"The key to making things affordable is design and technology improvements, as well as scale."

"Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history."

"I’ve actually not read any books on time management."

"I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself."

"I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company."

"If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me."

"Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence."

"I think whenever something is—whenever there’s something that affects the public good, then there does need to be some form of public oversight."

"Life is too short for long-term grudges."

"I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary."

"Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment."

"I could either watch it happen or be a part of it."

"You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better."

"I was born in Africa. I came to California because it’s really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don’t see a viable competitor."

"It’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life [and] your job is gonna be quite miserable."

"Talent is extremely important. It’s like a sports team, the team that has the best individual player will often win, but then there’s a multiplier from how those players work together and the strategy they employ."

"Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That’s pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement."

"Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product."

"Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

"Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It’s hard to break into a network once it’s formed."

"I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system."

"Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive, and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell."

"I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people."

"When somebody has a breakthrough innovation, it is rarely one little thing. Very rarely, is it one little thing. It’s usually a whole bunch of things that collectively amount to a huge innovation."

"When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor."

"If I’m not in love, if I’m not with a long-term companion, I cannot be happy."

"It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket."

"People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else."

"We’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work."

"I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time-solving engineering and manufacturing problems."

"Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death."

"There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties."

"What makes innovative thinking happen? … I think it’s really a mindset. You have to decide."

"Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up."

"There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multi celled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness."

"I think the best way to attract venture capital is to try and come up with a demonstration of whatever product or service it is and ideally take that as far as you can. Just see if you can sell that to real customers and start generating some momentum. The further along you can get with that, the more likely you are to get funding."

"There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering."

"There’s nothing – I’ve bought everything I want. I don’t like yachts or anything; you know, I’m not a yacht person, and I’ve got pretty much the nicest plane I’d want to have."

"When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars, people said, ‘Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?’ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked."

"You have to say, ‘Well, why did it succeed where others did not?’"

"We are the first species capable of self-annihilation."

"A battery by definition is a collection of cells. So, the cell is a little can of chemicals. And the challenge is taking a very high-energy cell, and a large number of them, and combining them safely into a large battery."

"If you’re co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do… If you don’t do your chores, the company won’t succeed… No task is too menial."

"I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don’t retire before I go senile, then I’ll do more damage than good at that point."

"I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens."

"From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare."

"When I was a child, there’s one thing I said: ‘I never want to be alone.’ That’s what I would say. I don’t want to be alone."

"Disruptive technology where you really have a big technology discontinuity… tends to come from new companies."

"We have a strict ‘no-assholes policy’ at SpaceX."

"The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design."

"I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future."

"People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working."

"I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my own test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do."

"If humanity doesn’t land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed."

"It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive."

"Stationary storage will be as big as the car business long term. The growth rate will probably be several times what it is for the car business."

"I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple’s product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium."

"I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side."

"Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do."

"Really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. … Hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful."

"Don’t delude yourself into thinking something’s working when it’s not, or you’re gonna get fixated on a bad solution."

"Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives."

"A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies."

"As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies."

"So, we originally expected to make about 35 gigawatt hours at the cell level and about 50 gigawatt hours at the module or pack level. Now we are expecting to do about 150 gigawatt hours in the same volumetric space as the original design."

"If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion."

"I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company."

"The fuel cell is just a fundamentally inferior way of delivering electrical energy to an electric motor than batteries."

"The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur."

"I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done."

"Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian."

"There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing."

"I don’t believe in the process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign. The problem is that at a lot of big companies, the process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative."

"I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign. The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative."

"I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right."

"If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not."

"There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

"I would just question things… It would infuriate my parents… That I wouldn’t just believe them when they said something ’cause I’d ask them why. And then I’d consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew."

"I’m interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you’re like, ‘Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?’"

"I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy."

"I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better."

"I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself."

"If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilizations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilizations."

"I always have optimism, but I’m realistic. It was not with the expectation of great success that I started Tesla or SpaceX… It’s just that I thought they were important enough to do anyway."

"Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80-to-100-hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40-hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100-hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve."

"I do think there should be some regulations on AI."

"The goal of Tesla is to accelerate sustainable energy, so we’re going to take a step back and think about what’s most likely to achieve that goal."

"If something has to be designed and invented, and you have to figure out how to ensure that the value of the thing you create is greater than the cost of the inputs, then that is probably my core skill."

"My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so, there were lots of engineered things around me."

"I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact."

"My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart."

"I like the word ‘autopilot’ more than I like the word ‘self-driving.’ ‘Self-driving’ sounds like it’s going to do something you don’t want it to do. ‘Autopilot’ is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars."

"I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved."

"Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is a disaster."

"In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate."

"Any product that needs a manual to work is broken."

"Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson."

"If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it’s always expensive."

"There are really two things that have to occur in order for new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions."

"I think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near term that's likely to affect humanity so it's very important that we have the advent of AI in a good way"

"if you can actually solve genetic diseases if you can promote dementia or Alzheimer's or something like that that was genetic reprogramming that would be wonderful"

"it only gets better if smart people work work like crazy to make it better that's how any technology actually gets better"

"it's not as though I just have the absence of fear I've I feel it quite strongly but there are times when something is important enough you believe in it enough that you do it in spite of the fear"

"my starting SpaceX I thought the odds of success were less than 10% and I just accepted that actually probably I would just lose lose everything but that maybe would make some progress if we could just move the ball forward even if we died"

"I think we must have democratization of AI technology make it widely available and that's you know the reason that obviously you mean the rest the team you know created open AI was to help with the democracy our a AI technology so it doesn't get concentrated in the hands of a few"

"almost all my time like 80% of it is spent on engineering design in engineering and design so it's developing next generation product"

"the biggest epiphany I've had thus this year is that what really matters is that is the machine that builds the machine the factory"

"A recent email to his employees shows that he not only has a strong work ethic, but also high emotional intelligence, which is “the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others,” according to Psychology Today."

"Research shows bosses who demonstrate high emotional intelligence make for better leaders and true team-players."

"Some of the key phrases in the email that demonstrate Musk’s emotional intelligence include “how much I care,” “it breaks my heart” and “so that I can understand.”"

"Every Entrepreneur Must Answer This Question, According To Elon Musk"

"Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal."

"maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors."

"Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day."

"We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard."

"Reading has been shown to enhance confidence, decision-making, and empathy, and can even prevent depression and relieve stress."

"Reading helps inspire, and many successful people specifically read biographies and autobiographies in order to gain guidance for career moves too."

"“Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.”"

"People who reason by analogy tend to make bad decisions, even if they’re smart."

"I do think there’s a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning. Generally I think there are — what I mean by that is, boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy."

"In layman’s terms, first principles thinking is basically the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you ‘know’ about a given problem or scenario — and then creating new knowledge and solutions from scratch. Almost like a newborn baby."

"“It is important to view knowledge as sort of semantic tree. Make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”"

"STEP 1: Identify and define your current assumptions"

"STEP 2: Breakdown the problem into its fundamental principles."

"STEP 3: Create new solutions from scratch"

"I think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near term that's likely to affect humanity."

"I think working on AI and making sure its a great future, that's the most important thing I think right now, the most pressing item."

"We're effectively superhuman but we are extremely bandwidth constrained in that interface between the cortex and that tertiary digital form of yourself and helping solve that bandwidth constraint would be I think very important for the future as well."

"making life multi-planetary, accelerating the transition to sustainable energy, the Internet broadly speaking and then genetics and AI."

"You can get a doctorate on many things that ultimately do not have a practical bearing on the world. And I wanted to just...I really was just trying to be useful. That's the optimization. It's like what can I do that would actually be useful."

"Crazy if the objective was to achieve the best risk-adjusted return starting our company is insane."

"It only gets better if smart people work like crazy to make it better. That's how any technology actually gets better. And by itself technology...if people don't work on it, it actually will decline."

"there are many such examples in history so I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side."

"Elon: Well first of all I actually think I feel fear quite strongly. So it's not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. But there are just times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that you do do it in spite of fear."

"something that can be helpful is fatalism to some degree. If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear."

"that maybe would make some progress if we could just move the ball forward even if we died maybe some other company could pick up the baton and keep moving it forward so that would still do some good."

"Critical to making that happen is an electric car without compromises, which is why the Tesla Roadster is designed to beat a gasoline sports car like a Porsche or Ferrari in a head to head showdown."

"Then, over and above that fact, it has twice the energy efficiency of a Prius."

"The strategy of Tesla is to enter at the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model."

"In keeping with a fast growing technology company, all free cash flow is plowed back into R&D to drive down the costs and bring the follow on products to market as fast as possible."

"When someone buys the Tesla Roadster sports car, they are actually helping pay for development of the low cost family car."

"Now I’d like to address two repeated arguments against electric vehicles — battery disposal and power plant emissions. The answer to the first is short and simple, the second requires a bit of math:"

"I wouldn’t recommend them as a dessert topping, but the Tesla Motors Lithium-Ion cells are not classified as hazardous and are landfill safe."

"Power Plant Emissions aka “The Long Tailpipe”"

"The H-System Combined Cycle Generator from General Electric is 60% efficient in turning natural gas into electricity. ""Combined Cycle"" is where the natural gas is burned to generate electricity and then the waste heat is used to create steam that powers a second generator."

"Natural gas recovery is 97.5% efficient, processing is also 97.5% efficient and then transmission efficiency over the electric grid is 92% on average. This gives us a well-to-electric-outlet efficiency of 97.5% x 97.5% x 60% x 92% = 52.5%."

"The full cycle charge and discharge efficiency of the Tesla Roadster is 86%, which means that for every 100 MJ of electricity used to charge the battery, about 86 MJ reaches the motor."

"Bringing the math together, we get the final figure of merit of 2.53 km/MJ x 86% x 52.5% = 1.14 km/MJ."

"The fully considered well-to-wheel efficiency of a gasoline powered car is equal to the energy content of gasoline (34.3 MJ/liter) minus the refinement & transportation losses (18.3%), multiplied by the miles per gallon or km per liter."

"They are really just gasoline powered cars with a little battery assistance and, unless you are one of the handful who have an aftermarket hack, the little battery has to be charged from the gasoline engine. Therefore, they can be considered simply as slightly more efficient gasoline powered cars."

"If the EPA certified mileage is 55 mpg, then it is indistinguishable from a non-hybrid that achieves 55 mpg. As a friend of mine says, a world 100% full of Prius drivers is still 100% addicted to oil."

"Natural gas is 14.4 grams of carbon per mega-joule and oil is 19.9 grams of carbon per mega-joule. Applying those carbon content levels to the vehicle efficiencies, including as a reference the Honda combusted natural gas and Honda fuel cell natural gas vehicles, the hands down winner is pure electric:"

"The higher CO2 content of coal compared to natural gas is offset by the negligible CO2 content of hydro, nuclear, geothermal, wind, solar, etc."

"I should mention that Tesla Motors will be co-marketing sustainable energy products from other companies along with the car."

"If you travel less than 350 miles per week, you will therefore be “energy positive” with respect to your personal transportation."

"So, in short, the master plan is: Build sports car Use that money to build an affordable car Use that money to build an even more affordable car While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options"