Discussion on Electric Cars and Tesla

How are things going at Tesla Motors?

Oh, they're going really well.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

You build, uh, cars like this one right here.

Yeah.

This is, uh, a, a Lotus of some description- ...

with a, with a electric motor in there.

And how many of these have you sold?

Uh, we've sold about, uh, 1,300.

1,300.

Yeah.

And, uh, this car is priced at about what?

Uh, roughly $100,000.

$100,000.

Yeah.

Now, uh, 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, the, uh, we make the only car that would be considered sort of a real

car-

Right

... where, you know, you can take it on the roads and that's,

that kind of thing.

'Cause some have, like, a range of 15 or 20 miles.

They're like golf carts more or less.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Um, so, so why, uh, when your company decided

that you wanted to

do this as a, as a project, uh, you, you, you chose

a sports car of about $100,000?

Well, that, that's an excellent question.

In fact, the, 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, uh, lower cost and, and, and mass market.

You know, if you think of the early days of cell

phones or, or laptops or any new

technology, starts off expensive.

You remember that giant phone that the guy on Wall Street walked down

the, the, you

know, the beach with-

Mm-hmm

... and that was cutting-edge technology.

Well,

it's the same thing with, with cars.

So, um, in fact, anyone who, who does, uh, buy the, the, the

Tesla Roadster, the sports car at $100,000 is,

is helping pay

for the development of the lower cost cars to follow.

Um, in, in fact, uh, you know, we've, we've recently announced our sedan,

which is-

Right. But that, but that'll be available when in, uh,

mass production?

In, in a, in a couple years.

In a couple of years.

Yeah.

But you, you mention new technology, uh, but to my way of thinking, the electric

motor not as, not necessarily new technology.

It's been around for nearly 100 years, hasn't it really?

Yeah. The, the electric motor is actually very old.

In fact, the, um, in the early days of, of, uh, cars, it was a competition

between gasoline cars-

Right

... and electric cars.

Right.

Um, and there was a range issue with, with electric cars.

Mm-hmm.

And so gasoline ended up winning out.

Uh, but now that with the advent of lithium

ion, uh, uh, batteries, uh,

we can now address the range issue.

So the, the, the real breakthrough is the batteries then.

The, the-

How, how to store, how to store that electricity.

Yeah, it's the single biggest breakthrough.

Right.

Yeah.

Uh, and I, I remember, uh, like, uh, 15 years ago there

were, uh, uh, General Motors was making the EV1 or Saturn was

making the EV1.

Right.

And it was an electric car that was, uh, in California, and there was a, 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, uh, much farther ahead than we are now. For what reason?

Why, why don't we have more electric cars

today?

Well, there, there, there was a great movie,

Who Killed the Electric Car by Chris

Paine, which I think exposed that, that question.

And it's noteworthy in that, in that movie, um, that, uh, Chris shows

how much people really wanted that, that EV1 car.

Um, in fact, they wanted it so much that wh- when the cars

were forcibly taken away

from them and crushed in, in a... They weren't actually destroyed.

Right.

They were actually crushed. The, the, the people who had,

who had those cars held a

candlelit vigil-

Mm-hmm

... uh, for the destruction of those cars.

Right.

Now, when's the last time you heard anyone

doing a, a candlelit vigil for, for

destruction of, of any product, let alone a General Motors product?

Well, there'll be one after the-

There'll be one after the show for my voice.

Uh, let's just say that you, you charge this electric car.

Yes.

And you charge it, uh, uh, on your outlet at home, and it's a, from a

coal-fired power plant that supplies the grid.

Are, are you polluting, are you adding more CO2 by taking

electricity

from a coal-fired power plant or burning gallons

of, uh, gas in your internal combustion engine?

Actually, e- even if 100%, even if 100% of the, the, the

electricity comes from coal, uh, the Tesla Roadster, which is a sports car,

produces less CO2 per mile than a Toyota Prius.

Uh-huh.

Um, so, and, and of course, uh, in, in many parts of the country, coal is less

than half of, of the power, and as we go over time,

we're gonna have to move to

renewable, uh-

Right

... energy generation.

Right. But when you say over time, I mean, we are so far beyond

over time. This, this should-

Yeah

... have been taken care of or taking place, uh, 20, 30 years ago,

right?

Y- yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

Um, I think we're sort of lulled into

complacency with a temporary, uh, drop in, in

the-

Right

... the price of oil. Um, but that's, that's gonna come back to haunt us in a

major

way.

But when you, when you take a look at the, uh, the economy and the circumstance at

General Motors and, and Chrysler and Ford, what if, uh,

the electric car movement had not been killed off 20 years ago, and

e- every company had now a viol- a viable electric car?

W- would, would that be a means of keeping these

factories open today?

Would that be a means of, uh, further research and development and,

and greater

employment and, and greater marketing and, and showrooms and, and, uh, all

of the accessories that need to accompany an electric car?

I think it, it's fair to say that with the benefit of, of hindsight,

uh, General

Motors probably wishes they had done an EV2 and an EV3 following the

EV1 rather than, um, sort of crushing them in-

Yeah.

Yeah. Um-

But i- it, doesn't it make you a little angry

that we're all pretending like,

"Whoa, we got an electric car"? It, it's, it's, like, you know, nobody landed from

Mars here.

That's right.

Like you said, we, we-

Well, you mentioned Mars.

We, we had, we had electric cars, uh, at the turn of the century, 1900s, right?

Yes.

So, I mean, it, it's frustrating to me. Is it frustrating to you?

It, it is frustrating. In fact, the reason I put so much time

and energy and, and

of, of my, my own financial resources into helping

create Tesla was

to try to spur that electric car revolution.

I, I really thought that the, uh, the in- incumbent car companies would, would do

this, and there wouldn't be any, any need for-

Right

... for a new car company to try to do this.

But, but it turns out there was, and, and I'm glad for it because now, now

that we,

we have the Tesla Roadster, uh, you know, General Motors actually, uh, you know,

Bob Lutz at General Motors kind of have to credit Tesla with, uh,

the, the, the, the inspiration for the, the, the Volt, you know, that they're

coming out with the plug-in hybrid Volt.

Yeah. The Volt, the Volt has a range of 40 miles.

Yeah.

That'll get you down the driveway and back.

"I'm gonna go pick up the paper."

Right.

"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, uh,

uh, Elon Musk, uh, 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-

Yeah

... I mean.

Dave, I can't thank you enough-

Yeah

... for plugging this product. Uh-

Go crazy.

Now, uh, I, 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, uh, skeptical and, and nervous, I

think like everybody else. Because you think electric car, this

is for guys in

Topanga Canyon selling sprouts.

Uh, but the, the thing is, uh, 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.

But that, that didn't happen. And, and it-

Yeah

... it could, it couldn't be more safe.

Uh-

Yeah

... the, the thing, it goes like a bat out of hell.

Absolutely.

Uh, but it irritates me that, that, that people who might be interested

now, because very, honestly, very few people are gonna spend the money

to buy

that car, as, as slick as that car is.

Yeah.

But it does kinda call attention to the product, doesn't it?

A- a- absolutely. Um, and it was important for us to al-

to also show that an

electric car can be a great car.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, that it can compete in its own right

against gasoline cars.

Um, so we wanted to make sure that it was, it was a, we made a sports car that even

if it wasn't electric-

Yeah

... it would still be a, 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 gonna make its own hydrogen.

Right.

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, uh, 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 gonna be in showrooms,

they wouldn't have to be closing down plants and filing for bankruptcy.

Right. That's-

Well, that's

true.

Right.

How much will this cost?

Uh, this will have a starting price of 49,900.

There's a very important point-

Oh, God. Turn it off. Ah,

ah, ah! Oh, I'm being electrocuted.

Ah, ah,

ah! Thank you.

Thank you so very much for being here.