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Speaker 1: Pushkin.

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Speaker 2: All right, okay, so getting in it's really really low.

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Speaker 1: That's what you want to do?

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Speaker 3: Is actually a friend of mine owns a Tesla roadster

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Speaker 3: black like the Batmobile, kind of slide in.

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Speaker 4: Okay.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to X Man. The Elon Musk Origin Story, a

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Speaker 3: special report on the relationship between science fiction and the

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Speaker 3: worldview of Elon Musk. I'm Jill Lapour. Okay, so that

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Speaker 3: was the ignition.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, you want to go, Yeah, I do.

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Speaker 3: Alright, let's go after Elon Musk made a fortune with

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Speaker 3: PayPal and launched SpaceX. But long before he bought Twitter,

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Speaker 3: when he was famous but not half as geopolitically influential

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Speaker 3: as he is now, he was known for Tesla. So

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Speaker 3: I decided to go for a ride.

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Speaker 2: Well, oh my god, that's good.

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Speaker 3: A century ago, in the early days of the automobile,

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Speaker 3: petrol powered cars won the battle against electric cars. In

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Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six, a few years before Tesla got started,

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Speaker 3: GM developed an electric car called the EV one. California

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Speaker 3: had just adopted a new zero emissions law. But then,

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Speaker 3: after California revised that law, GM seized its fleet of Eve's,

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Speaker 3: all of them. Grieving owners held funerals for their cars.

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Speaker 5: Some might say that to be here gathered today to mourn.

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Speaker 3: The loss of a car would be going too far.

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Speaker 6: We are here to say goodbye to more.

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Speaker 3: Than a car.

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Speaker 6: It is difficult to know what to say at a

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Speaker 6: time like this.

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Speaker 5: I consulted my Rabbi's manual and there was absolutely nothing

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Speaker 5: in it for the burial of the car.

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Speaker 3: So when Tesla came up with the roadster, these people

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Speaker 3: who'd held those funerals, these people went nuts. The roadster

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Speaker 3: was sleek and fast, It had a range of something

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Speaker 3: like two hundred miles. True, it cost about one hundred

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Speaker 3: thousand dollars, but that was supposedly part of the plan,

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Speaker 3: make electric cars sexy, sell a bunch to very rich people,

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Speaker 3: and use that money to build a more affordable car.

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Speaker 3: Hollywood A listers signed up. As Musk told NPR.

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Speaker 6: George Clooney, that's the founders of Google, Laryn Surge, what's

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Speaker 6: the name of.

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Speaker 4: Flee from Chollipevi's apoort.

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Speaker 3: A car Tesla when it launched that first car, Tesla

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Speaker 3: was a great story, something genuinely new and not some

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Speaker 3: ethereal thing like Facebook, a physical thing, an engineering marvel,

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Speaker 3: but Musk was a better story. Young, handsome, dashing Thomas

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Speaker 3: Edison meets Henry Ford meets Elvis Presley. He'd already disrupted

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Speaker 3: banking and aerospace, now the automobile industry. He wasn't just

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Speaker 3: selling cars to celebrities. He had become one or No,

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Speaker 3: he was becoming something more. Here's how he talked about himself.

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Speaker 6: Then, what I'm good at is, well, I think I'm

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Speaker 6: good at inventing solutions to problems. Things seemed fairly obvious

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Speaker 6: to me that are clearly not obvious to most people.

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Speaker 6: So and I'm not really trying to do it or anything.

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Speaker 6: I just seemed like, I don't know. I just I

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Speaker 6: can see the truth of things, and others seemed less

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Speaker 6: able to do.

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Speaker 3: So you can hear it just there in the messianic language.

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Speaker 3: When I started this series, I talked about Musk as Batman.

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Speaker 3: But long before that, in his Tesla Heyday, Musk had

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Speaker 3: begun to think of himself as Tony Stark. This episode,

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Speaker 3: Elon Musk as iron Man.

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Speaker 4: He's the real life Tony Stark. This guy, please welcome.

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Speaker 3: Elon Musk, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur as superhero is an

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Speaker 3: interesting historical turn one more way in which Musk's brand

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Speaker 3: of capitalism is tied to science fiction. But this episode,

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Speaker 3: I want to begin by taking a look at iron

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Speaker 3: Man's origins with the US military during the Cold War.

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Speaker 2: Who all, what is the most breathtaking, most sensational superhero

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Speaker 2: of all? Iron Man?

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Speaker 3: Marvel Comics introduced iron Man in nineteen sixty three during

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Speaker 3: the Vietnam War.

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Speaker 2: Rich handsome known as a glamorous playboy, constantly in the

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Speaker 2: company of beautiful a daring women.

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Speaker 4: Look, there's Tony Stark.

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Speaker 3: He's the dreamiest thing this side of rock.

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Speaker 2: Hudson, Yes, and many. Stock has both a sophesta cut

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Speaker 2: and a scientist, a millionaire bachelor as much at home

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Speaker 2: in a laboratory as in high society.

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Speaker 3: Stark travels to Vietnam to test some new tech in

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Speaker 3: the jungle, he trips and sets off an explosive and

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Speaker 3: wakes up in captivity to a communist. Hated by a

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Speaker 3: fellow captive, an elderly physicist, he sets to work building

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Speaker 3: a device to save his life.

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Speaker 6: I've done extensive work with transistors. I can design them

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Speaker 6: in any size to perform any function.

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Speaker 3: In the world of iron Man. You take technology on

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Speaker 3: faith it works.

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Speaker 2: But this man who seems so fortunate, who's envied by millions,

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Speaker 2: is so destined to become the most tragic figure on Earth.

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Speaker 3: Stanley, who created the character, said later that comic book

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Speaker 3: readers hated the Vietnam War, so he created a superhero

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Speaker 3: who is a military contractor on a kind of a dare.

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Speaker 2: So I said, I'm going to come up with a

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Speaker 2: character who represents everything everybody hates that. I'm going to

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Speaker 2: shove it down their throats.

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Speaker 3: But earlier he told a different story. In nineteen sixty three,

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Speaker 3: Lee said, most Americans thought that what was going on

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Speaker 3: between North and South Vietnam was a pretty straightforward good

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Speaker 3: versus evil story, and would have thought of Tony Stark

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Speaker 3: as the good guy.

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Speaker 5: Here.

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Speaker 3: Still, Tony Stark was a tragic figure, invincible but trapped

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Speaker 3: in a machine of his own making. In two thousand

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Speaker 3: and eight, Marvel reimagined that tragedy when it brought out

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Speaker 3: what would become some of the highest grossing Marvel superhero

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Speaker 3: movies of all time, the Iron Man franchise, produced by

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Speaker 3: Paramount and starring Robert Downey.

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Speaker 1: Junior, Tony Stark, visionary genius, American patriot even from an

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Speaker 1: early age. The son of legendary weapons developer Howard Stark,

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Speaker 1: quickly stole the spotlight with his brilliant and unique mind. Today,

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Speaker 1: Tony Stark has changed the face of the weapons industry

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Speaker 1: by ensuring freedom and protecting America and her interests around

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Speaker 1: the globe.

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Speaker 3: The Ironman films were written by a guy named John Favreau.

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Speaker 3: While Favreau was developing the character of Tony Stark, he

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Speaker 3: met with Elon Musk.

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Speaker 1: At age four, he built his first circuit board, At

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Speaker 1: age six, his first engine, and at seventeen he graduated

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Speaker 1: summa cum laude from MIT.

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Speaker 3: Musk received delivery of the very first Tesla roadster in

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Speaker 3: February two thousand and eight. John Favreau bought a Tesla too.

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Speaker 3: The first Iron Man movie hit theaters three months later,

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Speaker 3: Ironman in the Tesla rollout It was like a double feature.

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Speaker 3: Boy Wonder grows up to save the world by building

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Speaker 3: new machines and revels in his own celebrity.

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Speaker 5: If I take a picture with you, yes, it's very cool.

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Speaker 3: This too, seems to come from Musk's backstory. Back in

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Speaker 3: nineteen ninety nine, after Musk made his first millions from

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Speaker 3: x dot com and PayPal. He was already keen to

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Speaker 3: become a celebrity.

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Speaker 6: I'd like to only cover of Rolling Stunt better be cool.

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Speaker 3: After Ironman came out, Musk was on the cover of

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Speaker 3: Rolling Stone. The headline read Elon Musk aka Tony Stark

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Speaker 3: wants to save the world. Musk and Stark even look alike.

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Speaker 3: Black jeans, black T shirt, maybe a blazer, same haircut,

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Speaker 3: a little stubble. In the movie Reboot, Stark Industries is

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Speaker 3: manufacturing weapons to be used not fighting communists in Vietnam,

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Speaker 3: but fighting terrorists in Afghanistan. Tony Stark is super flashy.

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Speaker 4: Tell you what, throw a.

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Speaker 1: Little hot rod red in there.

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Speaker 4: Yes, though, should help you keep love profile.

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Speaker 3: If Elon Musk influenced Tony Stark, pretty soon, Tony Stark

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Speaker 3: seems to have begun to influence Elon Musk before iron Man.

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Speaker 3: Musk and Interviews was modest.

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Speaker 6: The things that worry me are we going to make

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Speaker 6: a mistake? Our own foolishness, our own errors can hurt us.

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Speaker 6: There's a reason why there's an adiomatic expression about rocket

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Speaker 6: science being hard. It really is really hard.

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Speaker 3: If you are not a Musketeer. If you've always scratched

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Speaker 3: your head at what people could possibly find appealing about

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Speaker 3: Elon Musk. Listen to some of these early interviews. He's

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Speaker 3: a smart, fascinating person with interesting, if grandiose ideas.

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Speaker 6: Well. I think what I'd like to do is help

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Speaker 6: solve some important problems. So I think, in a small way,

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Speaker 6: helped build the Internet. And then with respect to the

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Speaker 6: global warning problem, that the transition away from oil and

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Speaker 6: other hydrocobins to something which is clean and sustainable, I

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Speaker 6: hope to have an impact there. And then with respect

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Speaker 6: to space, I hope to have an impact in helping

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Speaker 6: make humanity a multiplanet species.

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Speaker 3: But after Iron Man, Elon Musk seemed to become more

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Speaker 3: like Tony Stark, flashier brasher. In twenty ten, in the

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Speaker 3: second Iron Man movie, he had a cameo as himself.

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Speaker 5: Mister Musk, how are you?

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Speaker 1: Those Merlin ewes are fantastic?

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Speaker 6: Thank you?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, good idea for electric jet?

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Speaker 2: You do, then we'll make it work.

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Speaker 3: Elon Musk became a character in the Marvel universe and

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Speaker 3: on the celebrity circuit. It seems sometimes as if Musk

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Speaker 3: was resisting this role. For instance, in an appearance on

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Speaker 3: The Colbert Report, on Comedy Central.

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Speaker 4: People have called you the real Tony Stark.

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Speaker 3: You're trying to do good things.

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Speaker 2: And you're a billionaire. I mean, yeah, that seems a

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Speaker 2: little bit like either superhero or super villain, you have

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Speaker 2: to choose one.

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Speaker 4: Are trying to do useful things.

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Speaker 3: After a while, though, he settled into the role. Okay,

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Speaker 3: I am iron Man.

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Speaker 4: But eventually you can transform Mars into an earth like planet.

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Speaker 2: How would you do that?

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Speaker 4: You'd warm it up, drop the nuclear weapons over the polls.

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Speaker 2: You're a super villain.

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Speaker 6: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Still, I think there's another way to look at this transformation.

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Speaker 3: Maybe Elon Musk becoming Tony Stark had been Tesla's plan

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Speaker 3: all along. Science fiction as a business strategy, you have

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Speaker 3: to drive it. I'm not really a car person. I'm

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Speaker 3: more of a bicycle persons, foot on the brake and

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Speaker 3: push d Okay, But when I went for a ride

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Speaker 3: in my friend's roadster, I'll admit I was super excited

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Speaker 3: to take a turn at the wheel.

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Speaker 4: So low. Yeah, literally feels like you're on it is.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, did you write go cards as a kid. Yes,

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Speaker 3: it's like a riding a go card.

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Speaker 6: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I think I don't really really want God.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, driving the roadster was a blast. But I wanted

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Speaker 3: to learn more about Tesla's history, so I called up

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Speaker 3: Ed Niedermeier, a long time auto industry analyst and author

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Speaker 3: of Ludacrous, The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors.

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Speaker 5: I think a lot of the very earliest investment in

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Speaker 5: Tesla was not really an investment in Tesla. It was

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Speaker 5: an investment in Elon Musk.

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Speaker 3: Musk didn't start the company. The earliest news stories about

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Speaker 3: Tesla didn't even mention him or else. They talked about

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Speaker 3: him only as an early investor. Musk seems to have

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Speaker 3: said about making sure stories about Tesla were stories about him.

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Speaker 3: In two thousand and six, on the Tesla website, he

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Speaker 3: posted the Secret Tesla Motors master Plan, a clever manifesto

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Speaker 3: that explained the company's strategy build sports car, use that

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Speaker 3: money to build an affordable car, Use that money to

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Speaker 3: build an even more affordable car. While doing above, also

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Speaker 3: provide zero emissions electric power generation options. But it was

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Speaker 3: also a very canny bit of self puffery. Call it

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Speaker 3: the secret Elon Musk master Plan. He introduced himself this way.

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Speaker 3: My day job is running a space transportation company called SpaceX,

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Speaker 3: but on the side, I am the chairman of Tesla

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Speaker 3: Motors and and eight. When both Tesla and iron Man

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Speaker 3: made their debuts, Musk left the conventional mold of the

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Speaker 3: Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind. He moved to Los Angeles, which

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Speaker 3: is also where Tony Stark lives. In two thousand and nine,

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Speaker 3: one of the guys who started Tesla sued Musk for,

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Speaker 3: among other things, slander and libel. He said that Musk

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Speaker 3: set out to rewrite history by claiming he'd founded or

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Speaker 3: created the company. The suit was later settled out of

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Speaker 3: court in a resolution that acknowledged five co founders of Tesla,

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Speaker 3: including Musk. Meanwhile, though Musk's pr stunts generated just the

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Speaker 3: buzz the company needed.

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Speaker 5: A big part of Silicon Valley is not just making money.

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Speaker 5: Another big part of it is the idea of changing

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Speaker 5: the world and making things cool. The reality is that

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Speaker 5: the reason Tesla is here today is because Elon Musk

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Speaker 5: is a remarkable storyteller.

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Speaker 3: In some ways, what Musk was doing. A man becoming

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Speaker 3: a brand is an old game. Colonel Sanders is Kentucky

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Speaker 3: Fried Chicken, and then there's this guy Trump.

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Speaker 2: Steaks are the world's greatest steaks, and I mean that

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Speaker 2: in every sense of the word.

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Speaker 3: But Musk did something different. Musk as Tesla was irreverent,

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Speaker 3: and he was witty, ironic, whip smart. The cheekiness of

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Speaker 3: Musk's online persona was new then, even if this voice

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Speaker 3: has since become ubiquitous online. Tesco's sassy Twitter personality, say,

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Speaker 3: Musk was sassy and messianic all at once. Not the

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Speaker 3: greatest steak in the world, but the steak that will

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Speaker 3: save the world. Niedermeyer has gotten a lot of harassment

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Speaker 3: for writing about Tesla.

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Speaker 5: I've been labeled by the fans and the company itself

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Speaker 5: as a hater or you know, someone with potentially nefarious

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Speaker 5: motivations for writing about Tesla the way that I do.

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Speaker 5: The reality is is I wanted the book to capture

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Speaker 5: what I saw as the complexity underneath this very polarized

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Speaker 5: discourse about it online. And I think that, you know,

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Speaker 5: a a lot of that polarization has been a conscious strategy.

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Speaker 5: It's absolutely not a coincidence that this very polarized culture

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Speaker 5: has sprouted up around Tesla, and that the fan culture,

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Speaker 5: you know, people call it a cult. I think that

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Speaker 5: Musk knows that if you can force people to either

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Speaker 5: love him and trust everything he says implicitly, or hate

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Speaker 5: him and think he's a con man. More people will

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Speaker 5: break his way, and so polarization is a strategic advantage

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Speaker 5: to him.

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Speaker 3: Long before Musk bought Twitter, he seemed to be tweeting

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Speaker 3: all the time, getting into spats, cultivating a following, iron

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Speaker 3: manning his millions of followers. Began to gang up on

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Speaker 3: his critics, especially women. Why did he need fans? Why

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Speaker 3: did he need to be so online? Ed Niedermeyer has

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Speaker 3: a theory.

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Speaker 5: Musk's fans need him to promise the impossible, and Musk

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Speaker 5: needs them to give him adulation even if he doesn't

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Speaker 5: actually deliver on the impossible. He needs them to tend

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Speaker 5: and nurture and grow again. What I think, ultimately is

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Speaker 5: the most important thing about Tesla, which is the narrative

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Speaker 5: in the image.

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Speaker 3: For Niedermeier, this relationship is a consequence of the sort

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Speaker 3: of speculative capitalism that involves more speculation than capital.

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Speaker 5: It's a natural outgrowth of the venture capital culture of

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Speaker 5: betting on the jockey and not the horse. You know,

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Speaker 5: for a venture capital investor, you don't always have to

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Speaker 5: build a really sustainably profitable business. What you have to

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Speaker 5: do is make sure that at some point down the road,

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Speaker 5: you can pass your investment off to someone who thinks

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Speaker 5: it's worth a lot of money.

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Speaker 3: Tesla almost went bankrupt in two thousand and eight, the

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Speaker 3: year iron Man came out. In two thousand and nine,

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Speaker 3: it received a four hundred and sixty five million dollar

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Speaker 3: loan from the US government. It raised two hundred and

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Speaker 3: twenty six million at its IPO in twenty ten, and

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Speaker 3: in twenty thirteen paid back its government loan ten years early.

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Speaker 3: In twenty twenty, it had its first profitable year, and

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Speaker 3: those profits have continued. But despite the company's incredible success,

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Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four, profits seemed to have slumped. There

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Speaker 3: are no guarantees in the auto industry, and for Kniedermeyer,

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Speaker 3: the story of Tesla, which is one of engineering virtuosity

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Speaker 3: and against the odd success, is also a story of precarity.

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Speaker 3: For Tesla and for a musk.

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Speaker 5: His position has always been incredibly precarious. And it's because fundamentally,

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Speaker 5: you know, a lot of why he's there is not

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Speaker 5: just the narrative, but also it's his risk tolerance is

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Speaker 5: an incredibly risk tolerant person. And you can look at

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Speaker 5: a lot of different decisions the companies made and see that,

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Speaker 5: and you know, with risk comes roared, but risk is

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Speaker 5: also risky.

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Speaker 3: As far as risk goes. The striking thing about Tesla

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Speaker 3: to me was how for a long time Musk described

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Speaker 3: it as a company out to save the planet from

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Speaker 3: existential risk by a Tesla avert human extinction. In twenty

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Speaker 3: twenty one, on Earth Day, President Biden was at the

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Speaker 3: White House charing a sum out on how to avert

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Speaker 3: climate disaster. Well, Elon Musk was at the launch of

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Speaker 3: a SpaceX rocket carrying NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.

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Speaker 3: The astronauts drove to the launch site in Tesla's that

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Speaker 3: each have their own suv with license plates that read Reduce, recycle,

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Speaker 3: and Reuse. A key story for Musk as a brand

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Speaker 3: for years was that he was saving the planet by

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Speaker 3: fighting climate change.

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Speaker 7: But was he Elon Musk is a really difficult one

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Speaker 7: to parse. He's been very open and saying that colonizing

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Speaker 7: space is a sort of a survival strategy, which I

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Speaker 7: think is a thought that has a weird amount of

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Speaker 7: currency out there in the world. And when you think

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Speaker 7: about it, you know, in my view, just makes no sense.

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Speaker 6: What's soever.

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Speaker 3: Elizabeth Colbert is a New york Er staff writer who

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Speaker 3: won Appel Surprize for her book The Sixth Extinction.

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Speaker 7: There are a lot of these tech billionaires who are

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Speaker 7: interested in SPAZ obviously, as you know, and who also

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Speaker 7: see it as a big business, and it's hard to

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Speaker 7: pull that apart too. How much of this space exploration

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Speaker 7: hype I'm going to call it is on behalf of

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Speaker 7: potentially very profitable businesses, and how much of it is

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Speaker 7: really this kind of sci fi escape from Earth fantasy,

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Speaker 7: I really don't know.

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Speaker 3: So then why do you call it hype?

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Speaker 7: Well, I mean, Elon Musk is constantly telling us, you know,

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Speaker 7: when we're going to colonize Mars. But if you ask

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Speaker 7: any person seriously involved in space exploration, are we colonizing

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Speaker 7: Mars the way Elon Musk is constantly proclaiming that we will,

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Speaker 7: and within a very short time frame they will say

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Speaker 7: absolutely not. There's absolute no way that's happening.

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Speaker 3: So then there's this other line of thought that I

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Speaker 3: confess myself totally perplexed by, which comes from the people

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Speaker 3: who talk about human extinction scenarios and their calculation is sure,

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Speaker 3: they're suffering here on Earth, but if we don't go

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Speaker 3: to other planets, then humans will become extinct when our

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Speaker 3: planet dies. And so against your global suffering of people

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Speaker 3: enduring poverty and disease, we count the untold numbers of

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Speaker 3: our human descendants whose human potential will be lost if

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Speaker 3: we don't go. Like it's almost a kind of extraterrestrial economics.

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Speaker 3: Have you encountered that existential risk argument?

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Speaker 7: Every species that we have in the fossil record eventually

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Speaker 7: does go extinct. I'm not really predicting, you know, human

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Speaker 7: extinction here, but if you look at the record, it's

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Speaker 7: pretty much one hundred percent, you know, over time. So

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Speaker 7: the idea that humans Homo sapiens are going to be

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Speaker 7: around for the end of the planet Earth as a

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Speaker 7: habitable planet, that's so crazily at odds with As I say,

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Speaker 7: what we know about the history of life. So embedded

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Speaker 7: in that is this notion of humans as completely separate,

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Speaker 7: completely divorced from evolutionary history, and facing this shining future

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Speaker 7: on other planets. And that is a really interesting idea.

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Speaker 7: It's not one that I find very plausible.

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Speaker 3: I'd called Colbert to ask her about Tesla, but we

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Speaker 3: ended up talking a lot about SpaceX, since it can

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Speaker 3: be difficult to pull these two visions of the future apart.

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Speaker 3: What struck me most talking with Colbert were her observations

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Speaker 3: about the internal contradictions of Muscism. In twenty twenty one,

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Speaker 3: Musk announced that Tesla would accept bitcoin from people to

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Speaker 3: pay for their Teslas, and the Tesla itself had purchased

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Speaker 3: one point five billion dollars worth of bitcoin. The price

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Speaker 3: of bitcoin jumped. Musk has been an incredibly avid proponent

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Speaker 3: of cryptocurrencies.

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Speaker 7: Bigcoin is a terribly energy intensive cryptocurrency. Bitcoin mining nowadays

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Speaker 7: is using up roughly one hundred and thirty terarowat hours

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Speaker 7: of electricity per year, and that's roughly the energy consumption

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Speaker 7: of a country like Sweden. So the internal inconsistencies here,

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Speaker 7: I think prevent him from being a particularly good spokesman

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Speaker 7: for environmental causes.

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Speaker 3: In twenty twenty one, Colbert published a piece in The

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Speaker 3: New Yorker about Tesla's bitcoin polluting. Days after it was published,

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Speaker 3: Musk announced that he'd changed his mind. You could no

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Speaker 3: longer buy a Tesla with bitcoin. Still, a lot of

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Speaker 3: commentators pointed out that there really was no excuse for

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Speaker 3: Musk's decision to accept bitcoin in the first place. How

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Speaker 3: could he not have known that bitcoin is mostly mined

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Speaker 3: in China and mostly on servers fueled by coal. A

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Speaker 3: writer for The Washington Post, pointing out how well known

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Speaker 3: it is that bitcoin is practically designed to waste power,

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Speaker 3: asked had Musk been on a multi year newsfast in

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Speaker 3: any case, the essential tenet of Muscism remains every problem

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Speaker 3: can be solved with technology. It's the reigning philosophy of

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Speaker 3: Iron Man, too, the motto of Stark Industries.

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Speaker 6: Everything is achievable through technology, better living, robust health.

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Speaker 3: Everything can also be wrecked through technology. Elizabeth Culbert's book

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Speaker 3: Under a White Sky asks whether we have engineered ourselves

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Speaker 3: so deeply into so many problems, especially climate change, that

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Speaker 3: at this point the only way forward is to try

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Speaker 3: to engineer ourselves out of them. Stopping carbon emissions is essential,

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Speaker 3: but it's not going to be enough. Maybe we need

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Speaker 3: to invent machines that can eat carbon. Environmentalism used to

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Speaker 3: be largely anti tech, but it's not anymore because maybe

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Speaker 3: there's no longer a choice.

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Speaker 7: I don't think there is really a sort of anti

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Speaker 7: tech environmentalism these days, but there are different strains, and

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Speaker 7: Elon Musk is the avatar of the strain that says, well,

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Speaker 7: humans can just do anything that we put our minds to.

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Speaker 7: We can cognize more as we can sucks here two

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Speaker 7: out of the atmosphere. There's no geophysical limits here that

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Speaker 7: we can't overcome. Unfortunately, I think that's just not true.

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Speaker 3: We approached Tesla for a response to several points raised

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Speaker 3: in the series, but at the time of this recording,

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Speaker 3: we hadn't received a reply. I loved driving the Tesla Roadster,

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Speaker 3: but as I say, I'm more of a bicycle person.

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Speaker 6: So is HG.

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Speaker 3: Wells, who once wrote cycle tracks will abound in utopia.

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Speaker 3: Alas utopia is never coming, I'll settle for sustainability. And

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Speaker 3: sustainability will require more than just switching out every petrol

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Speaker 3: powered car for an electric car. There on need to

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Speaker 3: be fewer cars and more bicycles, pedestrians and public transit,

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Speaker 3: and more renewable energy. But Tesla is pioneering that too.

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Speaker 3: Beyond producing electric cars and making them thrilling, Tesla has

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Speaker 3: done a whole lot for renewable energy, especially with its

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Speaker 3: battery technology. After all, the last part of the company's

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Speaker 3: secret master plan had always been provide zero emission electric

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Speaker 3: power generation options. In twenty seventeen, after a statewide power

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Speaker 3: outage in South Australia, Tesla won a bid to design

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Speaker 3: a battery system for the state and promise to install

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Speaker 3: it in one hundred days. As Musk explained at a

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Speaker 3: press conference.

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Speaker 6: This is going to be the largest bat translation in

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Speaker 6: the world by a significant margin. We actually insisted in

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Speaker 6: during the contract that we beheld to the one hundred

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Speaker 6: where it's free. The system will be three times more

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Speaker 6: powerful than any system on Earth. This is not like

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00:26:15,796 --> 00:26:19,356
Speaker 6: a minor Forura into the frontier. This is like going

439
00:26:19,356 --> 00:26:21,036
Speaker 6: three times further than anyone's gone before.

440
00:26:22,156 --> 00:26:26,236
Speaker 3: Tesla delivered in sixty three days. The system's still working

441
00:26:26,276 --> 00:26:32,836
Speaker 3: fantastically well for South Australians. Energy is cheaper and more reliable. Somehow,

442
00:26:32,916 --> 00:26:35,316
Speaker 3: this sort of thing never gets the Iron Man treatment.

443
00:26:35,356 --> 00:26:39,036
Speaker 3: It's not sexy, it didn't involve Hollywood or celebrities. It

444
00:26:39,076 --> 00:26:41,716
Speaker 3: didn't turn on Reddit, it didn't end in a Twitter feud.

445
00:26:42,236 --> 00:26:45,036
Speaker 3: It wasn't even a science fiction fantasy, and it did

446
00:26:45,036 --> 00:26:48,756
Speaker 3: not save the planet. It was a smart renewable energy

447
00:26:48,756 --> 00:26:50,236
Speaker 3: partnership that went well.

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00:26:50,476 --> 00:26:53,716
Speaker 6: There was really this opportunity to make a significant statement

449
00:26:54,036 --> 00:26:56,516
Speaker 6: about renewable energy to the world, to show that you

450
00:26:56,556 --> 00:27:00,876
Speaker 6: can really do a heavy duty, large scale, utility level

451
00:27:00,996 --> 00:27:04,636
Speaker 6: battery system, and that South Australia was up.

452
00:27:04,476 --> 00:27:08,996
Speaker 3: Of the challenge a public minded infrastructure project. It might

453
00:27:09,116 --> 00:27:11,796
Speaker 3: well be the most significant thing TESLA has ever done.

454
00:27:12,836 --> 00:27:15,996
Speaker 3: It is not, however, what Elon Musk will be remembered for,

455
00:27:16,756 --> 00:27:20,556
Speaker 3: because he pretty soon stopped talking about climate change as

456
00:27:20,636 --> 00:27:26,076
Speaker 3: humanity's greatest existential threat. Global warming risk is overblown, he

457
00:27:26,196 --> 00:27:29,756
Speaker 3: posted on Twitter in twenty twenty three. We don't need

458
00:27:29,796 --> 00:27:32,876
Speaker 3: to rush to solve climate change, he told Trump. At

459
00:27:32,876 --> 00:27:39,476
Speaker 3: the end of twenty twenty four, the less Musk talked

460
00:27:39,476 --> 00:27:43,476
Speaker 3: about renewable energy, the more he talked about politics and

461
00:27:43,636 --> 00:27:51,636
Speaker 3: especially about money. Next time on x men, bitcoin and

462
00:27:51,676 --> 00:27:57,276
Speaker 3: dogecoin and doge the Department of Government Efficiency Muskism under

463
00:27:57,316 --> 00:27:59,676
Speaker 3: the newly re elected Donald Trump,