This is getting stoned. It's podcast about gems and minerals and I am not your host. This is getting
stoned a podcast about all things gems and minerals and I am your host, John a Crider. On today's episode we have a very special guest. Thank you, Elon Musk for joining. All right. So Iran, I always find it inspiring when you talk about the light of Consciousness. So what is the website business need to use the best of our
knowledge?
the only spoke of
conscious life that we're aware of is on Earth Consciousness sense of
At least thinking that it has software - like we've found. I mean, I think of that. So I think, I think, therefore, I am' or whatever, you know, can take ours. So, you know, there's that, we private file found microbial life in the rest of the solstice now. Suppose it's possible that we may find microbial life or something, maybe even see life under the ice of Europa that's, you know, an interesting open question, walk.
But at least thus far we've seen no signs of Life whatsoever. Not even microbial outside of a and according to geological record as best Sciences can. As best at science can, determine both is about four and a half billion years old. The universe is about 13.8 billion years old. This is the suggest that like it's odd that there's not. If you ever see this old,
From the solar system is this world? It's odd that only now very recently have has life evolved that can can talk and write and communicate ideas in a sophisticated way. And only now have has civilization gotten to the point where it is possible to send life to another planet or obviously,
Before we sent people to the Moon whole it's been a while. This is relented, that a lot of people think moon landing was faked their, on topic, I was working there. I don't think this is a record number of people who do and I'm like, oh man, they're not very good please. But
they've actually brought back some cool minerals from the Moon and I kind of have one in my
collection. Yeah, I actually have a slice of a moon immediate, a chunk of moon that was
We're about meteor, hit the moon smashed, a bunch of moon rocks, and some of the moon rocks. I don't know that. And I've got a segment of one of them
yet the Apollo Mission. Brought back some Tranquility. Eight and up until 2011, new is called that because of the Sea of Tranquility. Yeah. And there was none found on Earth and in 2011, soon deposit for found in Australia. So I have a friend of mine, sent me some deposits, and it broke area. And so it had big chunk into little pieces. So I'm
The other two little pieces into art.
So but I mean, it's crazy, how old the Rockets, you
know. Yes. Like billions, and that some guy just gave you that's over 2 billion years old. They have no, no, no time. You know, no source of
income, it's hard to even, you can't, you can't wrap your mind around, you know, that kind of time to time scales. But I believe in you. I mean we're I mean I lifespans are a flash in the pan. I mean just
Like that. Yeah, shorter than a Flash and a fan. Hey, compared to the galactic time scales. So, so I don't know if there's much things that one could divorcee or at least appear to be likely, which is that it appears that Consciousness is rare. And it takes a long time for it to rise. And, and so, and we accept the best of our knowledge.
We are loved and so we have to accept the possibility that that really maybe it at least in this sector of the Galaxy or in Milky Way paps and and if we're at and this is this is the only little candle in a vast. Darkness of you know it'll only was a lot of Consciousness that got us with then we should really try to make sure that cat that life does not go out.
Are we can't take it for granted, that it won't. So we want to try to make it last as long as possible and
I think most want to try to understand the nature of the universe meaning of life. Where is it going? What does the future? Hold just find out what's going on in the universe? And yeah, and you know, so the so that means that the more that we can expand the scope and scale of Consciousness, the more we're likely to understand the
It'll questions around the meaning of life and nature of the universe. And so I think that's a good goal to have. And and it's a goal that I think can unite Humanity, you know, because it's a common goal as opposed to sort of infighting and you know, I want those people feel. If I say I want this because I know I want this piece of linoleum, you know, there's a lot of land out
there. Yeah.
There's a lot of planets with nothing. You know, how about those ones over the
Little pieces when this entire planets out there, you know, it's solar systems and stuff so, so I think it is. It is a it is a sort of I think it is a philosophy that withstands reason meaning like it's I think there's a solid reasoning basis for it. It's, it's really just a philosophy of curiosity, how call it. So,
So that and it's also exciting, you know? If you think like I mean it happy reasons when you wake up the morning that you're excited to be alive and you look forward to the future and I can't just be solving one sad problem after another. You know, that's what? What the hell Point. There's no point now. Like that,
I have a question about that later, on down the road about your stance on that,
but it's always problem. Yeah, but yeah.
Gonna have to, we're going to have some you know, fix things that were inspired that they're inspiring and exciting as to. If I'm not saying we shouldn't sell problems, we should but we also need positive things, you know, and I think people just get sad if it's just one problem after another and it is. And the way the media works is, I mean, I'll say it, like you read the newspaper most time newspapers trying to answer the question. What is the worst thing that happened on Earth today?
It's a big
planet, you know.
Something really bad is happening somewhere on Earth because eight billion people. So you've got to like it's like obviously something bad's going to happen on every given day of 8 billion opportunities for that. And so that's just, you know, and the way we're actually evolved, I think is to respond more to negative news than to positive news in the sense that if there's like a physical danger, like, let's say, you need like, remember, oh, that's where the lion is do, that's you know, that's don't go there.
That's very important but it's pretty silly. And I also found this place where there's some delicious berries. The delicious berries are nice to have not been eaten by a lion for essential. It's so. So that's why. You know, we, we should start pretend to tend to remember or respond to negative stuff more than positive because - sup historically could be, you know, physically the end of us like the Creed game over supposed to sort of nice to have stuff. So I think that's
is that there's this kind of like an inherent ablution are biased towards negative news. But the thing is that - use now is there's we use from all around the world that can't possibly affect us or some very unlikely to affect us and it's bad for where, you know, whether it was in the world that had the natural disaster or and so forth. But but it's not it actually doesn't affect us directly, but we we get the news from far away, that doesn't affect us directly but still makes us sad.
Yeah, that does have an effect on your because then you can't focus on what you need.
Focus on. Yeah, exactly. So fact. So my next question. So if the worst case were to happen. If Community Humanity goes extinct, do you think the light of Consciousness itself or die, or do you think it would evolve into
something else?
Given enough time humanity will go extinct because the count for it will be will you marry will look for ever? And I think that's just unlikely but we can look for a very long time for Humanity. Can the for very long time and we should try to make that time as long as possible.
As to whether there will be some other form of Consciousness that involves after Humanity. I hope so. But we don't know for sure.
And I think we want to we should we should, you know, it would be wise to not not to just assume that over there if we're gone they'll in the future be some other form of Consciousness it maybe maybe not exist on Earth, 1/2 billion years old, the sun is slowly expanding as a sun, expands those over millions of years. The temperature Earth will rise. And eventually the sun will engulf
I'm going to do everything, everything will be incinerated. Now, the, you know, the that that is, you know, there's different schools of thought here, but the Sun May it at the Sun. Make things may get hot enough.
on a within maybe 500 million years where with maybe
on an uninhabitable, it's but that sort of
A combination of the various cycles of Earth because on average geological time scale earthquake actually has it has gone through a snowball phases and and, and, and sort of very hot phases. And if you have a very hot days of both combined witness on expanding that, that that could really be a mass extinction event. And as I want to things like for Earth timing standpoint by Ramon years or only be 10 percent longer than Earth has.
I stood thus far. And so if therefore, if, if Consciousness or civilization had taken 10 percent longer to evolve, it wouldn't have evolved at all.
Yeah, so at a lot of time scale, we're kind of making it just we were actually pretty cool. Dude. We kind of got a got here just in time. Not yeah,
okay, yeah, I wonder how it actually evolved. Like it just poofed come out of nowhere. I don't know what a Consciousness like itself. Like it just kind of
you know, they started out as hydrogen and then
Got more complex and and basically believe hydrogen out in the sun long enough. It starts talking that's
us because I. Yeah. So what qualities are you looking for in a person who we want to make the first human man, trip to Mars?
Well first of all I think it's very important to emphasize that what really matters is getting a lot of people to Mars and and enough equipment to make a city.
Be self-sustaining I mean certainly whoever is the first I suppose we'll be world-famous but it's that's not what's important from a civilizational standpoint. What we actually need is to make a self-sustaining City on Mars, that's the critical threshold and we need to do that while civilization still has the ability to do so and that ability to do so could
And for a number of could have because of World War 3, it could end because civilization just gradually Peters out the The Arc of civilizations. The, in the other various sort of civilizations that have been on Earth that they have not had a sort of continuous upward. Trajectory they arose, they peaked and they fell
like a cycle of that. Yeah,
the ancient Sumerians are no longer the ancient Egyptians no longer.
So the Romans. Yeah, exactly. So that there's this many civilizations that have risen and Fallen the Mayans and that really quite an incredible network of cities was very amazing, actually. And so and Aetna and others mostly just under jungle and an Earth. So I think we're still at a period of time.
Where civilization from a technology standpoint has been has been increasing and so they're just naturally assume that's a twist out. That's how it is. How it is. It will always increase. Essentially, what I'm saying is the like Christ said that we should approach making life multiplanetary with a sense of urgency and to do so while we can, well, let because of the, this is the first time that the window of opportunity has been open for Life, become multiplanetary, and it that we do may be open for a long time or a short time.
I think it would be wise for us to assume it will be open for a short time and take action. Now, now from a resource standpoint, sounds people that go. What is this going to take all the resources and other with? No, I, what I'm suggesting is that we spend less than 1% of our resources for maybe on that order on making life multiplanetary and a suit and preserving the future of life, not just for humans, but for all, you know, life on Earth is we are in bringing life to Mars, we would be life Steward. We would be the
Caretaker of the Blind. And so, you know, the the other creatures can't build spaceships and we can. So
you would not believe what my cats can do. That's all I got to say about that. But
you know, it's like a know, I kind of think we're going to responsibility to protect the rest of the the, you know, the creatures on Earth to. And I think we should do that. I think a reasonable thing would be like, said about a 1% of
Of our resources, real skeleton I-94 with problems at, but I think one percent for making life multiplanetary and in ensuring the long-term Survival Of Consciousness and Life as we know it is worth one percent of resources, I think and that does that, that's what that's, that's look what I would propose to people. But yeah, and then of course, we're still need to make sure things are going on Earth. Of course, we were like, oh let's abandon Earth and Rory.
Sometimes feel like you, are you leaps good let us go to go to hell. I'm like no we need to make everything we can to make both good. Like Tesla's goal is to is to help make ensure a good future for Earth. And space X is goal is to make life multiplanetary and and you know ensure the long-term Survival Of Consciousness.
Those are awesome
goals. Yeah. So what once was?
Yeah yeah I think another thing is just increasing the happiness.
Yes.
Lutely, in fact, if it's totally. So I mean, I've some, you know, but mostly talked about the defensive reasons for, you know, like the protective reasons for making life multiplanetary. But I think it's also I think things like what actually gets me, most the most excited and fired up, it's actually the sense of adventure and and possibility and the it's just you're just be the greatest Adventure ever and it would be exciting and inspiring to see it
happen. Well, what you've done with human SpaceX have done in Ukraine.
In with the starlink it inspires, a lot of deep respect. You know, you've also helped st. Charles Parish and my state and my state, you know, after Hurricane Ida as well as the visibility to time yet. So what role do you see? Starling playing in regards of disaster relief? Because we're going to have a lot of disasters are predicting a more hurricanes for my area actually this year,
we'll just in general stalling because it is not dependent on any ground based infrastructure.
Can provide internet connectivity to errors that are pad floods or fires or earthquakes at that have destroyed the ground based infrastructure. So that's good. That's obviously extremely helpful for rescuing people. And, you know, not knowing where, you know, we had like if you just had just people being able to, you know, say I need to, I need help, I need rescue. If I can tell you how do you find them?
Communicate with them and and Stalin can prove Canada has provided that in a number of situations.
Yeah, so when we had Ida, my power was out for a week, there was actually when the hurricane hit, the communications Southeast Louisiana was completely wiped out. And we were using, I forgot the name of the app but the Cajun Navy uses app to rescue people when they go on because they will go from place to place to place. Yeah and it just kind of made me think of that you know started like I think what definitely help like organizations like Cajun a
Maybe as well as others, just kind of be able to communicate better, especially with government and not just in my area, but other areas to so. But, yeah, it's really awesome. What that? It would be cool to see something like that on a more install on your phone to, as well as, you know, internet, you know,
We keep people connected.
I think that's really like, like certainly
Once phone is capable of Behaving and releases a short-range walkie-talkie, even if it's not connected to the internet in any way that we can just do it with basically create a Wi-Fi Bridge, maybe that's is that we're talking about.
Or yeah. Are you somebody help people stay connected? Like, you know, if you're having a disaster and you call somebody usually you get like a well during Hurricane Rita. I wasn't really badly affected by Rita, but I had people telling me, Oh, we get this error message. You've been here on a disaster.
Are you in some kind of Zone? Where, you know, this person is impacted by disasters, they can't like the food, cause not going through. I had people telling me that that was back in 05 though. It's like, how are you? Yeah, but just, I don't know something, you know, just to keep people connected during the disasters. So like you don't have to worry about a friend is missing, you know? And they can call and say, hey, I'm okay powers out where, you know, conserving battery,
But speaking of disasters, the must Foundation has done a lot of good work in about a month. So ago I made this really long list. Yeah, you saw it. I was like, I got tired, like I was adding and adding and adding to that list to keep on growing just how much the work you guys have doing. And so what you did also for like, Charles in Southwest Louisiana, especially after Laura impacted, that area was really phenomenal. And it is
Of
lives. Cool,
but how do you see the musk Foundation itself, helping Charities, especially toward disaster relief within the next few years, as the effects of climate change, continue to kind of get worse?
Well,
I'm always, we're trying. We're trying too hard with the foundation to give away money in ways that are actually useful. Whether it's like, you know, maximum number of cents on the dollar of actually, helping the people in need, but it's way harder to give away money than you think. If you care about it, actually doing good as opposed to sounding like it was good. Yeah. It's easy to make it sound like it was my doing good, but it's hard to make actually do good.
I can't tell you this is insanely hard so we're actually it just spilling up more Personnel within the foundation to be more direct and and at go through like fewer sort of intermediaries and kind of middle entities. So we can be more. You have to have more than the shortest path to helping people in need. So but I have said it's way harder than you think to give away money, effectively.
And but that does were trying to do.
Yeah. And would you consider grants that helped organizations? That also focus on disaster relief?
Yeah. No we do. We do. We do provide grants to organizations that work on disaster. Relief. Yeah, absolutely.
The last year you donated 100 million dollars for X prize for the competition to fight climate change and so far about 20 million of that has been distributed to winners on Earth Day. They announced that you the foundation awarded 15 million dollars and two winners in four categories that are Land Ocean and rocks. Which of these four categories, do you feel needs the most work than most impact
help?
Well, I mean
Blunt and problem is is saying okay we need to get the parts per million level of CO2 in the atmosphere primarily an atmosphere that down to a lower level, we're going to have to pull it out of the jar and store it somewhere. And I think by storing it in some, in some solid form is going to make sense, you know, in a form that, you know, we're after you store it, it doesn't gradually sort of evaporating friend.
If you have a sphere or a somehow but you know, it needs to be. It's about that you've got extractors here to and store it. That's, that's a pretty tough, you know. So,
And and it's going to take a fair bit of energy to do that and so that energy Ops has to be provided by a renewable. Or sustainable means like solar and wind or geothermal. I'm actually pro-nuclear as well. I think nuclear has a bad rap and its people really should be shining down nuclear power stations in my view it unless they're in like a location. That's praja natural disasters. Yes, it is. You know, you don't you don't
So if you don't like your cables, always waiting for the real, but once in a century situation and then it happens. Yeah. You know, like, the Fukushima situation was like, well, you know, that was, there's a lot, there's a lot of tsunamis and and stuff. So it's probably not great to have nuclear where there's, you know, natural disasters. But for example in like France and Germany, maybe boss, the u.s. does, there's really no meaningful risk of up a natural disaster. Could that could affect a nuclear power plant. So it's like we shouldn't shut them down.
and I case,
But every but I think primarily solar solar and wind as you can then, you know, it's like figuring out what is the what takes the least amount of resources to convert it to take the CO2 from the atmosphere and bind it? And perform that can be stored.
Yes, that's what the competition is
about. You know, when you said bringing the cake in a climbing out there and storing it, you just made me think and I didn't have this on those questions but you just reminded me. There's a, there's a really cool company called project versus. I think it's the name of it, they take Peridot. They're trying to use a Peridot to do that and then there's other different Lyman companies that are making lab-grown diamonds with the air.
With the carbon in the air, taking the carbon out there, making gemstones with it. That's
all that is cool. I don't think that's a very, I'm not sure that scales
scales but it is cool to think about, like, you know this diamond. Yeah, that's that's carbonate. That's not going to the air. Is going in your drink. Yes. I think that takes a lot of
energy, you Frank, but it's all right. Yeah, but yeah, so cool.
So, would you consider having another expert? Like won? This competition, closes and the full 100 million is
Given out would you consider doing another one?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean like I said I'm in favor of anything that anywhere with with my money can be spent that does real good. And we're cautiously looking for, you know, things that we think will be highly effective ways to spend money for General Social
good,
And what is, what accomplishments that has the most Foundation achieve that you're the most proud is like when we feel warm inside that, you know, that makes you feel like you're doing good.
I mean, I really don't think we've done enough to too.
You know, at least this stage, I don't think we've done enough to to be.
You know, such a thing in our own Praises here. I mean, there was an education xprize that my Foundation funded and it was basically to figure out the best way to improve literacy. So is for
I'm going to think that was that was cool. And I think that did some good, you know, it to agree, that one can improve literacy. Then you're essentially removing everything about any given Society because they can now learn new to learn skills with learned learned think. If you can't read basically your is hot. It's hot. It's hard to make. It's hard to say sort of someone out of poverty. Father, if I can't read so, yeah, very
actually have neighbors that.
At read are like older than me and they just can't read or write. And I'm like, you know, that's my mom taught me when I was three how to read? I'm very grateful for that but I don't know. Like the idea of being unable to read that terrifies. Me and we do need more literacy.
Yeah so it's we had like a sum of the X prize Foundation, literacy X prize and to figure out like what's the best soft software that you could have on like a low-cost sort of kind of Android tablets.
The thing, you know that is most effective at teaching people to read so that I guess probably has that's probably the best thing we've done so far.
That's awesome. Yeah. You've done a lot of good work in the most Foundation. Yeah. You've helped a lot of people especially in my community. So
I think starlink will have a really positive effect on improving your peoples.
Any comments often and they're improving the standard of living because for a lot of people that they that large portion, what does not have internet connectivity or if it did, they do. It's it's very bad and extremely expensive and we're stalling. Can provide connectivity for like, you know, sort of a whole village of liked older, people type of thing and then it's like, you know, in that case would be like
50 cents, a month per person. I think that's pretty affordable.
Yeah. Yeah. That's really
affordable. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. So the declining birthrate you often talk about this problem. It is a real problem. It really is. But there's another problem I think is playing a major role and, and that's poverty. So what what actions do you think need to be taken towards solving?
Already that would kind of help it, relieve some of that issues with the burst declining birth
rate.
Well, the declining birth rate, so counterintuitive, but generally, the wealthier, someone who is the fewer kids they have. I'm an exception here is but it's quite rare. So it's the basically the higher education level and the the wealthier people are the fewer kids they have. So it's not a money thing. Yeah, it's a
In fact, it seems the opposite like more money. The tone has the pure kids they have so and and you know, somebody who's sort of
You know, so living at like to 2022 standard of, what's considered, you know, at the parts are apart, poverty level would be really. I mean, they don't have active access to things that so the richest person didn't have like, matter your skill, you know. So
I just know that, like, when I was at, you know, I've been homeless before working two jobs. Yes. And I don't know the idea having a kid
Terrify me, especially if you're not stable, you know, nothing. Like you know, those problems that contribute to that that you can't just like throw money at it and solve it. Now let's tell people that you know you can't just like okay here's a hundred million dollars, go going homelessness, you can't do that because you got there's a lot of trauma involved and there's a lot of mental healing involved. There's a lot of Chris I think trauma is the number one cause of homelessness just from my experience of it because I've seen what it does, first hand, you know, and I've experienced it, what it does.
Does. So I mean, you know, it's just poverty. I don't know. I don't want to call it in solvable but that's why I was asking because like what ideas do you have that could help you know Point some kind of solution, some kind of solution out
there.
Well actually literacy and access the internet I think are fundamentally helpful because if they go to think beyond the United States, you know it's like there's a lot of flexibility billions of people who have no internet cognitive at all nothing. Or it's like if very low bandwidth, Annex insanely expensive that's like the for many parts of the world. This is the case, but Alexa billions people. So the
Yeah, so I think that those things are helpful. I mean generally education obviously is good and I mean these days if you can learn almost anything online. So like MIT, for example, has all of their lectures online and number of other universities do. And so you can kind of if they actually if you want if you want, you can learn almost anything for it at that.
Very low, very low cost. I mean, just using a simple sort of
You know, I like it looks like you and a phone or an old tablet 400 bucks, basically. And and it's, yeah, you can listen. You've got access to all the world's information. So, you know, I think that's, you know, I think this may be this this fact is really underappreciated and, and people it's something, we should be. I think pretty excited and optimistic about our growth. Feel good about
Is that information before? The internet was very limited. If you wanted to learn a skill or trade or learn it learn something, you would have to go to a school and you'd have to get get the specific books or you have to go to a library in that Library wouldn't necessarily have all the books that you'd want and or maybe there isn't a library, it might not be a librarian area near where you live. So, but with the internet you've got
Instant access to basically all the world's information. And and so information quality is really incredible compared to work. Where do you still be especially if you go back say you know, a few hundred years with really likes, it was to go back to Route, 34 hundred years, the word public libraries whether were very few public life about my recent buttons and and books were things that only a few percent of the
Actually, even had a book and that, then the, and then there are the book collection. Be very small. So and then before the Gutenberg printing, press books were like a insanely rare. Yeah. So if you look at say how has information access to information and quality about the quality of access to information improved over time, it's insane. How much better it was than the past.
So
I can imagine not having books. Yeah.
So
And I know with with Google, you've got like the sort of magic article at like answer, you know? Essay question. Yeah,
I learned a lot on Google especially whenever I find I go to gym, the mineral shows from time to time, I'm always finding something, I'm like, what is that having a Google that and yeah, who will teach us really? Well. Do you have any other thoughts on ideas on how to reverse population, the
clients the population declined problem?
I think is possibly the biggest risk to civilization. It's certainly one of the biggest risks. First of all, people really need to a lot of people think that there's too many humans on the planet and planet can sustain this number of humans. This is absolutely not true. We could double the population without any meaningful damage to the environment so you can put all the humans on Earth in the city of New York.
But that's the, that's the cross-sectional area of humans. The other foot in the literally for the City of New York with one-on-one, Floyd room, the high-rises. And if you are playing flat, you look down. And you say what percentage of the time am I? If I were to drop a ball that would let where that ball would hit a person.
Basically zero.
Even in a city like LA but you think oh that's a crowded City. But so looking at from above, what's the cross sectional area of humans? Relative to the rest of the ground and is much less than 1% and even in La? So we sort of if you're in a big city environment and you see a lot of people sort of oh that's the must be user. Extrapolate that to everywhere but it's actually very rare to see a concentration of humans.
So humans is very spot on earth is very sparsely populated with humans. There's not enough humans far from being too many and
I think people who are sort of operating on the assumption that the population is growing like crazy. When in fact, the opposite is occurring and these numbers are easy to look up. I mean there's from the internet, so yeah.
And with the lowest birth rate in recorded history, last
year. Wow. Yes. Other statistics on your Twitter account. Yeah, I like to see. I tweets have to tie my and I follow you, you know, it's the crazy part. I'll look at your tweets and
you didn't have to like, the latest tweets. Again, if he's going to switch, but yeah, algorithm and lay it
down. It's like I don't go on Twitter, bad.
Church goes band search. But yeah, this is Freddie. Yeah, shado Beni is like, crazy is really bad. What the heck's going on? It's like I don't know. I might really nice things but yeah,
exactly. You you know, like a hate
Monger.
So what the heck are they
doing? It was Kristen and was somebody. Somebody one of my friend I think it was you or Kristen they reply to me with something really nice. All right.
And they got Shadow Bandit. We had a leak. You know, it was. You must have lots of love. Yeah.
Sounds like someone Twitter's doing something Shady. That's not, that's not cool. Not cool. Yeah. Well have is riveting that on Twitter. Shame on
you. Right? What is that? That's not cool. Yeah, don't Shadow Ben Gail. Yeah,
it's like she's awesome. Totally messed
up.
All right, so let's talk Tesla. This been a quite a lot of bills that have been kind of like anti EV are anti Tesla. Going through, put through state governments, some of them went through. I don't know if they, I haven't really followed up with that, but it seems like the goal is that they want to prevent Tesla from doing business. They want to shut down the service dinners and just stop Tesla from serving its customers and most of these bills have been introduced either by dealer associations or former dealerships who are like Congress,
So, what are your thoughts on how dealerships are trying to preserve their way of life? Instead of evolving with the market and the times, like, what's your
2.5? Yeah, it's nice to be expected that in comments, will oppose new entrance to a market and they, you know, if they can't win a fair fight, they'll trying to unfair fight. So I think we'll continue to see opposition to Tesla and
You know, but I think if the other day, if we have the people on our side and we're going to customer supporting us, I think with customer support, but with Tesla owners support, I think, I think will win, most of the battles, We're not gonna win them all. Probably a bit will move when most of them
to say something. I'm just agreeing. Once people, it's very surprised act. Whether its power storage or, of course the vehicle because
The cool the plot of it like the reaction when I went to the plat event last year and then when I flew home taking off in a flight, it's nothing compared to the launch in the Plaid. I'm just saying,
that's super fun. Yeah, I'm is really designed to be. What's the most amount of fun? You can have in a
car? Yeah it's the middle. You did a good job you and the team
did awesome team.
Yeah. So Tesla insurance is making a difference for the customers who switched and you're in several States. Now think it's eight or nine and
'He has the highest average cost of car insurance in the nation. Okay. Yeah. Wait, where are you? We're always either in the highest of the bar store the lowest in the best bits knows Louisiana for you. But but when will test light shirts, expand all 50 States and Canada. And one, Louisiana, get it.
Well, so that insurance is regulated primarily at the state level. So it's a state-by-state thing and the, you have to. So you have to have to jump through a lot of Hoops in every state. And those who take a long time to job that like this, you have to do so many things, you have to do. Like, there's a lot of barriers to entry basically, and and I like some of these barriers to entry are like legit, you can't have like some shady insurance company but then,
And I think some of these regulations are there to protect the existing insurers and and stop new entrance. So they but generally it's a very slow process of getting sort of the various licenses in all the state and every state is different. So it's a paperwork Insanity. So we're expanding as quickly as we can.
And I'm not sure, I'm not sure about Louisiana, but we are eventually we intend to be in all States and Canada and hopefully, the world here.
Yeah, we have the craziest drivers in Louisiana. Yeah.
Well the thing that says insurance is like we it's kind of real time feedback so you can that the more the safer you drive, the lower your insurance rate and that's I think quite a revolution in insurance.
And it also will allow people who likes work hard get insurance if you like under age 25 or maybe good like one bad thing on your drivers record or something and then sometimes you can't get insurance or it's insanely expensive but really the insurance should be proportionate to how good you are a striver house, a few artists driver. And so that's that's the sort of revolutionary element of tells insurance.
It was so fun because I don't drive, I don't know how to drive, I never learned and and you know, like being a first-time driver.
They go crazy, high and yeah, Louisiana be in the highest, you know, they'll be like, they'll be kind of hard, is it? I don't know. I think it's
discriminatory that if you have because you got there. So just love you in with everyone and statistically like you like all new drivers but like some new drivers are going to be much safer than others. And it took really Insurance, just be proportionate to how safe to drive and that's our goal.
So,
So you've said before that Tesla might go on to the mining industry. Is this something you're still considering? I is it on the table or just in the back of your mind?
Well we don't want to go to the mining industry or the sort of refining industry for you. Because the limitation I think is actually more for example with lithium is more lithium refinement than it is the actual mining. So you better take the or that contains lithium and you've got
Find it and get it to retrograde lithium hydroxide or lithium prominent and, and that has to be into extremely pure. Otherwise, you know, you can have a breakdown in the cell like you can't have like impurities in the cell because it will cause the cell to fail. So,
So that the challenge in with up, with a lot of the ingredients into my batteries is is is the processing. It's not the fundamental. Rarity of lithium lithium is very common. It's one of the most common elements on Earth, but you got to turn it into battery, great lithium and that's so that all of that processing that that's where the choke point is.
So yeah, we are. I hope we do not need to get into the Mind versus. I mean, it's won't appreciate like this with there's a limited number of smart, hardworking people that we can say work on this problem or work on that problem. And so if we have people working on this problem, they can't work on that problem. And there's not like some magical source of super talented people.
Perhaps,
he trained at least some of the passion about it to, you know, tell you something love.
Yeah, we're not sitting here sitting around a lot with idle resources saying, I wonder what more we can take on which we, we have to sort of husband, our resources and focus on things that really make a difference. But the overarching goal of Tesla is to accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy and
But the fundamental good of Tesla will be measured or should be measured by how many years did we accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy? And so we want to work on the things that that accelerate sustainable energy. The fastest whatever limiting factors are
Tesla recently had a virtual power plant. Could you tell us a little bit more about how Tesla is working with our cotton? The difference that it is making their
like
Yeah, I mean we've got there are three pillars to a sustainable energy. Future one is electric electric transport. The other is sustainable, power generation, primarily through solar and wind. And the third is stationary battery, energy storage because so the sun doesn't shine all the time and the windows blew all the time. So you gotta, you know, store the energy Wallace.
Shining wind is blowing in the back in the stationary batteries and then those batteries provide power to the grid and we can have a fully sustainable and energy Earth just with those with those three things. So, I Tesla is working on all the three things, the station, your battery part is is a big deal and
we are ramping that up, it's going to be a very big part of our business long term
It's just a, it's a very important part of the total energy solution for us. Our estimate is that you need about 300 terawatt hours of energy storage or said another 3,000, gigawatt hours, so, sorry, through 300,000 gigawatt hours. So,
other people may come up with different numbers but in order to fully transition Earth including all electricity transport and and Heating
I think it's probably around around that number.
So, that's a lot of batteries that need to be up to get made. Yeah. And if you assume a battery life, before it gets recycled of twenty years roughly, then you need 15 terawatt-hours a year of annual production, steady state.
So, 15,000 gigawatt hours here, I think, like, your current production is much less than that. I think we might be approaching 1000. GB, H social or thereabouts this point and and uh, this is like, my sort of Master Plan, part three is about scaling, like, how do we scale?
Let's get to. How do we get to that fully sustainable?
Economy, fully sustainable energy economy and and and what what times do we need of what materials and and what is the, maybe the best way to get all of those materials and turn them into batteries. With the fundamental governor of the rate at which we can transition to sustainability is the rate at which we can grow the output of silico of Lithium-ion batteries,
okay?
I've been following along with the virtual power plants and our got and Gail has really been like covering it on her blogs to I think that's awesome. And if those go pretty well on Earth, God says hey we're going to allow BPS. Now I'd like to see them in the across the Deep South because I like the Deep South is kind of like the most neglected part. We're like the hottest part of the country and the most hardest hit, you know, with all the disasters and stuff, you know, we could like, you know, it would be cool to see Tesla and
These partner up across these areas as well to do demonstrations and workshops.
If I go absolutely gonna be a game changer for Texas, is I really Texas complete and this really? I do I think they're very receptive to it. Yeah. It's inspiring to see, you know, because Texas, you know, Texas grid is completely separate from every like the rest of the nation and that's like its weakest part. I was just we were talking about this. I started with that's like the weakest part of Texas, Texas is the grid. And now here comes Tesla trying to strengthen that weakest part, you know,
No. Yeah, the batteries are helpful even without sustainable energy because they can let me sort of load balance the group The Grid. So if you have power spikes, the batteries can absorb the power Spike. If you just sort of dips or to safety, if you have to, there's a drop in power or an increase in power, like the power fluctuations, the batteries can smooth it out and so the potatoes will sort of mega pack and our walls and stuff can be really helpful for stay.
Iseman, great. Even in the absence of sustainable energy. Yeah, you can you
can you talk at all a little more about like the distributed energy resources or like how this Factory could be protected in the event of a disaster or emergency?
I think that thing was going to be. It shows batteries a combination of large batteries at the you took sort of utility scale batteries that were very begin.
Relations like we're just did a big thing with PG&E at Moss Landing in California, which is going to be very important for maintaining our kind of California and there's a number of other installations happening. And then at the local level, you got the power walls that collectively can stabilize the grid within a neighborhood. So the combination of
Centralized batteries with mega pack and distributed batteries at homes and businesses with the powerwall working together. Can have very positive effect in making sure the power stays on
this actually pretty cool. It's really cool. Yeah, I think I think it gives people hope. I think it has really bring happiness when we talk about how much we depend on.
Energy. Yeah, for just about everything.
Absolutely energy. Is the foundation of the economy? Civilization wouldn't would crumble immediately? We didn't have it. Every Mass starvation? Be careful. Yeah, sorry.
I wanted to quickly talk about the Tesla Justice. First of all it's about time like y'all should have been had that of all the drama on especially with all the like short selling and just all the stuff that they put people through.
Yeah, mitosis just under Relentless attack from so many, it's crazy. Yeah. So so I think like we just have to have like a strong litigation group that fights back essentially.
Yeah, yeah that's good. How's the?
The planning on that is get, is there anything you can share about that?
Yeah, we're a lot of really talented lawyers, have sort of sent in their resume or, and, and we're actually going through that, and we're going to be hiring a bunch of people who responded to my choice.
That's good. Yeah,
we we definitely just thought we were done just constantly attack
its but yeah, it is. I you are. Yeah.
The conspiracies I see on Twitter from people who like really hate you and I hate Tesla are just nuts. Like is like, you're raising them up with a good
stuff over there. Really is after twist themselves into a pretzel here and like it's like what exactly what diabolical think do they think I'm like in the factory trying to make
yelling cars. Yeah.
Like you could just literally see it. Yeah. Not like you know you know
like
To fight the flood and the negativity. You know, that's what that think the drawing videos were really important. Yeah. You know.
And then they said the the yeah I mean it's just crazy said that like a Goodwill in wouldn't get felt like you would get approvals. Yeah. We're like making a thousand cars a week.
That's the first congratulations.
But I mean I was just like a lot of great hard work. People are Tesla and you know, so because super it's actually really hard to make cars. So
So, the whole supply chain of production processes, extremely difficult. As you probably heard me say before, it's like relatively speaking, making a prototype is easy. We can make a prototype, practically anything in six months with maybe 100 people. But to get that to volume production and try to have the price be as affordable as possible. You know, did have sort of positive gross margin. So you're not operating at a loss. That is that takes 10,000 people at.
Two years and that's faster than that's like two to three times faster than the rest of Industry. So vastly more difficult to manufacture them to create prototypes. It's like it's like you're not even remotely comparable but in general I think met factoring exonerated and like manufacturing used to be really cool in the US and they're like we came for some reason. I think kind of uncool for like quite a long time and we're just a lot of talented people.
We went in other directions, but I sure hope a lot more talented people. Get it to me factoring because that's like, you know, where you're making the products that people use and enjoy. It's like, you know, it's like I could just generally think those both both the compliment on the criticism. But there are, there are too many smart Americans in finance and law.
So I'm saying they're smart as I'm also saying that the committee could connect considering what be doing manufacturing instead of financial law. Yeah. I think we have with probably too many lawyers in the in the United States and and and too many people in finance and and their talents would just be much better applied to very factoring.
So yeah, making some people need an and I love.
What is the next step in EV technology that would make it even friendlier to the environment and better for the economy. What do you think that is?
And I think it's really just about scaling up. Yeah so can we make enough like right now? We cannot make enough cars to sell Spider-Man. So we're going to grow production capacity and looking ahead. We need to make sure that
exit the raw materials from a mining and refining Southpoint are there to support future growth
And the really limp the limiting factor is the rate at which we can increase battery production so that's the best. That's what really matters. I wouldn't say that there's like some attitude I don't think there's any technology breakthrough needed. It's about scale. Hmm that's a tremendous amount of
work. Let's talk about Ai and optimist. So I know very little about Ai and what I've learned I've learned from you and Tesla actually be able to tell me
Years ago. Hey, you're going to be interviewing Elon Musk about a I will lick you like you lost your mind, right? Yeah. That's how I little I know, but I'm learning and I am curious. How close do you think we are too? General intelligence, or we already there.
What's going on? I don't think we're quite there for artificial general intelligence in a sense if that's defined as intelligence, that exceeds humans in every way. Okay, so we're not quite there yet, but we're headed in that. I mean, we're, you know, if progress continues that's
What will happen will have digital intelligence that exceeds human intelligence in every way and I hope that that the the AI is nice to us.
What are the chances?
I mean I've lost a lot of sleep thinking about AI as a exercise risk originally. I'm like, I don't know what hey I think we're just gonna hope that it's good and try to stir in a good direction.
And I think that probably should be a regulatory agency that oversees Advanced AI because it's a public safety risk. And and generally what were you got? A public safety risk. You won't have regulatory oversight. Just makes it true. No, companies are cutting corners or do an unsafe things type of thing.
But it's advancing quickly you know for Tesla we're just kind of looking for the kind of AI that can drive way safer than a human and we're almost there. But that's just that's a sort of simple that's like a utility as utility function Inside. It's A Hard problem. But it's I think it's like the car's not going to sort of suddenly decide. I want to take over the world, you know? Yeah. It's really going to work. Take you to your
destination that battle on what is the battle? And it was about time.
Right. It's the Tesla car is take you to work against your will or something like that. Yeah but I like the idea of it actually like if you pass out then it taking you to the hospital and just yeah. Yeah. Just to the ER you know and so
you have like a heart attack or stroke or something's wrong. I seizure the car can figure that out and take you to. Yeah.
Save lives. Yeah, yeah. Totally. He already does. But yeah, say more.
Yeah. I mean, there's already like a lot, a lot of cases where people have like, you know, fainted or just otherwise just lost, you know, lost Consciousness. Yeah. Seizures absolutely. And because the car was on autopilot, they're they're alive and and forbidden have autopilot they might be dead or they might have run someone over
and I remember. And I actually wrote an article about this you
Actually inspired by an adult by an accident that happened. I think it was a 2014 create
this. Yeah, exactly. So the one of the things that really convinced me that we need to go as fast as possible with autonomy is was that we had a Tesla owner in the Bay Area. He fell asleep at the wheel and ran over cyclists and killed cycling.
And I was like, well, work that that carbon autopilot the cyclist was still be alive. So we gotta hustle and make what about work. And then more recently, terrible tragedy jamiestravels wife was run over. I remember you. All right? Yeah, again, sort of driver truck driver fellas. I think fell asleep on the opposite side of the road and the truck veered across the road, and she was likely on that.
The far side of the road and sugar good killed by the truck.
Yeah. My heart went out to hands. Yeah. Yes, I remember reading that it was just horrible to read.
Yeah. So you know, this is directly affecting people, we know, it's not like people, we don't know. It's like, it's a very. So I think if that's, so if that truck had been on, autopilot JB's wife still be alive. So we gotta go, it's an important.
Life-saving technology. There's over a million people that die every year and car accidents. And I think on about 10 million that are severely injured like like you know we like to lose a limb or have have severe pain for the rest of your life type of thing and
You know, so there's a lot of good that can be done with will try to make think I think we'd probably improve those things by a factor of 10, like, maybe 10 times better, at least
I will tell you SSD beta kind of saved my life when I came back. Alright, so when I flew back from Austin, from the Cyber Rodeo, I took my neighbor was supposed to pick me up. They had him, everybody should I say, okay, we just call it Luber and my Uber driver was a Tesla owner with FST beta and he actually followed me on Twitter. We were just kind of like, it was like a Spider-Man me Mom.
But without us being each other. And so FSD beta took me home from the airport in Baton Rouge and along the way to cycle. It's literally like came Outta nowhere is like it. Stopped about this Peter something and it handled it beautifully. So flawlessly. And I was like, man, I wish we could have got this on video, you know, like but I wouldn't even expecting to be in fsdb it. I just came off a flight, you know, I just wanted to get home, you know? So but it was cool and it happened like one right after the other and then it's all pedestrian-only.
Satis tree that looked like they were trying to cross do is slow down to stop, Moses? Really cool. Kind of experiencing that and see in the car, just like, up, I see you. I'm going to stop for you, you know. It was really cool, you know? And we didn't see the cyclist had had it been him driving, who knows what would have happened? Sure.
Yeah, absolutely. It's
tragic. Yeah, that never, I'm pretty sure we would have been fine but those cyclist. Yeah. Yeah, no, yeah,
yeah. It tells a lot of Pardon and a 50 of saved, a lot of lives and prevent a lot of injuries
already. Yeah, he has a really has there's so many stories like that's what I don't get. I all these new stories talking about this car just kill somebody on AI or whatever I don't autopilot I'm like, no, it's they don't kill people like that whole
And fight and it frustrates me because I'm like, if you do your research, you'll see more stories of Tesla's, saving lives and not taking them, you know, I'm fat. I don't think there's any case that is actually actually took a life the way they make it out to
be. It's so they're not in the sense that like the card steered itself into a tree. Yeah. Out of nowhere type of thing that that's not having the best of my knowledge. The obvious like basic autopilot, is not meant to be a full self driving and we, you know, we
You have to acknowledge every time you use it, that you still need to pay attention to the road because it's not ready for yet for it's not right. It's like, it's already yet where you can't pay attention, we say every time you enable it will pop up a message saying, you must pay attention to the environment. So,
It's also important to say like what a pilot or for self-driving. It will not mean that accidents go to 0, it's not possible. If you have a look, you know, law of large numbers and billions of Miles traveled that you said that it's perfect. Perfect, is not, it's not possible. What really matters is, is it substantially safer than a person driving on average, and that is the case. So the, but when we say,
Not on this roof. What about self-driving past? I Was Won by a lot of people that it's like, even if you save 90% of the lives, the 10% of lives, you didn't save, will sue you, and that's true.
So yeah, the people let's use lives were saved. They don't know. The lives were saved. Sometimes they
do but but you're still doing it though. Yeah, yeah. That's my, you
know, it's the right thing to do for sure. Yeah.
And as I speak, so about your character and of course Tesla's character as a whole. Yeah
I mean I think we always want to do the the reality of goodness should be favored obviously above the perception of it
which is want to share a special. Thank you to Elon musk's Tesla. And his team's for not only allowing me to
Visit you get Texas again. But to interviewee Lon I think his work is important for Humanity. Elon is somebody inspired by the problems that the majority of us don't even think about as we go about our daily lives, I learned a lot from interviewing him and my hope is that you do as well. His dedication and his passion for his work is inspiring for all of us and it reminds us that we all have a purpose in life. Something that brings us the sense of fulfillment and of doing what
Here to do, Elon Musk has done a lot of good in this world. And I'm honored that he joined me here on getting Stone, a podcast about gems and minerals, most of the time.
Hey, this is getting Stone.
