Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads, the
Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neurolink.
I'm your host, Will Walden. Hey, so I've been thinking about
Elon's recent moves with Tesla. What do you make of the $25,000
car that they're talking about? And could that be the
breakthrough moment that everyone's been waiting for?
So let's talk about Elon Musk in Washington.
First, though, he's reached unprecedented levels as Tesla's
stock price soars 80% since early November, solidifying his
position as the world's wealthiest individual.
Now is a 13% stake in Tesla, and it's grown substantially, coming
after his strategic investment over $250 million in support of
Donald Trump's campaign. The relationship between Musk
and the president-elect has become so close that some people
have started referring to him as the Co president, marking a new
chapter in this political spectrum.
Here, the Department of Government Efficiency has
appointed Musk as Co lead, tasking him with finalizing
federal spending patterns in identifying areas for potential
cost reduction. The new role positions him to
shape policy decisions that could benefit the EV industry
while working toward the administration's goal of
reducing federal spending by around $2 trillion.
Now. This appointment demonstrates
the administration's trust in Musk's abilities to balance
public sector efficiency with private sector innovation.
Now, Teslas current market position presents both
challenges and opportunities for the automaker.
Sales data through November shows varying performance across
global markets, with U.S. sales projected to reach 633,000
units, representing 4% of the total car market.
Now, the company maintains its leadership position in the EV
sector, controlling nearly half of all EV sales in the United
States, despite increased competition from traditional
automakers. Now, the European Union market
has presented specific challenges for Tesla, with sales
dropping 15% through November compared to the previous year,
totalling 211,000 vehicles. Similar patterns have emerged in
China too, where local competitors like BYD have
intensified their market presence.
These numbers come during a period of overall growth in the
global EV market, which saw a 25% increase through November,
according to Row Motion Research data.
Now, Wall Street analysts have focused their attention on
Tesla's advancements in autonomous driving tech, though,
viewing it as a key factor in the company's future success.
Now this is combined with Musk's political strength, his
connections has has all contributed to investor
confidence. Despite current sales
challenges, the market appears to be pricing in the potential
for regulatory changes that could accelerate the deployment
of self driving vehicles. And also, the introducing of the
Cyber truck has added a unique element to Tesla's product
lineup with 28,000 units sold through September, according to
Cox data. And the distinctive stainless
steel vehicle starts at around $80,000.
And it's also become the best selling electric pickup in the
United States, though its sales volume remains significantly
below that of the Model Y, Tesla's primary revenue
generator. The Cyber Trucks market
performance provides insights in a Tesla's ability to create new
vehicle categories when they want to and add them to their
existing product lines. Now, Keith or Kenneth Boyer,
who's the author of the electric vehicle Revolution 5 Visionaries
leading the Charge, said the shift in Musk's operational
focus compared to that of 2018, when he personally oversaw the
model three production challenges.
And the analysis suggests that Musk's current attention spans
multiple ventures. So X, he has SpaceX governmental
responsibilities, he has Neurolink, Boring Company,
Tesla, and it presents a different leadership approach
from his earlier hands on manufacturing involvement, the
anticipated $25,000 Tesla model, his captured investor interest
as a potential catalyst for market expansion to battle.
Rd. Research President Ben Rose
projects strong market performance for Tesla shares,
setting the responsibility of reaching new customer segments
through more affordable pricing in the near future.
Now, the current Model 3, which is around $42,500 before
incentives, leaves room for a lower priced entry point that
could attract price sensitive consumers.
Not everybody has around $50,000 to spend on a vehicle and most
people are looking for a, you know, a a fairly decent budget
car like a 20,000 to 25,000 vehicle.
So if Tesla can hit that $25,000 mark with pretty decent
features, I think they're going to have a, a, a killer here.
They have a, a hit on their hands.
Now the used test. The market data from CarGurus
reveals strong demand for an affordable electric vehicle.
So Model Threes are priced around $25,000, and as they show
up, they quickly turn over, let's people buy them up.
And according to Kevin Roberts, the site's director of economic
and market intelligence, price reduction correlates directly
with increased consumer interest, suggesting potential
success for a lower priced new Tesla model.
So if you get a Tesla Model 3 from three years ago, it's still
a great vehicle. And if you pay $25,000 for that
Gray vehicle, is that going to be better than the new $25,000
Tesla that they're going to be introducing?
It's going to be interesting to see what kind of features.
It hasn't really, really piqued my interest.
Well, the self driving taxi market represents another area
of potential growth for Tesla, with companies like Waymo
already operating driverless services in several U.S. cities.
Waymo's expansion at Atlanta, Miami and Austin demonstrates
the growing acceptance of autonomous transportation
services. While extensive testing
continues in the Chinese market, Tesla's position in this sector
could benefit from regulatory changes under the new
administration. So Tesla's stock performance
correlates strongly with public perception of Musk's leadership
capabilities. The connection between corporate
value and executive reputation shows that it's important for
Musk's strategic decisions in determining Tesla's market
position. People invest in Tesla because
they want to invest in Elon Musk's ideas now.
Federal tax credits currently provide up to $7500 incentives
for Tesla purchases, though these benefits may face revision
under the incoming administration.
Potential changes to these incentives could affect Tesla's
sales strategy and pricing structure, particularly as the
company considers introducing more affordable models.
Now, will this also put Elon Musk and Trump in a battle?
We'll have to find out when this actually happens, how mad Elon's
going to get. How many posts he's going to do
on X and how many posts will the president-elect Donald Trump do
on his true social platform about this?
And are they going to be warring?
We're not sure. And will Elon get kicked off the
doge? I don't know.
It's a it's a toss up at this point.
We have no idea. But it looks like
president-elect Trump is OK with electric vehicles.
So we might see some of these incentives continue.
And the global electric vehicle market continues to evolve,
though with Tesla maintaining its position as an industry
leader despite increased competition.
The company's ability to innovate across multiple price
points and vehicle categories demonstrates its adaptability in
a changing market environment. The combination of technological
advancement and strategic leadership positions Tesla for
continued growth for the foreseeable future.
The development of Tesla's charging network infrastructure
is also another strategic advantage, providing customers
with reliable access to charging stations across multiple
continents. This established network
differentiates Tesla from competitors who rely on 3rd
party charging solutions. Most of those charging solutions
are not that good, and offering a more integrated ownership
experience for Tesla owners and Tesla customers is what the
Tesla's charging network is all about.
So let's digging a little bit of SpaceX here.
Spacex's success as the federal government's primary rocket
contractor has also enhanced Musk's credibility in both the
private and the public sectors. The track record of delivering
complex technological solutions on a massive scale supports
investor confidence in Tesla's ability to achieve its
autonomous driving and manufacturing.
Kohl's Now X provides him with a direct channel to communicate
with customers and investors, though he's remained notably
reserved about specific plans for Tesla's future product
lineup. And this communication strategy
is a departure from previous product launches, where he
shared some detailed information and got kind of, you know,
pinged for it. So let's move over to some
SpaceX. And I want to do a little bit of
news here, but I also want to give you some insight about
Starbase from my own experience. If you're not familiar with what
I did at Star Base, I spent about a year embedded covering
Star Base. I'm a Elon Musk fan and all of
his companies. So when I made the choice to
move the Star Base and cover the building of the initial full
stack Starship rocket, it was an easy choice for me.
I came from the Northeast. I was living in Vermont and I
moved to Star Base because I saw this amazing technological feat
that Elon and his crew were building on the tip of Texas.
So it was my duty to show that to the world.
And I spent about, like I said, about a year down there covering
that story. And I was on the road, the side
of the road, Hwy. 4:00 every single day.
It was 104° some days. Some days it was.
I was drenched in rain. There were floods.
There were hurricanes. The weather was sometimes
brutal, sometimes beautiful. I spent my Christmas Day there.
I spent my New Year's Eve there. I spent a lot of time at
Starbase covering this magnificent giant rocket and the
upcoming flight in the early weeks of January, January 10th
possibly. We're going to see this launch
and it's going to be amazing. It's going to be similar to the
last flight, but that's going to usher in a new era of Starship
because it's going to be the next block of the Starship and
they have some new heat tiles on it.
It's going to be more equipped for returns to Earth at a higher
pressure and a higher temperature, higher speed too,
and kind of the speeds that they'll be getting if they're
sending things to orbit, you know, if they're sending
satellites to orbit. But I want to go back to some of
my experiences to Starbase. And I think this is, it's pretty
cool to hear about this stuff if you've never been to Starbase
before because it is a brutal place.
First, let me tell you about Brownsville.
Brownsville is a border town. It's right on the border of
Mexico. There's a lot of illegal
immigration that happens in this area.
A lot of crime. It's a very a lot of crime
before SpaceX and their crew got there.
It's cleaned up a little bit since then there and there was
one of the most impoverished places in the United States.
If you're going to move someplace and you want a better
life, you know, if you want something with a higher wage
and, you know, don't get me wrong, Brownsville's amazing.
It's a great city and the people there were wonderful, but if
you're looking for kind of a higher end life, you don't want
to move to Brownsville. And like I said, I loved it
there. I I thought it was real great.
It was really fun. I met some really great people.
I was friends with some SpaceX engineers.
They were my neighbors and I just had a great time there.
So one of the things that I, I like to talk about are the
positives when I was there, because like I said, I met some
really great people. Two of my neighbors were SpaceX
engineers. I would have barbecues with
them. I'd invite them over for drinks
and for dinners we'd we'd all eat together, them and their
families. And we talked about SpaceX.
We just talked about regular life stuff.
It's just like people are pretty normal.
The engineers of SpaceX are just normal people, but they have
really cool jobs. They also get paid a lot of
money compared to the other people that work in the area.
Brownsville, like I said, it's a border town.
There's not much going on. And also it's about 250,000
people, I think like a quarter million people in the
surrounding area of Brownsville. A lot of people, it's kind of
congested, but they have every like kind of every normal city
problem, you know, a little bit extra traffic, some places, lot
of crime. For instance, the I would go to
a a park every day and I'd work out, I'd go for runs and there
was a track that would go that would, that went around one of
the facilities. It was like a walking track and
it's pretty big. Yeah, it's about a three mile
track. He goes around the whole
facility. And little did I know, but this
is where the, the, I don't know, a mafia, some sort of gang, I
don't know, I don't know what to call it, but that's where they
would take people and kill them. It's pretty brutal, man.
And I didn't know that, but one day I was out there and it was,
I think it was about two in the afternoon and it was about 75°
beautiful day. I did my walk and then I left.
I saw cop cars coming my way. There was a bunch of cop cars
coming that way. And then I learned later that
night that somebody had been murdered on the trail that I was
walking on like 5 minutes after I left, and they found the
people that did it. It was some some gangsters, some
mob, mob people. I'm not sure who they were, but
they found the people. They found them actually like at
the scene, like they tried to run away.
They couldn't get away because the cops were there so fast.
I didn't even know. Now, those are the kind of
things that happened at Brownsville.
But like I said before, a lot of wonderful, great things happened
in Brownsville too. People are wonderful.
They're really sweet, they're really nice and the area is
desolate. It's in a subtropical zone.
So really, really hot in the summer, in the fall, winter,
spring, bad storms happen, floods, hurricanes, things like
that. And it's also just to it's, it's
really hot there because it's really hot.
I, I wasn't used to it. I was from Vermont at the time.
I came from snow that the day that I left Vermont, I wasn't, I
was in upstate New York at that point.
And the day that I left it was, I think it was 40°F.
And when I got to Brownsville it was 102° at 8:00 at night.
It was a 20 hour drive. I drove all the way there.
So now we want to jump a little bit to what it's like to be at
the Star Base facility with Space XS Starship.
And as it's being built, like I'm seeing everything be the
infrastructure, the rocket, seeing new people join up.
Starbase wasn't really a thing. I mean it was like it's just
starting to become Starbase. It's a it was kind of a smaller
facility. It had the the high Bay and the
mid Bay and it had a few tents that people were building things
in. But it's nothing like it is now
and nothing like it's going to be in the next 5 years.
So they're going to be cranking out these rockets.
When I was there, they only had one rocket and one stackable
rocket, and they couldn't even fly with the engines on this
rocket because they weren't that good.
So the time that I was there, I thought they were going to
launch in September because Elon kept hinting.
This is what Elon does, right? We all know this.
Elon hints at some things, so he's like, yeah, like looking
good. Like, you know, nudge, nudge,
nudge. Look at the the Starship is
going to be stacked by September 10th or whatever.
It wasn't stacked at that point, and it's stacked in February,
February, I think it was February 10th at a stacked of
that year or the next year, because I got there because I
thought this thing was going to stack.
I thought they were going to fly it that year.
Regulatory stuff was still work being worked on, but it looked
like they had a clean, clear path to flight.
And the way that SpaceX does things is they, as Silicon
Valley companies do, as we've all heard, move fast and break
things, right? So that's how SpaceX does
things. First principles, take
everything away, strip everything away, just give
thing, give it the necessary parts and then fly it.
But that didn't happen. And then in February, of course,
they stacked it up and then they destacked it, and then they
didn't fly it. So my time at Star Base at that
point was almost over and I was enjoying myself.
It's like a tropical Wonderland down there.
There's amazing wildlife. You can see different people
everyday. I met some amazing people that I
still keep in touch with. I don't live there now.
I used you know, I, I moved away from there, but I met some
wonderful people that I still keep in contact with on the
daily. You can check out our Discord
and there's a discord in the description or show notes down
below. And I'm starting up a discord
for this channel for the Elon show.
But we had a discord for our space news pod show, which is
the show on YouTube that got this all started.
And that was how I communicated with people and I still
communicate with people through Discord.
People that I've met and also the engineers at Starbase that I
met. I still communicate with them
through Discord. I can't tell anybody who they
are or what usernames they have, mainly because they don't want
to be outed. They told me they don't want
anybody to know who they are. So I have to keep it a secret.
But if you want to join our Eland Show Discord, there's a
link in the show notes or description below.
Now let's get back to one of the fun things that happened to me
there. I wouldn't say it was fun.
It's really scary. So I at that point, at that
point I had this giant lens for my camera and I had the cinema
camera, a black magic cinema camera that I was using to shoot
all the video. 6K, amazing footage of this amazing rocket
that was being built. Wonderful times.
I was having enough time in my life filming this rocket and
getting all these angles that I thought were really cool.
People were enjoying the live streams on the YouTube channel
and you know, it was one night kind of late.
It was dark, about 10:00 at night.
I was down there a little bit later than normal.
I usually go home about 8:00 and then I edit videos for the
YouTube channel and then I'll post him up the next day.
So at about 8:30, something like that, it's kind of winding down
and wrapping up and I was getting some B roll footage for
the channel and a gentleman came up to me and started talking to
me about the Starship. And I gladly helped him
understand what it was and how it will affect humanity, how
this type of ship can send people to Mars.
And I said in a couple years, which of course we all thought
it was going to be in a couple years, except for Eric Berger,
who who knows? You know, Eric Berger's that
guy. He has had a long tradition of
Space Flight journalism. So he knows that it's going to
take not two or three years, it's going to take 10 years to
get it to Mars capabilities, which he's kind of right.
It should be around 10 years before this thing goes to goes
to Mars from its inception since the first build, I should say.
So the, the gentleman that was talking to me about this, I
noticed that he was acting, he was a little sketchy.
You know, when those people, have you ever met one of those
people that you're just hanging out with them and they keep
moving a little bit. They start like this, move their
bodies around a little bit and not in a good way.
And I didn't like a man. I'm just like my tense or
whatever. And I'm just like trying to
stretch or whatever because I've been on my feet all day and I've
been really, I'm really tired. I just want to move around a
little bit, not that kind of way.
It was like reaching into his pockets, you know, touching his
leg kind of like, you know, like just kind of twitchy, you know,
those kind of people. He was that kind of guy.
So I was talking to him and being nice to him being, you
know, being that he was there from someplace else and he came
in with a friend and he said he was going to camp on the beach
that night, which is totally OK down there.
And the beach is only about a mile away from the rocket.
So it's a really fun place to camp.
And he started getting like a little bit closer, like into,
you know, how when you're out in the wild, there's some people
that just want to get really close to you, want to like talk
up in your face when what you want them to be is like at least
an arm length away, at least that's pretty normal for people.
But an arm like maybe more, you know, and then you can talk
comfortably and nobody has, you know, weird things going on.
So he was about half of an hour length away from me at that
point. He kept moving in a little bit.
So then he started asking me about my camera.
And that's when I, the, the red light started flashing in my
head. I was like, OK, this guy is
thinking about something that he shouldn't be thinking about.
So I've got to wrap this up real quick.
I, I talked to the guy for about 10 minutes and I noticed it
about the 8 minute mark. He was super sketchy.
So and I was like trying to trying to buy some time so I
could get out of the situation, trying to figure out my next
move, which was get my camera in the car and get me in the car
and get out of there. We were right across from the
SpaceX facility. Luckily there was a security
guard there who could watch everything.
And you know, this guy reached into his pocket and he slowly
started pulling something out. Looked like a wooden handled
knife of some sort. That's all I could see is like a
wood handle and a little bit of metal.
So what I did was said, hey man, it's been great talking to you.
I got to go. So instead of putting my camera
in my camera bag, it was still attached to my lens.
The lens is $1000, the camera's $3000, the tripod is $500.00.
So I had about $4000 worth of gear in my hands at that point.
And I had like a streaming rig and all this other stuff.
So there's probably $5000 worth of gear right there in front of
this guy between me and him. So I I grabbed all of it at once
and like it was a Symphony of movement.
I unbuckled all the straps that were on it.
I turned all the knobs to put everything in his place.
I threw it in my car, slammed the door, jumped in my front
seat, locked the door, turned the key, and started driving
away. I was going to get stabbed at
Starbase. This guy was going to steal all
of my stuff. He's going to steal $5000 worth
of my camera gear. I don't know why, You know, the
guy probably needed money. He didn't seem like he was here
legally. And that happens down to
Starbase a lot, as we were on the border of Mexico.
You can get to Starbase. You don't have to stop at the
Border Patrol station on the way to Starbase.
But if you're going back to Brownsville from Starbase, you
have to stop at the Border Patrol.
So I think this guy was kind of stuck at Starbase and he needed
money to get himself out of there and he was just a super
sketchy person. I've only met 2 super sketchy
people there and I've met a real wild.
There's a lot of wild people to go there though, Lot of wild
people. Another one, I can tell this
story a little bit quicker, but there was a time when I was
filming the the first stack of Starship in February.
I think it was February. I'm not 100% sure I'll have to
like look at the the logs that I have, but I think it's February.
But there was a woman in her van.
I parked my car right behind her van.
I live stream from there every day.
You're allowed to park on the side of the street there on the
side of the road, wherever you can park your car.
It's totally legal in Texas. You can do whatever you want to.
So she was parked, her van was parked there.
I parked probably like a car and a half away from her, behind
her. And I got my camera gear out and
I set it up like I normally do every single day.
And she got out of her van and she told me to move my car.
So I said, oh, I'm just going to film this for like 10 minutes
and then I'll, I'll just leave you alone.
I have the footage of it somewhere.
I have the audio of it somewhere, but it's not clean
audio so I can't really post it. It's horrible audio because I
she wasn't nowhere near my microphone so you could just
kind of hear her barely in the background.
And I have to, I would have to really mess with the audio and
it would still sound really bad. So she told me that I have to
leave because her friends are coming and they're going to park
behind her. And I said OK, cool.
I'm going to be about 10 minutes.
I have to get this B roll footage then I'll leave you
alone. So I was going to get the nose
cone. I was going to get where the
ship and the booster attached together, and it was a far shot
and it looked really great. So I was like, I'm going to stay
here, I'm going to do this. And then there was an audible
FU. Unless you went back into her
van. She was red in the face.
She was a mad, real mad that I wouldn't move.
And I was like, OK, that's cool. And then she had some words with
me. She kept yelling out of her
window at me. And I'm like, just like, whoa,
what's going on here? So after that situation kind of
like died down a little bit, I, I picked up my camera and I
moved it back about two car spaces from there.
So I'm about 3 1/2 to four car spaces away from her.
At that point, I picked up all my gear, moved it back there,
moved my car back. I started filming again.
She got out of her car again, out of her van.
They told me, called me every name that you could think of,
everything imaginable. No, I didn't do anything.
I didn't do anything to her. I would just kind of sat there
and I was like, wow, what's going on?
Typically, you know, she typically most people are nice
there, but she must have been having a real bad day or
something. I don't know what, I don't know
what the deal was, but those are the only two times that I could
think of that were like real nasty.
The funny thing is, right after she yelled at me, a wonderful
couple from the Northeast drove in.
I think they're from Maine or Rhode Island or something, but
they drove all the way there. But they weren't there to see
the rocket. They were there to see the
wildlife. It's a wildlife preserve.
And there's some like some weird birds that they really love.
They're like some birds you can't see or find anyplace else
in the United States. So they drove down for the
birds. They didn't even know the SpaceX
was down there. They didn't even know there was
a giant rocket down there. But she didn't say anything to
them. They pulled up behind her and
then she eventually pulled off and went someplace else.
But it was I told them about her.
I was like, hey, you guys might not want to park there.
She might get out and yell at you.
And then she was like, she was swearing at us as she left, but
we were just kind of like, whoa, what just happened there?
So there's, there's all kinds of different people there, but I've
met some, like I said before, I met some wonderful people that I
still keep in contact with there from there, some photographers,
some videographers, some film makers, some producers.
And there's, you know, there's some beef between some of the
YouTube channels that got like, it's a silly beef.
The big YouTube channel, we all, everybody knows them.
There's some beef between the big YouTube channel, the big
streaming YouTube channel in the local boys, which the local
boys, they were there first, you know, they started it all.
There were a few people there before, you know who you know,
But it's like, it's a turf war, like it's silly.
Doesn't make any sense. There's enough room for
everybody to for everybody to have a piece of the pie.
And it just happens that one of them is better at business than
the other. The other one was kind of
hobbyist who had and they took us seriously though.
So I'm not going to discount what they've done.
But in the realm of business, they didn't do business well.
And that's where it was separate from the other channel.
I'm not going to name any channels.
You'll figure it out yourself if you really want to.
But basically the biggest Space Flight channel on YouTube other
than the everyday astronaut, the the biggest streaming at
Starbase YouTube channel and this other streaming at Starbase
channel. For a while there, they had some
beef and some other Youtubers had some beef too.
It was kind of funny because everybody wanted their piece of
the pie, man. And I was just there for their
good times. I was there to make friends.
I was there to hang out and I was there to enjoy myself with
the company of other people that are fans of Elon.
And I hope you're you know, if you're still listening to this,
I hope you get something out of the story.
As in, please go to Starbase. If you go to Starbase, pack some
water, a lot of water in your trunk, pack some snacks because
there's no facilities anywhere, and go to the bathroom before
you leave your house to go down there because there's no
bathrooms. So yeah, take a take a little
trip there if you can. It's amazing place to be and
you'll be shocked at how big the rocket is in real life.
It's absolutely massive. It's so, so large compared to
anything other than a 40 story building that you've ever seen
and it's a rocket that they've launched this thing into space.
It's gigantic. You can get 100 yards from this
thing, couple 100 yards I should say, but you can get so close.
You can it's like touching it almost.
It feels like you're right underneath it.
It's so huge. You can walk right up to the
fence. You can park your car on the
other side of the road. You can hang out there all day.
You want just watch the rocket. It's so cool.
So I just want to share that with you and I, I hope you got
something out of that. And if you did, please join our
discord down below. It's in the description in the
show notes. And please follow the channel,
follow this podcast because we are growing and it is becoming
actually, you know what I'm going to, I'm going to do a
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So thanks again for listening or watching wherever you are.
I do appreciate you and please take care of yourselves and each
other and I will see you in the next one.
Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
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If you could take a second and hit this subscribe or the follow
button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening
on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
miss an episode, and each episode is about 10 minutes or
less to get you caught up quickly.
Please, if you want to support the show even more, go to
patreon.com/stage Zero and please take care of yourselves
and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.