WHERE: CNBC Special Presentation Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, SpaceX CEO and Twitter CEO & Owner, and CNBC's David Faber that aired
WHERE: CNBC Special Presentation
MUSK: Well, this is the end of line that we're seeing here. So if cars aren't moving, that means this there's some blockage upstream and then I can go and see what that blockage is. So I think we might be on a break right now. But if this end of line is not moving, that means there's something upstream that's wrong.
MUSK: Well bear in mind that, you know, I only just agreed to it. So I don't have a fully formed strategy. MUSK: Yeah, so a lot of people still think Tesla's are super expensive because we did start out with an expensive sports car then a slightly less expensive sedan, and SUV but now we're at the point where the starting price of Tesla is actually below the average selling price of a car in the United States. So it Teslas are actually much more affordable than people realize. And so, we just make sure people at least know that.
MUSK: Yes. So, we're basically adjust our pricing to match demand. And we obviously did a big price drop in Q1, but quickly, now January, it's usually a terrible time for car buying. So there's the seasonality to car purchases with January, January is often the worst month so so we did a big price drop and then recently, we did a price increase.
MUSK: Like an autonomous Uber is a way of thinking about it. So perhaps, the utility then would be on an order of 50 hours a week. This is just a guess. Say there's 168 hours in a week, and probably as a rough guess, an autonomous car is, will be able to be active instead of for 10 hours a week, probably in our view for about 50. But it's the same car. So and it costs the same to build
FABER: Okay, right. There's a number of qualifiers there. I think, in my opinion, we probably will. So what do you think in your opinion, you probably will, when?MUSK: Well, we're now at the point where the car can drive on highways and in cities with and where a human dimension is extremely rare. So I mean, just – I was able to drive for several days, just dropping a navigation pin in random locations in the Greater Austin area with no interventions.
MUSK: Yeah, there's really two parts to the IRA. There's the incentive for battery manufacturing, and it's really quite a detailed, it's essentially a very well written – well, in that it really makes sure that you can't game it, you know. So you actually have to build up the batteries in the U.S. and you actually have to build the precursors to the batteries. But if you do, it is, I believe $30 at the cell level and $15 at the pack level, I believe, if I recall correctly.
MUSK: Yes, or any company in the world. Also no one really realizes that the Chinese economy and the goal the rest of the global economy are like conjoined twins, it would be like trying to separate conjoined twins. That's the severity of the situation. It's actually worse for a lot of other companies than it is for Tesla I mean, I'm not sure where you're gonna get an iPhone, for example.
MUSK: I'd say that the analogy I was using was like being teleported into a plane that's in a nosedive, headed to the ground with the engines on fire and the controls don't work.MUSK: Well, I did try to exit the deal. They wouldn't let me I mean, it was a funny situation where when I first was proposed, the acquisition they said hell no, they adopted a poison pill, basically saying they'd rather die than be they'd be acquired. Like they'd rather chew on cyanide.
FABER: So where are you going to spend the currency now that you don't have to spend as much at Twitter. FABER: Speaking of employment, though, you had 7800 people at Twitter when the plane was nosediving I think you're at 1500 now so roughly 6300 people where they all superfluous.FABER: You figure out which ones aren't or is it a little late you know, sometimes it gets a little late.
FABER: So do you see starting to me will Linda hiring people do you think are you ready for people to be hired at Twitter? FABER: So if you want to work at Tesla, you want to work at SpaceX, you want to work at Twitter, you got to come into the office every day. MUSK: I think community notes Yeah, I'd say so. My overall kind of vision for actual Twitter is to be a cybernetic collective mind for humanity. This is gonna sound quite esoteric and sci fi but so the if in pursuit of that objective, you want to have information move quickly have that information be accurate, and you want to have error correction on that information. So you can think of community notes as like an error correction on information in the network.
MUSK: I think it's important to say like that in any given election, even if you try your hardest if you got a 100 million votes, there's gonna be some some amount of fraud that is not zero. And that that it's important to acknowledge that without saying that the fraud was of sufficient magnitude to change the outcome. So so my opinion would be that there was some there was some small amount of fraud but it was not enough to change the outcome.
FABER: But how do you make a choice? You don't see I mean, in terms of when you're going to engage. I mean, for example, even today, Elon, you tweeted this thing about George Soros. I'm looking for it because I want to make sure I quote it properly. But I mean, you know what you wrote but you basically—
FABER: Okay. But I mean, when you when you link to somebody who's talking about the guy who killed children in a mall in Allen, Texas, you say something like it might be a bad Psyop. I'm not quite sure what you meant but. FABER: You talk about enhancing humanity. You know, I'm curious then about AI, which many people say will lead to great productivity gains. You showed those robots. I mean, I can imagine what they conceivably could do when powered by AI but I'm also curious because you've certainly been concerned what percentage do you give the chance that it will destroy humanity?
MUSK: I don't know. I mean, people do talk about it online. I think Tesla will have sort of ChatGPT moment maybe if not this year, I'd say no later than next year.FABER: Oh, you will? In terms of suddenly it will–FABER: Right. It goes back to that. Right.
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