- Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk was interviewed at the “Future of the Car” event where he discussed a number of topics. These are the details.
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk was interviewed at the Financial Times’ “Future of the Car” event in London where he discussed a number of topics including demand for vehicles, the plans for Twitter, and the possibility of buying a mining factory.
Demand For Vehicles
One of the production issues that Tesla faces is that demand is substantially exceeding production.
“Right now demand is exceeding production to a ridiculous degree,” said Musk at the event via TechCrunch. “We’re actually probably going to limit [or] stop taking orders for anything beyond a certain period of time.”
Tesla is aiming to build 20 million vehicles per year by 2030. This figure is based on 1% of the global fleet.
Musk said that this is “not a promise.” While this goal is an “aspiration,” Musk believes the company has a “good chance of getting there.”
Volkswagen And China Discussion
During the event, Musk also expressed admiration for Volkswagen. Musk believes that Volkswagen has made the most progress in terms of electric vehicles compared to other companies. But there are also several strong companies also coming out of China – which account for over a quarter of Tesla’s global sales.
“There’s just a lot of super talented, hardworking people in China that strongly believe in manufacturing. They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they’ll be burning the 3 a.m. oil. They won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America, people are trying to avoid going to work at all,” added Musk during the event.
Open Source And Licensing Details
Musk also said during the event that other automakers can continue to make use of Tesla’s patents to build upon the Autopilot system. And Musk said that the company only patents things in order to prevent others from creating a “minefield of patents that inhibit progress with electric vehicles.”
“But we’re never going to really prosecute anyone for using our patents. So let’s just say you can use any Tesla patents for free, so I think hopefully that’s helpful to others,” added Musk. “The thing that I think they may be interested in licensing is Tesla Autopilot full self-driving, and I think that would save a lot of lives.”
Reinstating Trump On Twitter
Over the last month, Musk made headlines for signing a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. And Musk is expected to become CEO of Twitter temporarily following the closing of the deal.
At the event, Musk said that he and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey believes that permanent bans on the platform should be “extremely rare” and reserved for accounts that operate bots or spread spam.
Musk believes that the decision to ban former U.S. President Donald Trump amplified Trump’s views on the political right. And Musk noted that the ban was “morally wrong and flat-out stupid.”
So Musk would reverse Twitter’s ban on Trump when he buys Twitter. However, Trump publicly said that he would not rejoin Twitter if the ban was reversed. Instead, Trump said he would be using Truth Social, which is a social media app launched by a company that the former president is the chairman of.
Mining Factory
Electric vehicle companies have been dealing with a shortage of raw materials. So Tesla has been signing long-term deals with mining companies around the world. During the interview, Musk said that he would be open to the idea of buying mining companies to mitigate the issue.
“It’s not that we wish to buy mining companies, but if that’s the only way to accelerate the transition then we will do that,” explained Musk. “There’s no arbitrary limitations on what’s needed to accelerate. We’ll just tackle whatever set of things are needed to accelerate sustainable energy, and doing mining and refining or buying a mining company provided we think we can do it.”
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