At that time, on March 22, after the first delivery ceremony of Tesla's Berlin factory, the old horse took the stage to give a speech and once again conducted a "shout-out Q&A".
The video is about 18 minutes long, and the previous minute is for the old horse to read the German script on the mobile phone, without subtitles. Chinese and English subtitles start in one minute. The number of texts in this text is about 3,0005.
Original video: Tesla Welt Podcast@youtube
Translation and subtitles: Rubble Villager
The full text of Lao Ma's speech and Q&A
Thank you all for your hard work on this important day!
It's so exciting to see customers picking up their cars. The atmosphere here is super nice and I think it's good for the future development of the Greenhead Giufactory in Berlin.
And it's worth remembering that every car we produce is a step towards sustainability. This factory and the cars we produce give people hope for the future. It's important to have reason to be excited about the future because people are often frustrated or sad about the future because they don't think the future will be good.
But what we're doing here, every car we make, every battery, is making the future a better place. What you do is really important, it can make a difference.
I'm working on the third part of the [Tesla] ambition, and it's going to be a good plan. An important part of that is scaling up, reaching high yields so that we can really impact the world in a positive way. Because we get a lot of coverage, we get a lot of attention, but you say, how many vehicles have we produced in total, how many percent of the total number of vehicles in the world?
There are 2 billion cars in the world, and so far, we actually produce far less than one percent, or even less than 0.5 percent. In order to impact the future in a positive way, we have to produce a large number of cars, which is the only way. That's why we call it Gigafactory, it's very big.
We started by producing the Edamame Y, but we're going to produce some exciting other models here. I think that overall it will be a centre of excellence for sustainable energy. It will truly help the world.
I look forward to working with you. Again, thank you for all that you have done!
Graffiti on the façade of the Berlin Gigafactory
If you have any questions, whatever, ask.
Wow, well, I was young. Great, thanks to the Chao Chong team who guaranteed our long trip. The work done by the Overshoot team is remarkable, and I want to applaud them.
In addition to the work we do here, we also inspire and encourage other businesses in this industry to switch to electrification.
It's fair to say that without Tesla, without the work done by the Tesla team, other companies in this industry wouldn't have moved so quickly to electrification. That's why we opened up our patents, and we made them available to other automakers for free. Because that's the right thing to do.
To the best of my knowledge, no other company does this. It's just because, at Tesla, we strive to do the right thing, and we want to be a company that deserves your full trust. In order to do that, we have to be a company that does the right thing.
I love you too.
If there's something wrong with anyone, shout out loud.
Okay, when is Tesla going to South America or some other market?
Well, we definitely want to go to the world. The challenge we face now is that this is a benign problem and our orders far exceed our production.
Sometimes people say, why don't you go into all these other markets? Why don't you make all these other different versions of the product, different models? Where are Tesla electric trucks, electric pickups, electric sports cars, and other products?
But the challenge we face, a good challenge, is that our orders far exceed our production, and that's a benign problem. But we need to get our production to the point where we're getting more than we're currently ordering, and then expanding to more markets, more products, and that makes sense. Because if we increase the complexity, but don't increase the output, don't increase the amount of production, then we don't actually accomplish more, because the "good" measure is a function of how many cars we can produce.
When we are able to increase production and meet the needs of existing markets, we will expand to other markets and we will also add additional products.
I think there were a lot of supply chain challenges in terms of chips last year, and everyone knows about chip shortages. Then, there will still be some chip shortages this year. Then, I think next year could be a challenge in terms of total battery production.
Then, of course, if you start imagining two or three years from now, the core question will be how many gigawatt-hours of batteries can be produced, and that will be the constraint. And then further into the supply chain, what is the rate at which raw materials for batteries are mined and refined? Obviously, we want to do this in an ethical and environmentally sensitive way.
How many terawatt-hour batteries can be produced per year in the long run? Our rough estimate is that it will take about 300 terawatt hours to transition the world to a sustainable energy economy. Basically, it's a huge amount of battery. We want to produce as much as we can.
I think we've actually done a good job, we're growing at an average annual rate of 70 to 80 percent. In the future, it may even be faster than that. I think that's why we're not going to more markets, why there's no answer to more products.
By the way, I'm almost baked by the sun. I don't have much sun protection
Five points of ripe old horses
Yes, of course, what am I most proud of?
Well, I think what I'm most proud of is the amazing work that the Tesla team has done, scaling at the rate we're doing now and producing irresistible products that people love.
Think about it, how many products can you buy that you really like? So few. If people can produce more of what you like, that's great.
Tesla is a rare company that actually makes products that you love that bring joy to people every day, which is fantastic.
If you look at our growth rate, Tesla is the fastest growing of any large product manufacturer in history. The second fastest, I think, is the Ford Model T, which seems to have happened 100 years ago. We're growing faster than the Ford Model T, which is crazy.
Will it be green? Regarding the color, which colors will be provided by the factory.
Color is always a challenge because when you think about color, you don't just need to produce, you also need to provide 20 years of repair and service for it. It's like, man, you need to think hard about how we want the service team to manage all these colors.
We must pay attention to the total number of colors. But obviously, we're going to be offering some special colors here. It's not just about the color itself, it's about the multi-layer spray paint painted to get a three-dimensional feel. We're going to offer a very special red color that I think probably a lot of people have seen. Yes, just like that. It's a 13-layer car paint, and the multi-layer spray paint provides a three-dimensional feel that makes the colors look darker and more complex.
And then we're going to offer a silver, and I guess that's not that many layers, maybe 8 or so. But it would still be very special, a bit like liquid silver.
That's right, a deep red, a complex deep red. Not very soon, we'll probably be producing this particular dark red and meteor silver paint in a few months. They're really cool, and they're going to be the best colors. I think they're going to be the best paints of any production-grade car, and they're not made for a show.
You have to design a paint shop specially for this, because if you're going to produce 13 layers of paint, you have to have 13 steps. To retrofit a paint shop is very difficult and you have to design it from the very beginning.
That's one of those things... Thank you.
I don't think we're going to use graphene, but we're going to use graphite. The amount of graphite is very rich, and graphite is basically carbon, a special form of carbon.
I think the battery material... Long-endurance models will use nickel-based cathodes. Cathodes are the really important part, they all contain lithium, which only accounts for two percent of the cells. Long endurance will use nickel, which is also what we are currently using. Then for standard endurance, it will use iron phosphate. And then interestingly, I think manganese has a lot of potential as well.
It's important if you look, on a very large scale, that you have to say that we need tens of millions of tons [of raw material] and eventually maybe hundreds of millions of tons. Therefore, materials used in battery production on a very large scale must be ordinary materials. If they're not ordinary materials, you can't scale up.
Well, graphene, I know everyone loves graphene, but it... Maybe we'll use it in the future, but graphene is a hard raw material to produce. But even graphene, it's made of carbon.
In short, the basic principle of expanding the scale of batteries is how many million tons can be produced and produced in an ethical and environmentally friendly manner. I'm confident that we can use iron phosphate and manganese cathodes to expand global production, and then nickel cathodes for long endurance.
FSD Beta in Europe, yes. FSD Beta in Europe.
I think we've reached the point where the FSD Beta is doing well in the U.S. and will expand to Canada later this week. Then, maybe in two or three months, I think we'll be ready to show it to the regulators of the European Union.
But then we have to do a lot of work for all the special circumstances in Europe. And the road system... If you drive in Europe, the road conditions vary greatly from country to country. Although the same is the European Union, the rules of the road and the way of drawing the road lines are different, and then all the different languages must be recognized.
Implementing FSD in Europe is quite difficult and much more complicated than in the United States or Canada. There are a lot of tricky things, and the rules are different. But I think we'll probably start pushing betas in Europe later this year. Yes, subject to regulatory approval.
The situation in the United States is a little different. In the United States, everything is legal by default, and in Europe they are illegal by default, so we have to get approval beforehand. In the United States, you can do things more or less within your own cognitive range.
Excuse me?
I think the next goal is to really scale up production this year and produce as many cars as possible.
We want to complete the development of electric pickup trucks and be ready to start production next year. Hopefully there will be enough battery pack production to start a Tesla electric truck, a heavy-duty truck. There is hope to complete the engineering task of electric sports cars, new electric sports cars. And then there are some future projects that are also very important. There's also fixed energy storage, a new version of Tesla's solar roof, and the Powerwall 3.
A lot of products, we have a very exciting product line, yes.
I may answer one or two more questions.
Female Audience Member A: I love you!
I love you too. I have to say that I am so happy to see you guys so happy.
No, but I'll get it, I'll get it.
Grand Plan Three, that's right.
Well, one last question.
Male Audience B: Ten years later, how many more gigafactories will be added?
Well, the best-case scenario is... I guess it's 10?
I think it's radical, but it's not impossible, we can reach 20 million cars a year in 10 years. That's a good number because there are 2 billion cars and trucks in active use in the world, and 20 million a year will account for one percent of the global fleet.
Okay, thank you again, I love you guys!
(above)
At the delivery ceremony, German Chancellor Olaf Schultz delivered a speech