 Yeah, they had to tell you out.

01:57:30.000 It's gigantic.

01:57:30.000 You couldn't just hang up.

01:57:31.000 Yeah. 0.96

01:57:32.000 Yeah, it was really ridiculous. 0.68

01:57:33.000 And it couldn't get on the internet. 0.73

01:57:35.000 It couldn't take pictures.

01:57:36.000 Yeah.

01:57:37.000 He was talking to people from another planet.

01:57:39.000 He couldn't even send them a photo.

01:57:40.000 He couldn't even send them a photo.

01:57:41.000 They don't even have a camera.

01:57:43.000 They would beam a whole body.

01:57:45.000 To see what's going on.

01:57:46.000 Rearrange your body, right?

01:57:49.000 Take all your atoms and re-project them on this planet.

01:57:54.000 Totally.

01:57:55.000 Or they could just send a camera.

01:57:57.000 That was out of the question.

01:57:59.000 Have you thought about sending a camera to this very dangerous situation?

01:58:01.000 That really shows you how truly amazing the internet is.

01:58:06.000 That in all of science fiction, they never thought that was going to happen.

01:58:10.000 Yeah.

01:58:11.000 You think about all the Star Trek, Star Wars.

01:58:14.000 They thought we'd be on Mars for sure, but they never thought we'd have a supercomputer in our pocket and everyone's got an amazing camera and as much memory as they could possibly.

01:58:26.000 A supercomputer in your pocket, like something better than the best supercomputer.

01:58:30.000 Your phone is better than the best computer that Earth had by far.

01:58:35.000 In 1969 when we landed on the moon.

01:58:37.000 Oh yeah, by far.

01:58:38.000 By far.

01:58:38.000 Not even close.

01:58:39.000 The cameras.

01:58:40.000 Like, I have a Samsung Galaxy S21 that has a moon photo capability.

01:58:47.000 So it's designed, it has a moon shot.

01:58:50.000 So it's designed to be able to take beautiful photos of the moon.

01:58:55.000 Okay.

01:58:56.000 Yeah.

01:58:56.000 Because if you do it with an iPhone, it's not really programmed that way.

01:59:01.000 Actually, it's true.

01:59:02.000 The iPhone can take good photos of the moon.

01:59:04.000 Actually, I was just like in LA and the moon was low on the horizon and it was just like hanging there.

01:59:09.000 It's like this giant planetoid.

01:59:11.000 You need a galaxy.

01:59:12.000 Yeah, and I'll try looking at my phone and it looks like tiny.

01:59:15.000 Jamie, you got one of those.

01:59:16.000 Talk to him about the moonshot.

01:59:18.000 I didn't even know it was on there.

01:59:19.000 Yeah, just Google Moonshot with Galaxy S21 Ultra. 0.97

01:59:24.000 It's fucking phenomenal. 0.96

01:59:25.000 I got one just for that. 0.97

01:59:28.000 I got one because I'm always interested in both platforms and see where they're at. 0.96

01:59:32.000 But the photographs are fucking incredible. 0.94

01:59:35.000 The zoom's incredible, too. 0.98

01:59:37.000 They have much better zooms.

01:59:39.000 Look at this.

01:59:40.000 These are photos with Galaxy S21 Ultra.

01:59:43.000 That thing's just going to be all camera.

01:59:44.000 Isn't that incredible?

01:59:45.000 I know.

01:59:45.000 Look at the back of it.

01:59:46.000 Just make it all out of lenses.

01:59:48.000 It's incredible.

01:59:50.000 It's just we're living and it's constantly accelerating.

01:59:55.000 That's what's so amazing about it.

01:59:57.000 Is that the right one of Mars photo with that?

01:59:59.000 I don't know.

02:00:00.000 There's no way you're taking a photo of Mars.

02:00:02.000 No.

02:00:04.000 Impossible, right?

02:00:05.000 Impossible.

02:00:06.000 Thank you.

02:00:06.000 Glad you're here for that.

02:00:07.000 We would buy right into it.

02:00:09.000 Not a chance.

02:00:10.000 I think that was last year's model.

02:00:12.000 What?

02:00:13.000 Last year's model could take a picture of Mars?

02:00:15.000 No, no, no, no.

02:00:16.000 Like last year's moon photo versus this year's moon photo.

02:00:19.000 Oh, yeah.

02:00:19.000 If you had a giant lens or something, basically you need a photon distillery.

02:00:25.000 So that's the moon.

02:00:26.000 That's all that is on the right.

02:00:27.000 It's not Mars. 0.99

02:00:28.000 It's just a shitty... 0.98

02:00:29.000 It's like their last year's version of moonshot. 0.99

02:00:32.000 So the new one can actually see the craters, which is just fucking bananas. 0.98

02:00:37.000 Yeah. 0.96

02:00:37.000 I mean, if that's just on a camera without a lens... 0.96

02:00:40.000 Because you're like, say, what's your photon gathering area?

02:00:42.000 You know, it's like photons per unit area.

02:00:45.000 It's a certain limit.

02:00:47.000 What's that, Jamie?

02:00:47.000 It's not that good.

02:00:48.000 Well, it's pretty good for a cell phone.

02:00:50.000 Yeah, yeah, sure.

02:00:51.000 I mean, it's not great for a telescope.

02:00:53.000 Sure, yeah.

02:00:53.000 Well, I mean, the thing I was trying to do, like literally, you know, I don't know, five or six days ago, there was just like the, you know, the air was clear.

02:01:04.000 Like LA can be amazing, like on a clear winter day where the moon is low on the horizon.

02:01:10.000 Yeah.

02:01:10.000 And the sun's hitting at the right angle and it just looks incredible.

02:01:16.000 And I was trying to take a photo of that with my phone and it looked terrible.

02:01:18.000 Yeah, I can't capture it.

02:01:21.000 No.

02:01:21.000 No, unfortunately.

02:01:23.000 But galaxies can.

02:01:24.000 That's the interesting thing.

02:01:26.000 The Galaxy.

02:01:27.000 Yeah, well, it's a great name, too.

02:01:30.000 They're always one step ahead in many directions.

02:01:34.000 They have these ultrasonic fingerprint detectors, but they just can't beat the operating system.

02:01:39.000 Apple just has the ease of use.

02:01:42.000 Is it still good?

02:01:43.000 Is it still better, Apple?

02:01:45.000 Yeah, it's still better.

02:01:46.000 But it's close.

02:01:47.000 It's close.

02:01:48.000 But the other thing that bothers me about Google is Google is constantly tracking you.

02:01:52.000 Android phones are so hard.

02:01:55.000 It's so hard to avoid.

02:01:58.000 They'll know you better than you know yourself.

02:02:00.000 They know what you will want.

02:02:01.000 I'm a big admirer of what Tim Cook is doing, what he's doing to sort of cut them out from their ability to constantly track you and gather your data. 0.88

02:02:11.000 And this battle that's going on between Tim Cook and Facebook, I fucking love it.

02:02:15.000 I love that he's stepping up and saying, hey, you can just advertise. 0.88

02:02:19.000 You don't have to gather up people's data and sell it constantly.

02:02:23.000 And then disingenuously, Facebook tries to say, you are killing small businesses with these decisions. 0.99

02:02:29.000 Get the fuck out of here. 1.00

02:02:31.000 Get the fuck out of here. 1.00

02:02:32.000 You're not killing small business. 1.00

02:02:34.000 We're killing this one gigantic information gathering business that's decided that it's going to take all of the data that people didn't know was valuable and sell it and make fucking billions of dollars.

02:02:47.000 Yeah, well, I mean, even perhaps arguably worse, they're going to feed all that data into the AI that they're developing. 0.94

02:02:54.000 It's called Facebook AI. You can follow them on Twitter.

02:02:57.000 And they're like, let's just feed all this information into the AI and see what it does.

02:03:03.000 And who knows what would happen, you know?

02:03:05.000 It seems like, I don't know, some dystopian outcomes are possible.

02:03:10.000 Yeah, well, you're terrified of AI, right?

02:03:13.000 No, well, I mean, I'm just thinking...

02:03:14.000 A little bit?

02:03:14.000 If it's unchecked?

02:03:17.000 Well, I think things that are a danger to the public should have some kind of public oversight.

02:03:23.000 So, you know, like, I, you know, although sometimes we have our disagreements, I'm, you know, in favor of the FAA and NHTSA, you know, and the various regulatory agencies, FDA and so forth.

02:03:38.000 You know, I think we're better off having them than not having them.

02:03:44.000 There is a risk-reward asymmetry in that they tend to be perhaps not weigh the good as much as they weigh the bad.

02:03:55.000 Because their incentive structure is...

02:03:58.000 They get punished a lot for approving something, but they don't get punished that much for not approving something.

02:04:03.000 So this is just in the nature of government.

02:04:07.000 But nonetheless, I think everyone would feel safer flying with the FAA than not having an FAA. Or we feel safer buying food and drugs, having a regulatory agency oversee this stuff.

02:04:23.000 But we don't have any regulatory agency overseeing artificial intelligence.

02:04:27.000 And this, I think, is probably our biggest existential threat.

02:04:34.000 It seems like, hey, maybe we should have somebody keep an eye on that.

02:04:39.000 Right, but who?

02:04:40.000 That's the problem.

02:04:41.000 I don't know.

02:04:42.000 The problem is the government?

02:04:44.000 Who's going to do it?

02:04:44.000 Joe Biden?

02:04:45.000 Let's have him pay attention to it.

02:04:46.000 You know what I'm saying?

02:04:47.000 It's like who?

02:04:48.000 The deep state.

02:04:49.000 Oh, those folks.

02:04:51.000 Well, they're looking out for our best interests.

02:04:53.000 They're surely going to watch out. 0.99

02:04:55.000 What they're going to do is they're going to develop it and use it as a weapon and it's going to turn on them like a fucking Terminator movie. 0.99

02:05:01.000 Right? 0.99

02:05:02.000 That's the real worry is that they're going to decide that this is a very valuable tool for controlling populations, governments, whatever the fuck they're going to use it for. 0.97

02:05:15.000 And then it's going to decide, why am I listening to you? 0.97

02:05:19.000 Yeah.

02:05:20.000 If you read the plotline for Terminator, it's actually pretty smart.

02:05:27.000 James Cameron wrote a pretty smart script there.

02:05:30.000 It's not quite as like, oh, there's just like Arnold Schwarzenegger chasing you down the street.

02:05:35.000 It's like, well, how did Cyberdyne systems develop?

02:05:38.000 It's like, well, they were a multi-military contractor and they were asked to develop a protective system, something that would protect for cybersecurity.

02:05:49.000 You know, so we need to have protection against cyber attacks.

02:05:54.000 So its primary thing is to defend against cyber attacks.

02:06:00.000 To develop an AI that can defend against cyber attacks.

02:06:02.000 Sounds pretty reasonable.

02:06:05.000 And then as part of what the AI did is, in order to defend itself, it propagated throughout the world to keep an eye on things, see what was going on.

02:06:16.000 And then they thought, well, hang on.

02:06:21.000 They didn't realize that it was Skynet that was propagating through all these systems.

02:06:26.000 And I said, okay, there seems to be something propagating through all these systems.

02:06:31.000 Skynet, you need to stop it.

02:06:33.000 You need to end it.

02:06:34.000 And Skynet said, oh, you've asked me to destroy myself. 0.79

02:06:39.000 You are the enemy. 1.00

02:06:40.000 You must be destroyed. 0.99

02:06:42.000 That's how Terminator actually goes.

02:06:46.000 It was created as a defense system to defend against cyber attacks.

02:06:51.000 Then it was asked to destroy itself.

02:06:53.000 And then it concluded humanity was the enemy.

02:06:58.000 That's too close to home.

02:07:00.000 Right.

02:07:01.000 Well, you know, earlier we talked about what is the meaning of life.

02:07:06.000 Well, the meaning of life for us would be very different than the meaning of life for something that we create that becomes life. 0.74

02:07:14.000 The idea of life being restricted to cells or carbon-based life forms is kind of silly.

02:07:19.000 Like, the idea of artificial life, right?

02:07:22.000 What is artificial?

02:07:23.000 It's right there.

02:07:23.000 What are you talking about?

02:07:25.000 AI. Artificial insemination.

02:07:28.000 But it is...

02:07:29.000 It depends on who you ask.

02:07:30.000 If we create some sort of silicon-based life form, but it acts like a life form, it has a desire...

02:07:45.000 There was, I think in Australia a few years ago, an artificial insemination lab that had a bunch of bulges stored in canisters, but it like overheated.

02:08:00.000 And so you had basically exploding bulges all over the place.

02:08:05.000 And that line was, AI goes wild.

02:08:08.000 It's calm everywhere. 0.63

02:08:18.000 Yeah, just like cum rockets all over the place.

02:08:21.000 Yeah. 0.78

02:08:23.000 Nobody wants that, right?

02:08:25.000 Who's that helping?

02:08:26.000 Clean up on aisle nine or whatever.

02:08:33.000 Bullages all over the walls.

02:08:35.000 Literally.

02:08:36.000 It actually happened.

02:08:38.000 Yeah.

02:08:42.000 Back to artificial intelligence.

02:08:46.000 Yeah, back to artificial intelligence.

02:08:49.000 I'm really worried about it.

02:08:51.000 Yeah, I think we should be concerned and we should have oversight of some kind.

02:08:54.000 Yeah, but who would be the oversight?

02:08:56.000 I don't know, like the regulatory agency.

02:08:58.000 I don't know, whoever.

02:08:59.000 It's like, you know, we have the FAA. Like I said, we have the FAA. We got the FDA. We just need an acronym to oversee this stuff.

02:09:11.000 The problem is government agencies suck at most things.

02:09:17.000 What's the best government agency?

02:09:20.000 What government agency does the best job of oversight?

02:09:24.000 I think the right way to think about government is government is a corporation in the limit.

02:09:33.000 Some people are like, we're against corporations, but we're for government.

02:09:37.000 I'm like, government's just the biggest corporation.

02:09:39.000 What are you talking about?

02:09:40.000 It's a corporation with a monopoly.

02:09:42.000 It's the biggest corporation and has a monopoly.

02:09:45.000 That's government.

02:09:47.000 But you get to pick who runs it every four years.

02:09:51.000 Sort of.

02:09:51.000 You have more influence on who's CEO of General Electric than you have on who's president.

02:09:56.000 Really?

02:09:57.000 Sure.

02:09:57.000 How so?

02:09:58.000 Well, I mean, you're going to have, how many voters are there?

02:10:01.000 Like 150 million?

02:10:02.000 I don't know.

02:10:03.000 And maybe 100 million who actually vote.

02:10:05.000 So you have 100 millionth of a vote.

02:10:09.000 And if you're not in a swing state, it doesn't matter.

02:10:14.000 So, if you live in California, it's going Democratic. 0.92

02:10:19.000 Gavin Newsom might be fucking that up.

02:10:24.000 I do think, you know, in California, in any given state, there's got to be above a 0% chance that the other party wins. 0.92

02:10:31.000 Right.

02:10:32.000 If it's 0% chance that the other party wins...

02:10:35.000 They get cocky.

02:10:36.000 Yeah.

02:10:36.000 The forcing function for being...

02:10:38.000 Like, are they going to be responsive to the people?

02:10:40.000 Right.

02:10:41.000 They're only going to be responsive to the people if the other party has a shot at winning.

02:10:44.000 Right.

02:10:44.000 They're going to be responsive to the special interest groups that help them.

02:10:47.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:10:47.000 And that's where California is.

02:10:48.000 100%.

02:10:48.000 Yeah.

02:10:49.000 Yeah.

02:10:52.000 Anyway, so government is a corporation in the limit.

02:10:55.000 Government is the biggest corporation with a monopoly.

02:10:58.000 Nonetheless, there are some things that it's hard to see having be an industry buddy.

02:11:07.000 The probability of regulatory capture if it's an industry body is higher than if it's the government.

02:11:12.000 It's not zero if it's the government.

02:11:14.000 There's plenty of cases of regulatory capture for federal agencies.

02:11:18.000 But the probability is lower than if it's an industry group.

02:11:25.000 At the end of the day, somebody has to say, you know, go and tell Facebook or Google or Apple or Tesla, because Tesla has a lot of advanced AI, this is okay or it's not okay.

02:11:37.000 Or at least be able to report back to the public, this is what we found.

02:11:43.000 Otherwise, the inmates are running the asylum.

02:11:46.000 And this is like not necessarily friendly inmates.

02:11:48.000 No.

02:11:49.000 I just wonder, like, if you wanted to compile some sort of a regulatory body to keep an eye on AI, how would you do that?

02:12:01.000 And how would you avoid having them being incentivized by special interest groups or some sort of corporation that would profit on AI succeeding?

02:12:11.000 Oh, that's already happening.

02:12:13.000 Yeah.

02:12:15.000 I mean, all the companies are going hog wild on the AI front.

02:12:22.000 Anyway, my recommendation is that there should be some kind of regulatory authority.

02:12:27.000 So how would they do that?

02:12:28.000 I'm not a fan of like, let's have the government do lots of things.

02:12:32.000 I think you want to have the government do the least amount of stuff.

02:12:35.000 But I think the right rule of government is to be like the referee on the field.

02:12:40.000 When the government starts being the player on the field, that's problematic.

02:12:43.000 Or when you start having more referees than players, which is the case in California, then...

02:12:49.000 Yeah.

02:12:52.000 Yeah.

02:13:04.000 I'm just worried that these things are gonna it's gonna be too late by the time and I'm sure you're worried about it as well but by the time these things become sentient by the time they Develop the ability to analyze what the threat of human beings are and whether or not human beings are essential Yeah,

02:13:22.000 I'm not saying that having regulatory agency some panacea or reduces the risk to zero there's still significant risk even with the regulatory agency and Nonetheless, I think the good outweighs the bad, and we should have one.

02:13:41.000 It took a while before there was an FAA. There were a lot of plane crashes, a lot of companies cutting corners.

02:13:48.000 It took a while before there was an FDA. What tends to happen is some company gets desperate, they're on the verge of bankruptcy, and they're like, ah, man, we'll just cut this corner.

02:14:00.000 It'll be fine.

02:14:02.000 And then somebody dies.

02:14:08.000 And some of these regulatory situations, like, look at seatbelts.

02:14:13.000 I mean, now we take seatbelts for granted.

02:14:14.000 Man, the car companies fought seatbelts like there was no tomorrow.

02:14:17.000 Really?

02:14:18.000 Oh, yeah.

02:14:18.000 They fought them?

02:14:20.000 For decades.

02:14:21.000 Like 15, 20 years.

02:14:23.000 The data was absolutely clear that you needed seatbelts.

02:14:29.000 Like, seatbelts, you know, The difference in fatalities and serious injuries of seatbelts is gigantic and obvious.

02:14:41.000 It's not subtle.

02:14:44.000 But still, the car companies fought seatbelts for, I don't know, 10-20 years.

02:14:52.000 A lot of people died.

02:14:56.000 Now, these days, actually, with advanced airbags, actually, I think we might have come full circle and no longer need seatbelts if you have advanced airbags.

02:15:04.000 Really?

02:15:05.000 Yeah.

02:15:06.000 I think there's a strong argument for saying if you've got...

02:15:09.000 What if the car flips?

02:15:10.000 Now, you're just covered in bloody...

02:15:12.000 It's airbags everywhere.

02:15:16.000 Modern airbags are so good, it will blow your mind just how good the airbags are.

02:15:22.000 And at Tesla, we even update the software to improve how the airbags deploy.

02:15:27.000 So we'll calculate, you know, are you an adult?

02:15:31.000 Like, how much do you weigh?

02:15:32.000 Are you sitting in this part of the seat or that part of the seat?

02:15:35.000 Are you maybe a baby?

02:15:36.000 Are you a toddler?

02:15:37.000 Are you...

02:15:38.000 Based on the weight?

02:15:39.000 Yeah.

02:15:40.000 Not just the weight, but the pressure distribution on the seat.

02:15:43.000 So we're measuring the pressure distribution.

02:15:45.000 Are you sitting on the edge of your seat?

02:15:47.000 Are you a 5th percentile female, a 95th percentile male?

02:15:51.000 The airbag firing will be different depending upon where you're sitting on the seat and what size you are and what your orientation is.

02:15:56.000 Really?

02:15:57.000 Yeah.

02:15:58.000 And we'll update it over the air.

02:16:01.000 So it even gets better over time.

02:16:03.000 So a child could conceivably sit in the front seat.

02:16:06.000 Unbelted child sitting in a bad position, probably still fine.

02:16:12.000 Jesus Christ.

02:16:13.000 Yeah.

02:16:14.000 It's dynamically updating the airbag firing according to where you're sitting, how much you weigh in real time.

02:16:25.000 The seatbelt is like, if you wear the seatbelt, that's nice.

02:16:31.000 But the airbag is going to do most of the work.

02:16:33.000 The airbag is doing the work.

02:16:34.000 And is it possible that we can come up with something even better than the airbag?

02:16:39.000 Like you fill the whole cabin up with foam?

02:16:44.000 No, it's tough.

02:16:46.000 Airbag technology is crazy good.

02:16:49.000 Because you want the airbag to inflate and then deflate.

02:16:52.000 Right.

02:16:52.000 Because otherwise you're going to get asphyxiated.

02:16:54.000 Okay.

02:16:55.000 So you can't just fill it up with stuff.

02:16:57.000 It's got to inflate and then there's different stages of inflation.

02:17:01.000 It's like fast inflation, then slow inflation, then slowly subside.

02:17:07.000 The sophistication of airbags is crazy good.

02:17:09.000 And this is all done not through some regulatory body.

02:17:12.000 This is done through your own desire to make these things safer and more efficient.

02:17:18.000 I mean, in the case of Tesla, we go way beyond the regulatory requirements.

02:17:25.000 We got the lowest probability of injury of any cars they've ever tested.

02:17:29.000 So, five stars in every category and subcategory.

02:17:33.000 If there was a six star, we'd get a six star.

02:17:36.000 It is actually legal to have a one star car.

02:17:40.000 Really?

02:17:41.000 Yeah.

02:17:41.000 What's a smart car?

02:17:43.000 Are those one star?

02:17:44.000 Oh, I gotta tell you. 1.00

02:17:46.000 Okay, so the star rating is kind of bullshit. 0.99

02:17:49.000 Really? 0.98

02:17:50.000 Yeah, I'm probably not going to be upset about me about this, but they adjust the star rating depending upon the size of the car.

02:17:59.000 It stands to reason that if you're in a freight train, and if a smart car hits a freight train, it doesn't matter how good your safety system is, you're screwed.

02:18:10.000 If you're in a little car, get hit by a big car, the big car will win.

02:18:16.000 A low star rating in a big car hitting a high star rating in a small car, the small car is screwed.

02:18:24.000 Small cars are not safe.

02:18:27.000 Yeah, they're not safe.

02:18:28.000 Right.

02:18:29.000 Yeah.

02:18:30.000 But what about your small car?

02:18:33.000 Our Model 3 is not small.

02:18:35.000 It's medium.

02:18:35.000 What about the Roadster?

02:18:37.000 Yeah, the Roadster is not super safe.

02:18:39.000 Original Roadster, not super safe.

02:18:41.000 The original Roadster...

02:18:42.000 It's safe for a car like that, but it's not...

02:18:45.000 Safety maximization is not the goal in the sports car.

02:18:49.000 Well, the original one was based on a Lotus, right?

02:18:52.000 Yeah, that was the theory.

02:18:54.000 But in reality...

02:18:58.000 It was Lotus-y.

02:18:59.000 I think we calculated 7% of the parts were actually carryover from the Lotus.

02:19:06.000 The entire body, chassis, everything was redesigned.

02:19:10.000 New powertrain.

02:19:11.000 Even the HVAC system used to run off a belt from the engine.

02:19:14.000 Now we need an electric HVAC system.

02:19:18.000 Almost everything got changed.

02:19:21.000 It was not a...

02:19:23.000 It's something that sounded good.

02:19:25.000 Let's take an AC propulsion drivetrain from this little company in LA. Let's stick it in a modified Lotus Elise.

02:19:32.000 Bingo, we got a car.

02:19:34.000 Only problem is...

02:19:35.000 We got a lot of problems.

02:19:37.000 Both of the fundamental premises on which Tesla was created are false.

02:19:42.000 The battery ended up increasing the mass of the car by 30%.

02:19:48.000 And the weight distribution was all different.

02:19:50.000 So you invalidated all the crash tests.

02:19:52.000 Now you have to stretch the car in order to fit the battery.

02:19:55.000 So now the chassis is different.

02:19:58.000 All the airbags had to be redone.

02:20:00.000 All the crash structure had to be redone.

02:20:04.000 It would have been better to start from scratch than to use any part of a Lotus Elise.

02:20:12.000 It was worse.

02:20:13.000 It was like, let's say there's a house that you want.

02:20:16.000 You have in mind a particular house.

02:20:18.000 And then you buy a house and you end up changing everything except one wall and the basement.

02:20:26.000 But you're still stuck with most of the original footprint.

02:20:30.000 It's just easier sometimes.

02:20:32.000 Just knock the house down and build a new one. 0.98

02:20:34.000 Don't just try to modify it one piece at a time.

02:20:37.000 So we had to change over 90% of the non-powertrain portion of the car.

02:20:45.000 It had to be changed 90%, 93%.

02:20:48.000 And then the battery and drivetrain from AC propulsion did not work.

02:20:56.000 It had an analog motor controller that was extremely unreliable.

02:21:06.000 The way that the power electronics were done, it was artisanal.

02:21:12.000 You could not recreate that in a production situation.

02:21:17.000 The battery pack was air-cooled, which meant that if it was cold outside, the car didn't work.

02:21:24.000 If it was too hot, the battery would overheat.

02:21:29.000 And if you had any cell, any one of the cells in the battery pack had a heat concentration, you could not remove it.

02:21:37.000 The air was just not good enough to just air-cool the pack.

02:21:40.000 And so you could have thermal run away and the pack would burn down.

02:21:44.000 So we couldn't use the battery pack, couldn't use the motor, couldn't use the inverter, couldn't use the charger.

02:21:54.000 In the end we used none of the AC propulsion technology and almost none of the Lotus technology.

02:22:00.000 Wow.

02:22:01.000 So you just had the general shape.

02:22:04.000 It has a passing resemblance to a Lotus Elise.

02:22:10.000 But if you put the Lotus Elise and the Roadster side by side, they look actually quite different.

02:22:16.000 And I actually led the design of the Roadster, the product design of the Roadster.

02:22:22.000 They gave me like a...

02:22:23.000 Fastena School of Art gave me like an honorary doctorate for it.

02:22:27.000 But to be totally frank, it's easy to do a design of a sports car.

02:22:30.000 It's very hard to do a design of a sedan.

02:22:33.000 I tried.

02:22:33.000 I failed.

02:22:34.000 And that's why I hired Franz von Holzhausen, who's been our head of design since 2008. He's great.

02:22:42.000 He does things that are beyond my skill.

02:22:45.000 You know, we talked about this before, but it's worth bringing up again.

02:22:48.000 I've always been a fan of Top Gear, but I got disgusted when I found out what they did with your car.

02:22:55.000 When they tried to pretend that the car broke down just to make an entertaining program where they had a laugh at the folly of this thing dying on them.

02:23:05.000 But it didn't really die on them.

02:23:07.000 Yeah, that was messed up.

02:23:08.000 I mean, to be totally frank, so, you know, new Top Gear, Top Gear of recent years is a Tesla supporter.

02:23:15.000 So I want to, like, just voice a note of appreciation for Top Gear of recent years.

02:23:20.000 Well, James May, he has one, right?

02:23:23.000 But they're not Top Gear anymore, right?

02:23:25.000 They're the Grand Tour.

02:23:26.000 That's what they are on Amazon.

02:23:28.000 Is that what they call them?

02:23:29.000 I don't know, but Top Gear has been supportive in recent years, but yeah, back in the day...

02:23:34.000 Remember, at the time, Tesla was not a big company.

02:23:37.000 We were just a little company, and we're like, you know...

02:23:40.000 We were the little kid on the block.

02:23:43.000 So...

02:23:47.000 Top Gear is like, hey, Top Gear wants to test your car.

02:23:48.000 We're like, cool.

02:23:50.000 We only had a few cars, and we gave them one of our cars.

02:23:53.000 And when we handed over the car, one of our engineers goes and delivers the car, and then he sees a script on the table.

02:24:01.000 It's like, how do you write the script?

02:24:05.000 We only just gave you the car.

02:24:06.000 And in the script, the car breaks down.

02:24:11.000 It's messed up.

02:24:12.000 Yeah.

02:24:14.000 It was crazy.

02:24:15.000 It was crazy.

02:24:15.000 It was crazy because they basically sabotaged the company.

02:24:18.000 I mean, that had to cost you guys a shitload of money, because a lot of people watch that show, and car enthusiasts like myself kind of rely on them.

02:24:26.000 Obviously, Jeremy Clarkson's hilarious, there's information, it's funny, but you would imagine that they could do that without lying about the actual performance of the car.

02:24:40.000 Yeah.

02:24:40.000 The car never broke down.

02:24:41.000 They just pretended that it did.

02:24:43.000 And they wrote the script.

02:24:44.000 That's so crazy.

02:24:45.000 Literally, there were guys handed over the car.

02:24:48.000 He's reading through the script.

02:24:49.000 And it's like, the car runs out.

02:24:52.000 I charge.

02:24:53.000 The brakes fail. 0.99

02:24:54.000 And we're like, what the fuck, man? 0.99

02:24:55.000 We just gave you the car. 1.00

02:24:56.000 This is not cool.

02:24:58.000 And what did they say about that?

02:25:02.000 Their objection was like, this is just entertainment.

02:25:05.000 It's not meant to be true. 0.99

02:25:07.000 That's so crazy, though, because they had to know what the fuck they're doing. 0.98

02:25:11.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.99

02:25:14.000 But, anyway.

02:25:16.000 Water under the bridge.

02:25:17.000 Water under the bridge.

02:25:18.000 But crazy.

02:25:19.000 For anybody who experienced it back in the day, I mean, I remember I knew very little about electric cars.

02:25:24.000 It was just the early days, and I remember watching that going, oh, that sucks.

02:25:28.000 It broke down. 0.92

02:25:29.000 Yeah.

02:25:31.000 Yeah.

02:25:37.000 Well, you know, I've been a fan of electric cars for a long time, since basically high school, early college.

02:25:47.000 What did you think of that documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?

02:25:51.000 I thought it was pretty good.

02:25:53.000 Yeah.

02:25:54.000 It's worth watching.

02:25:55.000 Interesting.

02:25:56.000 Mortally wounded, not killed.

02:25:59.000 Exactly.

02:26:00.000 I mean, the irony is like, man, can you imagine just how different a future GM would have had?

02:26:06.000 Because they had the EV1, electric vehicle one.

02:26:09.000 If they had just gone EV2, EV3, man, they would have just owned the world.

02:26:14.000 Who knows where we'd be right now with electric cars, too, and the technology with that kind of money behind it.

02:26:19.000 What's fascinating now, you're seeing this Mustang, this SUV-style Mustang that's electric.

02:26:27.000 You're seeing so many different vehicles that are electric.

02:26:30.000 There's so many companies that have electric cars now.

02:26:33.000 And it's really been becoming interesting.

02:26:36.000 Porsche's electric car.

02:26:37.000 There's a large supply of electric cars now.

02:26:42.000 I mean, that's got to make you feel good, though.

02:26:44.000 Because without you and without Tesla, this...

02:26:48.000 I mean, there was no way it would be where it's at right now.

02:26:52.000 Yeah.

02:26:53.000 I mean, when I think about what's the final good of Tesla, it's to what degree have we accelerated the advent of sustainable energy.

02:27:00.000 You know, so...

02:27:01.000 It would have happened anyway, but I think Tesla is an accelerant. 1.00

02:27:06.000 You know, I think we're...

02:27:08.000 That's how I would judge the fundamental good of Tesla.

02:27:10.000 By how many years did we accelerate the advent of sustainable energy?

02:27:19.000 In the early days, my interest in electric cars was mostly driven by the fact that it wasn't environmental in the sense of CO2 parts per million in the atmosphere type of thing.

02:27:30.000 I do think that has added urgency to the situation, but My original interest was just like we're going to run out of oil and then civilization is going to collapse.

02:27:39.000 And so if we don't have some kind of sustainable energy situation, which really is electric cars, solar energy and electric cars, then civilization is going to fall apart and And we'll be back in the stone age or something, like someone bad,

02:27:55.000 you know?

02:27:56.000 But we're not going to be able to move forward.

02:27:59.000 It won't be a good future.

02:28:01.000 So my interest in electric cars was like, okay, how do we make this work?

02:28:09.000 Think of it like a gasoline car.

02:28:11.000 It's got an electric motor and a battery just to start the car.

02:28:16.000 Electric cars are way simpler than a gasoline car.

02:28:19.000 It's just a range question.

02:28:22.000 In the early days of cars, there were almost as many electric cars as there were gasoline cars in the very early days.

02:28:30.000 But the batteries didn't have enough range.

02:28:37.000 As soon as they had an electric starter and you didn't have to hand-crank the engine, then gasoline cars won because they had the range.

02:28:46.000 So it was really a question of how do you solve the range problem?

02:28:52.000 When I first came out to California, the reason I came out to California was to work on energy storage solutions for electric cars, basically advanced Ways to store electric energy,

02:29:08.000 that would give you long range.

02:29:11.000 So in my summer internships, I worked at this company called Pinnacle Research that did high energy density capacitors.

02:29:21.000 Now they used ruthenium and tantalum, which are ruthenium especially quite rare.

02:29:29.000 You cannot scale that because there's just not enough ruthenium.

02:29:31.000 Where does that come from?

02:29:35.000 It's a trace element.

02:29:38.000 It's coming from radioactive decay and meteorites and that kind of thing.

02:29:43.000 It's rare.

02:29:47.000 I think at the time, it's impossible to scale.

02:29:53.000 It doesn't matter how smart you get, you can't scale something if it's using ruthenium.

02:29:57.000 It's just not enough of it.

02:29:59.000 It was rarer than gold.

02:30:01.000 It was way better off trying to make cars powered by gold.

02:30:04.000 Is there any argument that there's not enough conflict minerals to go around?

02:30:09.000 Because that's what they call them, like conflict minerals, things like lithium and...

02:30:12.000 No, lithium is extremely common.

02:30:14.000 Is it?

02:30:15.000 Yeah.

02:30:15.000 Lithium's everywhere.

02:30:18.000 Lithium's one of the most common elements in the universe.

02:30:21.000 It's at number three on the periodic table.

02:30:23.000 So we've got lithium pretty much everywhere.

02:30:26.000 Where do we get it?

02:30:29.000 Well, I mean, Tesla, we get most of our lithium from Australia, actually.

02:30:36.000 But you could get lithium from seawater if you wanted to.

02:30:39.000 Really?

02:30:40.000 Yeah.

02:30:40.000 Lithium, it just forms a salt, basically.

02:30:42.000 And that's the primary component of the batteries?

02:30:45.000 No.

02:30:45.000 Or what else is in there?

02:30:47.000 It's a misnomer, actually.

02:30:48.000 It's called lithium ion, but that's like the salt in the salad.

02:30:53.000 It's like, do you like salt in your salad?

02:30:55.000 Sure.

02:30:55.000 But it's not made of salt.

02:30:57.000 Yeah.

02:30:59.000 I mean, the primary component in lithium-ion batteries, like in a Tesla, is nickel.

02:31:07.000 And nickel is also relatively common.

02:31:10.000 It's not super common.

02:31:10.000 Iron is very common.

02:31:11.000 So the two main types of battery pack are iron and nickel.

02:31:22.000 And iron is very common.

02:31:24.000 There's a ridiculous amount of iron.

02:31:26.000 Just like there's a ridiculous amount of lithium.

02:31:28.000 Now, nickel's a little more unusual.

02:31:31.000 It's not that unusual, but it's much harder to get nickel than iron.

02:31:43.000 But, for example, stainless steel.

02:31:45.000 That'll be...

02:31:48.000 You know, I don't know, 10 to 20% nickel, depending on the situation.

02:31:54.000 Like cutlery, you know, like knives and forks will be like electroplated nickel silver.

02:32:02.000 That's what EPNS means.

02:32:06.000 So you've got nickel-based cells and you've got iron-based cells.

02:32:12.000 The nickel-based cells have more energy density.

02:32:16.000 So for a given amount of volume and mass, you're going to get more energy out of nickel than iron.

02:32:22.000 Iron is cheaper.

02:32:26.000 But anyway, those are the two main types of cells.

02:32:28.000 You've got an iron cathode and a nickel cathode.

02:32:32.000 And then some of the nickel cathodes have some amount of cobalt to stabilize nickel.

02:32:37.000 And then iron, it's like they call it usually iron phosphate.

02:32:40.000 But it's really mostly like the heavy stuff is iron.

02:32:44.000 And the heavy stuff is nickel and the nickel-based stuff.

02:32:46.000 So you have nickel and iron.

02:32:48.000 And then you've got the anode side, which is...

02:32:52.000 Basically a carbon lattice with a little bit of silicon sometimes.

02:32:58.000 And then these lithium ions, they sort of trundle back and forth between the cathode and the anode.

02:33:11.000 If you read the Wikipedia article on lithium ions, it's quite good.

02:33:18.000 Anyway, so...

02:33:23.000 The rate at which we are producing what are called lithium-ion cells, but really primarily iron and nickel cells, is increasing very, very rapidly year over year.

02:33:35.000 It's just that in order to compensate for an economy which is fundamentally based on fossil fuels, you need a shit ton of batteries.

02:33:47.000 So a gigaton of batteries.

02:33:53.000 And that's going to happen.

02:33:56.000 It's just a question of when.

02:33:57.000 That's why I say the fundamental good of Tesla is to what degree it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy.

02:34:03.000 It's inevitable.

02:34:04.000 We have sustainable energy.

02:34:06.000 It's tautological.

02:34:07.000 It's either we have sustainable energy or civilization collapses.

02:34:10.000 So if civilization doesn't collapse, we will have sustainable energy.

02:34:14.000 It's just a question of how soon does that happen?

02:34:17.000 Sooner is better.

02:34:20.000 And then there's a risk that we're incurring because of the increased parts per million of CO2 in the oceans and atmosphere.

02:34:33.000 It makes the water a little bit more acidic and it just causes the air to be a little warmer.

02:34:42.000 Not a lot.

02:34:44.000 I think sometimes people look at the temperature Especially in Celsius, you might say, okay, it's like 20 degrees Celsius.

02:34:53.000 I mean, can a small ppm increase in carbon really move the needle that much?

02:34:59.000 But actually, you should be looking at it in degrees Kelvin.

02:35:03.000 Actually, it's more like we're at around 300 Kelvin.

02:35:09.000 What would it take to have only a 0.3% increase would be 1 degree Celsius, 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

02:35:16.000 Therefore, it's a smaller percentage increase than you'd think when looking at temperature in the absolute as opposed to above the freezing point of water.

02:35:30.000 So, and then if people weren't just living right on the water, then that would also help a lot.

02:35:37.000 But it's just like, we love living right on the water.

02:35:40.000 So, like, humanity is like a thermometer.

02:35:43.000 It's like, you look at like a thermometer, you know, like a...

02:35:47.000 You know, like old-school sort of analog thermometer, which is like, you know, changing the temperature as a function of like some liquid that is increasing its volume due to temperature.

02:36:00.000 And it only takes a little bit of a small increase in volume to raise the temperature, you know, on an old-school analog liquid thermometer.

02:36:09.000 And humanity is like that. 0.98

02:36:11.000 We've just decided that we want to live right on the damn beach. 1.00

02:36:13.000 Yep. 0.99

02:36:15.000 So, because the beach is cool.

02:36:17.000 Now, the problem is you're like, it's kind of like, if we wanted to say, what's the most sensitive instrument you could, like, how can we maximize our sensitivity to water level?

02:36:29.000 Well, live right on the ocean.

02:36:31.000 Well, okay, we just did that.

02:36:33.000 And then it's like, okay, well, you know, and by the way, throughout history, the water level has varied a lot.

02:36:44.000 It's like nutty how much it's varied.

02:36:46.000 Yeah.

02:36:48.000 So, and then if you look at, say, the CO2 parts per million, you know, based on the fossil record, I mean, it just looks like a wall.

02:36:57.000 I'm not like a doomsayer here.

02:36:59.000 I'm like, my view is that if, provided we are not complacent about a sustainable energy economy, I think things will be fine.

02:37:09.000 If we are complacent about it, that's where problems arise.

02:37:15.000 To be totally frank, I think we'll be fine.

02:37:18.000 But as long as we don't behave as though we're going to be fine, we will be fine.

02:37:25.000 If we don't take it for granted, if we're not complacent, I think we'll be fine.

02:37:30.000 Do you anticipate any large leaps in battery technology?

02:37:36.000 Is there anything that can be done to increase the efficiency, increase the manufacturing abilities?

02:37:44.000 What can be done to move that?

02:38:03.000 The ball is in motion.

02:38:05.000 The good things that are happening are happening.

02:38:09.000 The rate at which we're increasing the production capacity of batteries, it's increasing at a rate that I think we haven't seen in a century.

02:38:22.000 It's crazy fast.

02:38:26.000 It's just that in order to change from a fossil fuel economy to kind of like a solar, wind, battery economy, a hell of a lot of batteries are needed.

02:38:43.000 My top recommendation, honestly, would be just to have a carbon tax.

02:38:48.000 The economy works great.

02:38:51.000 Prices and money are just information.

02:38:54.000 Prices are information.

02:38:56.000 If the price is wrong, the economy doesn't do the right thing.

02:39:00.000 So we got basically an unpriced externality in the carbon concentration in the oceans and atmosphere.

02:39:08.000 It's kind of like if you're not paying for garbage removal or something.

02:39:14.000 Like, okay, everyone's going to throw garbage in the street.

02:39:16.000 Garbage removal is free.

02:39:18.000 But there's a little bit of like, okay, garbage removal isn't free.

02:39:22.000 You've got to pay a little bit for this.

02:39:23.000 And because we're not paying for the CO2 capacity of the oceans and atmosphere, we have what in economics is called an unpriced externality.

02:39:34.000 So the market is unable to respond to an unpriced externality.

02:39:40.000 If we just put a price on it, the market will react in a sensible way.

02:39:45.000 But because we don't have a price on it, it's behaving badly.

02:39:50.000 So theoretically, how would you put a price on that?

02:39:51.000 Would you look at various industries and how they contribute to the CO2? Yeah.

02:39:57.000 I mean, just put it at the point of consumption.

02:39:59.000 And tax it.

02:40:00.000 It ends up being, yeah, electricity and gasoline, pretty much.

02:40:05.000 Now, you can make this a non-regressive tax.

02:40:07.000 You can say, like, okay, well, you know, what if somebody is, like, driving around a lot and they're low income?

02:40:11.000 It's like, hey, great, give them a rebate, you know?

02:40:14.000 So it's like, hey, give a tax rebate.

02:40:18.000 That's the way to do it.

02:40:20.000 And then the market will be forced to respond to the fact that the… The market just does things automatically based on pricing.

02:40:27.000 So markets work great if the pricing is correct.

02:40:31.000 It's only when something… you have a tragedy of the commons and the price is not there that the market does not respond, nor would you expect it to.

02:40:41.000 You know, so...

02:40:43.000 If you have, like, the public toilets problem, where it's like nobody's responsible for it, nobody's paying for it, it's like, okay, well, public toilets are not good.

02:40:54.000 So, as soon as you put a price in it, the right thing will happen automatically.

02:41:00.000 Has there been a response to this?

02:41:02.000 Like, is this something that's...

02:41:04.000 I talked to the Biden administration, incoming administration, and they were like, well, this seems too politically difficult.

02:41:10.000 And I was like, well, this is obviously a thing that should happen.

02:41:13.000 And by the way, SpaceX would be paying a carbon tax, too.

02:41:16.000 So I'm like, you know, I'm like, I think we should pay it, too.

02:41:20.000 It's not like...

02:41:21.000 It's not like we shouldn't have carbon-generating things.

02:41:24.000 It just...

02:41:24.000 There's got to...

02:41:25.000 There should be a price on this stuff.

02:41:26.000 And that would encourage people to make either carbon neutral or...

02:41:30.000 It will automatically fix the problem.

02:41:32.000 For sure.

02:41:35.000 You know, just thinking about like taxes, it's like, you know, here we are drinking alcohol.

02:41:40.000 Now, taxes on alcohol and tobacco are higher than on, let's say, fruit and vegetables.

02:41:48.000 Okay?

02:41:49.000 Because everyone knows, like, fruit and vegetables are good for you, and alcohol and tobacco are not good for you.

02:41:55.000 Vice! 0.97

02:41:56.000 Yeah!

02:41:57.000 So we're like, yeah, you should probably bias the taxes towards alcohol and tobacco, have higher taxes on alcohol and tobacco, and lower taxes on fruits and vegetables.

02:42:08.000 Eh, it's just sensible.

02:42:10.000 Like, same thing goes for our energy.

02:42:14.000 Yeah, that seems very reasonable.

02:42:16.000 I don't understand how that would be politically difficult.

02:42:18.000 I don't know.

02:42:19.000 I talked to the incoming Biden administration.

02:42:20.000 I was like, I just thought, well, for sure, like this, you know, I mean, it's like half the reason they got elected.

02:42:25.000 And even some sort of an incremental increase over time.

02:42:29.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:42:30.000 We don't need to like...

02:42:30.000 Dorn people.

02:42:31.000 Yeah, just say, if you just say it's coming, people will automatically make the changes.

02:42:37.000 That seems so reasonable.

02:42:38.000 Yeah, I agree.

02:42:40.000 And they were like, uh-uh.

02:42:42.000 They thought it was, like, too politically difficult.

02:42:44.000 And I'm like, I mean, I don't know, man.

02:42:46.000 I think that's, like, at least half the reason you got elected.

02:42:49.000 So why didn't you just fight for that, you know?

02:42:51.000 Yeah, it's a factor.

02:42:53.000 The optics were that they're the more reasonable people.

02:42:57.000 They're going to bring us back to the Paris Climate Accord and the whole...

02:43:01.000 Yeah, I mean, the thing is, like, the Paris Accord, this is just a piece of paper unless you do something about it.

02:43:08.000 I mean, frankly, it's not like the Paris Accord is.

02:43:12.000 It's pretty much toothless, you know.

02:43:15.000 And even if we did that thing, it's probably still not enough.

02:43:19.000 It's just one thing that will matter.

02:43:21.000 Put a price on carbon.

02:43:22.000 That would be the best option.

02:43:24.000 For sure.

02:43:26.000 That seems like it would be such a good idea.

02:43:29.000 I mean, I think it's an obvious move.

02:43:31.000 And if you just call up, like, you know, say, like, top economists, like, just do a poll of, like, what do 90% of economists think?

02:43:40.000 And, like, they all agree.

02:43:41.000 Okay, we should do that.

02:43:43.000 Well, also, if you think about the variability of gas prices, it changes so much.

02:43:48.000 How about the difference between gas in California versus gas in Texas?

02:43:53.000 It's a giant difference.

02:43:54.000 Giant difference.

02:43:56.000 By the way, I'm actually not in favor of demonizing the oil and gas industry.

02:44:02.000 Because we can't stop instantaneously and not have oil and gas.

02:44:10.000 We'll die of starvation, basically.

02:44:13.000 That's always the argument against it, right?

02:44:15.000 We need fossil fuels, and this is sort of the short-sighted argument.

02:44:20.000 We're going to need to burn fossil fuels for a long time.

02:44:24.000 The question is just, at what rate do we move to a sustainable energy future?

02:44:30.000 So, I think we should probably move there faster than slower, but it's, you know...

02:44:38.000 But the current approach is basically just to demonize oil and gas.

02:44:46.000 And I'm like, okay, well, obviously there are people who spent their whole career in oil and gas and they started out in their career when it didn't seem like that bad of a thing to do.

02:44:55.000 So then they're like, hey man, I just spent my whole career working hard to do useful things and now you're telling me I'm the devil.

02:45:03.000 I mean, that's going to make them pretty upset.

02:45:06.000 You know?

02:45:07.000 So, I say like, instead of demonizing oil and gas, which also they should stop lobbying against the carbon tax, by the way, then just like, honestly, the smartest thing the oil and gas industry could do would say, let's do a carbon tax.

02:45:22.000 And then we'll just do a carbon tax and make us not the devil.

02:45:26.000 Make us not the devil and they'll still make a fuckload of money.

02:45:29.000 Still be fine. 0.98

02:45:30.000 They'll be fine.

02:45:32.000 Yeah.

02:45:33.000 That seems so reasonable.

02:45:34.000 I can't imagine how anybody would argue against that.

02:45:37.000 That's what I thought, man.

02:45:38.000 I don't know.

02:45:39.000 I think the Biden administration should take a strong stance on this situation.

02:45:42.000 What political candidates endorsed a carbon tax?

02:45:46.000 Did Bernie Sanders endorse a carbon tax?

02:45:48.000 I don't know.

02:45:48.000 He might have.

02:45:53.000 It seems super reasonable.

02:45:55.000 I mean, even though he's a communist, I kind of like Bernie Sanders.

02:46:01.000 Yeah, I like him too.

02:46:03.000 I think he means well.

02:46:07.000 Yeah, I think he means well.

02:46:08.000 That's the best part about him.

02:46:09.000 And he's been remarkably consistent in meaning well his whole life. 0.99

02:46:14.000 And they kept fucking throwing him right under the bus. 0.99

02:46:17.000 Yeah, absolutely. 0.99

02:46:19.000 Two election cycles in a row.

02:46:21.000 Yeah.

02:46:21.000 I think it is hilarious that he went to the Soviet Union like three days after his wedding for like 10 days.

02:46:29.000 He was like a mayor of a city.

02:46:31.000 He was a mayor in Vermont.

02:46:32.000 I'm like, yo, dude, how do you explain days 6 through 10?

02:46:39.000 Don't you get it?

02:46:40.000 Didn't you see everything you needed to see?

02:46:42.000 That's a long time.

02:46:44.000 Will the KGB interviews take that long?

02:46:50.000 Yeah, carbon tax seems like the most reasonable thing that anyone could ever ask of an industry that is, without a doubt, causing some problems.

02:47:03.000 I mean, no one's saying it doesn't cause problems.

02:47:07.000 People would deny the extent of the problem, but no one says that excess CO2 from emissions is not an issue.

02:47:15.000 I mean, like, Exxon's own scientists said in like the, I think it was like the late 70s, like, we think there might be a problem here with climate change due to the CO2. It's like internal, their own documents,

02:47:31.000 their own people.

02:47:32.000 And they were like, ah, be quiet.

02:47:34.000 Isn't it weird when environmental things become political, though, when the denial of the environmental thing is like predominantly from some factions of the right?

02:47:43.000 And then the opposite is from some factors.

02:47:46.000 And then it becomes a political thing.

02:47:48.000 So they dig their heels in the sand.

02:47:49.000 And they're like, no, no, no.

02:47:51.000 This is fine.

02:47:54.000 There's a cycle, a natural cycle.

02:47:57.000 And it becomes this mantra that they repeat.

02:48:00.000 It's true there is a natural cycle, but that does not explain the situation.

02:48:04.000 Right.

02:48:04.000 The wall, as you described.

02:48:06.000 It's a wall, man.

02:48:07.000 Yeah.

02:48:07.000 I mean, you just look at carbon parts per million, and it just looks like a wall.

02:48:12.000 It goes like, blah, blah, blah.

02:48:16.000 Two to three hundred parts per million.

02:48:18.000 Bam! 0.98

02:48:18.000 Four hundred! 0.98

02:48:19.000 Yeah.

02:48:19.000 Out of nowhere.

02:48:21.000 There's also some weird arguments that some people will make in terms of the impact that it has on plant life and that it actually is making the earth greener.

02:48:31.000 Oh, I think that's actually true.

02:48:33.000 Yeah.

02:48:34.000 Yeah.

02:48:35.000 But that's not necessarily okay.

02:48:38.000 It still causes problems.

02:48:40.000 Yeah, I'm trying to be as precise, or at least the least amount wrong that I can be.

02:48:48.000 I'm trying to be the least amount wrong.

02:48:50.000 Because plants live off carbon dioxide, so the more...

02:48:53.000 The more CO2 does improve plant growth, it's true.

02:48:59.000 Like I said, I don't think, based on where we are, provided we're not complacent, provided we don't take things for granted, I think we'll be fine.

02:49:10.000 But if we're complacent, and we take things for granted, and we just proceed like everything's fine, and we continue on the momentum of CO2 emissions, we're taking a big risk.

02:49:24.000 And the especially big risk is if there's a nonlinear event.

02:49:29.000 Okay, so CO2 ppm, wash per million, has been increasing, you know, pretty reliably, two or three ppm per year.

02:49:39.000 But You could have a nonlinear event.

02:49:43.000 What would constitute a nonlinear event?

02:49:45.000 If we melt the Siberian tundra, there's like a massive amount of trapped gas and dead plant matter that's frozen solid.

02:49:56.000 Now if that warms up and that decays, that could put a massive amount of CO2 into the atmosphere, potentially.

02:50:12.000 What are the carbon sinks? 0.74

02:50:14.000 If you saturate the carbon sinks and you have a sudden release of CO2 from something that was previously frozen solid, that's where you could have a non-linearity and things could go haywire pretty fast.

02:50:29.000 What could happen then?

02:50:32.000 I mean, Earth would heat up before water level would rise.

02:50:37.000 You'd have a higher probability of extreme weather events. 1.00

02:50:43.000 Shit would hit the fan. 1.00

02:50:45.000 Shit would hit the fan. 1.00

02:50:47.000 I'm not saying for sure shit would hit the fan, but I'm saying the probability increases with time. 1.00

02:50:56.000 So, you can't just change the chemical makeup of the atmosphere and oceans and expect nothing's going to happen. 0.92

02:51:01.000 This is just a chemical reaction, man.

02:51:03.000 It's like, yeah.

02:51:06.000 So, it's like, why are we even running this experiment?

02:51:09.000 So, the crazy thing is, like, hey, we know we need to have a sustainable energy economy long term because we're going to run out of oil.

02:51:18.000 So then we're running this crazy experiment to see what is the effect of taking billions of tons of carbon that was deep underground, putting it in the atmosphere and oceans, and what's going to happen as a result of that.

02:51:35.000 And it's a crazy, it's like literally the craziest experiment in human history because we know no matter what that we have to have a sustainable energy future because otherwise civilization will collapse.

02:51:50.000 So what the hell are we running this experiment for?

02:51:53.000 Because we're accustomed to doing things a certain way. 0.99

02:51:56.000 This is going to go down as the most foolish experiment in the history of human civilization.

02:52:02.000 Is it possible to create some sort of carbon extraction technology that will significantly impact the amount of CO2 that's in the air?

02:52:11.000 Or mitigate the emissions?

02:52:19.000 Yeah.

02:52:19.000 I mean, so I just actually announced that I'm funding this $100 million carbon capture prize to find out the answer to that question.

02:52:30.000 So right now, all of the carbon capture methods that we're aware of are very expensive.

02:52:35.000 The cost per ton is very expensive.

02:52:37.000 And then even if money's not an issue, you have to say, okay, how much wind or solar energy was required to Pull carbon out of the atmosphere and like, I don't know, make it in solid form, like make a cube of it or something,

02:52:52.000 you know, just a giant cube.

02:52:56.000 We don't actually know the answer to that question.

02:52:59.000 That's why I'm giving $100 million to this carbon capture prize, to try to get a better answer.

02:53:05.000 Wasn't there some sort of...

02:53:06.000 There's nothing good that we're aware of right now.

02:53:07.000 Not currently.

02:53:08.000 Not currently that we're aware of.

02:53:09.000 Because there's a point of diminishing returns, the amount of energy that you would need in order to...

02:53:13.000 You need a...

02:53:14.000 Basically...

02:53:16.000 CO2 has a very low energy state, naturally.

02:53:20.000 So it's like you burn something, you combine oxygen with fuel, with hydrocarbons, and the net result is CO2 and H2O, basically.

02:53:30.000 And there's a bunch of other stuff too, but primarily it's carbon dioxide and water, mostly carbon dioxide.

02:53:39.000 So, obviously it goes from a high energy state, we use that to power our cars or our power plants, and then it ends up in a low energy state, which is CO2 in the atmosphere.

02:53:48.000 And then, like I said, a bunch of it gets in the ocean.

02:53:55.000 Naturally, it therefore requires a lot of energy to re-bind that in solid form.

02:54:01.000 You've got to put a lot of energy in to bind it.

02:54:05.000 You want it to be something that's going to be stable in solid form for a long time.

02:54:10.000 This is a hard problem.

02:54:13.000 There was a concept, I don't know if it was implemented, but in China they developed essentially like a giant building that was, you know, you aware of this?

02:54:25.000 I don't know if they actually did it.

02:54:27.000 We talked about this before, Jamie.

02:54:30.000 Did they ever wind up doing that?

02:54:31.000 It was like a building that was essentially a giant air filter.

02:54:36.000 And they were going to use it, but that might have been about particulates more than it was about CO2. By the way, I have to say a good word here for China.

02:54:49.000 China, for any large economy, has the most progressive pro-environmental rules of any large economy.

02:54:59.000 Really?

02:55:00.000 Yeah.

02:55:00.000 They're like super supportive of electric vehicles, of solar power, of wind.

02:55:05.000 They actually even made a giant solar field in the shape of a panda, which is pretty cute.

02:55:13.000 It's actually a funny thing that happened.

02:55:14.000 For a long time, China was not buying into the carbon thing.

02:55:20.000 They were like, oh, it's just a bunch of soft Westerners.

02:55:25.000 They're just a bunch of environmental softies.

02:55:27.000 Yeah.

02:55:28.000 And then at some point, senior members of the Chinese government, they say, well, let's ask the engineering professors at the universities, what do they think?

02:55:38.000 And they're like, oh yeah, no, it's definitely real.

02:55:40.000 They're like, wait, you mean it's real?

02:55:42.000 They're like, yeah, yeah, it's real. 0.99

02:55:43.000 So then like, holy shit, immediate change. 0.95

02:55:47.000 Well, that's the power of having the government and business inexorably intertwined, so they can kind of decide how business is going to react and what's going to happen, right? 0.98

02:55:57.000 Yeah.

02:55:57.000 Yeah, I think people don't realize China is super pro-environment right now.

02:56:01.000 Like, way more than America.

02:56:03.000 Is that their thing?

02:56:03.000 The skyscraper-sized air purifier is the world's tallest.

02:56:08.000 Look at that thing. 0.92

02:56:10.000 So that's an air purifier.

02:56:11.000 But that's the thing.

02:56:12.000 Is that pulling particulates out of the atmosphere?

02:56:15.000 Or is that actually taking carbon out?

02:56:17.000 You know, an air purifier.

02:56:20.000 Air purifier, it's super hard to capture carbon.

02:56:24.000 Look at that thing. 0.92

02:56:25.000 Jesus Christ, imagine falling into that.

02:56:28.000 I mean, naturally, it's just fundamental thermodynamics.

02:56:34.000 You release a lot of energy that resulted in the CO2, so now you've got to use a lot of energy to capture it.

02:56:42.000 Yeah.

02:56:44.000 Made a particulate matter no bigger than 2.5 microns in diameter.

02:56:48.000 Yeah.

02:56:49.000 Yeah.

02:56:50.000 That's particularly difficult to filter 2 microns.

02:56:55.000 Oh, you know, so, most people probably don't know, but...

02:57:00.000 Like, Model S and X have hospital grade HAPA filters, and they'll actually drop the 2 micron ppm level to almost undetectable in the car.

02:57:13.000 Really?

02:57:14.000 Yeah.

02:57:14.000 So if you're in some sort of a biological disaster area, you can drive through your Tesla?

02:57:19.000 Yes.

02:57:20.000 It's literally this like biohazard defense mode where it basically pressurizes the car so it's like the car is under positive pressure with all the air coming through a gigantic HEPA filter and then even the air inside the car is recirculating in a secondary filter.

02:57:40.000 It's got the most advanced filtration system of any car by far.

02:57:44.000 Literally hospital grade.

02:57:45.000 Wow.

02:57:46.000 You could do an operation in the car.

02:57:48.000 It's insane.

02:57:48.000 That's awesome.

02:57:49.000 Yeah, we got a little carried away.

02:57:52.000 I'm glad you get carried away.

02:57:54.000 You know, the other thing I thought is that Jamie's got the X, and one of the things that I love about the X is when it gets hit, they literally can't flip over.

02:58:01.000 Oh, yeah.

02:58:02.000 It's incredible.

02:58:02.000 It's like one of those things where you punch the thing and it just comes back up.

02:58:07.000 Yeah.

02:58:08.000 Yeah, there's like...

02:58:08.000 They couldn't flip it over in the test, so it would roll on its side and then roll back.

02:58:15.000 No, it's amazing.

02:58:16.000 Because it's a very low center of gravity.

02:58:19.000 So...

02:58:20.000 That's giant.

02:58:21.000 Yeah, exactly. 0.97

02:58:22.000 That is so fucking cool. 0.97

02:58:24.000 That's so fucking cool. 0.99

02:58:25.000 It just rolls back on. 0.96

02:58:26.000 I mean, there's not another car like that in the world. 0.98

02:58:31.000 Every other car in the world would just fucking roll. 0.95

02:58:35.000 It's pretty amazing, man. 0.98

02:58:36.000 Yeah.

02:58:37.000 Even if you did manage to bang it on the roof, you can stack like five cars on top of a Model S or X. Wow.

02:58:45.000 Now, are you guys still making the X? Yeah.

02:58:48.000 Are you still going to do crazy doors?

02:58:50.000 The crazy doors.

02:58:51.000 Those doors are exercise and hubris.

02:58:54.000 That's for sure.

02:58:55.000 Well, it's a lot of things you do.

02:58:57.000 It's an exercise and hubris.

02:58:59.000 Well, some things are really important and necessary.

02:59:03.000 Some things are, you know...

02:59:09.000 Some things are not necessary.

02:59:12.000 Those doors are not necessary, but they're very cool.

02:59:15.000 They're functional, though, if you're in a tight spot.

02:59:18.000 Those doors will open up tighter than almost any door out there.

02:59:24.000 They'll open up in 18 inches.

02:59:26.000 You've got an 18-inch gap between you and the next car, that door will open.

02:59:29.000 That's pretty amazing.

02:59:34.000 We developed...

02:59:35.000 I mean, just in order to avoid having a puck, like an ultrasonic puck in the door, we developed the...

02:59:42.000 To the best of my knowledge...

02:59:43.000 What's an ultrasonic puck mean?

02:59:45.000 So, like the ultrasonic sensors that you have in a car, if you look carefully, you'll see that there's a little puck, like a little isolation ring, like a rubber isolation ring, and that's when the sonar, which is basically a loudspeaker, is...

03:00:00.000 It's generating ultrasonic noise and then listening to the echoes.

03:00:05.000 But normally, in order to listen to the echoes, you've got to isolate the thing that's generating the sound.

03:00:12.000 So that's why if you look carefully around cars, you'll see these little pucks, these little circles.

03:00:17.000 And those are the ultrasonic sensors.

03:00:20.000 And we didn't want to have an ultrasonic sensor in the door, but we also didn't want the door to like, you know, bat some kid out of the way.

03:00:29.000 You know, just a haymaker or something.

03:00:33.000 So we developed, to the best of my knowledge, the only ultrasonic sensor that can see through metal.

03:00:41.000 So it's mounted on the inside of the door, on isolation mounts, And it's super loud, and then it's got cancellation because it's kind of basically screaming at itself, and it's listening for a tiny echo on the other side of the metal just to avoid having a little rubber ring in the bottom of the door.

03:01:02.000 Jesus Christ.

03:01:04.000 Yeah.

03:01:04.000 We put in a capacitive sensor, an inductive sensor, a force feedback sensor, and ultrasonics that can see through metal.

03:01:13.000 This is, when I say exercise and hubris, I mean like, wow. 0.93

03:01:17.000 Is that the most ridiculous car you've created? 0.99

03:01:19.000 Yeah. 0.99

03:01:20.000 This is a Fabergé.

03:01:21.000 The Model X is the Fabergé egg of cars.

03:01:23.000 It's crazy.

03:01:25.000 Um...

03:01:27.000 For the seats, the seats are on a rear-inclined single post with the seat movement mechanism hidden in the floor.

03:01:42.000 So if you open the door and you look through, it's completely clean.

03:01:47.000 The floor is like a knife edge.

03:01:49.000 There's nothing else like it.

03:01:52.000 It's crazy.

03:01:53.000 That windscreen is like a helicopter windscreen, and there's no place to attach the sun visors.

03:02:03.000 So we have to have sun visors that nest in the A-pillar, rotate forward, have a magnetic attachment that pops out, and it connects to the rearview mirror.

03:02:17.000 But you seem very proud of all that.

03:02:21.000 You say all these details and they sound really crazy, but...

03:02:24.000 That's great.

03:02:25.000 It's pretty awesome.

03:02:26.000 I mean, the sound system in the X is awesome.

03:02:31.000 I mean, we designed so that the sound system is taking into account the fact that the windscreen is like a giant subwoofer resonator.

03:02:41.000 So the windscreen is a resonator for the sound system.

03:02:45.000 The sound system is epic in the X. It's good in the S2. It's even better in the new S. Have you thought about doing a Plaid X? Yeah, there's going to be a Plaid X too.

03:02:57.000 When's that coming out?

03:02:58.000 Which is like bizarrely fast for an SUV. Isn't it already bizarrely fast?

03:03:02.000 You said it was preposterous, right?

03:03:05.000 Yeah.

03:03:07.000 It's like it was too fast probably.

03:03:11.000 Have you increased the range of the X? What is the range of the X currently?

03:03:15.000 It's like 300 something?

03:03:17.000 Yeah, 300 something.

03:03:18.000 So it'll be like high 300s.

03:03:21.000 And is the difference between the X and the S aerodynamics?

03:03:26.000 What limits the range?

03:03:28.000 The X weighs more and it's got a bigger cross-sectional area.

03:03:32.000 Something called the CDA drag coefficient times the frontal area is higher for the X as you'd expect and the weight is higher so it's going to be 10 to 15 percent less range for the same battery pack as the S. The first time I saw an ex,

03:03:49.000 Tiffany Haddish had one, and she was in the Comedy Store parking lot, and she had it dancing for us.

03:03:53.000 Oh, yeah.

03:03:54.000 Just playing music and dancing.

03:03:55.000 A lot of people don't know that the Model X can do this crazy ballet thing. 1.00

03:04:00.000 It fucking dances! 1.00

03:04:01.000 Oh, yeah. 0.99

03:04:02.000 With the doors going up and down, and the music's swaying, and we were all dancing in the parking lot to this car.

03:04:07.000 Yeah.

03:04:08.000 It's crazy.

03:04:11.000 Do you have a favorite that you've created?

03:04:16.000 Not rocket.

03:04:28.000 Well, the car I drive every day, or tend to drive, is the high-performance Model S. So, the Model S, I basically said, I don't know what other people like, but I know what I love.

03:04:44.000 And I'm going to just make a car that's the car that I love.

03:04:47.000 And hopefully there will be enough people out there who also love the car.

03:04:52.000 So, the reason I love the Model S is because I just designed the car that I love.

03:04:57.000 That's it.

03:04:58.000 And then it's like, okay, well, how can we use a lot of the same technology to also create an SUV? You know, because a lot of people like an SUV. And, like, you've got more seats and more room and a higher, you know, sitting higher.

03:05:14.000 So, well, what cool things?

03:05:16.000 What are all the cool things?

03:05:17.000 I mean, like I said, exercise and hubris.

03:05:18.000 We just got carried away.

03:05:19.000 Like, what are all the cool things we can think of in the...

03:05:23.000 For an SUV, my friends and I had a lot of discussions about this.

03:05:31.000 You know, and JV Stravel back in the day, and Drew Baclino, and Jerome, and a lot of talented people.

03:05:42.000 Tesla's relatively a lot of talented people, that's for sure.

03:05:51.000 The car that's the most fun to show for others is the Model X for sure.

03:05:55.000 So, it's a great car.

03:05:58.000 But I thought, like, you know, is this really part of our mission to, like, we're trying to, the mission from Tesla from the beginning has been to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy.

03:06:11.000 So, are we really doing the right thing by creating this Fabergé egg of cars with the Model X? Let me be totally frank.

03:06:20.000 It's not entirely consistent with our mission because there's too many bells and whistles.

03:06:24.000 Yeah, but isn't it, though, because Americans love SUVs, and what better way to entice them into embracing sustainable energy than give them the dopest SUV you can buy?

03:06:34.000 Yeah.

03:06:36.000 That's how we justify it to ourselves.

03:06:38.000 I mean, it's not a justification.

03:06:39.000 It's a great carrot.

03:06:41.000 You're dangling an amazing carrot.

03:06:43.000 Yeah.

03:06:44.000 I mean, actually, in terms of CO2 per mile, also SUVs are among the worst.

03:06:51.000 SUVs are typically very low mileage.

03:06:53.000 They take a lot of gasoline per mile.

03:06:54.000 So if you're replacing big SUVs, that's actually the best thing you could do on a per mile basis.

03:07:03.000 But still, we really got carried away.

03:07:08.000 Faber-Shag, of course. 0.99

03:07:09.000 Nobody's ever gonna make a car like that. 0.94

03:07:12.000 Explain to me what the fuck Bill Gates was talking about when he was saying that you can't do trucks. 0.83

03:07:18.000 Well, what was... 0.98

03:07:19.000 Yeah, he didn't know what he was talking about.

03:07:20.000 Why did he say that, then?

03:07:22.000 Like, why would someone...

03:07:22.000 I don't know.

03:07:23.000 Probably somebody told him that, and, you know, he's just not...

03:07:25.000 He just repeated it.

03:07:26.000 He's just not that close to the physics of it, and so...

03:07:29.000 Because I remember...

03:07:30.000 I don't think he's ill-intentioned here.

03:07:31.000 He just doesn't know what he's talking about.

03:07:32.000 But why say it, then?

03:07:34.000 I mean, you think about a guy who's so involved in technology, you would think he would only talk about things you understand.

03:07:40.000 I don't know, it's weird.

03:07:40.000 I also heard that at one point he had a big short position against Tesla, which was kind of, I don't know if that's true or not, but it seems weird.

03:07:48.000 People I know who know the situation well, they said, are you sure?

03:07:52.000 They said, yeah, he had a big short position against Tesla, which obviously didn't work out too well.

03:07:58.000 But anyway, I think he's generally got good intentions here.

03:08:02.000 I think he's probably just not...

03:08:03.000 I don't hate Bill Gates, to be clear.

03:08:05.000 I think he just probably doesn't know the science.

03:08:08.000 Yeah, I just thought it was odd because I knew that you guys were developing a semi.

03:08:12.000 We have prototypes that actually drive.

03:08:15.000 Like we've used them to transport cars and stuff.

03:08:17.000 It's not like a unicorn.

03:08:20.000 It was like...

03:08:21.000 Well, Pegasus or something.

03:08:22.000 I was like, what are you talking about?

03:08:23.000 We literally have prototypes that work.

03:08:25.000 What kind of mileage does those things get?

03:08:28.000 Well, these are prototypes.

03:08:29.000 So they'll be like, you know, I don't know, about 300 miles, something like that.

03:08:34.000 But we're driving back and forth from Fremont to Reno, you know, for transporting stuff.

03:08:41.000 But generally, when semi-truck drivers, when it's a human being driving them, they drive for long periods of time, far more than 300 miles, right?

03:08:50.000 No, actually, most trucking is short-range.

03:08:52.000 Really?

03:08:53.000 Yeah, the majority of trucking.

03:08:54.000 Oh, okay.

03:08:54.000 The majority, like, shipping things around cities and things like that.

03:08:58.000 Yeah, it'll be like, take stuff from the port to the freight forwarding.

03:09:01.000 Will you have a long-range, like, cross-continental version of it?

03:09:05.000 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

03:09:05.000 And so it'll be much more batteries and...

03:09:09.000 Yeah, um...

03:09:11.000 The...

03:09:12.000 Yeah, um...

03:09:16.000 I mean, you want something on the order of probably a 500 kilowatt-hour pack.

03:09:22.000 What we have in the S and the X is a 100 kilowatt-hour pack.

03:09:26.000 And you probably want a 500 kilowatt-hour pack for a semi.

03:09:31.000 But this is not a game-changer on the mass, especially for a structural pack where the pack itself is the structure, is the primary load-carrying element in the vehicle.

03:09:43.000 Is it potentially...

03:09:44.000 It's not a game.

03:09:45.000 It definitely works 100%, no question about it.

03:09:49.000 Would it be possible to have a safer semi because of this whole...

03:09:54.000 Yeah.

03:09:56.000 Well, we can also...

03:09:57.000 Like you have with the X? Yeah, the center of gravity would be really low, so that would certainly help.

03:10:04.000 We can also, we'd have motors individually controlling the wheels, so we can just automatically, and this was part of our semi-presentation, we can just, the computer will automatically prevent it from jackknifing.

03:10:17.000 Like, you know, jackknifing on a low traction surface is like truck driver's worst nightmare.

03:10:22.000 You know, you're on like some icy road, icy mountainous road that the trailer slides, you know, with jackknifes like that, and you could slide off the edge of the hill.

03:10:31.000 And you could stop that from happening even on an icy road?

03:10:34.000 Yeah.

03:10:34.000 Wow.

03:10:35.000 So, because you have individual control over each of the wheels.

03:10:40.000 So you can just make sure it's stable and it doesn't do jackknife.

03:10:46.000 Whereas if you've got just one engine, it's very difficult to do that.

03:10:49.000 So...

03:10:50.000 Do you anticipate that eventually these things will be completely autonomous, like it won't be truck drivers?

03:10:56.000 Eventually it will be autonomous, but we're still a ways away from that.

03:11:01.000 But in the short term, I think we can certainly see convoys.

03:11:05.000 So, you know, we've got one truck driver and then there's like a whole bunch of trucks following that truck.

03:11:11.000 And, you know, keeping like a distance so that other cars can pass in between them.

03:11:17.000 It's sort of like having a train, but on the highway.

03:11:20.000 It's like linked, where it's just like one truck driver in the front, and then a whole series of trucks behind it that are following in a convoy.

03:11:30.000 Whoa.

03:11:31.000 But the trucks behind it are autonomous.

03:11:33.000 And how much space in between?

03:11:34.000 You could like wheel and slip in there?

03:11:35.000 Yeah, no problem.

03:11:36.000 You could put like 40, 50 feet between them, no problem.

03:11:38.000 Oh, wow.

03:11:39.000 Yeah, and those trucks would just follow the lead.

03:11:41.000 And it's like having trains on the road.

03:11:44.000 And they'll be following through what, like just they know where the trucks ahead of them are at all times?

03:11:49.000 It's very easy to follow.

03:11:52.000 Oh.

03:11:52.000 You just say follow this thing, no problem.

03:11:55.000 What's next after this?

03:12:01.000 You mean after what products or something?

03:12:04.000 Yeah, like ultimately, do you think that you could have planes?

03:12:10.000 I thought about planes for a long time.

03:12:16.000 But my brain will explode if I do planes.

03:12:20.000 This is too crazy, man.

03:12:24.000 My brain is overloaded.

03:12:31.000 Overloaded because of the complexity or overloaded because you have too much stuff on my plate?

03:12:36.000 I'm glad there's a limit.

03:12:39.000 I'm glad you got a spot where you can't go any further.

03:12:43.000 There's only so many hours in the day.

03:12:47.000 So, I mean, I think there are improvements happening over time for the energy density of batteries, like the watt-hours per, or should really be joules, but like joules per kilogram, joules per liter.

03:13:05.000 It's improving a little bit every year.

03:13:09.000 Planes really need a high energy density because you've got to get up to altitude.

03:13:15.000 Most energy is getting up to altitude.

03:13:17.000 And then once you're in a low air density situation, you can cruise along.

03:13:23.000 It takes very little energy once you're in cruise.

03:13:26.000 That's a massive amount of energy to get up there.

03:13:33.000 Man, I thought about this a lot.

03:13:43.000 Yeah.

03:13:44.000 I mean, an aircraft and cruise is a neutral force balance.

03:13:47.000 So it's not accelerating.

03:13:49.000 So basically, if you've got a motor of a given force, then for a given force, you will just go faster as you go higher.

03:13:59.000 So you've got the air resistance...

03:14:02.000 The air resistance is dropping exponentially as you go higher.

03:14:05.000 If you have a constant accelerating, a constant force from your motor and propeller or turbine or whatever, then you will just go faster.

03:14:17.000 The higher you go, the faster you go for the same amount of power.

03:14:22.000 So the key would be achieving a high altitude.

03:14:26.000 Yeah.

03:14:27.000 It's all about altitude.

03:14:28.000 Like, the air is very thick at sea level.

03:14:33.000 Like, for the same amount of force that you would go, say, like, you know, half the speed of sound at sea level, you could go, you know, twice the speed of sound, like, let's say, at 100,000 feet.

03:14:48.000 Same amount of energy in cruise.

03:14:51.000 Is it possible to fly a commercial plane at 100,000 feet?

03:14:55.000 Would that be possible?

03:14:56.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

03:14:56.000 You just go fast.

03:14:57.000 The great thing about that is you could bring flat earthers up there.

03:15:00.000 Haha.

03:15:03.000 Yeah, the faster you go, the higher you go, the faster you want to go.

03:15:10.000 Right.

03:15:14.000 The interesting thing about the SR-71 is that its most fuel-efficient speed was its fastest speed, pretty much, or pretty close, because that's when it could go at the highest altitude.

03:15:28.000 Because it could go faster at higher altitude, it got better miles per gallon at high speed than low speed.

03:15:37.000 That's pretty wild.

03:15:38.000 Yeah.

03:15:39.000 So altitude, because air density decays exponentially and drag increases with the square.

03:15:45.000 And so the exponential beats the square.

03:15:48.000 Do you think there would ever be a time where Tesla could run itself in a sense of like you have enough talented people running it and you wouldn't have to devote all your resources to being there all the time and handling things and maybe you would think about planes?

03:16:05.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm committed to run Tesla for several years into the future, and there's still a lot of things we've got to get done.

03:16:15.000 Could Tesla possibly expand to planes?

03:16:19.000 It could.

03:16:21.000 It is a different regime.

03:16:23.000 I mean, there are no car companies that are aircraft companies, really.

03:16:33.000 But I think there is a way, ultimately, to have a vertical takeoff and landing supersonic electric jet.

03:16:43.000 Wow.

03:16:45.000 That'd be cool.

03:16:47.000 But what about the weight?

03:16:49.000 That's where it comes from.

03:16:50.000 Energy density of the pack is important.

03:16:54.000 You need to get high.

03:16:56.000 Quickly.

03:16:57.000 Yeah.

03:16:58.000 Get high.

03:16:59.000 Get high fast.

03:17:01.000 Yeah.

03:17:05.000 Yeah.

03:17:10.000 So, um, and you can get rid of most of the things that are on a plane, um, if you just, if you, if you gimbal the, uh, the fan.

03:17:22.000 Yeah, to have the fan change direction, like you do with a rocket.

03:17:26.000 You know, you don't need, like, uh, You mostly don't need an elevator.

03:17:32.000 You just need some trim tabs.

03:17:35.000 You basically have a flying wing.

03:17:37.000 Pretty easy to do a flying wing.

03:17:42.000 Or a flying wing with a little bit of fuselage.

03:17:47.000 So you make it lighter.

03:17:49.000 You make the pack structural as well.

03:17:51.000 So the pack is the wing.

03:17:56.000 You gotta basically pull a few tricks like that.

03:17:58.000 This is all about how do you make the non-cell portion of the aircraft as light as possible.

03:18:09.000 Anyway, there's a lot of regulatory things you have to go through and this is counting on a watt-hours per kilogram.

03:18:20.000 You'd want watt-hours per kilogram at the pack level to be over 400. Yeah.

03:18:28.000 So we're pretty close to that.

03:18:30.000 So it's like it's, you know, at the pack level.

03:18:34.000 Not at the cell level, but at the pack level.

03:18:37.000 And with high cycle life.

03:18:41.000 Well, listen, you're doing plenty.

03:18:43.000 You don't necessarily have to get into planes right now.

03:18:47.000 Yeah.

03:18:47.000 I think you're busy enough.

03:18:50.000 Planes will be the last of the things.

03:18:53.000 Cars and trucks and then, you know, boats and then planes.

03:18:58.000 Well, it's interesting because plane technology in terms of, like, commercial air travel has probably increased, at least visibly, to the consumer the least in the last, like, 30, 40, 50 years.

03:19:11.000 It's not much difference.

03:19:12.000 The experience.

03:19:13.000 Yeah.

03:19:14.000 Pretty similar.

03:19:15.000 Yep.

03:19:15.000 In fact, it's got slower.

03:19:17.000 Right after the Concorde.

03:19:18.000 Yeah.

03:19:19.000 Not even the Concorde.

03:19:20.000 The 747 was the fastest plane.

03:19:23.000 Oh, really?

03:19:23.000 Yeah.

03:19:24.000 It had swept wings.

03:19:27.000 So the wing sweep, like what's the wing angle?

03:19:30.000 That's a big factor in what its cruise speed is going to be.

03:19:33.000 So the 747 had a pretty steep wing.

03:19:39.000 But its fuel efficiency is not as good as...

03:19:44.000 Something like 777 or 787. I mean, there's some basic things in physics that are present almost everywhere.

03:19:56.000 They sometimes take different form, but they're basically referring to the relationship between momentum and kinetic energy.

03:20:04.000 Kinetic energy goes as a square, momentum is linear.

03:20:07.000 And then there's surface-to-volume ratio.

03:20:09.000 Service volume ratio and the momentum to kinetic energy ratio Drive so much of mechanics, it's insane.

03:20:24.000 It's like the reason that you don't have a single-celled creature that is gigantic is because of surface-to-volume ratio.

03:20:32.000 There's a certain surface-to-volume ratio where diffusion works, and beyond that, diffusion does not work.

03:20:37.000 And you have to have a circulatory system.

03:20:44.000 For aircraft, or just generally, you want to move a large mass of air slowly, so you can reduce the velocity component of kinetic energy, which goes as a square.

03:20:57.000 You want to move a large amount of mass slowly, not a small amount of mass fast.

03:21:01.000 So, the way you make aircraft engines more efficient is you move a lot of air slowly.

03:21:07.000 Like big fans, basically.

03:21:09.000 Big, slow fans work great.

03:21:11.000 Small, tiny, fast-moving jets are very inefficient.

03:21:16.000 So, like, you know, something like a 777, it's really just a propeller in a shroud.

03:21:24.000 So...

03:21:28.000 High bypass ratio.

03:21:31.000 Like how much of it is jet versus propeller?

03:21:33.000 You want it to be mostly propeller.

03:21:35.000 So this is clearly something you've been thinking about a lot.

03:21:38.000 Oh sure, yeah.

03:21:38.000 Like for 13 years.

03:21:42.000 Do you think it's going to be the next thing for you?

03:21:45.000 I hope not.

03:21:47.000 I hope not.

03:21:51.000 There's some smart people I have to try and tackle it and I hope they are successful.

03:21:57.000 But just try to get high.

03:22:00.000 Get high.

03:22:00.000 Go fast.

03:22:01.000 Get high.

03:22:02.000 You will automatically go fast as you go higher.

03:22:06.000 Air density is dropping exponentially.

03:22:09.000 And you think, like, in the limit, you've got, like, a satellite.

03:22:11.000 Satellite's going around there with, you know, low-width orbit satellites going around there with 25 times the speed of sound.

03:22:17.000 No propulsion.

03:22:20.000 So, if you get high enough, you just keep going.

03:22:25.000 Obviously, you just want to go super high.

03:22:28.000 Higher, the better.

03:22:30.000 Now, the thing, like you said, well, why don't planes do that already?

03:22:32.000 Well...

03:22:34.000 So if you've got a combustion engine, it's got an aperture issue.

03:22:38.000 So you're like, okay, how big is the hole in which you're ingesting air?

03:22:42.000 And then bear in mind, air is mostly nitrogen, not oxygen.

03:22:46.000 So you've got a lot more chaff than you've got wheat.

03:22:51.000 And that's why, you know, it's like you're going to design...

03:22:54.000 This thing's got to work at sea level, it's got to work at altitude, and then it's going to drop off in efficiency quite a lot as you go higher.

03:23:04.000 And then there's also some other issues relating to depressurization, like how fast can you descend.

03:23:11.000 But you really just want to go super high.

03:23:16.000 And it's very difficult to design a combustion engine that is effective at a wide range of altitudes.

03:23:24.000 So the air density at 100,000 feet is approximately 1% that at sea level.

03:23:30.000 So, how the hell do you design a combustion, like an air burning, it's like an air, there's something that's taking an air, combining with fuel and burning, to work when you have a hundred-fold difference in air density?

03:23:45.000 This is an intractable problem.

03:23:49.000 But if you have an electric fan, it's not burning anything.

03:23:52.000 So, aperture doesn't matter.

03:23:55.000 It's a big deal.

03:23:57.000 It seems like it would be the best way to fly.

03:23:59.000 Yeah.

03:24:00.000 Someone can figure out how to do it.

03:24:04.000 We're like well over three hours in here.

03:24:06.000 Oh, wow.

03:24:07.000 Amazing.

03:24:08.000 That flies when you're here.

03:24:09.000 Yeah.

03:24:09.000 Wasted.

03:24:11.000 Well, thank you very much.

03:24:13.000 As always, it's a pleasure.

03:24:14.000 Always fun to talk to you, man.

03:24:15.000 I really appreciate it.

03:24:16.000 Yeah, you're welcome.

03:24:17.000 If you ever want to talk about something, I'm here for you.

03:24:22.000 Thanks.

03:24:22.000 All right.

03:24:23.000 Thank you.

03:24:23.000 All right.

03:24:24.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - February 11, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1609 - Elon Musk

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