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Elon Musk Interviewed by Tesla Owners, Hears from a Former Professor (youtube.com) 93

Posted by EditorDavid from the Stanford-never-forgets dept.
In June a YouTube channel called "Tesla Owners Silicon Valley" ran an hour-long interview with Elon Musk. (Musk begins by sharing an example of the "comedically long" list of things that can disrupt a supply chain, remembering an incident where a drug gang shoot out led to the mistaken impounding of a nearby truck that was delivering parts for a Tesla Model S factory -- ultimately shutting down Model S production for three days.)

There's some candid discussions about the technology of electric cars - but also some surprisingly personal insights. Musk also reveals he's been thinking about electric cars since high school, as "the way cars should be, if you could just solve range... People will look back on the internal combustion car era as a strange time. Quaint." And then he remembers the moment in 1995 when he put his graduate studies at Stanford "on hold" to pursue a business career, reassuring Stanford professor William Nix that "I will probably fail" and predicting an eventual return to Stanford. Nix had responded that he did not think Musk would fail.

It turns out that 27 years later, now-emeritus professor William Nix heard the interview, and typed up a fond letter to Elon Musk at SpaceX's headquarters in Texas. Nix complimented Musk on the interview, noting Musk's remarks on the challenges in using silicon for the anodes of electric batteries. "About 10 years ago we at Stanford did research on the very issues you described. Indeed, it almost seemed like you had read all the papers."

Musk's hour-long interview with the group was followed by two more hour-long interviews, and since then the group has been sharing short excerpts that give candid glimpses of Musk's thinking. (The overwhelming focus is solving full self-driving," Musk says in one clip. "That's essential. That's really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero.")
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Elon Musk Interviewed by Tesla Owners, Hears from a Former Professor More

Elon Musk Interviewed by Tesla Owners, Hears from a Former Professor

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  • Full driverless for cars as a service (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Camembert ( 2891457 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @10:43PM (#62809977)
    Eventually the full autonomous driving challenge will be solved and that will signal the rise of cars as a service, even more so than Uber, The cars can plan charging when they have no passengers. Really why buy a car if you can use an autonomous car? Rumour is that Apple is also thinking in this direction for their eventual autonomous car.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by danda ( 11343 )

      I don't believe it will ever be solved in any meaningful way. Only for the most artificial conditions.

      Humans exercise judgement based on a lifetime of experience that lifeless computers will never be able to match.

      At some point money will run out, and people will realize this.

      • Re:Full driverless for cars as a service (Score:4, Informative)

        by Linux Torvalds ( 647197 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @11:26PM (#62810045)

        Humans kill about 30,000 other humans every year "exercising judgement based on a lifetime of experience" in the US alone.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by danda ( 11343 )

          Take any FSD "AI" in development today, and replace all the human drivers in the world with that AI, so it is doing the same exact trips in the same exact conditions with no "safety driver": darkness, rain, snow, kids and animals in the street, off-road driving, etc.

          Let's see what the numbers are like then eh? me, I'll be on foot, a bike, or a horse.

          Wake me up when even a SINGLE car is doing FSD to any destination the passenger wants within a given country with NO SAFETY DRIVER at ANY time of day in AL

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by danda ( 11343 )

            btw, I was an early proponent of automated cars. I watched the 1st Darpa Challenge and even wrote a little code for one of the teams in the 2nd one. I've been watching and thinking about this since the 90's. Since 2015 or so, I've been saying its too hard, and is not going to happen in a meaningful way. At least not the vision where we just pile grandma and kids into the car and send them off.

            Still waiting, and fanboys are still making the same noises.

            Time will tell who is right. or maybe it already

          • That would be easy to do in Phoenix; they don't have any actual seasons in the way you're thinking, and unlike my new home of Los Angeles, somebody actually knew what they were doing when they designed the roads, and the city actually maintains them too. And if you feel like walking, you can do that too because nobody's permanent dwelling ever occupies the sidewalk forcing you to walk on to a busy street in order to go around it.

          • Can we expect algorithms to have imperfect responses in the worst case situations, yes. A good system would not allow itself to be used in situations where it can not safely operate in the same way that the safety switches are on heavy equipment to prevent operation when humans are present. Tesla's Autopilot has some of this present, but it does miss some really critical problems like sharp turns.

            You don't need full level 5 self driving to reduce the number of fatalities. Level 3 with aggressive driver warn

      • Re:Full driverless for cars as a service (Score:5, Insightful)

        by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Monday August 22, 2022 @12:23AM (#62810117)

        Only for the most artificial conditions.

        Asphalted roads *already* are "very artificial conditions", so you'd have to be pretty hypocritical about artificial conditions to reject some of them.

        Humans exercise judgement based on a lifetime of experience that lifeless computers will never be able to match.

        Yeah, one obvious problem with this is that every human being has his own "lifetime experience" which other humans don't partake in, and that each human's experiences die with him, whereas the experience gaining of computers can be amortized over their whole fleet, with every vehicle gaining every other vehicle's experiences.

        Yes, one might argue that it certain things won't happen for quite some time. To argue that they will never happen seems like an extraordinary claim, though.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by danda ( 11343 )

          Given that after all these years of R&D there still does not exist a single FSD vehicle that I can hop in and it will drive me across the country day and night in the rain... as a human can do... well it seems like arguing that it will happen is the extraordinary claim.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          ...the experience gaining of computers can be amortized over their whole fleet, with every vehicle gaining every other vehicle's experiences...

          Car 1: Guys, today I've squashed a meat sack, let me show you how it's done.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Don't buy into Musk's hype. His cars don't have advanced AI drivers that learn from the millions of miles driven by Tesla owners.

          Autopilot is a bunch of algorithms that plan a path for the car to take. Some machine learning is used to identify objects from video, and to create depth information from a single camera.

          That's how they all work. Waymo is the same, for example. Machine learning for interpreting sensor data, and the rest is human designed algorithms.

          Tesla's problem is that their sensors are crap (

          • Yeah, literally everyone at tesla knows that is true except one person. I'll let you guess who. But they get paid to work on challenging tasks so they only care a little.

          • Don't buy into Musk's hype ...

            I haven't said a word about Musk, so I fail to see the connection to my comment.

            As for *how* the knowledge is encoded, whether by hand or automatically, that is irrelevant, too. What is relevant is whether that knowledge can be easily shared with other entities or not. In case of humans, this is not possible; there's no "brain uploads". On the other hand, in case of computers, it's trivial.

            Tesla's problem is that their sensors are crap (just cameras)

            In that case all humans are crap, too. Yes, ideally one would want as much different information as possible. On the ot

        • FYI, not every thing a human learns from an experience is good. For instance when my 3rd grade teacher was in a bad accident, she learned seatbelts are worthless and claimed to never wear them again. I feel like this is a much more common occurrence. Part of the problem with tesla right now is, that they fired all the humans that were supposed to review these learnings before making it into the neuro net. So good luck robots

      • Re:Full driverless for cars as a service (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DeBaas ( 470886 ) on Monday August 22, 2022 @03:13AM (#62810291) Homepage

        I wouldn't underestimate how fast technology can develop. I'm 52, When I was young, we didn't even have a calculator in the house (portable calculators became commonplace when I was about 10) and look where we are now. Having said that, it's true that there are some major hurdles to overcome. Everyone seems focused on safety, but that may not be the hardest part. Getting to a point where a car using FSD can go through the centre of Amsterdam nearly as fast as a human driver is much harder. Achieving that it doesn't run into someone can probably be done, but preventing that it ends up in a deadlock within a few minutes not so much.
        I'm looking at what insurance companies will do. The bean counters don't care, they eventually will only look at something like liability per driven mile. And if liability and the cost to the insurance companies is determined equally compared to human drivers, it will give a much more objective verdict on what is safer.

        I am hoping though that we'll get there. I have seen too many people still driving at an age when they really should have stopped. If they're lucky they are only a nuisance to other drivers and don't end up hurting others. I hope that when I get to that age, which is just a few decades away, FSD is real and I can hand over the wheel to AI.
        The moment an FSD car can get safely and nearly as fast as a human driver throught the city centre of Amsterdam, I'll open a bottle to celebrate. When I'm allowed to have it take me home after drinking I'll open a few more ;-)

      • Humans exercise judgement based on a lifetime of experience that lifeless computers will never be able to match.

        in elementary school (public), some 30 years ago, a school textbook had a picture of someone driving a car, and included a little blurb that stated, "a driver traveling 60mph takes in more information per second than the fastest super-computer".

        that always stuck with me, because even as a kid, it sounded like antiquated BS.

        anyway, think of super computers back then, and think of them now.
        think about the phone in your pocket. can you even beat the CPU in chess at the highest difficulty?
        you really think

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by danda ( 11343 )

          yes.

          a computer will never be able to recognize real world objects such as a child, a dog, a rabbit, an empty cardboard box, a piece of paper, a bird, a pedestrian, and prioritize their importance and likely movements the way that a human being can, and worse yet in adverse weather and road conditions. the end.

          So I'll pass, but I'm happy to let you be a guinea pig though.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by quonset ( 4839537 )

      Eventually the full autonomous driving challenge will be solved and that will signal the rise of cars as a service, even more so than Uber,

      Congratulations. That full autonomous driving will cost you $15,000 [marketwatch.com]. For its service.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ichthus ( 72442 )

      Really why buy a car if you can use an autonomous car?

      Because I'm clean, and other people are filthy pigs.

  • FSD price hike (Score:3)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @11:00PM (#62809997)
    As recently as 2019 so-called Full Self Driving was $5000, now after the second price hike this year it's now $15,000. $15K! To me that price seems crazy. If they ever get it to the point of not needing human supervision, that would be one thing, but for what it is I have to wonder how many will opt for it.

    As it is, it kinda seems like Tesla's progress has stalled.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by danda ( 11343 )

      I hope customers are suing... and winning.

    • >$5000, now after the second price hike this year it's now $15,000. $15K!

      A bit higher than McDonalds' price hike, $9.99 for this "bundle up" meal in 2020 to $19.95 the other day. But then again McD will probably keep raising their prices in smaller percentages more often, and Tesla raises it in chunks.

  • Speaking as a stockholder ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @11:13PM (#62810023)

    "That's essential. That's really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero."

    I really wish he would stop saying this. Even more I would like to have him retract it.

    It isn't mysterious what he is trying to say but he has got to find a better way to say it. Yes, if Tesla achieves its FSD objective (with vision only!) it will be a product that really puts Tesla in a technology class all by itself. No question. It won't be "just another" EV maker. But ..

    Without that you have built up multi-billions of brick-and-mortar factories with beyond state-of-the-art manufacturing tech on 3 continents that are cranking out billions of dollars of best-of-class product at profit margins far beyond any competitor. Revenues are limited only by supply. The backlog never shrinks and there is no end in sight for the demand with basically zero advertising. At least two new major groundbreaking products starting to ship this year.

    That is worth zero? Come on. The execs at every major auto company in the world would slice off and offer one of their testicles to own a P&L statement and market forecast like what Tesla has.

    • Re:Speaking as a stockholder ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Monday August 22, 2022 @12:28AM (#62810127)

      best-of-class product

      When I think best-of-class vehicles, I think of the manufacturer that will hold shit together with 2x4s when it encounters supply chain issues.

      profit margins far beyond any competitor

      This second part explains why the first part isn't true.

      • And that was the better of the two jokes on the story.

        I sure as heck ain't gonna waste the time watching Musk's self-aggrandizing BS.

        But I have a funny reference on the underground tunnel thing. It's a comic book called The Mysterious Underground Men by Osamu Tezuka. The heroes build a rocket train that tunnels through the earth! But the android rabbit dies in the end from his burns as they passed the center. Originally published in Japanese in 1948.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • >It could collapse.

        It could, but it seems unlikely. After all, the only thing company valuation really offers to the company itself is borrowing potential.

        Tesla may be over-leveraged, but that's existing debt unaffected by valuation. So long as they can continue to service that debt at the agreed-upon rates it's fine. The question is whether they could continue producing cars and batteries (their new batteries may actually be their real cash cow) profitably enough to service that debt without being ab

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by RJFerret ( 1279530 )

      > best of class

      Erm, lousy fit/finish, lousy reliability, overly expensive repair where easier options could have been designed (saw an electrician break down a Tesla headlight assembly, yikes).

      Meanwhile others are surpassing with autonomous driving using better sensor arrays to cover a broader variety of conditions. Traditional auto manufacturers are also moving forward with much higher quality standards and less expensive repair and more manufacturing experience.

      Tesla did good getting electric car as a

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        Yes, Tesla is also worst in class, it's all about how "class" is defined. This is how you spot a Tesla Stan.

        What's more important is that, going forward, Tesla will increasingly become worst in class REGARDLESS of how you define class. They will lose whatever headstart they have in drivetrain technology / charging infrastructure and will not catch up in making quality vehicles because they have no interest. Instead, they want to leverage the idea that they alone can delivery FSD when there's no reason to

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Tesla will increasingly become worst in class REGARDLESS of how you define class. They will lose whatever headstart they have in drivetrain technology / charging infrastructure and will not catch up in making quality vehicles because they have no interest.

          There's signs this is already the case. The Supercharger network in North America, once held as the premier example of a charging network, is becoming increasingly irrelevant because it's basically proprietary - and Tesla owners ought to be worried becau

      • Re:Speaking as a stockholder ... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Monday August 22, 2022 @09:49AM (#62810841)

        Is it?

        I've been following Sandy Munroe for a while now (he does tear downs and analysis of a wide range of vehicles - posting overviews on Youtube, and selling the in-depth reports to manufacturers). And while his teardown of early model Teslas agreed with you 100%, it sounds like they've been improving rapidly, and the later models, especially in the last year or so, have really impressed him.

        • It takes a long time to repair a broken reputation.

          When I heard about the Roadster, I totally wanted a Tesla. Over the next 15 years they proved to me time and time again that their priorities don't mesh with mine. Even in the midst of "improving quality", they still regularly do some boneheaded things, proving that their "improvement" isn't consistent and based on solid policy.

          Don't even get me started on their idiotic design stunts, like full touchscreens and steering yokes. What they really want to ma

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      He's saying it because Tesla is massively over valued based on promises of future revenue from Full Self Driving. The robotaxi service announced a few years ago was supposed to be a major stream of revenue, and Musk said it would launch within a year.

      There's also the big liability of all those "fully self driving" cars that have already been sold, and whose owners have been waiting for the software update for 6 years. At some point they are going to realize they have been duped and want their money back, pl

    • That is worth zero?

      What you have to take into consideration is how the market reacts to auto companies. If they have a great quarter, exceed all their expectations... the market does nothing. If they have a slow quarter, but expect to make it up next quarter, the market reacts and they lose value. Meanwhile, if a "tech company" puts out a press release that suggests they have something new coming, investors fall over themselves to throw money at them. So while this is true in general, it's also definitely true for auto compan

      • >Their manufacturing tech is not any more advanced that anyone else's.

        I've got to disagree. The giga-casting components radically simplifies construction, eliminating hundreds of parts, and they've taken a large number of other steps to further simplify things I want to say they currently have something like half the parts as a competing vehicle.

        If you care about manufacturing it's worth watching some of Sandy Munro's analyses of various vehicles. They post overview videos on Youtube for those of us wh

        • The giga-casting components radically simplifies construction, eliminating hundreds of parts

          It eliminates hundreds of parts compared to a specific design of car that is being used because it is cheaper than Elon's plan when you have sufficient volume. It wouldn't make sense to make Teslas without all of the cast parts. It's not however clear that it actually makes sense to make those big complicated castings.

          Consider the Audi A8. It has a full aluminum unibody which is made from a mix of parts made in basically every way (cast, stamped, you name it) and then joined together in basically every way

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by steveha ( 103154 )

            It's not however clear that it actually makes sense to make those big complicated castings.

            Sandy Munro doesn't agree with you. He says the "gigacasting" is very obviously better than the alternative.

            "I'm telling you what... Tesla is showing the way."

            https://youtu.be/CBEWNnprDww?t=3493 [youtu.be]

        • Also, former VW CEO indicated that Tesla requires 1/3 the man-hours/hours in assembly as VW's best facility.

          Tesla has a fair number of innovations like the structural battery pack that allows the battery module, front seats, carpet, and center console all to be lifted into the car from below. They are far from perfect, but they do have some creative innovations going on.

  • Musk doesn't allow negative interviews (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @11:32PM (#62810051)

    Musk isn't an idiot, but he has created an environment surroundded by fans, butt kissers and yesman. Where debate is fine as long as it doesn't hit his ego.

    Reporters get kicked out of offical press events if they happen to ask the wrong question. Such as "who is responsible if a car with FSD crashes"

    While I admire him for what he has done, you need to take interviews like this as considered fan service, vs getting actual insight. Success and wealth at that level changes people and often not for good. Because that wealth gives him power at a massive level, where normal life checks and balances do not apply.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Debate is a side show, as is technical merit. The debate is whether Tesla is a great company or the greatest company, other discussion is unwelcome.

      At its core, Tesla is a con that Musk runs to extract money from investors. That's who Musk is, he is not and has never been an engineer. He sells people on the lie that the auto industry is a collection of idiots and they he personally is more innovative than the rest of them put together. This appeals to a VC who thinks he will buy into market supremacy with

    • Politicians also don't take criticism very well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Monoman ( 8745 )

      "who is responsible if a car with FSD crashes"

      This is the exact reason I will not buy into FSD until the laws are figured out. Even if Tesla and every other car maker have FSD solved and in their cars tomorrow, it will take years for the government to agree on who the responsible party is when the a car is driving itself.

      Having said that, Driving a car is not my favorite thing to do. I hope I do see the say when we can all be passengers in cars.

      • One option that would change my mind is if the manufacturer made a legally binding statement that they accept 100% of responsibility for all crashes caused by FSD. And then not trying to weasel out of it.

        That is after all the *only* assignment of liability that makes any sense, and Musk has made non-binding statements to that effect in the past. Statements I wouldn't rely on given the effort Tesla has put into weaseling out of autopilot liability.

        Granted, there's been a lot of autopilot abuse that absolut

    • he has created an environment surroundded by fans, butt kissers and yesman.

      His companies, plural, would not be as successful as they are if this were true.

      Reporters get kicked out of offical press events if they happen to ask the wrong question.

      There is a lot of media against him because he's disrupting many industries (oil, internal combustion cars, energy, rockets, etc.), plus Tesla doesn't pay for advertising; calling them "reporters" is generous.

      Such as "who is responsible if a car with FSD crashes"

      Musk has said if it's a design flaw, Tesla would be responsible. The advantage of FSD is that it is constantly improving, but people aren't becoming better drivers. I'd rather we take the couple of orders of magnitudes fewe

      • Yup, you lost me at "There is a lot of media against him because he's disrupting many industries..". If you consider this an excuse for that kind of question, you might be a fan boy. (Jeff Foxworthy)
        • I am a fan boy - Tesla is accelerating the switch to clean energy technologies. That doesn't mean I'm wrong; media will cater to its advertisers, and Legacy Auto buys a lot.

  • Short sighted (Score:2, Interesting)

    by clambake ( 37702 )

    "Musk also reveals he's been thinking about electric cars since high school, as "the way cars should be, if you could just solve range..."

    Here's an idea. If long-range public transportation, such as high speed rail, were convenient and ubiquitous then shorter-range electric vehicles for everyday in-city use would instantly feel a lot more viable. He's not a visionary, he's a tunnel-visionary.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "...he's a tunnel-visionary." ...and a revisionist historian. Musk doesn't reveal anything other than his latest con and his massive sociopathy.

      • The hate is strong in this one.

        Musk has also produced some of the best cars ever made, starting from zero and without 100 years of car manufacturing experience behind him. He still can't produce them fast enough to meet demand.

        He's also launching two or three relaunchable rockets per week at the moment leaving all the "professionals" in the dust.
         

    • > If long-range public transportation...

      I'm not so sure. Public transportation has a persistent "last mile" problem. If it were ubiquitous enough to eliminate that (unlikely in the US given our love of urban sprawl), then it's not clear that there'd be much demand for a short-range car either.

  • surprisingly personal insights (Score:3, Insightful)

    by real_nickname ( 6922224 ) on Monday August 22, 2022 @01:22AM (#62810171)
    This man is mainly a toxic social media influencer. Stop listening him.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jiriw ( 444695 )

      Stop using social media then. There wouldn't be 'toxic social media influencer(s)' (debatable) if there was no social media 'hype'. It's the crowd that 'elevates' the speaker, not the other way around.
      Yes, I still remember a time when the pinnacle of social media were bulletin board systems you had to dial in to and IRC (which I actively used) was the new kid on the block. It all went down hill from there. And nowadays, with 10 different messaging apps and another slew of group communication systems on my p

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Being toxic on social media is the only way to get noticed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Twinbee ( 767046 )
      He's on his own in terms of being a CEO who expresses very different opinions to the vast majority of celebrities out there and ALL other CEOs. We don't need to all think the same. Sometimes there's value in going against the grain (for balance if nothing else), and if anyone's going to come under that category, it's Elon.
      • He doesn't express opinion, he is all about market manipulation and harassment: thai diver, elonjet account, its own employees, tesla stocks, crypto.... As a CEO he want people to work more and at the office, hardly very different from other CEO.

  • You don't actually own a Tesla, you have a license to drive one with optional subscriptions

  • "About 10 years ago we at Stanford did research on the very issues you described. Indeed, it almost seemed like you had read all the papers."

    ... or hired the people who wrote them. He doesn't come up with any of this himself.

  • Technology that is involved in life and death situations can't be buggy. It has to be right. Elizabeth Holmes proved that the "fake it until you make it" Silicon Valley ethos doesn't work for medical devices. Hopefully Elon Musk doesn't prove that with self driving cars.

    Neural networks do amazing things but explaining their behavior in systems with many hidden layers is problematic at best. For something like identifying family members in a photo album mistakes are acceptable. Explaining why and fixing th

  • Reading this piece and watching Musk work and talk about Tesla and SpaceX confirms that there is a big difference between people like him and Steve Jobs compared to most CEOs and middle managers. It can be summed up with something that Steve Jobs said in an early Apple interview when talking about managing people. Early on, Apple hired a bunch of MBAs to manage teams at Apple and it didn't work at all. He said that these MBAs didn't know how to do anything. They had management knowledge but didn't know

  • I would say that I love my model Y but am very angry at Tesla because they don't sell parts and are hostile to DIY and third party repair. I would suggest that they make all parts as easy to order as it was to order the car. They should also provide full service manuals and training videos free of charge. They should encourage enthusiasts to understand, fix, hack and modify their vehicles. I'm not asking for new rights, I simply want a return of the rights we have always had. Old school cars were open sourc

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