It's always really tricky to predict the future. I look at the future from the standpoint of probabilities. It's like a branching stream of probabilities, and there are actions that we can take that affect those probabilities, or that accelerate one thing or slow down another thing, or it may introduce something new to the probability stream. I think the one thing that we could be quite certain of is that any predictions we make today for what the future will be like in fifty years will be wrong, that’s for sure. I mean when you think of say the first controlled powered flight in 1903 with the Wright Brothers, and then 66 years later we put the first people on the Moon. If you’d asked people say in 1900 what are the odds of a man landing on the Moon they would have said that’s ridiculous. If you tried to talk to them about the Internet they would not even know what the heck you’re talking about, like this sounds so crazy. But today with a hundred dollar device you can video conference with anyone in the world, on the other side of the world, and if you have a Wi-Fi connection it’s basically just for free. Free to have an instant visual communication with anyone or even with millions of people, with social media you can communicate to millions of people simultaneously. You can Google something and ask any question, it’s like an oracle of wisdom that you can ask almost any question and get an instant response. I think this is one of those things that’s quite difficult to predict. It would be incredibly difficult to predict these things in the past, even the relatively recent past.
I mean some of it is pretty obvious like computer power is just going to be crazy. The really big change is going to be the cost of computing power, not so much the circuit density, the sort of Moore's law thing. If you look at say the actual dollars per instruction, that cost is dropping exponentially. If you think about it, if you're making a computer it's just rearranging silicon and copper on a little chip. Once the capital cost of the development and the chip plant is paid for the marginal cost of a chip is very very tiny. I think we will see massively parallel computers, and computing power and storage being really as much as you want. For sure ubiquitous computing. I think there's likely to be some breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, AI is going to be incredibly sophisticated. AI that's beyond anything like the public appreciates today. AI appears to be accelerating from what I can see, and the tricky thing about predicting when there’s an exponential is an exponential looks linear in a close-up, but actually it's not linear. I think we’ll see autonomy and artificial intelligence advance tremendously, I think that’s actually quite near-term. My guess is in probably ten years it will be very unusual for cars to be built that are not fully autonomous, ten years. I think almost all cars produced will be autonomous in 10 years, almost all. It will be rare to find one that is not in 10 years. That is going to be a huge transformation.
I suspect we will even see the flying car. I think someone else is doing that.
I think things will grow exponentially, there’s a big difference between 5 and 10 years. My guess is probably in 10 years more than a half of new vehicle production is electric in the United States. China is probably going to be ahead of that because China has been super pro EV. Probably not a lot of people know this but Chinese environmental policies are way ahead of the U.S, their mandates for renewable energy far exceed the U.S. Sometimes people are under the impression that China is either dragging their feet or are somehow behind the U.S. in terms of sustainable energy promotion, but they are by far the most aggressive on Earth. In fact a coalition of Chinese car manufacturers wrote the Chinese government to beg for them to slow down the mandate. They said it’s too much, they needed to make like 8% of vehicles in the next two years or something. They couldn’t physically do it. China is by far the most aggressive on electric vehicles and solar, but that is a common misperception that they are not. It’s only one Google search away to figure this out by the way, it’s really easy. Quite frankly I think that China is quite well developed, China has better highways and definitely better trains than the United States, by far. In fact I had a great experience taking the bullet train from Beijing to Xi'an to see the Terra Cotta warriors.
So, in 10 years, half of all production I think will be EV. The thing to bear in mind though is that new vehicle production is only about 5% the size of the vehicle fleet. If you think how long does a car or truck last? they last 15-20 years before they are finally scrapped. New vehicle production is only roughly 1/15th of the fleet size, so even when new vehicle production switches over to electric or autonomous, that still means the vast majority of the fleet on the roads is not. It will take another 5-10 years before the majority of the fleet becomes EV or autonomous. If you are to go say out 20 years overwhelmingly things are electric and autonomous, fully autonomous, there will not be a steering wheel in 20 years. I think there may be some auxiliary steering wheel that only pops out whenever you need to take manual control for whatever reason, but probably if you go long long term my guess is there isn't a steering wheel in most cars. It would be something you'd have to special order. It will be like having a horse. People have horses, which is cool, people will have non-autonomous cars like people have horses, it just will be unusual to use that as a mode of transport.
I expect all transport to go fully electric over time with the ironic exception of rockets. Then all energy production to go sustainable over time, primarily solar. Sustainable energy will happen no matter what. If there was no Tesla, if Tesla never existed, it would have to happen out of necessity. If you don't have sustainable energy it means you have unsustainable energy, it’s tautological. This will take a long time, many decades, but the way it'll manifest itself is by people having batteries in their homes or at the utility substation and by driving electric vehicles. As I said, this is going to be a very slow transition because the incentive structure is so biased against sustainable energy. I think there's going to be a number of breakthroughs, I would expect to see significant breakthroughs in energy storage that's probably the biggest area. Probably breakthroughs in energy generation as well.
I do think there's a great deal of innovation is going to occur in biotech, particularly with rapid low-cost perfect coding of DNA. That's going to be really revolutionary as far as diseases, and potentially accelerated evolution someway, although that's a touchy subject. In terms of solving some of the more intransigent diseases, genetics are really key to solving those. The thing to most profoundly affect people would be to be able to recode genetics, which is a dodgy subject. We are close to saturation on lifespan, we are pre-much leveled out. If you solve let's say any one disease you could maybe extend life expectancy a little but not a lot. You kind of have a genetic programming of any species for a specific lifespan, like you cannot make a fruit fly live for 10 years no matter what you do, no amount of healthy living or vitamins or anything. It's a really tricky subject, it's wrought with all kinds of moral issues but the thing that would most affect people's lives, it certainly is a double edged sword. There's going to be huge breakthroughs in genetics in decoding DNA and also writing DNA. Once you read the DNA you figure out where is the error and you want to sort of correct the code. DNA is basically firmware, so if there's a disease that somebody has genetics can fix that. I think we can sort of fix Alzheimer’s, if you can actually solve genetic diseases, if you can prevent dementia or Alzheimer's or something like that with genetic reprograming that would be wonderful. I think there's going to be a lot of breakthroughs in the genetics area. That's going to be really really huge. I think there's some pretty significant breakthroughs in genomics, we're getting better and better at decoding genomes and being able to write genetics, that’s going to be a huge huge area.
Something that I think people are only beginning to look at is establishing some kind of brain/computer interface at the neuron level. You can read and write information back to the chip from your brain at the individual neuron level. Intelligence augmentation as opposed to artificial intelligence. I think that has a lot of potential, you would never forget anything, you wouldn't need to take photographs. You’ve got to watch out for hacking that could really be awkward. I think it actually would be quite an equalizer as well because I think it would sort of even things out.
I think we will probably start seeing more truly cyborg activity. There is some amazing things happening, they have been able to figure out how to do an artificial hippocampus in rats and monkeys and now they are looking at doing that to solve severe epilepsy. About half of epilepsy cases originate in the hippocampus and by having a sort of artificially augmented hippocampus they can actually solve the severe epilepsy cases. Of course a lot of the biggest breakthroughs are going to be difficult to anticipate in advance, but probably the whoppers are going to be energy, transport and genetics. There's probably going to be some breakthroughs in understanding the human mind and consciousness.
Then there's becoming a multi-planet species and space-faring civilization, this is not inevitable. It's very important to appreciate this is not inevitable. The sustainable energy future I think is largely inevitable, but being a space-faring civilization is definitely not inevitable. If you look at the progress in space, in 1969 we were able to send somebody to the Moon, 1969! Then we had the Space Shuttle, and the Space Shuttle could only take people to low Earth orbit. Then the Space Shuttle retired and the United States could take no one to orbit. That was the trend, like down to nothing.
I think directionally I can tell you what I hope the future has as opposed to maybe what it will be, because this may just be wishful thinking. I mean I hope we are out there on Mars and maybe beyond Mars, the moons of Jupiter, I hope we are traveling frequently throughout the Solar System perhaps preparing for missions to nearby star systems. I think all of this is possible within fifty years. The thing I would be most disappointed about is if humanity would not land on Mars in my lifetime, that would probably be my biggest disappointment.
I would like to go to Mars, absolutely, but only if I'm confident that SpaceX will be fine if I die. Maybe if I'm confident that the mission would continue then I would do it. I want to make sure that things are going well on Earth. Basically, I want to make sure that things keep going the way they should. As long as I felt confident of that, then.. I would go. It would be cool to be born on Earth and die on Mars. I guess I'd like to be able to go to Mars while I'm still able to manage the journey reasonably well, I think I don't want to be like 75 and go to Mars. At least in the beginning it could be mildly arduous, so I'd like to get there ideally in my 50s, that would be kind of cool. I aspire to make that happen and I can see the potential for that happening, I'm not saying it will happen but I think it can happen, I'll try to make it happen. It's certainly tempting to go up soon. I think it'll probably be a couple of years after the first astronaut crew goes up, maybe four or five years I suppose. In an ideal circumstance I would make one trip to Mars come back to Earth and then when you get really old go back to Mars, when I’m like 75 or something and die there. If you’re gonna die anywhere why not die on Mars? if you're going to choose a place to die then Mars is probably not a bad choice. It’s not some sort of Martian death wish or something, I mean we’re all going to die someday and if you’re given the choice to pick someplace to die then why not Mars? seems like maybe it would be quite exciting. All things considered I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars… just hopefully not at the point of impact.
I think I'm going to stay on electric cars and rockets for a while. With Tesla as more people joined the team, investors would ask me how long am I going to be CEO and I said, well, I'm committed to be CEO through the high volume production vehicle, at that point I would then have to consider what makes sense. I mean, I will never leave Tesla ever, but I may not be CEO forever. No-one should be CEO forever. Right now our plan is for sure I'm CEO through the production of the Model 3 and the Gigafactory and then evaluate.
It was actually never my intent to run Tesla, because running two companies is quite a burden, actually. I sometimes run into people who think, oh, if you're CEO of the company then they sort of imagine themselves if they were CEO of the company they would grant themselves lots of vacation and do lots of fun things. It's doesn't quite work that way. What you actually get is a distillation of the worst things going on in the company, so the idea of taking on something more is very frightening.
I really think that this is probably the best I've ever felt about the company. I intend to stay with Tesla as far into the future as I can imagine, and there are a lot of exciting things that we have coming. The first Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan that I wrote more than 10 years ago is now in the final stages of completion, and Part 2 of the Master Plan, there's four parts to it is:
1.Create a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world.
2. To expand to all of the major vehicle segments in order for us to as quickly as possible move us away from oil. Today, Tesla addresses two relatively small segments of premium sedans and SUVs. With the Model 3, a future compact SUV and a new kind of pickup truck, we plan to address most of the consumer market.
3. Get to a self driving capability that is about 10 times better than the average driver, 1,200,000 People die a year in auto accidents so that's a lot of potential for lives saved there.
4. When true self-driving is approved by regulators, it will mean that you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere.You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you're at work or on vacation. Most of the time when you look at cars they are sitting in a parking lot somewhere and they are not being used and this has the potential to massively amplify the utility of vehicles and obviously the cost of ownership.
So, in short, Master Plan Part Deux is:
Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage.
Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments
Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning.
Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it.
I think there's a lot of opportunity in general in the electrification of transport. Everything will go fully electric, except for rockets, which is ironic. We have an idea for something that isn't exactly a bus but would solve the density problem for inner city situations. I think we need to rethink the whole concept of public transport. I think there is a new type of car or vehicle that I think would be really great for that, and actually would take people to their final destination not just to the bus stop. I have a bad habit of putting my foot in my mouth unfortunately.
I've been sort of toying with the design for an electric supersonic Vertical Take-Off and Landing electric aircraft for a while, I'd love to do it, but I think my mind would explode. It'd be like, brain's worn out, you know. I'm pretty saturated working on electric cars and rockets. Possibly, at some point in the future, certainly not the near term, there's an opportunity to create an electric jet, essentially. I do think a VTOL electric supersonic plane is a really sort of optimal air transport solution, and it actually works together quite well for a bunch of reasons. In particular the higher you go the more efficient the electric aircraft is, where as if you have a combustion aircraft as you get higher it tends to get worse because you have a fixed aperture. The hole in the engine is a fixed size so you have to pick a particular cruising altitude, you got to figure out how do you get the right amount of air at sea level all the way to really high altitude. Then you've got this issue of supersonic combustion, so it ends up not being that efficient. An electric aircraft would just get better and better as it got higher, electric motors have a higher power to weight ratio then a combustion engine. You can actually have the power to do the vertical takeoff and landing part with a fairly small motor compared to combustion. I think it would be very cool to have in the world because you would not need big runways, and you could get to places fast, and it would be quiet, and of course it would be very low cost to operate, and good for your environment. The real trick of it is how do you make it really long range and at least as safe as existing aircraft. Those are really the only two questions on that front I think, but they are certainly tricky. I'm quite confident it's doable provided that there's a rough doubling of the energy density in batteries or capacitors. Basically, around the 500Wh/kg level is where it starts to make sense, before aircraft really start to become compelling relative to kerosene fueled or petroleum based aircraft.
It is not out of the question that Tesla will do an electric aircraft in the future, our goal is to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. That goal has been there since the founding of the company and that is what is going to remain true for the future. I mean Tesla has electric power train expertise and SpaceX has the aerospace expertise, between the two it's kind of perfect to create a supersonic vertical takeoff and landing electric jet. But there are other things on the plate so we have to stay focused on those things. I got a lot of fish frying right now. I would love to be working on electric aircraft. If I wasn't super strung out I would for sure be doing electric aircraft. That's something I would love to do at some point in the future if my time allows. Maybe in the future we’ll do something like that. I think that's where things will eventually end up it just may take a while to get there. It seems unlikely to be coming from Boeing or Airbus given that they seem to focus on very incremental improvements to the planes as opposed to radical improvement.
The thing that drives me is that I want to be able to think about the future and feel good about that, to be inspired by what is likely to happen and to look forward to the next day. That is what really drives me, trying to figure out how to make sure things are great. That is the underlying principle behind Tesla and SpaceX.
My goal is to retire right before senility, because your judgment starts to be impaired so you don't realize that your decisions suck until you're dead, so I don't intend to retire maybe at 80 or something. I am not actually a huge proponent of longevity. I do think that having a good life for longer is better. You would want to address the things that happen to you when you're older, like dementia and so forth. Those are pretty important. I definitely don't want to live forever, a hundred good ones in total is probably fine, or maybe a bit longer. I do sometimes wonder if I'm going to die under suspicious circumstances. I have a lot of enemies among the big aerospace companies and maybe among some of the car companies.
When I think what is the fundamental good of a company like Tesla, I would say hopefully accelerate the transition to sustainable generation and consumption of energy. If it accelerated that by a decade, potentially more than a decade, that would be quite a good thing to occur. That's what I consider to be the fundamental aspirational good of Tesla. It is inevitable but it matters if it happens sooner then later.
SpaceX is about helping make life multi planetary. I am a naturally optimistic person, I do think there is value in establishing an insurance, which is that if Life is on more than one planet then the light of consciousness is likely preserved for the future much longer. Looking ahead I’d like to see humanity go beyond Earth and see people on Mars, and see a widespread adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy. I think that would be really cool. I want to be clear I'm not trying to be anyone's savior, like I said I’m doing this because I think it makes things better in the future not worse, for everyone. I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad. Life is short and there’s lot’s of things that one can’t necessarily do. I am quite optimistic about the future, I mean I don't think we are about to enter a dark age, it could happen but I think it's not likely anytime soon. We are doing what we can to have the future be as good as possible. The teams are working super hard to make it happen. I'm excited about the prospect and I feel of course optimistic that that will take place.
So yes, we're really proud of the teams for getting to this point, and I really want to thank them for working hard to achieve some very difficult things. I couldn’t be prouder to work with such a great team. I really feel like we're like a kind of a small rebel group, we’re outnumbered, we’re outgunned, and usually in situations like that bad things happen. It’s usually not a happy ending, but I think this is going to be one of those happy endings.
I want to thank all you guys for your support and all of our customers.
My apologies for the long story… I hope you enjoyed it.