Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.
Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
Focus on signal over noise. Don't waste time on stuff that doesn't actually make things better.
I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don't retire before I go senile, then I'll do more damage than good at that point.
I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.
I've been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I'm getting really tired of Disneyland.
Mars is the only place in the solar system where it's possible for life to become multi-planetarian.
There's nothing -- I've bought everything I want. I don't like yachts or anything; you know, I'm not a yacht person, and I've got pretty much the nicest plane I'd want to have.
It is definitely true that the fundamental enabling technology for electric cars is lithium-ion as a cell chemistry technology. In the absence of that, I don't think it's possible to make an electric car that is competitive with a gasoline car.
I'm personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I'm not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.
I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.
If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.
Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.
The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished.
The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It'll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn't been reusable.
It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.
I was born in Africa. I came to California because it's really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don't see a viable competitor.
I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based. However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.
There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.
I think long term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the U.S. and in Asia.
If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.
I hate writing about personal stuff. I don't have a Facebook page. I don't use my Twitter account. I am familiar with both, but I don't use them.
I'm glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That's cool.
Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure -- the law firms, the real estate, all that -- that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.
My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment -- my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.
I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.
To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That's what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games -- nothing like saving the world.
It's obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.
The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.
I usually describe myself as an engineer; that's basically what I've been doing since I was a kid.
In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate.
If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.
What most people know but don't realize they know is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn't there, we'd be a frozen ice ball at three degrees Kelvin, and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.
There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.
A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.
I wouldn't say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I'd like my fear emotion to be less because it's very distracting and fries my nervous system.
Stationary storage will be as big as the car business long term. The growth rate will probably be several times what it is for the car business.
If we could do high-speed rail in California just half a notch above what they've done on the Shanghai line in China, and if we had a straight path from L.A. to San Francisco, as well as the milk run, at least that would be progress.
When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world.
Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.
People should pursue what they're passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.
For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it's been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I'd just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.
Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.
People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better.
Longer Version:
I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better. I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.
I don't spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.
The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the light bulb.
I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don't believe in climate change -- they think oil will last forever.
An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.
Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.
I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It's the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.
Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.
I'd like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that's not just e-mail with a view.
When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.
Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.
Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That's pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.
The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.
We polled Tesla owners, do you want autopilot disabled or not. Not one person wanted it disabled. That's pretty telling.
The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it's going to become multiplanetary, or it's going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there's going to be an extinction event.
Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.
I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems... It's got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.
I'm interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you're like, 'Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?'
I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
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