April 29, 2025 • 31 mins
Today marks the 100th day of the second Trump administration. It also means it’s been about 100 days since Elon Musk transformed the US Digital Service into what he and Trump contend is a government cost-cutting initiative named after Musk’s favorite crypto coin. With the Trump news cycle more intense than ever and Musk the fastest moving part of it, today’s episode of Elon, Inc. attempts to make sense of the past three-and-a-half months.
What we do know is that the “Department of Government Efficiency” has only cut a fraction of the $2 trillion Musk initially promised, and that the South Africa native’s pledge of full transparency has come to nearly naught. Meanwhile, the entire effort is the subject of furious litigation over its arguably unconstitutional nature. Host David Papadopoulos gathers Max Chafkin, Dana Hull and Bloomberg technology reporter Kurt Wagner to break down Musk’s activities as his 130 days as a special government employee nears a close. What has been Musk’s biggest win? Biggest loss? What event has been the most surprising or under reported? The gang has its work cut out for them.
Also, David, Dana and Max zero in on the robotaxi. Supposedly launching in Austin, Texas, in June, much of Tesla’s still-high valuation is bound up with Musk’s idea of a self-driving cab, and a lot of time was dedicated to it during last week’s Tesla earnings call. After years of promises, will the robotaxi actually see the light of day? How big of a fleet are we talking about? Will it survive an already crowded market?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A star is born Elon pumped up on Mars Juthan Kennemy.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
be in four fos.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Reminds us of that we don't have a fourth branch
of governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
Mack, Mush, Mush.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon Ak, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, April twenty ninth. I'm your host, David Papadopoulos. Okay, folks,
so depending on your math, and this I will note
is the subject of heated debate inside the Bloomberg newsroom.
We're one hundred days into the Trump administration, which for
us here at Elon Ink means, of course, one hundred
(01:08):
days of doge. And so we've assembled our crack staff
to unveil the good the bad, the ugly, and the
truly shocking of Musk's first hundred days in power. We
have our regulars, Max Chafkin and Dana Hull. Welcome to
you bulls.
Speaker 6 (01:24):
Greetings, David, how are you?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I'm good, Dana, Hey, David, And we have good Friend
of the Pod tech reporter Kurt Wagner.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Kurt Heloser, Hey, how often do I have to come
on to be considered a regular here? I feel like
my title, but no, I feel like I'm here pretty regularly.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It's fine.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I can be friend of the pod.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Friend of the Pod gets you, you know, a certain
amount of pay, and then if you go move beyond that,
it's a bomb. We'rettle. We got doged around here. We
all have the money to give you an upgrade later on.
Later on we'll kick Kurt out, so is you know,
because just keeping him in the friend of pods status,
We'll kick him out. Sorry, Kurt and Dana, Max and
(02:06):
I will get under the hood of the vaunted Robotaxi,
which is launching supposedly in June. Now, Musk spent the
chunk of last week's Tesla earnings call, remember that call,
hyping the vehicle and so we'll dissect the new details
and color emerging around a product that is a crucial
driver of Tesla's stock price. All right, but first things first,
(02:27):
Dana and Kurt, you guys have out on the Bloomberg
terminal and on the world wide Web today a terrific
piece about the one hundred days of elon Muskin power,
and there were a few nuggets I want to quickly
point out that people. One is that Musk has ruffled
so many feathers there in Washington and inside the administration
(02:47):
and among Republican members of Congress that he is. He
has been instructed to sit down each week with Trump's
Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, to keep her informed of
his comings and goings. A little bit more color on this,
he got called into the penalty box. What happened?
Speaker 4 (03:04):
This is reporting that was contributed by our colleague Nancy
Cook and Washington. And my understanding is just that, you know,
for all of the shock and awe of the first
hundred days on both the Trump administration side and the
Doge side, the lack of coordination really led to a
lot of consternation with the cabinet secretaries and with the staff,
and you know, musk is, you know, moving fast, kind
(03:27):
of like shoot first, asked questions later. That is the
way he operates. And he kind of felt like he
had carte blanche to do that from the President and
was doing what he was doing to help enact the agenda.
But when there's fallout, you know, you have to kind
of have a little bit more of a coordinated approach.
And I think that you know, Susie Wilds is very
much into message discipline and kind of trying to run
a much more orderly White House. So yeah, they're apparently
(03:50):
they're meeting on a more regular basis now, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
And I just thought that was a great little nugget
in there. And another one Kurt that I noticed was
for every day that Doze says it saved for American taxpayers.
The market cap of Tesla has fallen two dollars. Tesla's
market cap now down roughly four hundred and fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, And I think what is probably not shocking to
those of us here and those who are regular listeners
of Elon Inc. Is this idea that you know, Elon
has quite frankly like vastly overpromised and under delivered on
the Doze stuff, right, I mean, it wasn't that long
ago what we were talking when we're talking like two
trillion dollars in cuts than one trillion dollars in cuts,
(04:40):
and now we're talking about, you know, one hundred billion
dollars in cuts or whatever it is. So I think
what's somewhat again maybe surprising to the general public, but
not to those who follow Elon closely, is this idea
that he often presents a much grand or a much
more successful vision than what he's able to liver. And
(05:00):
that's part of why he's a great salesman. But it's
also part of why you know he is now in
this predicament, is that he kind of came in and
went a little too big, not really hitting those numbers.
So that's reflected in the Tesla stock.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Okay, and so let's do this. Now. We have a
handful of categories that we have selected for you guys,
and I will throw them out in Musk and Doge's
first hundred days. So let's say in Musk's first hundred days,
I should say for starters, first things first, give me
his biggest victory, Kurt Wagner.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
His biggest victory is going to be the impact he's
had on helping get friends and allies placed throughout the government.
And I'm going to focus specifically on the presumptive administrator
of NASA. Jared Isaacman, who you know has flown in
SpaceX Rockets, is sort of a supporter both emotionally and
(06:01):
financially of Musk, and I think having a friend running
NASA will be huge for him.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Max Chefkin agree.
Speaker 5 (06:07):
With Kurt Jared Isaacman as Kurt is a good friend
of this pod. Jered isaac Man is a good friend
of SpaceX. That's Elon's biggest win, I think by some margin.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
But is Kurt being a good friend of the show.
Is that helping Elan?
Speaker 5 (06:22):
No, what I'm saying, Yeah, I'm not saying going to
get us a ten billions.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Contract right now.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
But don't let David come between us. Max, I got you.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It's fine, Dana Hall, Let's say you the data.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
It's the access to the data. It's the fact that Doge.
It's not just that like these Doge kids are like
working at these various entities. It's that Musk and like
the sort of Silicon Valley cabal they have people now
in CISO positions, and they have access to vast amounts
of government data. This is a guy who's who's running
(06:58):
an AI company. He all has access to government data.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
As somebody who has kind of by nature somewhat skeptical
of many developments in AI. Like I think I agree
with everything that Dana just said, Like this is a
potential win both for Trump and for Elon, but I
don't know, like we've seen, like data access does not
necessarily mean like definite technology improvement. It doesn't mean that
(07:26):
they've done anything with the data, like we just I
don't think we know for real what Elon has gotten
out of this, or even frankly, what Trump has gotten
out of this. Like these guys are definitely going to
tell a story where data is very important.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
I see, Okay, moving on, Musk's biggest defeat, and there
are many to pull from here. His biggest defeat in
these first hundred days. Kurt Wagner, I'm.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Going to go with Tesla's brand destruction. Obviously, I know
these things go in waves, but it's been it's been
really bad. It's the kind nothing I could take years,
decades to win back.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
Max Chefkin, The poll numbers Elon Musk went his poll numbers.
And now, because Elon Musk is a political figure, we
see him all the time.
Speaker 6 (08:12):
He is like the equivalent of a.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Very unpopular politician. And he went from being a pretty
much universally admired business guy, even when he was starting
to sort of signal right wing, to being you know,
underwater in his poll numbers. And that, you know, that
has impact on Tesla. It has impacts, you know, it
could even impact Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
So, yeah, Wisconsin, you know, lost in the kind of
blizzard of this first one hundred days is that Musk,
you know, ventured out with his political Action committee to
the badger state in support of a Republican nominee for
the Supreme Court race there, and you know, spent twenty
million dollars, ran all these ads, you know, paid people
(08:57):
to sign his petition, gave away money, campaigned in Green Bay,
wore a cheese hat, I mean, did all these things
to kind of really inject himself in the Wisconsin race.
And what the Democratic Party in was content realized very
quickly was that Trump was not on the ballot and
that they could frame this race as a referendum on
Musk and Doge which they did quite effectively, and the
(09:19):
Democrat in that race won by ten points. And you know,
in the piece today we have a great quote from
Elaine Kmark from brook Dings. People hate Elon more than
Trump now and that is rallying Democrats. And if the
Wisconsin race is a barometer of what's to come, I
think it just really calls into question how effective Musk
and a spending will be in down ballot races where
(09:40):
when Trump is not on the ballot himself.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And there's obviously there's a through line here between the
three things, because the collapse and Musk popularity gets you
the brand destruction gets you to the.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
Feed different sort of show what has happened this incredible
collapse his popularity.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Okay, next category, the biggest surprise in these first one
hundred days, Kurt Wagner, what say.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You, Well, I'm gonna repeat what Dana just said, which
was the Wisconsin election loss.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
You're going back to Wisconsin? Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I just thought so soon after the Trump victory to
employe essentially the exact same playbook and get rebuked in
the way that he did, I just I don't know,
I knew people were unhappy obviously, with Elon I didn't
know that it would be that stark, this fast, Max Scheffkin.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
The biggest surprise to me was the attempt to gain
access to the Department of Defense's China plans.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
This was like a news story.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Surprising because you just thought it was such an overreach,
just so audacious.
Speaker 6 (10:46):
It wasn't.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
I mean, it was clearly an overreach because Trump came
out and said, I actually, no, no, no, no, he's
not you know.
Speaker 6 (10:50):
This isn't actually happening.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
There was, you know, whatever it To me, that was
the kind of high point of Elon Musk's influence in Washington.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
That was it.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
I mean, the idea that he's gonna march over to
the Pentagon and despite the fact that he has these
very close ties to China, that they're you know that
there are people within the Republican Party who are skeptical
of Elon Musk because he's so close to China that
he's gonna, you know, that he's gonna get access to
potentially classified according to some reports which were then disputed,
(11:20):
potentially classified information. Of course, that has implications for for SpaceX.
SpaceX is you know, vying for government contracts and so on.
Speaker 6 (11:30):
To me, that was that was kind of the high point.
It was stunning.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
Even as as optimistic as I was about Elon's ability
to influence Donald Trump, I did that even surprised me.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
You didn't You didn't see that one coming, Okay, Dana Hall.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
I still think that. Like one of the most surreal
moments was when Donald Trump had five Tesla vehicles, including
a cyber truck, on the White House lawn and kind
of turned the White House into a pop up showroom.
This this was at the height of like the backlash
against Tesla and all of these protests are going on,
(12:05):
and instead of like maybe realizing, oh, the optics of
all this are kind of bad, like Musk and Trump
just doubled down on the optics of the president of
the United States basically rewarding his billionaire backer with like
a little you know, with like a little show like
fake Tesla sales thing, and it just forever cemented Tesla
(12:27):
as a Trump brand. It was just so crazy. It
was so crazy to watch. You know, Trump is like, oh,
it's all computer. He's like getting into the car. Meanwhile,
because he's the president, he can't actually drive to see
the White House turned into that kind of a spectacle
for a private business person. It's just like unheard of.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
But that is a good point that as bad as
first quarter sales were, sales to sitting US presidents were wayrd.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
But did he actually buy I think I don't know
that he borrowed.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
It was infintesimal. It went from zero to like one
or I.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Want to see that car. I don't believe that there
was actually a car purchase.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Not my favorite my I guess at a surprising moment.
I don't know if it was a surprise, but maybe
most surreal was when he was jumping up and down
on stage with the chainsaw that Javier Malay gave him,
and he was shouting chainsaw, which is what one does
when one jumps up and down on the stage with
the chainsaw on their hand. The most underreported story of
(13:24):
the first one hundred days, Kurt Wagner.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I'm gonna caveat this by I think it's partly underreported
because we're still dealing with or learning about the consequences,
but we're still reporting. But I think Doge's impact on
all of these various agencies that regulate Musk's companies, right,
So do these cuts are these cuts going to benefit
(13:47):
him tremendously down the line, because the people who used
to keep tabs on him and all the things that
his companies do are no longer in the building. And
I suspect, I think we all sort of suspect that
that is true to an extent. To what extent, I'm
not sure we will know for a while, but I
just think that's something that we're going to have to
keep paying attention to.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
That is a story that will have legs.
Speaker 7 (14:09):
Max Schafkin, So, I think this was like a blip
of a news story about a potential four hundred million
dollar contract for the State Department to buy cyber trucks.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
People will remember this.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
It came and went, the Trump administration essentially backed away
from it. The spreadsheet was deleted. We don't know what happened.
I think people are going to continue pulling on that one,
and I personally would like to know how that line
item got on a spreadsheet. I think to me, it
feels like the kind of news story that could come
(14:44):
to come back to bite both Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Denihull, what is your most underreported story?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Okay, two things. First of all, it's notable that Elon
Musk has not left the country since Trump became president.
Typically he is someone who travels abroad quite a bit,
like he goes to Europe, he goes to China. He
has not left the country, and I think that that's
because he's just been hyper focused on Doge, but also
maybe he's like worried about his safety, so it's unusual
(15:12):
for him to just be domestic for so long. But secondly,
I mean, I'm going to bring up natalism over and
over again because Sophie, Alexander and I were very early
to the story. Since inauguration, we have learned if not
just one other, but two other new children in Elon
Musk's family. He now has at least fourteen children. Ashley
Saint Clair announced that she was the mother of one
(15:35):
of his kids and there's a whole lawsuit now about
paternity and child support. And then Chavon Zillis, who is
an executive at Neuralink, also announced that they have four
kids together. So since Trump was inaugurated, we have learned
of two additional children.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, so if nothing else, there will be by the
end of the year. If my math is correct, we'll
have eight new members of the Musk household, Kurt Wagner,
Before you leave us, sir, I want to point out
one other thing in the story that you guys had today,
which is that, of course, coming into last week's Tesla
earnings call, there was a lot of you know, questions
(16:12):
and hand ringing about was Musk going to address the
topic of his leaving government his returning to Tesla see
oh no, And it was just kind of there was
a lot of debate swirling in your story. You said,
he announced what is effectively a soft exit.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Explain, Yeah, well, he said, I'm leaving, but I will
continue to work, you know, for or with the administration
one the two days per week as long as President
Trump wants me to.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
I'll continue to spend a day or two per week
on goun matters for as long as the President would
like me to do so and as long as it
is useful. But starting next month, allocating parlow of my
time to Tesla.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
But if he's still going to spend forty percent of
his work week doing this, is he really leaving? I
would say that was maybe more optics for Tesla investors,
but it felt a little bit more like a performative
language perhaps.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
Look, I guess it's possible he may leave, but just
just this morning, or maybe it was last night as
we record this. On Tuesday, he posted two pictures of
himself holding a Doge badge for some reason.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
So you know what did a Doge badge say?
Speaker 6 (17:30):
It's a Doge father and had a number on it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
It's the father of dog. That's another the number.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
Nine for twenty six six thousand, sixty nine thousand, four
hundred and twenty.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
He's got the badge, he can't see.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Kurt Wager, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, friend of the pod kerk Wagner signing off. Thanks guys.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
So, in addition to Musk unveiling his grand soft exit
from Doge, heading back in part to Tesla, on the
call last week, he talked lots and lots about the Robotaxi.
Let's listen to Elon in his own words and what
he had to say.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
The team and I are laser focused on bringing robotaxi
to Austin in gine on spis autonomy. Well, first, he's
all for the model. Y in Austin actually should pass
out the terms for robotic taxi or robotaxi and just
generally like what's the cybercap because we've got a product
called the cybercab. And then at any any Tesla which
could be an S three X or Y that is autonomous,
(18:37):
is a robotic taxi or robotaxi. It's very confusing. So
the vast majority about the Tesla fleet that we've made
is capable of being a robotaxi. Robotic taxi.
Speaker 6 (18:48):
Guys, Okay, I got this.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
First off, is for a guy who says I'm so excited,
he didn't sound too excited. Okay, that's my first stop.
But second of all, Max, I mean, what the heck
is he talking about? Seeing as I'm not that close
to it, I'm confused.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
So in a lot of ways, the earnings call was
very similar to the earnings calls we've seen many times
over the last couple of years, in the sense that
you have Elon Musk attempting to spin things forward. Don't
focus on the declining or stagnant sales numbers, don't focus
on the fact that the cyber truck is disappointing. Focus
on robotax is an optimism, and we saw that. But
(19:26):
what's different now and what really became clear to me
as we watched and listened to this earnings call. Is like,
they need to launch something very soon, and when you
need to launch something very soon, you need to start
talking about specifics. So we're hearing some specifics there. What
Musk is talking about is that the Robotaxi launch in
Austin will not include the cybercab. This was the car
(19:48):
that they launched a year ago. It will essentially be
a normal Tesla with a steering wheel. But I suppose
without a driver behind the wheel, or perhaps maybe a
safety driver behind the way.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Oh sorry, sorry, but don't tessels aren't they already largely
capable of driving themselves.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
That is, you're not, David, I'm getting yelled at the
Well wait a minute.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So when drivers take their hands off the wheels, who
is driving them?
Speaker 5 (20:17):
You, the driver, are still driving the Tesla. When you
take your hands off the wheels, I assume you're still
I hope your eyes are still on the road. I
hope your feet are ready to press the brake if necessary.
And so that is you're right, David, that Elon Musk
has described what.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I guess I'm trying to get at it. What is
the difference between that vehicle and its technology and the
one that currently And you guys can scream and shout
as much as you want. If your hands aren't on
the wheels and your foot's not on the pedal or on,
you're not driving. You could be watching it, you're monitoring it,
but you're not driving it.
Speaker 6 (20:48):
Oh dude, you are driving it. Because if your hands
are right there to take.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
The wheel, are they or you're or I don't know,
are they or are you texting?
Speaker 5 (20:55):
Well, if you're texting, then you are not using the
technology appropriately.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
We digress. Or what is the difference as we understand it,
What is the difference between this vehicle that we shall
see apparently in June and the existing ones.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
David, You're not going to see a new vehicle in June.
What's happening in June is that Tesla is going to
launch some kind of ride handling service with the Model.
Speaker 6 (21:16):
Why.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
The cybercab that is the new vehicle that people have,
you know that they unveiled in the fall, is not
ready for prime time. You know, they said that they're
going to launch this service with like ten vehicles, maybe
twenty vehicles, and it's all going to be the Model Why.
So that's what's so crazy, David.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
They answer your question is so Tesla right now has
something called full self driving parentheses supervised.
Speaker 6 (21:40):
Now, the full self driving is what you're describing.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
The parentheses supervised is what Dan and I are bringing up,
which is that you're not allowed to use it without
having your eyes on the road, hands on the wheel,
feet ready to take over, because it is not considered
ready for that. The plan, of course, is to take
away the parentheses supervised and allow these cars to operate autonomously.
(22:02):
And as we learned during this conference call, the way
they're going to do that is by essentially severely limiting
where these cars are able to operate. So Elon Musk
talked about that during the call. It's going to be
part of Austin and then they're going to try they
are frantically, as we learned, trying to fix the quote
(22:22):
unquote edge cases. So the kinds of things that might
cause you to have to take over they're going to
try to fix.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
We actually we have a clip of Elon talking about
that as well. Let's listen to every one second.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
It does seem increasingly likely that there will be a
localized parameter set, especially for places that have said very
snowy weather, like say, if you're in the Northeast or something.
It's kind of like a human you could be a
very good driver in California, but are you going to
be also a good driver in a blizzard in Manhattan?
You're not going to be as good. So there is
actually some value in USEL drive, but you're probably even
(22:57):
an accident is higher. It's increasing the obvious that there's
some value to having a localized set of parameters for
different regions. But this is that put them the nice
to have category, that's not the required category.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Blizzards in New York in the Year of Our Lord
twenty twenty five, we get about one of those every
you know, five years or something.
Speaker 5 (23:17):
At other parts on the call, they said, you know,
the conditions are different in Boston versus Austin. I mean,
it's clear they're going to create a very modest, modestly
bounded part of Austin that they in my my and
my guess is that they have mapped it, you know,
very closely. But basically this is the kind of thing
that all of the other quote unquote autonomous vehicle companies
(23:41):
have done as well, because they're not actually able to
deliver an autonomous vehicle. What you do is you kind
of limit the where you're deploying it. You put it
on roads that you already know, You limit the speed,
you know, you do a bunch of things to make
this thing act as if it's a fully featured autonomous
vall even though it isn't.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Dana, we get how many of these vehicles when they
apparently roll it out in a couple months.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
I mean they said on the earnings call, like ten
to twenty at first. What I want to impress upon
people is I think people have this idea that all
of a sudden, come June, this brand new Robotaxi is
going to take on Austin much in the way that
like Waimo has rolled out in cities like San Francisco,
and that is not happening. It's this is going to
(24:35):
be a soft launch with existing model. Wise, and like
there's a lot about the business model for this that
we don't know. And you know, Elon has bet the
future of the company on autonomy and AI and robotics.
They don't have another cheaper car yet, so they've got
to do something. And so he's going to have this
event and we'll see and you know, to be fair
of people who have Tesla vehicles with FSD constantly talk
(24:58):
about how they get better and yet like you know,
when the cameras run into the sunlight, like the whole
computer thing gets messed up. So like that's that was
something that they also talked about on the call.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
So it is actually exactly like Waimo. It's just like
Waimo ten years ago. What they're doing. I mean, they
are doing the thing that Weimo did. They're deploying in
a single city with a very small number of cars.
I guess as there will be significant limitations and significant
support for the vehicles so they don't screw up.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So again, just because I'm an idiot, the difference between
these model these ten or twenty model wise that they're
going to be rolling out in June or whatever it is,
are different than existing model all the other model wise
out there because they know the roads, they've been given
the maps of Austin, Texas.
Speaker 6 (25:45):
They they don't know that for sure. No, no, we
don't know.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
So as far as Elon Musk is concerned, these are
the exact same cars. The only we did learn on
this call they're adding a microphone on the cars, so
like there's going to be an additional sensor that is
ostensibly to listen for sirens. The problem being that autonomous
cars from other companies struggle to deal with. Emergency vehicles
(26:09):
are a huge problem for autonomous vehicles. Crews got into
a lot of trouble. It's one of the reasons CRUs
ceased to exist as a driverless car companies because they
could not navigate the emergency vehicles, so police cars and ambulances.
What we know for sure is that they're doing some
things to augment the existing thing. And then the other
difference is going to be there's apparently no one overseeing
(26:32):
the you.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Know, the AGA. As you said earlier, what differentiates this
one from the other ones is the FSD.
Speaker 6 (26:39):
You're essentially just getting rid of the parentheses super.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
No more parentheses.
Speaker 5 (26:44):
It is just although as we learned on this earnings call,
there is going to be some supervision, there's going to
be you know, quote unquote remote operators.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Really just just worked through a long tale of unusual
interventions and these are really very intervention Every ten thousand miles,
I mean, there's a lot of driving you've got to
do to even find one case with an ATHLETs. Okay,
but do you have like remote operators for example, I.
Speaker 8 (27:09):
Mean never know and then if your car gets stuck
or something, someone will like, you know, unlock it. But
it's says, figure to be a bit conservative and our
tend towards more safety than even if it gets stuck.
Every now and then. We do every remote support, but
it's not going to be required for safe operation if anything,
is just required far more availability.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Anyways, I don't like a couple months away, so you
can just say for yourself in a couple months in
as Okay.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
So that was Musk and a shoke Eli Swami, who's
the VP of Autopilot Remote Operators.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
This is a huge issue in the world of autonomous cars.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
And again, what Tesla is doing is basically learning all
of the lessons that Weymo learned. You know, Waimo was
acting like they were about to launch driverless cars across
the country, you know, about ten years ago, and they
have now they're in a handful of cities, you know
there there's certainly more than ten or twenty. But anyway,
remote operators is a guy in a call center who's
(28:05):
watching the car and who is prepared to help take
over if something.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Wait wait, wait, each each person in the call center
presumably they're monitoring more than one car at a time.
Speaker 5 (28:18):
Otherwise you really don't ten or twenty. You probably could
have ten or twenty guys. You know, remember the uh
the autonomy event where you had people voicing Optimus like,
I assume no, no, no, no, that's fine.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
But for Wamo, jesus, Weaimo's literally got.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
Every hugely controversial issue and the companies.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Are whole things a hoax.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
Dude. I have been writing stories about this, pointing out.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
The issues for a year.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
I'm not saying that no one listen.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
Anyway, this has been a huge issue in industry. There
are people in call senators monitoring the cars for Waimo
and all the other driverless car companies. Now, the driverless
car companies are pushed back on the idea that these
are remote operators. What they say is no, they're there
to kind of get the car unstuck or tell it
(29:09):
what to do. But like, it's very hard to know
how much control those operators have. Some of the reporting
that I've done over the years suggests that, at least
with other companies, these remote operators have been able to
literally control the car remotely, So anyway, they are all
sorts of issues based on this answer, it was very vague,
(29:32):
but my guess is that there are remote operators who
are monitoring these cars more or less continuously while they're operating.
And again this is my guess based on reporting I've
done on the industry and the technology and so on.
This is how these things, says one of the reasons
they're only launching ten to twenty All.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Right, Denna, When that cybercab comes out, if it does
at some point, what exactly then does that look like
and just how different is that than this.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Well, the cyber cab is what Musk unveiled in the fall,
and it's sort of like a gold tinged vehicle that
probably doesn't have a steering wheel. It is a dedicated robotaxi.
So the thing way we have to remember is in
Musk's mind, there is the dedicated cybercab. But that also
what they're trying to tell you is that like anyone
(30:20):
who owns a model, why could eventually like let their
car be part of this like autonomous tessel fleet. And
so they're trying to do both things. Where create a
dedicated vehicle but also allow their current vehicles to eventually
be autonomous.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
That cybercab.
Speaker 5 (30:37):
I think it's should be regarded kind of as a
demonstration vehicle rather than anything that. I mean, you know,
I'm sure Musk is going to produce a few because
it would be very embarrassing to not. But like, there
are just some practical issues and only has two seats,
you know, like, especially a guy with a big family
like Elon Musk, you might think there you might want
a few more seats. You know, two seats is not
(30:58):
very many. It's like if you have three friends, you
need two cybercaps.
Speaker 6 (31:02):
I guess so I don't.
Speaker 5 (31:04):
It doesn't seem like a fully baked technology to say
the least.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Okay, Danna Max, thank you as always, Thank you Thanks.
This episode was produced by Stacy Wang, Blake Maples handles engineering,
and day Percell fact checks. Our editor is Anna Masirakis
and our supervising producer is Magnus Henricson. The Elon Inc.
(31:31):
Theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
sugi Erra. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer in
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts, A Big things.
As always to our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone,
I'm David Papadopoulos. If you have a minute, rate and
review our show, it'll help other listeners find us. See
you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A star is born Elon pumped up on Mars Juthan Kennemy.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I feel for the guy.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I would say ninety eight percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are I'll
be in four fos.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Reminds us of that we don't have a fourth branch
of governments called Elon Musk.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
Mack, Mush, Mush.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon Ak, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
It's Tuesday, April twenty ninth. I'm your host, David Papadopoulos. Okay, folks,
so depending on your math, and this I will note
is the subject of heated debate inside the Bloomberg newsroom.
We're one hundred days into the Trump administration, which for
us here at Elon Ink means, of course, one hundred
(01:08):
days of doge. And so we've assembled our crack staff
to unveil the good the bad, the ugly, and the
truly shocking of Musk's first hundred days in power. We
have our regulars, Max Chafkin and Dana Hull. Welcome to
you bulls.
Speaker 6 (01:24):
Greetings, David, how are you?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I'm good, Dana, Hey, David, And we have good Friend
of the Pod tech reporter Kurt Wagner.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Kurt Heloser, Hey, how often do I have to come
on to be considered a regular here? I feel like
my title, but no, I feel like I'm here pretty regularly.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It's fine.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I can be friend of the pod.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Friend of the Pod gets you, you know, a certain
amount of pay, and then if you go move beyond that,
it's a bomb. We'rettle. We got doged around here. We
all have the money to give you an upgrade later on.
Later on we'll kick Kurt out, so is you know,
because just keeping him in the friend of pods status,
We'll kick him out. Sorry, Kurt and Dana, Max and
(02:06):
I will get under the hood of the vaunted Robotaxi,
which is launching supposedly in June. Now, Musk spent the
chunk of last week's Tesla earnings call, remember that call,
hyping the vehicle and so we'll dissect the new details
and color emerging around a product that is a crucial
driver of Tesla's stock price. All right, but first things first,
(02:27):
Dana and Kurt, you guys have out on the Bloomberg
terminal and on the world wide Web today a terrific
piece about the one hundred days of elon Muskin power,
and there were a few nuggets I want to quickly
point out that people. One is that Musk has ruffled
so many feathers there in Washington and inside the administration
(02:47):
and among Republican members of Congress that he is. He
has been instructed to sit down each week with Trump's
Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, to keep her informed of
his comings and goings. A little bit more color on this,
he got called into the penalty box. What happened?
Speaker 4 (03:04):
This is reporting that was contributed by our colleague Nancy
Cook and Washington. And my understanding is just that, you know,
for all of the shock and awe of the first
hundred days on both the Trump administration side and the
Doge side, the lack of coordination really led to a
lot of consternation with the cabinet secretaries and with the staff,
and you know, musk is, you know, moving fast, kind
(03:27):
of like shoot first, asked questions later. That is the
way he operates. And he kind of felt like he
had carte blanche to do that from the President and
was doing what he was doing to help enact the agenda.
But when there's fallout, you know, you have to kind
of have a little bit more of a coordinated approach.
And I think that you know, Susie Wilds is very
much into message discipline and kind of trying to run
a much more orderly White House. So yeah, they're apparently
(03:50):
they're meeting on a more regular basis now, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
And I just thought that was a great little nugget
in there. And another one Kurt that I noticed was
for every day that Doze says it saved for American taxpayers.
The market cap of Tesla has fallen two dollars. Tesla's
market cap now down roughly four hundred and fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, And I think what is probably not shocking to
those of us here and those who are regular listeners
of Elon Inc. Is this idea that you know, Elon
has quite frankly like vastly overpromised and under delivered on
the Doze stuff, right, I mean, it wasn't that long
ago what we were talking when we're talking like two
trillion dollars in cuts than one trillion dollars in cuts,
(04:40):
and now we're talking about, you know, one hundred billion
dollars in cuts or whatever it is. So I think
what's somewhat again maybe surprising to the general public, but
not to those who follow Elon closely, is this idea
that he often presents a much grand or a much
more successful vision than what he's able to liver. And
(05:00):
that's part of why he's a great salesman. But it's
also part of why you know he is now in
this predicament, is that he kind of came in and
went a little too big, not really hitting those numbers.
So that's reflected in the Tesla stock.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Okay, and so let's do this. Now. We have a
handful of categories that we have selected for you guys,
and I will throw them out in Musk and Doge's
first hundred days. So let's say in Musk's first hundred days,
I should say for starters, first things first, give me
his biggest victory, Kurt Wagner.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
His biggest victory is going to be the impact he's
had on helping get friends and allies placed throughout the government.
And I'm going to focus specifically on the presumptive administrator
of NASA. Jared Isaacman, who you know has flown in
SpaceX Rockets, is sort of a supporter both emotionally and
(06:01):
financially of Musk, and I think having a friend running
NASA will be huge for him.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Max Chefkin agree.
Speaker 5 (06:07):
With Kurt Jared Isaacman as Kurt is a good friend
of this pod. Jered isaac Man is a good friend
of SpaceX. That's Elon's biggest win, I think by some margin.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
But is Kurt being a good friend of the show.
Is that helping Elan?
Speaker 5 (06:22):
No, what I'm saying, Yeah, I'm not saying going to
get us a ten billions.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Contract right now.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
But don't let David come between us. Max, I got you.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It's fine, Dana Hall, Let's say you the data.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
It's the access to the data. It's the fact that Doge.
It's not just that like these Doge kids are like
working at these various entities. It's that Musk and like
the sort of Silicon Valley cabal they have people now
in CISO positions, and they have access to vast amounts
of government data. This is a guy who's who's running
(06:58):
an AI company. He all has access to government data.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
As somebody who has kind of by nature somewhat skeptical
of many developments in AI. Like I think I agree
with everything that Dana just said, Like this is a
potential win both for Trump and for Elon, but I
don't know, like we've seen, like data access does not
necessarily mean like definite technology improvement. It doesn't mean that
(07:26):
they've done anything with the data, like we just I
don't think we know for real what Elon has gotten
out of this, or even frankly, what Trump has gotten
out of this. Like these guys are definitely going to
tell a story where data is very important.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
I see, Okay, moving on, Musk's biggest defeat, and there
are many to pull from here. His biggest defeat in
these first hundred days. Kurt Wagner, I'm.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Going to go with Tesla's brand destruction. Obviously, I know
these things go in waves, but it's been it's been
really bad. It's the kind nothing I could take years,
decades to win back.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
Max Chefkin, The poll numbers Elon Musk went his poll numbers.
And now, because Elon Musk is a political figure, we
see him all the time.
Speaker 6 (08:12):
He is like the equivalent of a.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Very unpopular politician. And he went from being a pretty
much universally admired business guy, even when he was starting
to sort of signal right wing, to being you know,
underwater in his poll numbers. And that, you know, that
has impact on Tesla. It has impacts, you know, it
could even impact Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
So, yeah, Wisconsin, you know, lost in the kind of
blizzard of this first one hundred days is that Musk,
you know, ventured out with his political Action committee to
the badger state in support of a Republican nominee for
the Supreme Court race there, and you know, spent twenty
million dollars, ran all these ads, you know, paid people
(08:57):
to sign his petition, gave away money, campaigned in Green Bay,
wore a cheese hat, I mean, did all these things
to kind of really inject himself in the Wisconsin race.
And what the Democratic Party in was content realized very
quickly was that Trump was not on the ballot and
that they could frame this race as a referendum on
Musk and Doge which they did quite effectively, and the
(09:19):
Democrat in that race won by ten points. And you know,
in the piece today we have a great quote from
Elaine Kmark from brook Dings. People hate Elon more than
Trump now and that is rallying Democrats. And if the
Wisconsin race is a barometer of what's to come, I
think it just really calls into question how effective Musk
and a spending will be in down ballot races where
(09:40):
when Trump is not on the ballot himself.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And there's obviously there's a through line here between the
three things, because the collapse and Musk popularity gets you
the brand destruction gets you to the.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
Feed different sort of show what has happened this incredible
collapse his popularity.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Okay, next category, the biggest surprise in these first one
hundred days, Kurt Wagner, what say.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You, Well, I'm gonna repeat what Dana just said, which
was the Wisconsin election loss.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
You're going back to Wisconsin? Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I just thought so soon after the Trump victory to
employe essentially the exact same playbook and get rebuked in
the way that he did, I just I don't know,
I knew people were unhappy obviously, with Elon I didn't
know that it would be that stark, this fast, Max Scheffkin.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
The biggest surprise to me was the attempt to gain
access to the Department of Defense's China plans.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
This was like a news story.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Surprising because you just thought it was such an overreach,
just so audacious.
Speaker 6 (10:46):
It wasn't.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
I mean, it was clearly an overreach because Trump came
out and said, I actually, no, no, no, no, he's
not you know.
Speaker 6 (10:50):
This isn't actually happening.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
There was, you know, whatever it To me, that was
the kind of high point of Elon Musk's influence in Washington.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
That was it.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
I mean, the idea that he's gonna march over to
the Pentagon and despite the fact that he has these
very close ties to China, that they're you know that
there are people within the Republican Party who are skeptical
of Elon Musk because he's so close to China that
he's gonna, you know, that he's gonna get access to
potentially classified according to some reports which were then disputed,
(11:20):
potentially classified information. Of course, that has implications for for SpaceX.
SpaceX is you know, vying for government contracts and so on.
Speaker 6 (11:30):
To me, that was that was kind of the high point.
It was stunning.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
Even as as optimistic as I was about Elon's ability
to influence Donald Trump, I did that even surprised me.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
You didn't You didn't see that one coming, Okay, Dana Hall.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
I still think that. Like one of the most surreal
moments was when Donald Trump had five Tesla vehicles, including
a cyber truck, on the White House lawn and kind
of turned the White House into a pop up showroom.
This this was at the height of like the backlash
against Tesla and all of these protests are going on,
(12:05):
and instead of like maybe realizing, oh, the optics of
all this are kind of bad, like Musk and Trump
just doubled down on the optics of the president of
the United States basically rewarding his billionaire backer with like
a little you know, with like a little show like
fake Tesla sales thing, and it just forever cemented Tesla
(12:27):
as a Trump brand. It was just so crazy. It
was so crazy to watch. You know, Trump is like, oh,
it's all computer. He's like getting into the car. Meanwhile,
because he's the president, he can't actually drive to see
the White House turned into that kind of a spectacle
for a private business person. It's just like unheard of.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
But that is a good point that as bad as
first quarter sales were, sales to sitting US presidents were wayrd.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
But did he actually buy I think I don't know
that he borrowed.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
It was infintesimal. It went from zero to like one
or I.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Want to see that car. I don't believe that there
was actually a car purchase.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Not my favorite my I guess at a surprising moment.
I don't know if it was a surprise, but maybe
most surreal was when he was jumping up and down
on stage with the chainsaw that Javier Malay gave him,
and he was shouting chainsaw, which is what one does
when one jumps up and down on the stage with
the chainsaw on their hand. The most underreported story of
(13:24):
the first one hundred days, Kurt Wagner.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I'm gonna caveat this by I think it's partly underreported
because we're still dealing with or learning about the consequences,
but we're still reporting. But I think Doge's impact on
all of these various agencies that regulate Musk's companies, right,
So do these cuts are these cuts going to benefit
(13:47):
him tremendously down the line, because the people who used
to keep tabs on him and all the things that
his companies do are no longer in the building. And
I suspect, I think we all sort of suspect that
that is true to an extent. To what extent, I'm
not sure we will know for a while, but I
just think that's something that we're going to have to
keep paying attention to.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
That is a story that will have legs.
Speaker 7 (14:09):
Max Schafkin, So, I think this was like a blip
of a news story about a potential four hundred million
dollar contract for the State Department to buy cyber trucks.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
People will remember this.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
It came and went, the Trump administration essentially backed away
from it. The spreadsheet was deleted. We don't know what happened.
I think people are going to continue pulling on that one,
and I personally would like to know how that line
item got on a spreadsheet. I think to me, it
feels like the kind of news story that could come
(14:44):
to come back to bite both Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Denihull, what is your most underreported story?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Okay, two things. First of all, it's notable that Elon
Musk has not left the country since Trump became president.
Typically he is someone who travels abroad quite a bit,
like he goes to Europe, he goes to China. He
has not left the country, and I think that that's
because he's just been hyper focused on Doge, but also
maybe he's like worried about his safety, so it's unusual
(15:12):
for him to just be domestic for so long. But secondly,
I mean, I'm going to bring up natalism over and
over again because Sophie, Alexander and I were very early
to the story. Since inauguration, we have learned if not
just one other, but two other new children in Elon
Musk's family. He now has at least fourteen children. Ashley
Saint Clair announced that she was the mother of one
(15:35):
of his kids and there's a whole lawsuit now about
paternity and child support. And then Chavon Zillis, who is
an executive at Neuralink, also announced that they have four
kids together. So since Trump was inaugurated, we have learned
of two additional children.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, so if nothing else, there will be by the
end of the year. If my math is correct, we'll
have eight new members of the Musk household, Kurt Wagner,
Before you leave us, sir, I want to point out
one other thing in the story that you guys had today,
which is that, of course, coming into last week's Tesla
earnings call, there was a lot of you know, questions
(16:12):
and hand ringing about was Musk going to address the
topic of his leaving government his returning to Tesla see
oh no, And it was just kind of there was
a lot of debate swirling in your story. You said,
he announced what is effectively a soft exit.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Explain, Yeah, well, he said, I'm leaving, but I will
continue to work, you know, for or with the administration
one the two days per week as long as President
Trump wants me to.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
I'll continue to spend a day or two per week
on goun matters for as long as the President would
like me to do so and as long as it
is useful. But starting next month, allocating parlow of my
time to Tesla.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
But if he's still going to spend forty percent of
his work week doing this, is he really leaving? I
would say that was maybe more optics for Tesla investors,
but it felt a little bit more like a performative
language perhaps.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
Look, I guess it's possible he may leave, but just
just this morning, or maybe it was last night as
we record this. On Tuesday, he posted two pictures of
himself holding a Doge badge for some reason.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
So you know what did a Doge badge say?
Speaker 6 (17:30):
It's a Doge father and had a number on it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
It's the father of dog. That's another the number.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
Nine for twenty six six thousand, sixty nine thousand, four
hundred and twenty.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
He's got the badge, he can't see.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Kurt Wager, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, friend of the pod kerk Wagner signing off. Thanks guys.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
So, in addition to Musk unveiling his grand soft exit
from Doge, heading back in part to Tesla, on the
call last week, he talked lots and lots about the Robotaxi.
Let's listen to Elon in his own words and what
he had to say.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
The team and I are laser focused on bringing robotaxi
to Austin in gine on spis autonomy. Well, first, he's
all for the model. Y in Austin actually should pass
out the terms for robotic taxi or robotaxi and just
generally like what's the cybercap because we've got a product
called the cybercab. And then at any any Tesla which
could be an S three X or Y that is autonomous,
(18:37):
is a robotic taxi or robotaxi. It's very confusing. So
the vast majority about the Tesla fleet that we've made
is capable of being a robotaxi. Robotic taxi.
Speaker 6 (18:48):
Guys, Okay, I got this.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
First off, is for a guy who says I'm so excited,
he didn't sound too excited. Okay, that's my first stop.
But second of all, Max, I mean, what the heck
is he talking about? Seeing as I'm not that close
to it, I'm confused.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
So in a lot of ways, the earnings call was
very similar to the earnings calls we've seen many times
over the last couple of years, in the sense that
you have Elon Musk attempting to spin things forward. Don't
focus on the declining or stagnant sales numbers, don't focus
on the fact that the cyber truck is disappointing. Focus
on robotax is an optimism, and we saw that. But
(19:26):
what's different now and what really became clear to me
as we watched and listened to this earnings call. Is like,
they need to launch something very soon, and when you
need to launch something very soon, you need to start
talking about specifics. So we're hearing some specifics there. What
Musk is talking about is that the Robotaxi launch in
Austin will not include the cybercab. This was the car
(19:48):
that they launched a year ago. It will essentially be
a normal Tesla with a steering wheel. But I suppose
without a driver behind the wheel, or perhaps maybe a
safety driver behind the way.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Oh sorry, sorry, but don't tessels aren't they already largely
capable of driving themselves.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
That is, you're not, David, I'm getting yelled at the
Well wait a minute.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So when drivers take their hands off the wheels, who
is driving them?
Speaker 5 (20:17):
You, the driver, are still driving the Tesla. When you
take your hands off the wheels, I assume you're still
I hope your eyes are still on the road. I
hope your feet are ready to press the brake if necessary.
And so that is you're right, David, that Elon Musk
has described what.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I guess I'm trying to get at it. What is
the difference between that vehicle and its technology and the
one that currently And you guys can scream and shout
as much as you want. If your hands aren't on
the wheels and your foot's not on the pedal or on,
you're not driving. You could be watching it, you're monitoring it,
but you're not driving it.
Speaker 6 (20:48):
Oh dude, you are driving it. Because if your hands
are right there to take.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
The wheel, are they or you're or I don't know,
are they or are you texting?
Speaker 5 (20:55):
Well, if you're texting, then you are not using the
technology appropriately.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
We digress. Or what is the difference as we understand it,
What is the difference between this vehicle that we shall
see apparently in June and the existing ones.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
David, You're not going to see a new vehicle in June.
What's happening in June is that Tesla is going to
launch some kind of ride handling service with the Model.
Speaker 6 (21:16):
Why.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
The cybercab that is the new vehicle that people have,
you know that they unveiled in the fall, is not
ready for prime time. You know, they said that they're
going to launch this service with like ten vehicles, maybe
twenty vehicles, and it's all going to be the Model Why.
So that's what's so crazy, David.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
They answer your question is so Tesla right now has
something called full self driving parentheses supervised.
Speaker 6 (21:40):
Now, the full self driving is what you're describing.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
The parentheses supervised is what Dan and I are bringing up,
which is that you're not allowed to use it without
having your eyes on the road, hands on the wheel,
feet ready to take over, because it is not considered
ready for that. The plan, of course, is to take
away the parentheses supervised and allow these cars to operate autonomously.
(22:02):
And as we learned during this conference call, the way
they're going to do that is by essentially severely limiting
where these cars are able to operate. So Elon Musk
talked about that during the call. It's going to be
part of Austin and then they're going to try they
are frantically, as we learned, trying to fix the quote
(22:22):
unquote edge cases. So the kinds of things that might
cause you to have to take over they're going to
try to fix.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
We actually we have a clip of Elon talking about
that as well. Let's listen to every one second.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
It does seem increasingly likely that there will be a
localized parameter set, especially for places that have said very
snowy weather, like say, if you're in the Northeast or something.
It's kind of like a human you could be a
very good driver in California, but are you going to
be also a good driver in a blizzard in Manhattan?
You're not going to be as good. So there is
actually some value in USEL drive, but you're probably even
(22:57):
an accident is higher. It's increasing the obvious that there's
some value to having a localized set of parameters for
different regions. But this is that put them the nice
to have category, that's not the required category.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Blizzards in New York in the Year of Our Lord
twenty twenty five, we get about one of those every
you know, five years or something.
Speaker 5 (23:17):
At other parts on the call, they said, you know,
the conditions are different in Boston versus Austin. I mean,
it's clear they're going to create a very modest, modestly
bounded part of Austin that they in my my and
my guess is that they have mapped it, you know,
very closely. But basically this is the kind of thing
that all of the other quote unquote autonomous vehicle companies
(23:41):
have done as well, because they're not actually able to
deliver an autonomous vehicle. What you do is you kind
of limit the where you're deploying it. You put it
on roads that you already know, You limit the speed,
you know, you do a bunch of things to make
this thing act as if it's a fully featured autonomous
vall even though it isn't.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Dana, we get how many of these vehicles when they
apparently roll it out in a couple months.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
I mean they said on the earnings call, like ten
to twenty at first. What I want to impress upon
people is I think people have this idea that all
of a sudden, come June, this brand new Robotaxi is
going to take on Austin much in the way that
like Waimo has rolled out in cities like San Francisco,
and that is not happening. It's this is going to
(24:35):
be a soft launch with existing model. Wise, and like
there's a lot about the business model for this that
we don't know. And you know, Elon has bet the
future of the company on autonomy and AI and robotics.
They don't have another cheaper car yet, so they've got
to do something. And so he's going to have this
event and we'll see and you know, to be fair
of people who have Tesla vehicles with FSD constantly talk
(24:58):
about how they get better and yet like you know,
when the cameras run into the sunlight, like the whole
computer thing gets messed up. So like that's that was
something that they also talked about on the call.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
So it is actually exactly like Waimo. It's just like
Waimo ten years ago. What they're doing. I mean, they
are doing the thing that Weimo did. They're deploying in
a single city with a very small number of cars.
I guess as there will be significant limitations and significant
support for the vehicles so they don't screw up.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So again, just because I'm an idiot, the difference between
these model these ten or twenty model wise that they're
going to be rolling out in June or whatever it is,
are different than existing model all the other model wise
out there because they know the roads, they've been given
the maps of Austin, Texas.
Speaker 6 (25:45):
They they don't know that for sure. No, no, we
don't know.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
So as far as Elon Musk is concerned, these are
the exact same cars. The only we did learn on
this call they're adding a microphone on the cars, so
like there's going to be an additional sensor that is
ostensibly to listen for sirens. The problem being that autonomous
cars from other companies struggle to deal with. Emergency vehicles
(26:09):
are a huge problem for autonomous vehicles. Crews got into
a lot of trouble. It's one of the reasons CRUs
ceased to exist as a driverless car companies because they
could not navigate the emergency vehicles, so police cars and ambulances.
What we know for sure is that they're doing some
things to augment the existing thing. And then the other
difference is going to be there's apparently no one overseeing
(26:32):
the you.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Know, the AGA. As you said earlier, what differentiates this
one from the other ones is the FSD.
Speaker 6 (26:39):
You're essentially just getting rid of the parentheses super.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
No more parentheses.
Speaker 5 (26:44):
It is just although as we learned on this earnings call,
there is going to be some supervision, there's going to
be you know, quote unquote remote operators.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Really just just worked through a long tale of unusual
interventions and these are really very intervention Every ten thousand miles,
I mean, there's a lot of driving you've got to
do to even find one case with an ATHLETs. Okay,
but do you have like remote operators for example, I.
Speaker 8 (27:09):
Mean never know and then if your car gets stuck
or something, someone will like, you know, unlock it. But
it's says, figure to be a bit conservative and our
tend towards more safety than even if it gets stuck.
Every now and then. We do every remote support, but
it's not going to be required for safe operation if anything,
is just required far more availability.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Anyways, I don't like a couple months away, so you
can just say for yourself in a couple months in
as Okay.
Speaker 5 (27:36):
So that was Musk and a shoke Eli Swami, who's
the VP of Autopilot Remote Operators.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
This is a huge issue in the world of autonomous cars.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
And again, what Tesla is doing is basically learning all
of the lessons that Weymo learned. You know, Waimo was
acting like they were about to launch driverless cars across
the country, you know, about ten years ago, and they
have now they're in a handful of cities, you know
there there's certainly more than ten or twenty. But anyway,
remote operators is a guy in a call center who's
(28:05):
watching the car and who is prepared to help take
over if something.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Wait wait, wait, each each person in the call center
presumably they're monitoring more than one car at a time.
Speaker 5 (28:18):
Otherwise you really don't ten or twenty. You probably could
have ten or twenty guys. You know, remember the uh
the autonomy event where you had people voicing Optimus like,
I assume no, no, no, no, that's fine.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
But for Wamo, jesus, Weaimo's literally got.
Speaker 5 (28:35):
Every hugely controversial issue and the companies.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Are whole things a hoax.
Speaker 6 (28:41):
Dude. I have been writing stories about this, pointing out.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
The issues for a year.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
I'm not saying that no one listen.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
Anyway, this has been a huge issue in industry. There
are people in call senators monitoring the cars for Waimo
and all the other driverless car companies. Now, the driverless
car companies are pushed back on the idea that these
are remote operators. What they say is no, they're there
to kind of get the car unstuck or tell it
(29:09):
what to do. But like, it's very hard to know
how much control those operators have. Some of the reporting
that I've done over the years suggests that, at least
with other companies, these remote operators have been able to
literally control the car remotely, So anyway, they are all
sorts of issues based on this answer, it was very vague,
(29:32):
but my guess is that there are remote operators who
are monitoring these cars more or less continuously while they're operating.
And again this is my guess based on reporting I've
done on the industry and the technology and so on.
This is how these things, says one of the reasons
they're only launching ten to twenty All.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Right, Denna, When that cybercab comes out, if it does
at some point, what exactly then does that look like
and just how different is that than this.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Well, the cyber cab is what Musk unveiled in the fall,
and it's sort of like a gold tinged vehicle that
probably doesn't have a steering wheel. It is a dedicated robotaxi.
So the thing way we have to remember is in
Musk's mind, there is the dedicated cybercab. But that also
what they're trying to tell you is that like anyone
(30:20):
who owns a model, why could eventually like let their
car be part of this like autonomous tessel fleet. And
so they're trying to do both things. Where create a
dedicated vehicle but also allow their current vehicles to eventually
be autonomous.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
That cybercab.
Speaker 5 (30:37):
I think it's should be regarded kind of as a
demonstration vehicle rather than anything that. I mean, you know,
I'm sure Musk is going to produce a few because
it would be very embarrassing to not. But like, there
are just some practical issues and only has two seats,
you know, like, especially a guy with a big family
like Elon Musk, you might think there you might want
a few more seats. You know, two seats is not
(30:58):
very many. It's like if you have three friends, you
need two cybercaps.
Speaker 6 (31:02):
I guess so I don't.
Speaker 5 (31:04):
It doesn't seem like a fully baked technology to say
the least.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Okay, Danna Max, thank you as always, Thank you Thanks.
This episode was produced by Stacy Wang, Blake Maples handles engineering,
and day Percell fact checks. Our editor is Anna Masirakis
and our supervising producer is Magnus Henricson. The Elon Inc.
(31:31):
Theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
sugi Erra. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer in
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts, A Big things.
As always to our supporters Joel Weber and Brad Stone,
I'm David Papadopoulos. If you have a minute, rate and
review our show, it'll help other listeners find us. See
you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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