What Elon SaidAn archive of questions answered

Subjects / Manufacturing

Manufacturing

52 answers

Opinion

What's your view on China (competition, manufacturing)?

“When China figures out how to manufacture a product, their ability to scale is often greater than the rest of the world combined. We saw this with lithium batteries and solar, for example. SpaceX is a rare counter-example, where its mass to orbit is roughly an order of magnitude greater than the rest of the world, BUT China now does a majority of non-SpaceX mass to orbit. SpaceX is an anomaly in the matrix. Maybe RAM will be different, but RAM was a low margin commodity only ~3 years ago. LP5 and LP6 are designed to a common standard that China seems to be solving fast. Newer HBM architectures and things like an SRAM layer below logic and 3D stacking RAM on top of logic while finding a way to keep the logic cooled will be harder to solve.”

— Elon Musk, 12 October 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

Why build your own chips (AI5, Terafab)?

“We cut our RAM in half for the Tesla AI5 chip (now 72GB of LP5) and 1/3 for AI6 (now 144GB of LP6). This was the only way to get enough volume for Optimus production and greatly reduces cost. As it turns out, we think this will have a negligible effect on Optimus performance, as memory bandwidth is a bigger limiting factor than total memory storage (bandwidth was held constant).”

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

Prediction

What's your view on China (competition, manufacturing)?

“Yeah, I will be surprised if domestic chip production in China is not competitive with Taiwan in raw compute, albeit less power efficient, within 3 to 5 years. There are also significant diminishing returns to reducing element size on a chip and some things, like SRAM, just don’t scale down.”

— Elon Musk, 2 March 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Opinion

Why build your own chips (AI5, Terafab)?

“Solving AI5 was existential to Tesla, which is why I had to focus both the teams on that chip and I’ve personally spent every Saturday for several months working on it. This will be a very capable chip. Roughly Hopper class as single SoC and Blackwell as dual, but it costs peanuts and uses much less power. Now that AI5 is looking good, we have some headroom to work on Dojo3 too.”

— Elon Musk, 19 January 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Why build your own chips (AI5, Terafab)?

“Slightly different versions of the Tesla AI5 chip will be made at TSMC and Samsung simply because they translate designs to physical form differently, but the goal is that our AI software works identically. We will have samples and maybe a small number of units in 2026, but high volume production is only possible in 2027. AI6 will use the same fabs, but achieve roughly 2X performance. Aiming for a fast follow to AI5, so hopefully mid 2028 for volume production of AI6. AI7 will need different fabs, as it is more adventurous.”

— Elon Musk, 4 November 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will Optimus be produced and sold, and how many?

“Optimus is a very sophisticated robot. It will be immensely difficult to get the cost to $20k. Not easy at all, but it will eventually happen. Production volume needs to be above 1M/year for that. Price will be driven by demand, but eventually even price will get to ~$20k.”

— Elon Musk, 26 November 2024 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

What will Neuralink do?

“This is not much consolation, but Neuralink is working on a vision chip, which will be ready in a few years. That is the next area after enabling phone/computer telepathy for those who have lost their mind-body connection. We waiting for regulatory approval for our first human.”

— Elon Musk, 7 November 2023 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Fact

What is first-principles thinking?

“…well I've got this like first principles algorithm that I find to be very helpful in and any in the design and manufacturing of anything and people here may find it helpful the first thing you should do is make the requirements that you've been given a less dumb whatever constraints and requirements were given there were some degree down and you want to make them less dumb…”

— Elon Musk, 4 November 2022 · Watch: Elon Musk at the 2022 Baron Investment Conference · 11:01 ↗ · 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

Who do you want working on manufacturing?

“Anyone who’s interested in working on cutting edge manufacturing — designing & building the machine that makes the machine — please consider working at Tesla or SpaceX. We’re gonna take this to a whole new level!”

— Elon Musk, 15 October 2019 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive