Name: Elon Musk on Tesla’s Breakthrough in Electric Car Technology | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-02-01T16:12:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Elon Musk on Tesla’s Breakthrough in Electric Car Technology | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Elon Musk on Tesla’s Breakthrough in Electric Car Technology | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-01. Transcript available.

How are things going at Tesla Motors?
They're going really well.
You build cars like this one right here.
This is a Lotus of some description with an electric motor in there.
And how many of these have you sold?
We've sold about $1,300.
$1,300?
Yeah.
And this car is priced at about what?
Roughly $100,000.
$100,000.
Now, from looking at websites, I'm under the impression
if a person wanted to buy an electric car in this country,
this pretty much is the only highway-friendly electric car available.
Yeah.
We make the only car that would be considered sort of a real car
where you can take it on the roads and that kind of thing.
Some have like a range of 15 or 20 miles.
They're like golf carts, more or less.
Right.
So why, when your company decided that you wanted to do this as a project,
you chose a sports car of about $100,000?
Well, that's an excellent question.
In fact, the goal of Tesla has always been to make mass-market electric cars,
even from the beginning.
But when you have new technology,
it takes time to make it lower cost and mass-market.
If you think of the early days of cell phones or laptops
or any new technology, it starts off expensive.
Remember that giant phone that the guy on Wall Street
walked down the beach with and that was cutting edge technology?
Well, it's the same thing with cars.
So, in fact, anyone who does buy the Tesla Roadster,
the sports car at $100,000,
is helping pay for the development of the lower-cost cars to follow.
And, in fact, we've recently announced our sedan, which is...
But that'll be available when in mass production?
In a couple of years.
In a couple of years.
But you mentioned new technology.
But to my way of thinking, the electric motor is not necessarily new technology.
It's been around for nearly 100 years, hasn't it, really?
Yeah, the electric motor is actually very old.
In fact, in the early days of cars,
it was a competition between gasoline cars and electric cars.
Right, right.
And there was a range issue with electric cars.
And so gasoline ended up winning out.
But now that with the advent of lithium-ion batteries,
we can now address the range issue.
So the real breakthrough is the batteries, then?
How to store that electricity?
Yeah, it's the single biggest breakthrough.
Right.
And I remember, like, 15 years ago,
there were General Motors was making the EV1,
or Saturn was making the EV1.
And it was an electric car that was in California.
And there were 1,000 of them on the road.
So, again, the idea that we have an electric car is not a breakthrough.
We had electric cars.
And to my way of thinking,
we should be so far ahead of this curve,
much farther ahead than we are now,
for what reason?
Why don't we have more electric cars today?
Well, there was a great movie,
Who Killed the Electric Car?
by Chris Payne,
which I think explores that question.
And it's noteworthy in that movie
that Chris shows how much people really wanted that EV1 car.
In fact, they wanted it so much
that when the cars were forcibly taken away from them
and crushed in a...
They weren't actually just stored.
They were actually crushed.
The people who had had those cars held a candlelit vigil
for the destruction of those cars.
Now, when's the last time you heard anyone
doing a candlelit vigil for destruction of any product,
let alone a General Motors product?
There'll be one after the...
There'll be one after the show for my voice.
Let's just say that you charge this electric car
Yes.
And you charge it on your outlet at home
and it's from a coal-fired power plant
that supplies the grid.
Are you polluting,
are you adding more CO2
by taking electricity from a coal-fired power plant
or burning gallons of gas
in your internal combustion engine?
Actually, even if 100% of the electricity comes from coal,
the Tesla Roadster, which is a sports car,
produces less CO2 per mile than a Toyota Prius.
And, of course, in many parts of the country,
coal is less than half of the power.
And as we go over time,
we're going to have to move to renewable energy generation.
But when you say over time,
I mean, we are so far beyond over time.
This should have been taking care of,
or taking place 20, 30 years ago, right?
Yes, absolutely.
I think we're sort of lulling into complacency
with a temporary drop in the price of oil.
But that's going to come back to Hornets in a major way.
But when you take a look at the economy
and the circumstance at General Motors
and Chrysler and Ford,
what if the electric car movement
had not been killed off 20 years ago
and every company had now a viable electric car,
would that be a means of keeping these factories open today?
Would that be a means of further research and development
and greater employment
and greater marketing and showrooms
and all of the accessories that need
to accompany an electric car?
I think it's fair to say
that with the benefit of hindsight,
General Motors probably wishes they had done
an EV2 and an EV3 following the EV1
rather than sort of crushing them in, yeah.
But doesn't it make you a little angry
that we're all pretending like,
whoa, we got an electric car?
It's like, you know, nobody landed from Mars here.
Like you said, we had electric cars
at the turn of the century, 1900s, right?
Yes.
So, I mean, it's frustrating to me.
Isn't it frustrating to you?
It is frustrating.
In fact, the reason I put so much time and energy
and my own financial resources
into helping create Tesla
was to try to spur that electric car revolution.
I really thought that the incumbent car companies
would do this
and there wouldn't be any need
for a new car company to try to do this.
But it turns out there was
and I'm glad for it
because now that we have the Tesla roads
to, you know, General Motors,
actually, you know, Bob Black's General Motors
kind enough to credit Tesla
with the inspiration for the Volt,
you know, that they're coming out
with the plug-in hybrid Volt.
Yeah, the Volt has a range of 40 miles.
Yeah.
That'll get you down the driveway and back.
I'm going to go pick up the vehicle.
Take the electric car.
Call me if there's trouble at the curb.
I mean, it's insane.
I mean, 40 miles is the range on the Volt.
That's ridiculous.
I was talking to Elon Musk during the commercial
and he says from now on
for every electric car they sell,
he'll throw in his new fragrance, Elon Musk.
So, I mean...
Dave, I can't thank you enough
for plugging this product.
Go crazy.
Now, I have...
I, I, I, I, I, I...
I have driven one of your, your cars
and, and I must say in the beginning
I was a skeptical and nervous,
I think like everybody else
because you think electric car,
this is for guys in Topanga Canyon
selling sprouts.
But the thing is, is bulletproof.
I mean, you, you can drive the wheels off the thing
and, and I honestly, I thought the first time
I would charge the electric car
that my house would catch fire.
That, that didn't happen
and, and it couldn't, it couldn't be more safe.
The thing goes like a bat out of hell.
But it irritates me
that, that, that people
who might be interested now,
because honestly, very few people
are going to spend the money
to buy that car,
as, as slick as that car is.
Yeah.
But it does kind of call attention
to the product, doesn't it?
Absolutely.
And it was important for us
to also show that an electric car
can be a great car.
That it can compete in its own right
against gasoline cars.
So we wanted to make sure
that it was, it was,
when we had a sports car
that even if it wasn't electric,
it would still be a great car
to buy and compete against other cars.
Between you and me,
the first time I drove it,
I was worried
that it would magnetize my nuts.
Well, that's true.
This is the sedan.
Is that right?
Yeah.
And you know,
those, those free fuel cell cars,
that's a load of crap too.
You know, oh, hydrogen.
It's going to make its own hydrogen.
You can do it
and it'll be right there.
Well, they're talking about
20 years from now.
Right.
Maybe 20 years from now.
So I think that these
automobile companies,
and it couldn't be a worse time
for them to be doing this,
are just shining people on.
Because if they were actually
working on technology
that was going to be
in showrooms,
they wouldn't have to be
closing down plants
and filing for bankruptcy.
Right.
Please.
How much will this cost?
This will have a starting price
of $49,900.
There's a very important point.
Oh, God!
Turn it off!
Ah!
Ah!
Ah!
Ah!
I'm being electrocuted!
Ah!
Ah!
Ah!
Thank you.
Thank you so very much
for being here.
We'll see you next time.