Good morning everyone. I think our next
guest really doesn't need an introduction.
We are going to be hearing
from this serial entrepreneur
behind a range of companies, PayPal, Tesla Motors,
SolarCity, SpaceX.
He is a Titan of industry who has disrupted and transformed entire industries we're talking about
automotive, aerospace, energy, internet
finance. And these are sectors that are
really tough to operate in as a startup.
In the next 40 minutes we are going to
hear from Elon Musk and we're going to
learn more about Tesla Motors in Hong
Kong. In China, we are going to hear about
sustainable energy solutions. We're going to talk
about Mars and we're also going to touch
on the fate and future of humankind
pretty big stuff. So in this icy cold day
here in Hong Kong, let's give a very warm
welcome to Elon Musk.
You can pick any mic on the table. There're so many to choose from.
Elon Musk, welcome to Hong Kong.
I talked to your people at Tesla here in Hong Kong.
Tesla opened up here in 2010.
The Model S has been selling pretty well.
Good build-up.
First general question. How's the business doing here in Hong Kong?
Actually I mean at Tesla we're super appreciative of Hong Kong. It's the city with the, I believe at this point, the most
number of Tesla per capita. And it's very exciting model in Hong Kong
I think Hong Kong will have over time
the highest percentage of electric vehicles of any city in
the world and can therefore serve as a model for
how other high-density cities around the
world can transform to a sustainable
transport future so I think
that's very exciting so we plan to work
closely with the Hong Kong government
and take lessons learned and see what we
can do so then propagate that to cities
around the world. So we're very excited about the partnership with Hong Kong.
Because Hong Kong is such a densely packed city, there's no range anxiety in Hong Kong but that's not
the only factor behind the popularity of
Tesla. What are the other factors?
Sure. Certainly the range not being an
issue is one factor, although that is
counterbalanced by challenges with
charging. So one of the things that
we need to work through, and this is a
challenge that any other dense city in the
world has is, as you have more and more electric
vehicles on the road, you have to find someplace
to charge them. The ideal place to
charge the car
is at your home or office, certainly the same
place that you charge your phone
But that is challenging because a lot of apartment
buildings or most apartment buildings don't
anticipate having that level of power in
the garage and sometimes it's the parking spots
floated around that are not consistent 
so it's going to be quite important to get the
power to the buildings that need it and
then figure out a convenient way for people to
charge at home. We are deploying a lot of
super-charges and of course that's
gonna be important but those are really meant
for when you have an unusually long trip
you've been away from your home or office for a while, or you need to top up and you're out and about.
But by far the most convenient is home and office charging and
that the thing that we're really
working closely with Hong Kong government on.
We were talking about this earlier about the
impact of falling oil prices because
high oil prices was a major selling point for
getting into hybrid or electric vehicles.
Now that oil prices are in free fall.
What does that mean for the industry?
Well, it definitely makes the transition
to sustainable energy more difficult.
I think it's no doubt that is going to dampen
interest in electric vehicles in general.
With our cars, what we aspired to
do is to make the car so compelling that
even with low gasoline prices it's
still the car you want to buy.
That's the only thing I can think of. I don't know what else we could do, really.
You have to make it compelling. And this is really the key at Tesla is to create an electric car
that's not worthy it's going to help the
environment but it is a car that you will
cover it, that you want to drive. That
happens to be very good for the climate
change, very good very good for the
environment.
Exactly, I think this is sort of general advice I would give to people starting companies, entrepreneurs in general,
is really focused on making a product that
your customers love.
It's so rare that you can buy a
product and you love the product when you bought it.
There are very few things that fit into that category and
if you can come up with something like that
your business will be successful for
sure.
Let's talk about China.
China is the world's largest auto market. China is also a growing electric vehicle market too.
It's soon to be the world's largest. They're world's largest carbon emitter
We've seen the return of the so-called
apocalypse, increasing bad-air days in
places like Shenyang and Beijing
especially during the winter time.
China needs your technology. Is China really aware that? Do you get that sense?
And if you don't mind, 
you could hold the mic a little bit closer.
Sorry, absolutely.
I think it is very high gain.
Yes, China is apparently aware of. Tesla had a number of high-level meetings with the Chinese Government
and in fact the Minister
of Finance recently mentioned Tesla
in a speech that he gave as a good example.
So he likes what we are doing.
which is a good thing
Yeah, absolutely, and in the last
year we are in an effort to help the rest of
industry and, sort of, be a good neighbor. 
We opened source of our patents
so any companies in China or elsewhere can
use our patents to create electric vehicles.
(Applause from the floor)
And what you are doing just underscores a theme that
emerged at the latest climate change 
conference in Paris
the debate on whether developed
countries should be doing more to help
developing countries when the goal is a
general shared goal.
And you are saying a company 
from a developed country
should be doing that a little bit more in a market like China.
China is quite well developed. I think China has better highways and definitely better
trains than in the United States, by far
In fact I had a great experience taking the bullet train from Beijing to Xian to see the Terracotta Warriors.
It was a great experience.
So I think there are lots of opportunities there.
I think the challenge for Tesla is that in China.
we need to establish sort of a local partnership and so we're going to kind of figure that out.
There is an issue of pollution in China, the need for sustainable energy solutions in China.
Gridlock is a huge issue in places like Beijing.
I don't know if you've been stuck in
Beijing traffic. I've been stuck in Beijing.
Everyone here used to travel to China, you've been stuck. It's pretty crazy.
Can Tesla auto-pilot provide some service solutions to that?
I think auto-pilot can certainly take the edge off.
Our auto-pilot capability right now is really good in two scenarios.
It either works on a highway where there is no traffic and the lines are quite clear
or in heavy traffic so it's super good in heavy traffic, and not that I recommended it,
but you know you can read a book or do an email as what I found.
I heard people say.
So you can really take the edge off the traffic but I'm actually quite a big fan of tunnels.
Tunnels are so underappreciated.
Please elaborate.
Well the fundamental problem of cities is that we built cities in 3D and you see that we got these tall buildings
with lots of people on each floor but
then you got roads which are 2D,
so that obviously just doesn't work. You're
guaranteed to have gridlock but you can
go 3D if you have tunnels and you can
have many tunnels crisscrossing each other
with maybe a few metres vertical
distance between them
and completely get rid of traffic problems.
And as my understanding that actually Hong Kong
is in the process of building some tunnels. I was very pleased to hear that. But that really is the solution
for solving traffic in major cities.
Yeah, you can also go 3D with flying cars.
You can
But that's not going to happen for a long time.
Well, flying cars sound cool but then
they do make a lot of wind
and they are quite noisy. And the probability of something falling on your head is much higher.
Got you.
We talked about charging stations
in the challenge for rolling out more
charging stations in Hong Kong. The
challenge is exponentially greater in
China, especially in the rural areas to
connect the big cities.
What are your plans on that?
So actually we have a supercharging network
throughout China. You can go at this
point almost anywhere in China using it
as a supercharger network and then we got
that whole bunch of third party
affiliate destination chargers.
And we've actually had people drive all the way from Beijing to Tibet in a Model S.
That's incredible. Have you driven a
Tesla in rural China?
No.
I know people who have.
The model 3. What can you tell us about the model 3? What's it going to
look like and I know that you've
mentioned to me...
I can tell you what it's gonna look like but I mean I can tell you just generally some
characteristics about it which is it
meant to be a slightly smaller version of
the Model S and it won't have
quite as many bells and whistles but
it'll be at a much lower price point.
So the intent is to roughly cut the price in half
for smaller vehicle.
And I think really that's gonna be probably the
most profound car that we make.
That'll be a very compelling car at an affordable price.
Yeah, this is with the model 3 the
electric vehicle could go fully mainstream.
Other car manufacturers, you have GM
in mind with the Bolt doing the same
thing and you welcome your rivals doing
this?
Yeah, the goal has been to accelerate the
advent of sustainable transport
so we actually did some partnerships, one with Mercedes and one with Toyota.
We open-sourced our IP and everything so the whole
purpose of it was really to
accelerate the advent of sustainable transport so it's always great to hear when the
other car companies are making electric cars
Including car companies inside China?
Yea, absolute.
Are there any Chinese electric car vehicle makers that are capturing your attention?
Well, we don't think too much about what competitors are doing
Just because I think it's important to be just focused
on making the best possible products
You know, a sort of maybe analogous to what's ever if you were in a race
Don't worry about what other runners are doing, just run
But, you know, to push that metaphor even more.
Are you afraid that whoever's hosting the race could tilt the race in favor of the Chinese racer
I am trying to figure out if there's any way to answer a question and not lose.
You get one pass during this interview.
If you would like to take the pass, you can take that pass.
I will pass on that one.
Okay.
(Applause from the floor)
We've talked about innovation in China and
I thought your answer was really interesting.
We quote the share with the audience in here.
What is the example of "Made in China" innovation that you thought, wow, that's pretty cool.
I think actually a lot of the social media services in China, you know, Weibo, WeChat are pretty impressive, is better than what's in the US
Oh, you are on WeChat.
I am, actually.
Really? I only use WeChat when I'm in Mainland China in business.
Do you use WeChat in LA Silicon Valley?
Occasionally to respond to the people in China.
But it's pretty good.
I think Alibaba is pretty impressive.
Do you use Alibaba? Have you used it to purchase...
No.
It is very very impressive.
Wechat, how do you use it? Which messaging functions do you like to use on it?
I wouldn't call myself a WeChat expert. I basically just message people
and send pictures. Pictures and text. Can you do other things?
Recently I did a panel discussion in Beijing with a group of technologists and this subject came up
Or I brought up the question. Can there be a Elon Musk in China and the answer was no
And it was because of... this is according
to Kai-fu Lee, former Head of Google China
who started Microsoft Research in Beijing
and he said it's because of the
education system in China.
It emphasizes too much role learning.
You are Elon Musk. What do you make of that?
I mean obviously there are a number of very
successful entrepreneurs in China
Jack Ma, Pony Ma. That's right?
Yea, exactly.
So I think, I'm not sure I would entirely agree with that... but it is generally true that innovation comes
from questioning the way things have
been done before. And if in the education
system you're taught not to do that,
that will inhibit entrepreneurship
Being able to question what you're being taught,
being able to...
Yeah, I mean, just saying "is there a better way?" to ask a question.
Let's talk about innovation at
Tesla for more questions there.
We talked about Tesla autopilot. There's also Tesla Summon with your mobile phone
and we did talk about this earlier.
I know that there's a big gap between those two programmes and self driving cars
But is Tesla on its way to a driverless model?
Yeah, I think the whole industry ultimately will be producing autonomous cars.
And if you fast forward, let's say 10 or certainly not more than 15 years, I think
almost all cars produced will be autonomous
All cars produced will be autonomous?
All new cars, yes.
But that's not same as all cars on road cause
there's roughly 2 billion cars and trucks on the road and just under a hundred million produced every year
so the production rate is only 5% of the fleet size. But if you say of new cars produced,
I will be surprised if a majority of them are not self-driving in let's say 10 to 15 years.
And of all those new self-driving cars on the road how many of
them will have, you know, it's like, will
have a steering wheel versus not having a steering wheel.
It's like the ruin of the past.
The steering wheel thing I am not sure.
I think there may be some perhaps auxiliary steering wheel
that only pops out when you need to take manual control for whatever reason.
But probably if you go a long long term. My guess is that there isn't a steering wheel in most cars,
it would be something that you
would have to special order.
In most cars, not all cars, and I do want to clear that
predictions are not endorsements, you
know. I am not saying that this would be
a good or bad thing. I am just saying that this is probably what would occur.
This is pattern recognition and anticipating what's going to happen next.
It's likely, I mean, I think it's sort of
like elevators used to have a manual
elevator operator and you have somebody who would be sort of moving the lever and be able to
fine-tune adjustments the elevator for each floor. Now there's no manual controller for elevators.
I think it's gonna seen the same way for cars.
And how about the way consumers interact with driverless cars
How many consumers will choose to own their own car vs signing into a network fleet of driverless cars?
Probably still most people will own their own cars but it is hard to predict the exact percentage,
but I think probably roughly 60-70 percent of people probably want to own their cars
about two-third or one-third share and this is a complete shooting-in-the-dark guess,
but I think still most people
will want to own their own cars.
But they also may choose to add it to the shared fleet and then take it out of shared fleet at will.
You don't see that as a threat to your
business model?
No, I think just as long as we make great autonomous cars.
It's just additional options for the consumer.
Yeah it's just adding functionality that I think who will consider quite important in the car in the future.
I actually talked about this before.
In the long term owning a car that does not have the autonomous capability will be a bit like owning a horse.
You sort of own a horse for sentimental reasons but not...
but not for actual transport
Let's talk about the futuristic-looking Model X
A question that many Hong Kongers have is, can I park this thing in my parking garage
because of those falcon wing doors.
What's your answer to that?
Actually the falcon wing doors are double hinged.
we call them 'Falcon Wing' instead of 'gull-wing'
because they have a dual acting hinge so
they can actually opened in a
tighter space than almost any door.  And certainly a tighter space than a conventional door.
If you can physically fit between your car and a Model X, then you'll be able to get in the falcon wing door.
And it looks beautiful and
I love the... I mentioned this yesterday
I love the Back to the Future series, remind you the DeLorean which I know, it should not compare to...
It looks sci-fi, it looks cool but
it also, this is important, it serves a design purpose.
What is that purpose?
Yes, so the falcon wing door is designed to improve accessibility of the third row.
Typically in a three-row car and SUV, it's quite difficult to access the third row directly.
You have to fold up the second row seat.
You somehow have to move the seat back of the second row which if you've got sort of a child
or child seat in the second row
can make it really inconvenient to access the third row.
So by having the falcon wing door, we have much bigger opening
that allows you to directly step to the third row quite conveniently
even if their baby sits in the second row.
And then if you're a mother
putting your child in the child seat in the second row,
it's very easy because you
have such a big opening.
And you can step into the car and put the child in the child seat instead of cantilevering your child over
through a hole over the baby
seat, sort of armrest.
So it's meant to improve accessibility and really there are only two ways to achieve the level of accessibility:
One is the sliding door of a minivan and
the other is have something like a falcon wing door
The reason we did't go for a sliding door like a minivan is that
it fundamentally constrains the aesthetics of the exterior of the car
and you have to have three support rails
which also negatively affect aesthetics and that's why all minivans pretty much look the same.
And we wanted to have
something that had that level of accessibility
and actually has greater accessibility than the minivan door but also looks good.
This is classic user-centered design and can I just say thank you for designing for moms
and thank you for designing for parents.
It's pretty cool.
I think parents will really enjoy the Model X.
And we are also taking good feedback from customers and for example one of the things that was asked
some of the Hong Kong customers who have ordered the Model X is
to have a partial open function of the falcon wing door so if it's a really heavy rain.
Oh, yeah, so it can be an umbrella.
Yeah, so you want sort of maybe a 50, 60 percent open level so you have a good shield from the rain
and people would be pleased know that actually it's already in the works.
Oh, very good, very cool.
just a software update.
And something that is also potentially in
the works but only first selects few a submersible Tesla.
That will be not in anytime soon but just to be a fun side project to have a submersible Tesla,
but I think the market for submarine car is quite small.
But you don't have to use the cross-harbour tunnel in Hong Kong, you can just go through the Victoria Harbour.
That's true.
That would be pretty epic.
Cause it drives right off the edge of the pier.
That's right, be James Bond everyday in your commute.
A Tesla truck? Could that ever happen?
Yeah, I think it's quite likely that we will do a truck in the future.
Yeah, any more details on that?
No, I think it is sort of logical thing for us to do in the future.
Okay, with Tesla your goal's been to make a better car
and you've done that with an electric vehicle that people love it that has quite a cult following
that's upgradable but you also want to
achieve in your turn of phrase is very nice
Or try to achieve this platonic ideal of a car to reach
perfection so what does the perfect car .looks like
I do use that phrase with our engineering and design team aspirationally that we were in pursuit of platonic ideal of perfect car
and who knows what that looks like actually.
But you wanna try to make every element of the car as flawless as possible.
There's always be some degree of imperfection,
but try to minimize that and create a car that is just delightful in every way
and I think if you do that then the rest can take care of itself.
You are also the chairman of SolarCity, building a network of solar panels and solar systems
and I can see what solar can make sense in the place like California where it's sunny all the time
homes are big, a lot of roof space, you can lay out the solar panels.
But in the place like Hong Kong, densely packed, vertical cities,
how can solar makes sense here?
I think it's true that in dense cities, rooftop solar is not gonna solve the energy need.
What you can do is have ground mount solar power near Hong Kong tapping into the existing power lines
that are coming in and so you can supply Hong Kong with solar power
which is needed to be coming from a land area that's not too far away.
China has actually enormous land area, much which is hardly occupied at all.
Given that the Chinese population is
so concentrated on the coast,
once you go inland, the population is remarkably tiny
so you can easily power all of China with solar.
All of China with solar?
Easily.
The world's most populous country.
Yeah, definitely.
(Applause from the floor)
Let's go even more way out there and talk
about SpaceX. You are CEO of SpaceX
and you've said that your ultimate goal is
to get humankind to Mars.
I've heard your response to the question but these guys didn't hear it.
Why is Mars important? Whys does Mars matter?
It is really fundamental as we need to make as civilisation...
What kind of future do we want? Do we want a future where we are forever confined to one Planet?
Until some eventual extinction events, however far in the future that might occur.
Or do we want to become a multi-planet species and then ultimately be out there among the stars,
being among many planets, many star systems
I think the latter is far more exciting and inspiring future than the former and Mars is the next natural step.
In fact it's the only planet that we really have a shot at establishing our self-sustaining city on.
And I think once we do establish such a city,
there will be strong forcing function for the improvement of space flight technology
that will enable us to establish
colonies elsewhere in the solar system
and ultimately extend beyond our solar system.
And so there's the defensive reason of protecting the future of humanity
ensuring that the light of consciousness is not extinguised
should some calamities befall Earth
that's the fancy reason but personally I found what gets me more excited is
the fact that it would be an incredible adventure like the greatest adventure ever.
It will be exciting and inspiring
and there need to be things that excite and inspire people.
Reasons why you get up in the morning can't just be solving problems,
it's gonna be something great gonna happen in the future.
We talked about this at length yesterday.
It's not an exit strategy or backup plan for humankind when Earth fails,
it's also to inspire people on Earth
and to transcend to go beyond or mental limits of what we think we can achieve.
I think how incredible the Apollo programme was.
If you ask anyone to name some of humanity's greatest achievements in the 20th Century,
the Apollo programme landing on the moon would in many if not most places be no.1
When will there be a manned SpaceX mission and when will you go to Mars?
Pretty close to do it to sending co-op to the space station. That's currently scheduled for the end of the next year.
So that'll be exciting with the Dragon 2 spacecraft and then we'll have a
next-generation rocket and spacecraft beyond the Falcon Dragon series,
and I'm hoping to describe that architecture later this year
at the International Astronautical Congress which is like the big international space event every year
so that would be quite exciting.
And in terms of me going, I don't know.. maybe four or five years from now,
maybe going to the space station would be nice.
And in terms of the first flight to Mars,
we hope to do that in around 2025.
In the Year 2025?
Nine years from now thereabouts.
Oh my goodness, it's just around the
corner.
Well, nine years.
So are you doing zero gravity training?
I've done the parabolic flights, those are kind of fun.
You must be reading up and doing the physical testing to get ready for this ultimate flight of your life.
I don't think it's that hard honestly, float around. It's not that hard to float around.
But I know you've seen the Martian.
We talked about the Martianm
and it looks like the hardest thing anyone could ever do
is getting there and also surviving and trying to anticipate everything that could go wrong
and make sure it doesn't happen.
You can tell I'm not gonna be signing up for your manned space flight when it takes place.
Going to Mars is definitely gonna be hard and dangerous and difficult in probably every way you can imagine.
Certainly wouldn't be, if you care about the sort of things safe and comfortable
going to mars would be a terrible choice.
And this is at the heart of who you are because you to quote Pink Floyd -
you do not like to live a comfortably numb life.
You take on incredible risk to take on entrenched big established industries
and to shake and rattle them up
to introduce something new and it's so cool to watch
and I think that's why everybody here signed up to come here to listen to you
just to hear more about that.
People want to be more like you.
And for the fate of humankind I think it would be great to have more Elon Musks.
So what do we need
to do to become more like Elon?
I think maybe sounds better than it is.
Honestly, there is a friend of mine who's got a good saying about creating a company
which is trying to build a company and have it succeeded
is like eating glass and
staring into the abyss
so what tends to happen is it's sort of quite exciting for
the first several months of starting a company
and then reality sets in,
things don't go as well as planned,
customers aren't signing up, the technology or the product isn't
working as well as you thought
and then conduct concern has been compounded by a recession
and it can be very painful for several years.
So I think starting a company, I would advise some people to have a high pain tolerance.
And thanks for reminding us of the very harsh and brutal reality of launching a startup.
There is that Elon Musk/ Tony Stark mystique, people think
you were Robert Downey Jr. model,
his character, Tony Stark, iron man on you.
It's easy. It's fun.
You are a super hero type of industry
but it's really hard, it's really difficult
and it's something that requires
perseverance and greed.
Do you fear that maybe in this generation 
or the younger generation
that they don't have that perseverance and greed to take on these really tough challenges?
I think some people will do.
It is definitely true that...
maybe there are occassionally companies that get created where there's not an extend a period of extreme pain
but I'm not aware of many of such instances.
But I do think that new great entrepreneurs are born everyday
and we will continue to see amazing
companies get built,
but I would definitely advise people starting a company to expect a long period of difficulty.
But as long as people stay super focused on creating absolute best part of service
that really delight their end customer if they stay focused on that.
then if you get a sense that your
customers want you to succeed then you probably will.
You have to focus on the customer,
delivering for them.
If your customers love you, your odds of success are dramatically higher.
All the entrepreneurs in this room, they are listening to that message.
Running out of time, so this is the final question:
This is for the budding entrepreneurs in the room who can take an Elon Musk idea and run with it.
Quite famously Hyperloop idea that you had to give away
because you just don't have enough time to deal with it
What are the other ideas that you have that you would love to see another entrepreneur take on and go?
I think there's a lot of opportunity in general in electrification in transport.
So electric aircraft I think there is lots of opportunity there.
And genetics, so that's sort of a thorny area,
but in terms of solving some of the more intransigent diseases, genetics is really key to solving those.
Something that people may be only beginning to look at is establishing some kind of brain-computer interface.
A brain-computer interface?
Yes, at the neuron level.
So this is sort of intelligent augmentation as opposed to artificial intelligence
that has a lot of potential.
You mentioned this to me yesterday, I really had no idea what you're talking about
and then I looked up Iain Banks, Neuralynx.
So it is the concept of wiring the brain so it's either...
So there could be a brain internet
and it could also mean that we could upload our thoughts to the cloud
You will never forget anything
and you wouldn't need to take photographs.
It's incredible. You will never forget anything.
You will expand your ability to process information to remember information
but then where the denial of service attack happens.
You know, watch out for hacking, that could really be...
But also I read that it could be used to fight the degenerative diseases like Parkinson's too.
Absolutely.
And I think actually it would be quite an equaliser as well
cause I think the the delta between
it would just even things out.
You mean, for humankind, people would be no education disadvantage,
everyone would be starting at the same
level
so there would be no meritocracy... no, there would be new meritocracy.
There will be but the differences will be smaller.
The delta will be smaller probably.
And you really welcome that kind of world?
Well, You asked for predictions.
Predictions are not the same as preferences.
So do I think something like that is likely to occur?I think probably.
It's incredible.
We can go on and on. Unfortunately we have to wrap and leave it that.
Let's give it for Elon Musk.
That is really awesome. Thank you so much.
Thank you Kristie from CNN
and the de facto game changer, Elon Musk
In fact I invite both of you to stand on the stage for a moment, we are going to do a group photo.
I'd like to please invite to join us on stage.
Mr Greg So,  Hong Kong Secretary for the Commerce and Economic Development
along with all our distinguished speakers
and vertical champions as well as venue partners for StartmeupHK Festival.
Come up onto the stage, we are going to take a group photo together.
I believe we are going to move the furniture briefly.
Can I also please just make sure that we
include these individuals -
Matt, Julie, Renue, Bhatti, Anson Falie, Irene Chiu, Andy Liu, Steve Monaghan, Angie Ohn
and the Brinc team Mickey, Christine and Manav.
We have to get it nice and close to each other.
