#09
What's the future of energy (solar, batteries)?
Interviews
10
Answers
11
X posts
5
Span
2023 to 2026
First asked Oct 31, 2023, most recently Jun 8, 2026. Excerpts below are from machine transcripts with filler words (um, uh, you know) and stutters removed; … marks a cut. They are not checked word for word, so use the link to hear the exact words, or the transcript link for the raw text. Timestamps: 3 cross-checked against YouTube captions, 8 from the archive transcript only. X has no link-to-time option, so X links open at the start.
How the answer evolved · oldest first
Oct 31, 2023 · The Joe Rogan Experience · asked by Joe Rogan
Q: Like how far away are we from having batteries that are far more efficient and last far longer?
Battery range is not a problem at this point. I mean, the model s will go 400 miles. Model 3, model Y will do over 300 miles. So that's more than most people need. So. Yeah, right.
Jan 6, 2024 · Moonshots with Peter Diamandis · asked by Peter Diamandis
Q: But what's the rate at which batteries and solar is increasing?
Yes. I mean Tesla, we've made a couple of presentations, one sort of simplistic and then one in extreme detail on how to make Earth completely self sustaining from an energy standpoint and demonstrating that there is no that if you break down all of the raw materials for a lithium ion battery and for solar, you can easily make Earth. I mean there's no shortage of materials. It's easy, it's a lot of work obviously, …
May 20, 2024 · 10th World Water Forum Keynote · asked by Moderator
Q: Who is going to support the R and D in this era?
Yeah. It's so something I would encourage everyone in the room to look at is, and you touched on that briefly, is that the cost of solar power has dropped dramatically over the years. So if you were to, say, look at the cost of solar power five years ago or 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, it would have seemed cost prohibitive. But the cost of solar power today is extremely low. And. And the cost of batteries to store …
Jul 13, 2024 · X Takeover 2024 · asked by Kelvin (Tesla Owners Silicon Valley)
Q: What advancements are you most excited about in terms of battery technology and how will they impact the range of inefficiencies of future Teslas?
Well, the. I think it's important to note that even if there were no battery breakthroughs at all, I think you could electrify all road transport and all road and transport and all ships could be electrified even if there was zero improvements in battery technology. This may be an important point to note. Now there will be improvements in battery technology, but even if they weren't, you could electrify all ground …
Oct 29, 2024 · Future Investment Initiative · asked by Interviewer
Q: How concerned are you about providing sufficient energy for the growing hungry clusters globally?
Yeah, I think things will. Things are currently chip limited, or they're not quite chip limited. They're going to get to the point where they're limited by voltage, transformers and installation and they will become limited by energy. So there will be a tremendous amount of energy that's needed for digital intelligence and also for electrification of transport. So those two things are a big deal. Yeah, we're going …
Mar 20, 2025 · Tesla All-Hands (Q1 2025) · asked by Audience
Q: Are we going to reformulate that officially to kind of explain to the world better about how Optimus and AI folds into the rest of the fabric of the company?
Yeah, I mean, I touched on this briefly earlier, but you're right that I think we do need to articulate it more prominently and maybe more often, because it's really about sustainable abundance. Can we have a future of abundance for all that is also sustainable and compatible with nature? So we're not destroying nature, but you also get abundance for everyone on Earth. Sounds like the best possible future. That's …
Jan 6, 2026 · Moonshots · asked by Peter Diamandis
Q: Yeah, I mean you're natural gas and solar. You're at Colossus too, right?
Yeah. People just don't understand how that solar is everything. So everything compared to the sun, all other energy sources are like cavemen throwing some twigs into a fire. Yeah. So the sun is over 99.8% of all mass in the solar system. Jupiter is around 0.1% of the mass. So even if you burnt Jupiter, the energy produced by the sun was still around up to 100%. And then if you teleported three more Jupiters into …
Jan 6, 2026 · Moonshots · asked by Peter Diamandis
Q: So what should, what do we do to scale that way? Do we do it in solar here?
I think we should scale solar substantially in the US. Tesla and SpaceX are scaling solar. So. And I encourage others to do so as well. So the, I mean, obviously I've said this stuff publicly. I do see a path to 100 gigawatts a year of space sort of AI powered, solar powered AI satellites.
Jan 22, 2026 · Davos · asked by Larry Fink
Q: And then let me ask a question. Why aren't we doing it?
Yeah. So I mean, I guess rough way to think about it is 100 miles by 100 miles, or call it 160 km by 160 km of solar is enough to power the entire United States. So 100 mile by 100 mile areas is, I mean, you could take basically a small corner of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico. Obviously you wouldn't want it all in one place, but it was a very small percentage of the area of the US to generate all of the electricity that …
Feb 5, 2026 · Dwarkesh Podcast · asked by Dwarkesh Patel
Q: If it wasn't for the tariffs, would Colossus be solar powered?
It would be much easier to make it solar powered. Yeah, the tariffs are nuts. They're several hundred percent. So don't you know, some people.
Jun 8, 2026 · SpaceX Technical Talk: AI Satellites at Scale · asked by Moderator
Q: But how much energy are we talking like coming from the sun, especially compared to what we're using here on Earth?
It feels like, yeah, the incident solar energy on the cross section of the Earth is roughly a half billionth of the sun's power output. And the vast majority of that we cannot use because 70% of Earth is water. Technically our planet should be called water because there is 70% water. And I think an alien civilization visiting us would be like, why are they calling it Earth when it is mostly water?
In his own posts on X
@elonmusk · Jan 13, 2024
Earth already receives about the same energy from the Sun in an hour than humanity consumes in a year. Solar panels just need to catch a tiny amount of it to power our entire civilization! https://t.co/OVFIDQlg3m
View on X ↗@elonmusk · May 11, 2025
Very few people realize that Europe’s entire electricity needs can be met with solar panels covering an area less than the size of the island of Sicily! Battery packs can cover the energy needed during the night. https://t.co/CTtbrPvvNy
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Jan 31, 2026
Solar is not A source of energy, it is THE source of energy https://t.co/3KleMaVnT4
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Aug 6, 2026
Megapack 3 starting production. Congrats Tesla Megapack team!
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Sep 15, 2026
The solar power exponential will continue until all other energy sources are <<0.1%
View on X ↗
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