Elon Musk: “Any new technology is expensive when it starts out”

In the clip below, Charlie Rose asks Elon why Tesla started with the expensive Roadster. Elon replies:

“Any new technology is expensive when it starts out… Because the first thing that engineers are trying to do is make it work. And then when you make it work, you optimize, and you optimize, and you optimize.”

He points out that computers, cell phones, and gasoline cars all followed this cycle. Cars used to be toys for rich people until they were made affordable by Henry Ford.

“And then you combine that with the fact that we’re just a little startup. There’s just no way that we could afford a billion dollars to make a giant car plant that would make hundreds of thousands of cars a year. Because that’s the kind of volume you have to get to to make cheap cars… So we have both a volume problem and a new technology problem. You have to reach scale and you have to work the bugs out of the system. And you want to make your mistakes at a small scale.”

Full video: Remembrance of Things Past “Elon Musk in 2009— Charlie Rose Interview“ (Aug 2009)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Elon Musk insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Elon Musk"