Speaker 1: Pushkin. All right, okay, so getting in it's really really low. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what you want to do is actually a friend
Speaker 1: of mine. One's a Tesla Roadster black like the Batmobile,
Speaker 1: kind of slide out. Okay, who Welcome to the Evening Rocket.
Speaker 1: A special report on the relationship between science fiction and
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley and the world of Elon Musk. I'm Jill Lapoor,
Speaker 1: was the ignition. Yeah, all right, you want to go? Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: let's go. This episode is called iron Man and it's
Speaker 1: about the Tesla. I decided to go for a ride.
Speaker 1: So what I like it? Off? The car? Is it?
Speaker 1: I really do? I feel like I'm driving a piece
Speaker 1: of art? Yeah? Who. A century ago, in the early
Speaker 1: days of the automobile, petrol powered cars won the battle
Speaker 1: against electric cars. In nineteen ninety six, a few years
Speaker 1: before Tesla got started, GM developed an electric car called
Speaker 1: the EV one. California had just adopted a new zero
Speaker 1: emissions law. But then after California revised that law, GM
Speaker 1: seized its fleet of evs, all of them. Grieving owners
Speaker 1: held funerals for their cars. Some might say that to
Speaker 1: be here gathered today to mourn the loss of a
Speaker 1: car would be going too far. We are here to
Speaker 1: say goodbye to more than a car. It is difficult
Speaker 1: to know what to say at a time like this,
Speaker 1: To be honest with you, I consulted my Rabbi's manual
Speaker 1: and there was absolutely meling in it for the burial
Speaker 1: of the car. So when Tesla came up with the Roadster,
Speaker 1: these people who'd held those funerals, these people went nuts.
Speaker 1: The roadster was sleek and fast, It had a range
Speaker 1: of something like two hundred miles. True, it cost about
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars, but that was supposedly part of
Speaker 1: the plan. Make electric cars sexy, sell a bunch to
Speaker 1: very rich people, and use that money to build a
Speaker 1: more affordable car. Hollywood A listers signed up, as Musk
Speaker 1: told NPR George Clooney, there's the founders of Google, LARRYN. Sergay,
Speaker 1: what's the name of Lee Flee fla chollieps about a
Speaker 1: car Tesla when it launched. That first car Tesla was
Speaker 1: a great story, something genuinely new and not some ethereal
Speaker 1: thing like Facebook, a physical thing, an engineering marvel. But
Speaker 1: Musk was a better story. Young, handsome, dashing Thomason meets
Speaker 1: Henry Ford meets Elvis Presley with a little Dick cavit
Speaker 1: tossed in debonair. He'd already disrupted banking and aerospace, now
Speaker 1: the automobile industry. He wasn't just selling cars to celebrities.
Speaker 1: He had become one or no where. He was becoming
Speaker 1: something more. Here's how he talked about himself. Then, what
Speaker 1: I'm good at is, well, I think I'm good at
Speaker 1: inventing solutions to problems. Things seem barely obvious to me
Speaker 1: that are clearly not obvious to most people. So, and
Speaker 1: I'm not really trying to do it or anything. I
Speaker 1: just just seemed like, I don't know, It's just like
Speaker 1: to see the truth of things, and others seemed less
Speaker 1: able to do so. Elon Musk was becoming a superhero.
Speaker 1: Time on the Evening Rocket How Elon Musk became Iron
Speaker 1: Man CEO of Tessa Motors. He's the real life Tony Stark.
Speaker 1: This guy, please welcome. Elon Musk, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur
Speaker 1: as superhero is an interesting historical turn, one more way
Speaker 1: in which Musk's brand of capitalism is tied to science fiction.
Speaker 1: But this episode, I want to be gained by taking
Speaker 1: a look at iron Man's origins with the US military
Speaker 1: during the Cold War. Oh oh, what is the most breathtaking,
Speaker 1: most sensational superhero of all? Iron Man? Marvel Comics introduced
Speaker 1: iron Man in nineteen sixty three during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: Rich handsome, known as a glamorous playboy, constantly in the
Speaker 1: company of beautiful a daring women. Look, there's Tony Stark.
Speaker 1: He's the dreamiest thing side of work cuts. Yes, Anthony
Speaker 1: Stock has both a sophesticut and as scientist, a millionaire
Speaker 1: bachelor as much at home in a laboratory as an
Speaker 1: high society Stark travels to Vietnam to test some new
Speaker 1: tech in the jungle, he trips and sets off an
Speaker 1: explosive and wakes up in captivity to a communist. Heated
Speaker 1: by a fellow captive and elderly physicist, he sets to
Speaker 1: work building a device to save his life. I've done
Speaker 1: extensive work with transistors. I can design them in any
Speaker 1: size to perform any function. In the world of iron Man,
Speaker 1: you take technology on faith it works. But this man
Speaker 1: who seems so fortunate, who's envied by millions, is so
Speaker 1: destined to become the most tragic figure Earth. Stanley, who
Speaker 1: created the character, said later that comic book readers hated
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War, so he created a superhero who was
Speaker 1: a military contractor on a kind of a dare. So
Speaker 1: he said, I'm going to come up with a character
Speaker 1: who represents everything everybody hates it. I'm going to shove
Speaker 1: it down their throats. But earlier he told a different story.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty three, Lee said most Americans thought that
Speaker 1: what was going on between North and South Vietnam was
Speaker 1: a pretty straightforward good versus evil story, and would have
Speaker 1: thought of Tony Stark as the good guy. Here. Still,
Speaker 1: Tony Stark was a tragic figure, invincible but trapped in
Speaker 1: a machine of his own making. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: Marvel reimagined that tragedy, who would have brought out what
Speaker 1: would become some of the highest grossing Marvel superhero movies
Speaker 1: of all time, The Iron Man franchise, produced by Paramount
Speaker 1: and starring Robert Downey Jr. Tony Stark's fusionary us. Today,
Speaker 1: Tony Stark has changed the face of the weapons industry
Speaker 1: by ensuring freedom and protecting America and her interests around
Speaker 1: the globe. The Ironman films were written by a guy
Speaker 1: named John Favreau. While Favreau was developing the character of
Speaker 1: Tony Stark, he met with Elon Musk. At age four,
Speaker 1: he built his first circuit board, at age six, his
Speaker 1: first engine, and at seventeen he graduated Sola cum laude
Speaker 1: from MIT. Musk received delivery of the very first Tesla roadster.
Speaker 1: In February two thousand and eight, John Favreau bought a
Speaker 1: Tesla two. The first Iron Man movie hit theaters three
Speaker 1: months later iron Man in the Tesla roll out, it
Speaker 1: was like a double feature. Boy Wonder grows up to
Speaker 1: save the world by building new machines and revels in
Speaker 1: his own celebrity sick if I take a picture with you? Yes,
Speaker 1: that's very cool. This too, seems to come from Musk's backstory.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen ninety nine, after Musk made his first
Speaker 1: millions from x dot com and PayPal, he was already
Speaker 1: keen to become a celebrity. I like to only cover
Speaker 1: Rolling Start better. After Iron Man came out, Musk was
Speaker 1: on the cover of Rolling Stone. The headline read Elon
Speaker 1: Musk Ak a Tony Stark wants to save the world.
Speaker 1: Musk and Stark even look alike. Black jeans, black T shirt,
Speaker 1: maybe a blazer, same haircut, a little stubble. In the
Speaker 1: movie Reboot, Stark Industries is manufacturing weapons to be used
Speaker 1: not fighting communists in Vietnam, but fighting terrorists in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: Tony Stark is super flashy. Tell you what, throw a
Speaker 1: little hot rod red in there. Yes, I should helping
Speaker 1: keep a low profile. If Elon Musk influenced Tony Stark,
Speaker 1: pretty soon, Tony Stark seems to have begun to influence
Speaker 1: Elon Musk before Iron Man Musk and interviews was modest.
Speaker 1: The things that worry me are we going to make
Speaker 1: a mistake, Our own foolishness, our own errors can hurt us.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why there's an adeomatic expression about rocket
Speaker 1: science being hard. It really is really hard. If you
Speaker 1: are not a musketeer. If you've always scratched your head
Speaker 1: at what people could possibly find appealing about Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: listen to some of these early interviews. He's a smart,
Speaker 1: fascinating person with interesting, if grandiose ideas well. I think
Speaker 1: what I'd like to do is help solve some important problems.
Speaker 1: So I think, in a small way, helped build the Internet,
Speaker 1: and then with respect to the global waring problem that
Speaker 1: the transition from away from oil and other hydrocommence to
Speaker 1: to something which is clean and sustainable. I hope to
Speaker 1: have an impact there. And then with respect to space,
Speaker 1: I hope to have an impact in helping make humanity
Speaker 1: a multiplanet species. But after Iron Man, Elon Musk seemed
Speaker 1: to become more like Tony Stark, flash you brashure. In
Speaker 1: twenty ten, in the second Iron Man movie, he had
Speaker 1: a cameo as himself, how are you Those Merlin engines
Speaker 1: are fantastic. Thank you? Yeah, good idea for electric jet.
Speaker 1: You do, then we'll make it work. Elon Musk became
Speaker 1: a character in the Marvel universe and on the celebrity circuit.
Speaker 1: It seems sometimes as if Musk was resisting this role.
Speaker 1: For instance, in an appearance on The Colbert Report on
Speaker 1: Comedy Central, people have called you the real Tony Stark.
Speaker 1: You're trying to do good things and you're a billionaire.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that seems a little bit like either
Speaker 1: superhero or super villain. You have to choose one. You're
Speaker 1: trying to do useful things. After a while, though, he
Speaker 1: settled into the role. Okay, I am Iron Man, But
Speaker 1: eventually you can transforms into an earthlike planet. How would
Speaker 1: you do that? You'd warm it up, dropped the nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons over the poles. Was a super villain. Still, I
Speaker 1: think there's another way to look at this transformation. Maybe
Speaker 1: Elon Musk becoming Tony Stark had been Tesla's plan all along.
Speaker 1: Science fiction as a business strategy, you have to drive it.
Speaker 1: I'm not really a car person. I'm more of a
Speaker 1: bicycle person. Ye, put on the brake and push d okay.
Speaker 1: But when I went for a ride in my friend's roadster,
Speaker 1: I'll admit I was super excited to take a turn
Speaker 1: at the wheel. Yeah it is. Yeah, Well, did you
Speaker 1: ride go carts as a kid. Yes, it's like a
Speaker 1: riding a go cart high end. I think I don't
Speaker 1: really really want Yeah, driving the roadster was a blast.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to learn more about Tesla's history, so
Speaker 1: I called up Ed Niedermeyer, a longtime auto industry analyst
Speaker 1: an author of Ludicrous, The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the very earliest investment in
Speaker 1: Tesla was not really an investment in Tesla it was
Speaker 1: an investment in Elon Musk. Musk didn't start the company.
Speaker 1: The earliest news stories about Tesla didn't even mention him
Speaker 1: or else. They talked about him only as an early investor.
Speaker 1: Musk seems to have said about making sure stories about
Speaker 1: Tesla were stories about him. In two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: on the Tesla website, he posted the Secret Teslomotors master Plan,
Speaker 1: a clever manifesto that explained the company's strategy build sports car,
Speaker 1: use that money to build an affordable car, Use that
Speaker 1: money to build an even more affordable car. While doing above,
Speaker 1: also provide zero emissions electric power generation options. But it
Speaker 1: was also a very canny bit of self puffery. Call
Speaker 1: it the secret Elon Musk master Plan. He introduced himself
Speaker 1: this way, my day job is running a space transportation
Speaker 1: company called SpaceX. But on the side, I am the
Speaker 1: chairman of Teslomotors. And in two thousand and eight, when
Speaker 1: both Tesla and iron Man made the debuts, Musk left
Speaker 1: the conventional mold of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind. He
Speaker 1: moved to Los Angeles, which is also where Tony Stark lives.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, one of the guys who
Speaker 1: started Tesla sued Musk for, among other things, slander and libel.
Speaker 1: He said that Musk set out to rewrite history by
Speaker 1: claiming he'd founded or created the company. The suit was
Speaker 1: later settled out of court in a resolution that acknowledged
Speaker 1: five co founders of Tesla, including Musk. Meanwhile, though Musk's
Speaker 1: pr stunts generated just the buzz the company needed. A
Speaker 1: big part of Silicon Valley is not just making money.
Speaker 1: Another big part of it is the idea of changing
Speaker 1: the world and making things cool. The reality is that
Speaker 1: the reason Tesla is here today is because Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is a remarkable storyteller. In some ways, what Musk was doing.
Speaker 1: A man becoming a brand is an old game. Colonel
Speaker 1: Sanders is Kentucky Fried Chicken, Lloyd Grossman is his line
Speaker 1: of sauces, and then there's this guy Trump. Steaks are
Speaker 1: the world's greatest steaks, and I mean that in every
Speaker 1: sense of the word. But Musk did something different. Musk
Speaker 1: as Tesla was irreverent, and he was witty, ironic, whip smart.
Speaker 1: The cheekiness of Musk's online persona was new then, even
Speaker 1: if this voice has since become ubiquitous online. Tesco's sassy
Speaker 1: Twitter personality say Musk was sassy and messianic all at once.
Speaker 1: Not the greatest steak in the world, but the steak
Speaker 1: that will save the world. Niedermeyer has gotten a lot
Speaker 1: of harassment for writing about Tesla. I've been labeled by
Speaker 1: the fans and the company itself as a hater or
Speaker 1: you know, someone with potentially nefarious motivations for writing about
Speaker 1: Tesla the way that I do. The reality is I
Speaker 1: wanted the book to capture what I saw as the
Speaker 1: complexity underneath this very polarized discourse about it online. And
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, a lot of that polarization
Speaker 1: has been a conscious strategy. It's absolutely not a coincidence
Speaker 1: that this very polarized culture has has sprouted up around Tesla,
Speaker 1: and that the fan culture, you know, people call it
Speaker 1: a cult. I think that Musk knows that if you
Speaker 1: can force people to either love him and trust everything
Speaker 1: he says implicitly, or hate him and think he's a
Speaker 1: con man, more people will break his way, and so
Speaker 1: polarization is the strategic advantage to him. Musks fifty five
Speaker 1: million followers on Twitter. He has sued his critics he
Speaker 1: has damned the media. His Twitter followers tend to gang
Speaker 1: up on his critics, especially when those critics are women.
Speaker 1: Musk is always getting into Twitter spats. It's strange. Why
Speaker 1: is this billionaire online all the time, tweeting belligerently about
Speaker 1: mostly nothing? What does he need it? Ed? Niedermeyer has
Speaker 1: a theory. Musk's fans need him to promise the impossible,
Speaker 1: and Musk needs them to give him adulation even if
Speaker 1: he doesn't actually deliver on the impossible. He needs them
Speaker 1: to tend and nurture and grow again. What I think
Speaker 1: ultimately is the most important thing about Tesla, which is
Speaker 1: the narrative and the image. For Niedermeyer, this relationship is
Speaker 1: a consequence of the sort of speculative capitalism that involves
Speaker 1: more speculation than capital. It's a natural outgrowth of the
Speaker 1: venture capital culture of betting on the jockey and not
Speaker 1: the horse. You know, for a venture capital investor, you
Speaker 1: don't always have to build a really sustainably profitable business.
Speaker 1: What you have to do is make sure that at
Speaker 1: some point down the road, you can pass your investment
Speaker 1: off to someone who thinks it's worth a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Tesla almost went bankrupt in two thousand and eight, the
Speaker 1: year iron Man came out. In two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: it received a four hundred and sixty five million dollars
Speaker 1: loan from the US government. It raised two hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty six million it's IPO in twenty ten, and in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen paid back its government loan ten years early.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, it had its first profitable year. But
Speaker 1: for Niedermeyer, the story of Tesla, which is one of
Speaker 1: engineering virtuosity and against the odd success, is also a
Speaker 1: story of procarity for Tesla and for Musk. Even as
Speaker 1: the richest man in the world, when he you know
Speaker 1: in those days that he is, his position has always
Speaker 1: been incredibly precarious. And it's because fundamentally, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of why he's there. It's not just the narrative,
Speaker 1: but but also it's his risk tolerance. Is an incredibly
Speaker 1: risk tolerant person. And you can look at a lot
Speaker 1: of different decisions the company's made and see that, and
Speaker 1: you know, with risk comes roared, but risk is also
Speaker 1: risky as far as risk goes. The striking thing about
Speaker 1: Tesla to me is how Musk describes it as a
Speaker 1: company out to save the planet from existential risk by
Speaker 1: it avert human extinction. This year, on Earth Day, President
Speaker 1: Biden was at the White House sharing a smut on
Speaker 1: how to avert climate disaster. Well. Elon Musk was at
Speaker 1: the launch of a SpaceX rocket carrying NASA astronauts to
Speaker 1: the International Space Station. The astronauts drove to the launch
Speaker 1: site in Teslas. They each o their own SUV with
Speaker 1: license plates that read Reduce, recycle, and reuse. A key
Speaker 1: story for Musk as a brand is that he's saving
Speaker 1: the planet and saving humans from extinction. But is he
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is a really difficult one to parse. He's
Speaker 1: been very open and saying that, you know, colonizing space
Speaker 1: is in a sort of a survival strategy, which I
Speaker 1: think is a thought that has a weird amount of
Speaker 1: currency out there in the world, and when you think
Speaker 1: about it, you know, in my view, just just makes
Speaker 1: no sense whatsoever. Elizabeth Colbert is a New Yorker staff
Speaker 1: writer who want appealed Surprise for her book The Sixth Extinction.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of these tech billionaires who are
Speaker 1: interested in space obviously, as you know, and who obviously
Speaker 1: also see it as a big business, and it's hard
Speaker 1: to pull that apart too. How much of this, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of space exploration hype I'm going to call it,
Speaker 1: is on behalf of very potentially very profitable businesses. And
Speaker 1: how much of it is really this kind of sci
Speaker 1: fi um, you know, escape from Earth fantasy. I really
Speaker 1: don't know. So then why do you call it hype? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, Elon Musk is constantly telling us, you know,
Speaker 1: when we're going to colonize Mars. But if you ask
Speaker 1: any person seriously involved in space exploration, are we colonizing
Speaker 1: Mars the way Elon mu is constantly proclaiming that we will,
Speaker 1: and within a very short time frame, they will say
Speaker 1: absolutely not. There's absolutely no way that's happening. So then
Speaker 1: there's this other line of thought that I confess myself
Speaker 1: totally perplexed by, which comes from the people who talk
Speaker 1: about human extinction scenarios, and their calculation is sure, they're
Speaker 1: suffering here on Earth, but if we don't go to
Speaker 1: other planets, then humans will become extinct when our planet dies.
Speaker 1: And so against your global suffering of people enduring poverty
Speaker 1: and disease, we count the untold numbers of our human
Speaker 1: descendants whose human potential will be lost if we don't
Speaker 1: go like it's almost a kind of extraterrestrial economics. Have
Speaker 1: you encountered that existential risk argument species that we have
Speaker 1: in the fossil record eventually does go extinct. I'm not
Speaker 1: really predicting, you know, human extinction here, but if you
Speaker 1: look at the record, it's it's pretty much one hundred percent,
Speaker 1: you know, over time. So the idea that humans Homo
Speaker 1: sapiens are going to be around for the end of
Speaker 1: the planet Earth as a habitable planet, that's so crazily
Speaker 1: at odds with as I say, what we know about
Speaker 1: the history of life, so so embedded in that is
Speaker 1: this notion of humans as completely separate, completely divorced from
Speaker 1: evolutionary history and facing the shining future on other planets.
Speaker 1: And you know, that is a really interesting idea. It's
Speaker 1: not one that I find very plausible. I called Colbert
Speaker 1: to ask her about Tesla, but we ended up talking
Speaker 1: a lot about SpaceX, since it can be difficult to
Speaker 1: pull these two visions of the future apart. What struck
Speaker 1: me most talking with Colbert were her observations about the
Speaker 1: internal contradictions of Muscism. Earlier this year, Musk announced that
Speaker 1: Tesla would accept bitcoin from people to pay for their Tesla's,
Speaker 1: and the Tesla itself had purchased one point five billion
Speaker 1: dollars worth of bitcoin. The price of bitcoin jumped. Musk
Speaker 1: has been an incredibly avid proponent of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoins a
Speaker 1: terribly energy intensive cryptocurrency. Bitcoin mining nowadays is using a
Speaker 1: roughly one hundred and thirty terror watt hours of electricity
Speaker 1: per year, and that's roughly the energy consumption of a
Speaker 1: country like Sweden. So you know, the internal inconsistencies here,
Speaker 1: I think prevent him from being a particularly good spokesman
Speaker 1: for environmental causes. Just doesn't suggest that his ultimate goal
Speaker 1: is really driving carbon emissions down. The day I talked
Speaker 1: to Colbert, she'd just published a piece in The New
Speaker 1: Yorker about Tesla's bitcoin polluting. Days later, must announced that
Speaker 1: he changed his mind. You could no longer buy a
Speaker 1: Tesla with bitcoin. Still, a lot of commentators pointed out
Speaker 1: that there really was no excuse for Musk's decisions to
Speaker 1: accept bitcoin in the first place. How could he not
Speaker 1: have known that bitcoin is mostly mined in China and
Speaker 1: mostly on servers fueled by coal. A writer for The
Speaker 1: Washington Post ask had must been on a multi year
Speaker 1: news fast. In any case, the essential tenant of Muskism remained,
Speaker 1: every problem can be solved with technology. It's a reigning
Speaker 1: philosophy of iron Man, too, the motto of Stark Industries.
Speaker 1: Everything is achievable through technology, better living, robust health. Everything
Speaker 1: can also be wrecked through technology. Elizabeth Colbert's new book
Speaker 1: Under a White Sky asks whether we have engineered ourselves
Speaker 1: so deeply into so many problems, especially climate change, that
Speaker 1: at this point the only way forward is to try
Speaker 1: to engineer ourselves out of them. Stopping carbon emissions is essential,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to be enough. Maybe we need
Speaker 1: to invent machines that can eat carbon. Environmentalism used to
Speaker 1: be largely anti tech, but it's not anymore because maybe
Speaker 1: there's no longer a choice. I don't think there is
Speaker 1: really a sort of anti tech environmentalism these days. But
Speaker 1: there are different strains, and Elon Musk is the avatar
Speaker 1: of the strain that says, well, humans can just do
Speaker 1: anything that we put our minds to. We can colonize mores,
Speaker 1: we can succeed or two out of the atmosphere. There's
Speaker 1: there are no geophysical limits here that we can't overcome. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I think that's just not true. We approached Tesla for
Speaker 1: a response to several points raised in the series, but
Speaker 1: at the time of this recording, we haven't received a reply.
Speaker 1: I loved driving the Tesla Roadster, but as I say,
Speaker 1: I'm not much of a car person. I'm more of
Speaker 1: a bicycle person. So is HG. Wells, who once wrote
Speaker 1: cycle tracks will abound in utopia. Alas utopias never coming,
Speaker 1: I'll settle for sustainability. And sustainability will require more than
Speaker 1: just switching out every petrol powered car for an electric car.
Speaker 1: They only need to be fewer cars and more bicycles,
Speaker 1: pedestrians and public transit, and more renewable energy. But Tesla
Speaker 1: is pioneering that too. Beyond producing electric cars and making
Speaker 1: them thrilling, Tesla has done a whole lot for renewable energy,
Speaker 1: especially with its battery technology. After all, the last part
Speaker 1: of the company's secret master plan had always been provide
Speaker 1: zero emission electric power generation options. In twenty seventeen, after
Speaker 1: a statewide power outage in South Australia, Tesla won a
Speaker 1: bid to design a battery system for this date and
Speaker 1: promise to install it in a hundred days. As Musk
Speaker 1: explain at a press conference, this is going to be
Speaker 1: the largest matter translation in the world by a significant margin.
Speaker 1: We actually insisted in doing the contract that we'd be
Speaker 1: held to the one hundred days or it's free. This
Speaker 1: system will be three times more powerful than any system
Speaker 1: on Earth. This is not like a minorphoora into the frontier.
Speaker 1: This is like going three times further than anyone's gone before.
Speaker 1: Tesla delivered in sixty three days. The system's still working
Speaker 1: fantastically well for South Australians. Energy is cheaper and more reliable. Somehow,
Speaker 1: this sort of thing never gets the Iron Man treatment.
Speaker 1: It's not sexy. It didn't involve Hollywood or celebrities. It
Speaker 1: didn't turn on Reddit, it didn't end in a Twitter feud.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even a science fiction fantasy, and it did
Speaker 1: not save the planet. It was a smart renewable energy
Speaker 1: partnership that went well. There was really this opportunity to
Speaker 1: make a significant statement about renewable energy to the world,
Speaker 1: to show that you can really do a heavy duty,
Speaker 1: large scale, utility level battery system, and that South Australia
Speaker 1: was up with a challenge a public minded infrastructure project.
Speaker 1: It might just be the most significant thing Tesla has
Speaker 1: ever done. Next time on the Evening Rocket will blast
Speaker 1: off to a different past to the science fiction vision
Speaker 1: of the future that Silicon Valley left behind. The Evening
Speaker 1: Rocket was written and read by New Gillipour for the BBC.
Speaker 1: The Evening Rocket was produced by viv Jones. Oliver Riskin
Speaker 1: Cuts was the researcher. The editor was Hugh Levenson. The
Speaker 1: commissioning editor was Dan clark I. Oonah Hammond was production coordinator.
Speaker 1: Mixing by Graham put a foot In, original music by
Speaker 1: Corntith for Pushkin. It was produced by Sophie Crane mckibbon
Speaker 1: and Jake Gorski, who also did the mix and sound design.
Speaker 1: Production support from Ben Nattapafrick. Our executive producer is Neil o'bell.
Speaker 1: Our operations team includes Danielle Lakhan, Maya Kanig and Carly Mgliori.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to John Schnar's, Jacob Weisberg, Maggie Taylor, Heather Faine,
Speaker 1: Nicole Moreno and Eric Sandler.