What Elon SaidAn archive of questions answered

Subjects / Cars

Cars

90 answers

Opinion

Why does everything look the same these days?

“Nonetheless, look at how generic and banal day-to-day corpo fashion and cars have become for over 2 decades!! Time for a total reset in fashion. To quote my son, Saxon, “Why does everything today look like 2015?? The future should look like the future!” We will make it so.”

— Elon Musk, 1 November 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What is the new Roadster?

“Success is not certain, but excitement is The new Tesla Roadster is a candidate for greatest product demo of all time… New Roadster is beyond movies, beyond imagination, beyond human, yet still made by humans on Earth”

— Elon Musk, 16 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will AI be smarter than any human (AGI/ASI)?

“Just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car. Congrats to the @teslasi team! If you’re interested in solving real-world AI, which is likely to lead to AGI imo, join Tesla AI. Solving real-world AI for Optimus will be 100X harder than cars.”

— Elon Musk, 22 January 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Why are your timelines always late?

“I might be late, but I always deliver in the end From impossible to late… I think I do have like an issue with, uh, time. …would not have probably done cars or rockets. I am trying to recalibrate as much as possible.”

— Elon Musk, 14 August 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When is FSD coming to Europe?

“FSD in Europe will save lives of people in the car, as well as vulnerable road users like pedestrians, cyclists and pets. Please let your government know that you want approval. First (supervised) FSD approval in Europe! Congratulations to the Tesla team and thank you to the regulatory authorities in the Netherlands for all the hard work required to make this happen.”

— Elon Musk, 12 June 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

Why let other car brands use Tesla Superchargers?

“Tesla aspires to be as helpful as possible to other car companies. We made all our patents freely available several years ago. Now, we are enabling other companies to use our Supercharger network. Also happy to license Autopilot/FSD or other Tesla technology.”

— Elon Musk, 5 June 2023 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

Why build a humanoid robot?

“It needs to be able to do things that people do… It needs to be able to work with tools, carry a bag, that kind of thing. Tesla is arguably the world’s biggest robotics company because our cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels…”

— Elon Musk, 19 August 2021 · Watch: Tesla video (2:08:00) ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What is your five-step engineering process?

“First make your requirements less dumb, your requirements are definitely dumb. It does not matter who gave them to you. Whatever requirement or constraint you have, it must come with a name, not a department. Step two, delete the part or process step… if you’re not adding things back in 10% of the time, you’re clearly not deleting enough. The reason it’s the third step is ’cause it’s very common, possibly the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize the thing that should not exist. Accelerate cycle time. You’re moving too slowly, go faster, but don’t go faster until you’ve worked on the other three things first. …don’t dig it faster, stop digging your grave. The final step is automate. And now I have personally made the mistake of going backwards on all five steps multiple times. …literally I automated, accelerated, simplified and then deleted.”

— Elon Musk, August 2021 · Watch: Everyday Astronaut video 13:36 ↗ · In the archive

Fact

Did you really say you have Asperger’s on live TV?

“I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL. I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak... which I’m told makes for great comedy. I know I sometimes say or post strange things, but that’s just how my brain works. To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say, I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill normal dude?”

— Elon Musk, 8 May 2021 · Watch: SNL video (0:48) ↗ · In the archive

Fact

How safe does self-driving need to be?

“It isn’t enough to be safer than human drivers, Autopilot ultimately needs to be more than 10 times safer than human drivers. The threshold is achieving safety far in excess of the average human driver. Ultimately, autonomous cars will be >1,000% safer than human-driven cars.”

— Elon Musk, 1 January 2021 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Why hasn't Tesla accelerated Semi production?

“…that's part of the reason why we have not, for example, really accelerated production of the Tesla semi because it does use a lot of cells. And unless we've got a lot of battery cells available, then say, like accelerating production of the Tesla semi would then necessarily mean making fewer Model 3 or Model Y cars.”

— Elon Musk, 29 January 2020 · Watch: Tesla Q4 and full year 2019 earnings call (2020) · 39:22 ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What happened with the truck window on stage?

“Oh my f---ing god. Eh, not bad. Room for improvement. We threw wrenches, we threw everything even literally the kitchen sink at the glass and it didn’t break. For some weird reason, it broke now. I don’t know why. We will fix it in post. Yup. Sledgehammer impact on door cracked base of glass, which is why steel ball didn’t bounce off. Should have done steel ball on window, *then* sledgehammer the door. Next time …”

— Elon Musk, 21 November 2019 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

When's the refreshed Model X coming?

“There is no “refreshed” Model X or Model S coming, only a series of minor ongoing changes. Most significant change in past few years was to use high efficiency Model 3 rear drive unit as S/X front drive unit. That went into production 3 months ago.”

— Elon Musk, 9 July 2019 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

Why solar?

“People talk about fusion and all that, but the sun is a giant fusion reactor in the sky. It’s really reliable. It comes up every day. If it doesn’t, we’ve got bigger problems.”

— Elon Musk, 15 July 2017 · Watch: Interview video ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

Why doesn't Tesla sell through dealerships?

“By the time most people decide to head to their local dealer, they have already pretty much decided what car they want to buy, which is usually the same make as their old car. Tesla, as a new carmaker, would therefore rarely have the opportunity to educate potential customers about Model S if we were positioned in typical auto dealer locations.”

— Elon Musk, 22 October 2012 · Archived copy ↗ · In the archive