How Elon Musk Took Tesla To Hell And Back With The Model 3

The last time, at least in the United States, a car company achieved mass manufacturing was about a hundred years ago and then Tesla. The point is definitely not to come up with the design of the car, but to build the production system. The difficulty and value of manufacturing is underestimated. It is relatively easy to make a prototype and extremely difficult to reliably mass-produce a vehicle at scale. In 2003, a Silicon Valley startup called Tesla Motors came up with an ambitious plan that would transform the automotive industry. Founders Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning set out to redefine the electric car.

Cars that everyone would like: affordable, ecological and fast. His master plan began with a small volume of expensive but attractive electric sports cars. In 2004, well-known entrepreneur and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk invested millions of his own money and eventually became CEO. Not only are you buying a sports car, you are actually helping to finance the development of mass-market vehicles. In less than 10 years, Tesla launched the groundbreaking Roadster, Model S, and Model X, all paving the way for its first affordable electric car, the Model 3. In 2016, Musk and Tesla seemed unstoppable. Tesla has received almost four hundred thousand orders for its latest car, the Model Three Sedan.

But over the next year, the company struggled to make cars. Tesla was plagued by manufacturing problems, financial losses and volatile decision-making by its CEO. This has been an incredibly long and difficult journey. It has been a huge amount of blood, sweat and tears. Today, Tesla forges ahead with big promises and new vehicles, despite endless lawsuits, growing competition, and inconsistent manufacturing goals. But Wall Street doesn't seem to care. Tesla now at session highs. It's up twenty-one percent on the day above nine hundred dollars a share. The ambitions have never been higher and the stakes have never been higher for Elon Musk and Tesla.

We created Tesla to make a difference in the world. The world desperately needs sustainable transportation. We want to show that electric cars are, in fact, better than gasoline cars. Tesla was founded in 2003 and was not founded by anyone who had automotive experience. It was the consumer electronics, software and battery technology guys. When we founded Tesla, there were two things in the world that everyone knew about electric cars: They're dead and they suck. Nobody wants to drive one, that's why they're dead. They are slow and short range. They are ugly. If you look at the original business plan we wrote for Tesla, we described the Tesla Roadster in great detail.

And we said that once this car is successful, the next car we should make will be a large SUV, an expensive SUV or a large sedan. The sedan market is enormously large. It's much, much bigger than the sports car market, the Roadster market. And then below is the Model 3 segment of that market. And if you want to have a big impact, you have to take action there. But you can't start there because the capital requirements are too great and you don't know what you're doing. You know, you have to learn and develop the technology along the way.

Everything was hard, everything. We were inventing from scratch. This was something that had never been done before. We had clients who literally said, this is the most exciting thing I've ever been involved in, even though on some level they just wrote a check, but they believed in the vision enough to write that check. And now they are participating in this process that we were going through. And then we meet Elon. Martin and Mark knew that the only other person, perhaps lunatic enough to start something that ambitious and join that kind of EV mission with them, would be a guy like Elon Musk.

As part of the PayPal mafia, he had made a good amount of money in payments software and technology and sold that company to eBay. And he was in Southern California working on an equally ambitious business: SpaceX. One of the great things about pitching to Elon in this context is that, a lot of times, we pitched to VCs and other, you know, angels and they said what you're trying to do is crazy. You know, you're trying to make an electric sports car, that's crazy. And we're introducing you to someone who's actually trying to make rockets. And so, you couldn't really say that.

Right in context, Hh said, oh yeah, I got it. Now we have Martin Eberhard, CEO of Tesla Motors. And, of course, this is one of the great cars, the Tesla Roadster, an electric car that travels two hundred and fifty kilometers on each charge. A test of this. You can hear how quiet it is. There is no sound. You can have a car that is fast and you can have a car that is electric. But having one that is both is what makes electric cars popular. They kicked me off the island and in a pretty rude way.

When I left Tesla, the Roadster was essentially finished and I hadn't been doing anything but Tesla for five years and I thought it would be another five years. And Martin wasn't there anymore, it wasn't as fun. Sports car manufacturer Tesla Motors. Reuters reports that this Silicon Valley electric vehicle plans to go public soon. If it does, it would be the first American automaker to go public since Ford in 1956. Tesla is best known for its $190,000 all-electric Roadster. When Tesla came to the government, they were actually looking for a loan to build his first facility to create sedans.

We ended up lending Tesla four hundred and sixty-five million dollars. And the real premise was to be able to get that industry up and running, the electric car industry. And even to this day, I would say we wouldn't have hybrid and electric cars to the extent that we did if this hadn't proven to be a successful transaction and a successful business opportunity. If we were just making the Roadster and doing powertrain business, we would be profitable as a company, but we are in massive expansion mode. The latest electric car

model

rolls off the Tesla assembly line in California today.

The Tesla Model S, delivery starting today in Fremont, California. Tesla is showing off its newest vehicle, it's called the X. Tesla introduced its Supercharger network. Musk says Tesla could also begin construction on three sites for its gigantic battery factory, or Gigafactory. Not only does he want to bet on this stock, but he wants to bet everything on Tesla. For investors, Tesla has been a wild ride for many reasons. If you look at the history of Tesla stock, it really

took

off from 2010 to 2013. That's when Elon Musk first said, I'm going to build the Model S and then I'm going to build the

model

.

X. Y presented a game plan. And when the Model S first came out, people may have been skeptical beforehand. But when criticism came in that this is a solid vehicle that changes the game plan in terms of how far you can drive an EV and what it feels like to drive an EV, that's when Tesla stock

took

off. In recent years, Tesla stock has been extremely volatile. Sometimes people get carried away with our stock. You know, honestly. If you care about Tesla long term, I think the stock is well priced. If we look at the short term, it is less clear.

Well, I've been calling it cold stock. Last night I said he's like a wide receiver. I mean, you want them in your fantasy, what am I going to say? It is a fantasy action that is reality. I think we have to continue to adopt a wait-and-see approach. Tesla is highly valued right now. You know, Tesla is still a small automaker in a small niche market. The problem for some investors when they look at Tesla is that they see a company that continues to burn cash and constantly ask themselves: when will this company turn a profit and sustain it?

In the eyes of some investors, being profitable for one quarter is not enough. They want to see a company that is solidly profitable quarter after quarter after quarter. Tesla has been on its stock. It has been a common story. There's been a lot of, you know, sentiment and positive sentiment around its CEO and founder, who is a big owner, with 22 percent ownership in Tesla. Elon Musk has become the face of the brand. Tesla fans love him and follow all his business. Mr. Musk, how is he? Congratulations on the promotion. Thank you so much. Those Merlin engines are fantastic.

Oh thanks, I have an idea for an electric jet. You do? Yes. Then we will make it work. I really believed deeply in the vision that the company had and the vision that Elon had set, which was to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. That's what inspired me to join. And I think that's what inspired a lot of people at Tesla to join. I met Elon a couple of times, which was very exciting. The first time I saw him he was wearing a Duff t-shirt from The Simpsons, his beer brand. And I thought this guy is great.

I already know that. Where are you from, boss? Michigan. Oh Michigan, are you in the car business? Oh, no, no. Impression. Elon Musk. Elon Musk? Tesla Elon Musk? Yes. Wow. I love space. I love the idea of ​​space exploration. So all of his SpaceX stuff fascinated me. Solar energy, pretty much everything Elon has done, I loved. So the idea of ​​working for him and having his name on my paychecks was great for me. What an honor to meet you. I am a big fan of Tesla and SpaceX, of all their companies. I'm Howard Wolowitz, Caltech. Nice to meet you Howard.

To the extent that Tesla benefits from Elon's numerous side projects, and SpaceX is not a side project, SpaceX is a huge focus for him, it is a big and serious company. I think you could probably classify Boring Company, Neuralink, OpenAI, Hyperloop, Pravda, and a meme website—anything else that comes from his imagination—as side projects. But there's an argument that what's good for his celebrity is good for the company. People see him as a great visionary genius who is very interested in the details of all these companies, when in reality I see him as a great defender of these causes and a great motivator of people and a great identifier of talent, and he trusts on these people to keep their public perception alive.

But some investors question whether he has enough operational experience and are focusing on Tesla to lead the company in the CEO role. Elon Musk has good news for you. He tweeted that a cheaper mass-market Tesla will start at thirty-five thousand dollars. The company will begin accepting pre-orders for the Model 3 in March. Don't get too excited, Musk warns that production won't begin for another two years. Then moving on from the S and the Do you want to see the car? Well, we don't have it for you tonight. I'm just kidding, of course. Or you won't be able to buy a better car for thirty-five thousand dollars or even close.

One surprising thing about the launch of the Model 3 was the number of pre-orders that came in immediately after the company revealed it. The total number of Model 3 orders in the last 24 hours has exceeded one hundred and fifteen thousand. We found dozens of people lining up outside the automaker's showroom in Chelsea, hoping to put their name on the list for $1,000. Potential buyers can reserve one of Tesla's new affordable vehicles. I got up at 4 in the morning to come here to deposit money on a car that I haven't seen because it's a Tesla. The Model 3 could be the first model that really opens up electric cars to the masses, to the mass market.

The reason I say this is that Tesla has received hundreds of thousands of deposits on this car, numbers the likes of which we have never seen happen with electric cars. It could be a turning point not only for Tesla, but also for the automotive industry. The Model 3 was a big turning point for Tesla because they are starting to get into economies of scale. Making a car aimed at the masses rather than early adopters and people who want to drive a beautiful sports car is a completely different matter than making a high-end niche vehicle. Now how are we going to build these cars?

OK. Good question. Going from announcing a vehicle to building it was a very short period of time, so short that I think Tesla realized this wasn't going to happen as quickly as we expected. Tesla was under a lot of pressure to produce a low-cost car. And as soon as the vehicle design was at least viable enough to show to the public and viable enough to know it could be produced, it was released to the public. Most manufacturers don't release cars that early, they don't release the complete vehicle, they don't give specs, they don't give prices. When that happened, itThe first thing that was really thought about was the manufacturing part, how to build the car.

So when are the deliveries? Well, they will be next year. So I feel pretty confident that it will be next year. Welcome

back

everyone. Today, Tesla is making the first deliveries of its Model 3. And this is the day Tesla fans and customers have been waiting for. Delivery of the first Model 3. The first of Tesla's Model 3 will be delivered over the weekend, but most buyers will have to wait at least a year before getting behind the wheel of Elon Musk's latest creation. Production is growing exponentially, so in August there should be one hundred cars and in September more than 1,500.

And then what happens after that? Well, finally, at the end of December, the production rate, at least according to Elon Musk, will be twenty thousand vehicles. What will be a big challenge for us over the next six to nine months is how do we build a large number of cars? Frankly, we'll be in production

hell

. The Model 3 was expected to be in mass production by the end of 2017, but it wasn't. It was a disaster. And so it was a year of production

hell

where Tesla was scrambling to build these cars for all these people who had low deposits.

When I said manufacturing hell and supply chain hell on Friday, I meant it. I mean, you know, but we know this, we signed up, not blaming hell, because we bought the ticket. One of the things that I think Tesla does that maybe hurts him is that he tries to do everything himself and internally. In the Model 3 process, we decided that we were going to build better cars than any other automaker instead of just building what was kind of an industry standard and guaranteed to work. Tesla's plan to innovate manufacturing was all about technology. They seem to think that humans were the problem and that if only robots were there everything would be better.

We went too far on the automation front and automated some pretty dumb things. We tried to automate the placement and attachment of the lint to the top of the battery pack, which is ridiculous. So we had Flufferbot, which was really an incredibly difficult machine to get working. Machines are not good at collecting lint. Tesla eventually eliminated most of the automation that delivered parts to the line, and they ended up adopting an industry standard of moving them using pallets, forklifts, and things like that, because it was much more reliable, had fewer problems and complications in terms of to take it to scale.

We started running a lot of Model 3, I would say, in November-December 2017. In February-March we started the ramp, acceleration of Model 3 and started running a lot of Model 3. There were probably 500,000 Model 3 orders, so We knew we had a lot of pressure to get those cars out. I think a lot of us were willing to do whatever it took to put up those big numbers because we really wanted this company to succeed. In the process, they were so desperate to get things

back

on track that they ended up building a factory in a tent. They ended up making this outdoor line 100% made by humans.

There are no robots. They don't, they don't do anything. We have a couple of hydraulic lifts, things that help us put tires on the car and put the glass on top, but it's a 100 percent manual line for the Model 3. The company is under tremendous pressure to produce as many cars as possible. . as possible. And so it creates a workplace that can be very chaotic, meaning making changes on the fly. There are workers who are being placed in positions for which they say they have not been trained. They are getting hurt at work. They work long hours and struggle to keep up with these demands.

I've had two cases of heat exhaustion myself, one that was fixed, the other that I basically had to suffer through until I literally got out of line and went outside for 45 minutes because it looked like I had taken a shower. And I was in my paint suit and I was completely soaked. I had to go out because I was sick. They fined me for that, for stepping out of line. Although I had 20 text messages to my boss telling him, you guys are going to take me out of here on a stretcher. I think we should examine them if they are really doing something fraudulent and if they are punishing people or enslaving them.

But things happen in the workplace. The working conditions are harsh. When I worked at Tesla, we worked at the end of the assembly line in a room that had no ventilation or windows. We ate, you know, shitty cereal, we drank shitty coffee. I'm not saying anyone cared. But most people weren't saying, well, I'm not here for that, I'm not here for the cereal, I'm not here for the coffee. I'm here to change the world. They were supposed to be making half a million of those cars a year at the Fremont factory by the end of 2018, and they're not there yet.

As they try to get Model 3 production off the ground, Elon Musk makes a big announcement that Tesla will acquire a company he also helped co-found, SolarCity. Then there's Tesla today, which is offering to acquire SolarCity, and this stock deal valued it at $2.8 billion. Musk is the chairman, the largest shareholder of both companies, as you know, and he calls the combination a no-brainer. We think there's really a huge opportunity here to have a highly integrated sustainable energy company that answers the whole question of sustainable energy, from power generation to storage and transportation. What about the timing of this deal?

We're also talking about SolarCity stock, which may not be as high as it has been over the course of the last few years. All I can say is this: that SolarCity would have gone even lower if it hadn't made this offer. On paper, what Elon Musk laid out made sense. He was going to use SolarCity to increase sales of home solar panels and drive the development of solar technology that could be used in different locations. That hasn't happened. This is a kind of integrated future. You have an electric car, a Powerwall and a solar roof. The key is that it must be attractive, affordable and seamlessly integrated.

I think we really started to see some things get out of hand, no pun intended, with the SolarCity acquisition. And I think that really brought to light how intertwined Elon's personal wealth, self-interest, ego, and brand were in this company. Directions from others and potential conflicts are quite significant. Lyndon Rive, CEO and co-founder, and Peter Rive are brothers and both are Musk's cousins. John Fisher's fund is an investor in SpaceX, of course, another Musk company. Jeffrey Straubel is a Tesla employee and SpaceX investor. Nancy Pfund was a director of Tesla before it went public. By the way, Tesla made an offer six weeks ago, shareholders must not be too happy, although one wonders if it had any idea it was going to do this.

It just seemed too convenient for Tesla to absorb this company that he had financed and run by his cousins ​​and it was going to add enormous financial strain to Tesla and enormous complexity at a time when he already had a lot of complexity to deal with. This is the worst corporate governance I have seen in my career in a company. The SolarCity bailout is simply an abomination and they should be held accountable for it. And they shouldn't be responsible for that, because it was nothing more than a rescue. Let's continue to focus on SolarCity. I mean, by the way, I love Tesla, I have a Tesla too, so I love the car, but let's stay focused.

Exactly. Tesla has gone from production hell to delivery and logistics hell. That tweet was in response to a customer complaint about a delivery delay. But in reality, if that is the case, it will be progress for the company. One problem for Tesla in trying to deliver these vehicles is that they supply customers around the world from a plant in California. Other automakers rely on outsourced delivery companies that will take your car from the factory to the dealership and make sure everything is in good condition. Tesla is doing everything themselves. In fact, they do not work with distributors.

They run all their own stores and service centers. We had wanted a Tesla for a long time and were very excited about it and it made sense for our new journey. But we received the delivery in the dark and couldn't see the vehicle until the next day. The next day I took it to work, it was a bright sunny day and unfortunately showing what was an absolutely horrendous paint job, I have no idea how they got it off the line, how they would get it into the hands of a customer. I mean, it was crazy. Now Tesla has hundreds of thousands of cars on the roads and he's going after a mainstream consumer rather than just early adopters.

They have a much higher service load. And the problem is that they haven't really expanded the service on par with that. I was completely fed up with Tesla to the point that today if they want to touch my car, they can't touch it. Now I will do my own work on my car. As soon as I exceeded the warranty period, the help, kindness and interactions disappeared. They treated me like I didn't even own a Tesla. So in terms of the service part of Tesla, I get nervous. When many owners try to schedule a service appointment, service centers are overwhelmed and appointments can take weeks before a car goes into service.

The reason I started my YouTube channel was to demystify Teslas in general. Tesla wasn't really sharing much information about them in terms of what's inside them and how they worked. So I thought people might be interested in this. So as I started getting in the car more and more, I started taking detailed photos of things and detailed videos. This blue connector goes back to the door. And it just took off from there. This is my Tesla parts warehouse. This is where all the used parts or crash parts are kept, every little bit. I worked at Tesla from May 2009 to February 2013.

I started as a service manager for the Seattle area. Part of the reason people have trouble repairing their cars is that there are not enough parts. Now, specifically with the Roadster, there are no parts. And with newer models, there simply aren't enough parts coming off the assembly line or reproduced to repair the cars sitting in body shops. Here's a local body shop that sometimes has over 100 Model 3s that need paint work. I have no problem with them being vertically integrated. I have no problem with them doing things like they do with cars that are under warranty.

But if they want to be in the mass market, unless they're going to run every service center in every small town, there's no way it's acceptable for people with minor problems to drive and kill an entire day to go to the service center and get Free Keurig coffee. The genesis of the electrified garage was such that many people began contacting me through the YouTube channel, people who wanted to solve problems with their Teslas. And at that time, Tesla was very busy, they didn't have time to make appointments with people. Then they started coming up to me and saying, "Hey, Tesla is too busy to take a look at this or I own a salvage vehicle, can you take a look at my EV?" We expect demand to be really strong and we hope to turn this into a franchise type business and almost work alongside Tesla to repair a lot of their vehicles as well, because at this point, they need all the help. that they could get.

One thing Tesla has done to address the gaps between service centers that can be far apart and difficult for customers to access is to launch this mobile ranger service. These are technicians who come to you, customers who can solve their problems through mobile love it, but they can't do everything. Over the past year, Tesla has increased its service locations by about 20 percent. And again, Tesla hopes to quintuple the number of cars it will ship. So we're not sure the ramp is going to be significant enough. Service is absolutely important to Tesla's long-term success. The proposal for the customer of a Model 3 is to buy it at his own risk.

This could cause problems. At the current scale with the number of Model 3s on the market and who their core customer is, there are enough people to buy it with that caveat, but that grace period won't last forever. . Therefore, Tesla needs to solve these problems before becoming truly popular. I've talked to a lot of people who have Tesla vehicles and service is an issue. And you know, everyone says, "Oh, Tesla service is a problem." Microsoft had no customer service for years. Google had no customer service for years. Apple's customer service, until they hit the stores, waspractically non-existent.

Good? This is not a problem unique to Tesla, it is a problem unique to the industry. Tech companies are not good at service, period. Stop criticizing Tesla for this because they are a technology company. They are not really a car company. Cheaper models, like the Model 3, are everywhere. You just have to have one service. Tesla needs to step up and give them the service they deserve. And if they provide the service they deserve, Tesla is unstoppable. Let me tell you, this is going to blow this ladder out of the water. I mean, this car will leave a Ferrari in the dust.

I think Elon's Eloness has increased over the years. Yeah, I mean, if you wanted to describe Elon Musk in a few words, I don't think it would fit in a few words. It's as if Elon Musk has been transported from another planet to show us mortals how to run a company. Elon Musk is a divisive character because he has a difficult personality. He is sometimes very friendly and is the best person to be with. And you love his views, his opinions and the things he says, and he's actually funny. Other times he's a complete jerk. There are times when he is arrogant, unpleasant and insulting.

Of the reservations that have actually been opened and made available to configure. Can you tell us what, how and what percentage you have actually taken action for the setup? Let's go to YouTube. I'm sorry. These questions are so dry. They are killing me. How many executives or senior executives have left this company in recent years? According to some estimates, between 40 and 50 have left the company under the direction of Elon Musk in recent years. Most people in some sense confuse Elon's management style with his vision. So what Elon is trying to do is inspire people to work on a really difficult problem.

In my opinion, at least he has problems, he is trying to do it and at the same time maintain the operation's excellence. I've been in a couple of meetings with Elon Musk where people who disagreed with him no longer, you know, you never saw them the next day for going that route. And that's what Elon Musk does. We are going in that direction and you are going in that direction or you are not going. He is a great innovator, he is a great visionary. I don't necessarily think he's a great leader. I don't even have a desk or an office anymore, I'm basically standing on the production floor and occasionally meeting in a conference room.

We've seen him at the back of the line wearing a Tesla t-shirt, steel-toed boots, safety glasses and a protective cap, working with people, doing the physical labor. When the S and X were released, he literally had a sleeping bag at the end of the row because he didn't even want to leave. He was there very often working on the cars just to get them right and to make sure they were the best they could be and that production was running. He was there all the time. He slept there and it was true. If his CEO has to solve problems on the production line, no matter how brilliant she is or how good his solutions are, there has been a systemic failure to get to that point.

The goal of running a giant company is to make sure everything runs as orderly, efficiently and profitably as possible, without requiring constant personal attention from any one person. It should find a partner as quickly as possible who plays the same role at Tesla that Gwynne Shotwell plays at SpaceX, a stabilizing force and making that company made up of humans who have to work together as well as Tesla's cars do. Another Twitter rant from Elon Musk. This time it's about media companies. He accuses them of hypocrisy and says the public no longer respects them. Elon Musk, for most of his career at Tesla, has embraced Twitter.

He believes it is his direct way of communicating with customers, fans and facing criticism. I think Elon spends too much time obsessing over the media and their opinions of him. Most of the media has been very helpful to Tesla. Basically, it's free marketing for the company. Tesla has a lot of fans who have their own type of media setup, whether it's influential Twitter accounts or YouTube channels or blogs that do nothing but tell the world how wonderful Elon Musk is. So we tend to have a lot of people who are big fans and a lot of people who just hate us.

And I hope that over time we can convince some of the people who hate us to hate us less. I don't think we thought production was going to kill the company as much as, if anything, we thought Elon's stupidity with Twitter would kill the company. He continues the race to rescue a teenage soccer team stranded in a flooded cave in Thailand. The options to remove them are few, and all of them are quite risky. He called a guy a pedophile with probably zero basis. He called him out on Twitter. He repeated it to the media. These are not the behaviors of some traditional, timid CEO.

We start with the tweet that was heard around the world, or at least on Wall Street. CEO Elon Musk created chaos with a single tweet, citing: "I'm considering taking Tesla private. Four hundred and twenty dollar financing secured," which led to the stock skyrocketing and then stopping and then skyrocketing once again. Let's go with Leslie Picker. With one tweet, he created huge moves in the stock price, both up and down. Let's get right to the biggest story about money in business this morning, and that's Tesla. The stock is falling. It's down almost 10 percent right now. It's all due to news that broke last night: the SEC sued the company's CEO and founder, Elon Musk, for fraud.

The SEC alleges that Elon Musk posted false and misleading tweets in August in which he said that he was considering taking Tesla private for $420 and that financing was secured. Let's get to our corporate story from the morning, I should say from the weekend. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk and the SEC reach a settlement. He leaves the presidency for three years. Two new independent directors will be appointed to Tesla's board of directors. Both Elon Musk and Tesla paid fines of $20 million. And this is the most interesting. A committee will oversee Elon Musk's communications. I guess this means we won't be getting as many Twitter bombs in the middle of the night as we've seen in recent years.

That was a 20 million dollar tweet. That's $20 million that could have been distributed in the form of profit sharing or any other way. You saw the confrontation with the SEC, that every time entrepreneurs in the valley start attacking the government, regulators or traditional stakeholders in a counterproductive way, it ends up being a big problem for a company in the long run. This shows that they are so caught up in the vision that they do not think about the pragmatic operation and running of the business. He has an outsized personality that occasionally gets him into trouble on Twitter.

But he also has a vision and is driving not only his employees, but the industry as well. Tesla shares plummeted on Friday after an explosive interview with CEO Elon Musk. Shares fell 9 percent right in a bear market, again on track for their worst week since March. Billionaire Elon Musk, of Tesla and SpaceX fame, like we've never seen him before. Smoking marijuana on YouTube. Tesla CEO Elon Musk appeared on an overnight podcast with comedian Joe Rogan last night. And yes, he smoked. Have a look. So is that a joint? Or is it a cigarette? Not well. It's marijuana inside tobacco.

OK. It's like luxury marijuana tobacco. Yeah, you never had that? Yeah, I think I tried one once. Come on man. You probably can't because they're shareholders, right? I mean, it's legal, right? Totally legal. OK. How does it work? Do people get upset with you if you do certain things? I'm not going to touch this stock right now. It is evident that the stock has not found its balance at any time. Elon is completely crazy, whether it's tweets or anything he's doing recently. I mean, maybe the pressure is getting to him, but his behavior seems strange. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk sitting down for a rare interview with Lesley Stahl on this Sunday's 60 Minutes.

I want to be clear: I have no respect for the SEC. I don't respect them. But you're honoring the agreement, right? Because I respect the justice system. There are people who say that the company cannot survive without you. I do not think that's true. Yes. And there are people who say that the company cannot survive with you. Haha, that's funny. They say it because of the way you act during the summer. Doing things that seemed impulsive and un-CEO-like. Well, first of all, I'm kind of impulsive and I don't really want to try to stick to any CEO model.

That's just the character that Elon is. And it's really difficult to prevent it from being that way. I don't think he's ever going to do it. He is a divisive figure because he is a divisive person. Those who are here and those who are watching, thank you very much for your support throughout these years. It has been an incredible journey. And I love you too. I love you too. All cars produced have all the necessary hardware, computer and otherwise, for fully autonomous driving. I feel very confident predicting self-driving robotaxis for Tesla next year. I keep finding it's a three-ring circus with the guy and it's a little annoying, but it's exciting.

I mean it's P.T. Barnum, okay? You know, Barnum filled the seats. Yes, but he is P.T. Barnum, P.T. Musk. Elon Musk and Tesla used to talk about the green angle. Now, the focus is on autonomy. We care about one thing: autonomous driving. And we hope to be confident enough from our point of view to say that we think people don't need to touch the steering wheel, look out the window, probably around the second quarter of next year. When I started at Tesla, Autopilot was a very new concept for them. It was something that wasn't on their brand when I bought my car in 2012.

I never felt like that was a core part of Tesla, autopilot. But now it has become that. The full version of autopilot is already on sale in the market, although the features are not available. It's also great for converting consumers into investors. A man in Minnesota blames his car accident on Tesla's Autopilot feature. A Tesla sedan in Autopilot mode crashed into a parked police cruiser yesterday in Laguna Beach, California, in Orange County. Thousands of people in the Almaden Valley were left without power tonight after a Tesla crashed into a power pole. There it is, starting a fire.

She was on autopilot when it happened. Tesla's Autopilot has been both a big promise and a big headache for this company. Teslas are electric vehicles. Fire departments are still figuring out how to put out an electrical fire solely on battery power. The other question is to what extent Tesla's Autopilot systems were potentially involved in an accident. This is cutting-edge technology, people are trying to understand it. So Tesla is enduring a lot of scrutiny. The other challenge with Autopilot is the question of whether drivers were fully informed and fully aware of the limitations of the technology. Did drivers understand that this technology could be used in certain select situations?

Or did they think I can take my hands off the wheel anywhere? It's better cruise control. A true autonomous car would be one that could say: go to school, pick up the kids, and take them to write. We don't even know how far we are from that. I don't know if you know that Roomba ships 2 million self-contained vacuum cleaners a year. I think on some level the Roomba and the self-driving car are roughly on the same level. Another thing they find challenging is the backlog of lawsuits. Any growing car company will realize this. But Tesla is dealing with a fairly high volume of lawsuits, from small claims to shareholder litigation.

Elon Musk won a legal victory, all related to a tweet he posted more than a year ago. That deal with SolarCity remains controversial to this day. There is shareholder litigation against Tesla alleging that it was a bad deal that should never have happened. So the fact that he survived the accident when he made eye contact with them to save them is disturbing. He built that plant in 10 months. That's extraordinary. The future of any automobile company is inextricably linked to the future of the automobile industry in China. China accounts for 12 to 15 percent of Tesla's global car sales.

And China is a very interesting market for them. Its penetration in the automotive sector, especially in the battery electric vehicle market, remains very, very low. So I think they have a long way to go. I believe that a successful Gigafactory 3 in China would allow Tesla to move largesome production to the rest of the world and maybe even North America, if the economics make sense. The Chinese customer loves the appearance of the vehicle. Elon Musk is kind of a beloved character there and he's a luxury brand in a market that values ​​luxury brands. Tesla is a company with big plans, a big vision, but they still have no proof that Elon Musk and his team can achieve it consistently.

Look, can this company make cars viably and economically in the future? We believe the world is going electric. We think they are increasingly proving that they can make these cars profitably. That makes us feel modestly better about the stock, long term. Tesla was like listening to a call from a real company that made cars and made money. The stock price literally influences the future of this company. As long as there are enough believers and Musk can raise capital, I wouldn't rule it out. I don't think this is about Elon anymore. I think it's about what's happening in the car market.

You know, consumers are opting for premium and sustainable solutions, they are willing to pay for that sustainability. Tesla hit an all-time high after reporting that it delivered 367,000 cars last year. Tesla today is on track to open with a new record. The company announces a program to build the Model Y SUV at its Shanghai Gigafactory, delivering its first Chinese-made Model 3 cars to the public, and during that ceremony, if you haven't seen it yet, Musk expresses his joy by dancing on stage. , proceeding to take off his jacket, he reveals a T-shirt with a cartoon of the factory. The stock rose and posted its first consecutive net gains.

Earning two dollars and 14 cents per share in the fourth quarter. The street estimate is $72. Far above expectations. Revenue was also better than expected: $7.38 billion. In six months, Tesla has almost quadrupled. And yesterday's dollar trading volume was a record for an individual stock. I just can't believe these damn actions. It's crazy. This is a big separation from what you know, we like to take out the calculators and look at reality. The valuation is absurd. The balance is a disaster. I don't think the total addressable market is large enough for the company to capitalize on. And sooner or later, those balance sheet obligations will come back to haunt you.

It changed the conversation about Tesla from whether it can meet its obligations and goals to what the future is. Will there be bulletproof vans? Will it be a factory in China that will produce hundreds of thousands of cars on its way to millions of cars a year? There are a lot of expectations and excitement for Tesla. I think global warming is a very serious problem and it's something we have to address, and the only way to address it is to create a car that doesn't add carbon emissions to the environment. And I think the way to do it is with electric vehicles.

Our goal from the beginning has been to try to get the rest of the automotive industry to go electric. That's why it's extremely gratifying to see the rest of the industry going electric. This is great. Excellent. This is just the beginning for Tesla, and I think when they really want to increase demand for these cars, they will be able to start turning on the burners and start seeing results pretty quickly. We saw this with the Prius in California. It started as a very California-focused car for eco-minded middle-class people and has now spread around the world. But the Prius is not a sexy car.

It's really not a desirable car. The Model 3 is a sexy car. Tesla earns top marks in new crash tests conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The Model 3, the first of Tesla's vehicles to obtain that maximum safety rating. It's something of a vindication, we should say, for the company and for Elon Musk, who, of course, was accused of making some misleading safety claims by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Would Ford, GM and all these companies be producing electric cars if Tesla hadn't done it first and shown them how? It has driven all of these legacy companies to start innovating.

That's a good thing. Tesla could die tomorrow. They could run out of money, they could go out of business and disappoint all of their investors tomorrow, and they still would have been a positive force on the planet thanks to all these legacy companies they boosted. It turns out that Musk is a great CEO when he can get out of his own way, and that seems to be what he's doing. If the Model 3 was Tesla's biggest turning point to date, there are a lot of things that have to go right for that car and the next batch of projects to be a success.

Oh my gosh, well maybe that was too hard. You know, I think there are a lot of things today that are very difficult to predict. Tesla is probably easier to predict and I still have no idea if they will succeed or not. If we look back 10 years from now to 2010, we will produce approximately a thousand times more cars in 2020 than we produced in 2010. Thousand. So where will we be in 10 years? It's very exciting to consider the prospect. Nowadays, when people think about electric cars, they think, well, of course it's faster than other cars, it's electric. And that's why we did.

We changed the way the world thought about electric cars as they could be and restarted the world's electric vehicle revolution. There were no automobile companies, at least of any importance, that manufactured electric cars when we founded Tesla. And now they all are. Each one of them.