#40
Why is manufacturing so hard / the factory is the product?
Interviews
3
Answers
5
X posts
4
Span
2023 to 2023
First asked Oct 5, 2023, most recently Oct 31, 2023. 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: 0 cross-checked against YouTube captions, 5 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 5, 2023 · International Astronautical Congress · asked by Interviewer
Q: What do you, what are you trying to achieve with the new factory?
Yeah, so we are building a giant factory for a giant rocket. And I mean honestly, I recommend people visit Starbase. As it turns out, it's on a state highway. So for the. I think it's one of the rare situations where, and actually I don't mind, I think it's kind of cool that the public can actually drive within a literal stone's throw away from the factory and the launch site and actually see the rocket firsthand. …
Oct 18, 2023 · Tesla Q3 2023 Earnings Call · asked by Analyst
Q: Or is there any reason that we should be maybe more optimistic or pessimistic about the ramp profile there?
Yeah, I mean to be clear, it's not really the third year of production. It's kind of like the 18th month of production is roughly my guess. So it's just that they happen to. It'll happen is that the. It starts this year, spans next year and gets to 2025. So technically there are three calendar years in there, but there's actually only 18. 18 months, not three years. I would be very disappointed if it took us and …
Oct 31, 2023 · The Joe Rogan Experience · asked by Joe Rogan
Q: Why is it so much harder than making an individual model?
Well, in order to make it affordable, you have to make it at volume. So you've got to make everything at high rate consistently. If you tour the production line, you'd have a sense for it. You've got to have all of the casting machines, all of the stamping machines, as the case may be, the glass machines, the wheels, the tires, everything required from the motor that the battery cells, all of the constituents of the …
Oct 31, 2023 · The Joe Rogan Experience · asked by Joe Rogan
Q: And how much more difficult is it to make this, considering the body's made out of steel?
Very difficult. The difficulty of manufacturing is proportionate to the amount of new technology that you have in a car and in the product. And in this case, there's a lot of new technology. The production line will move as fast as the slowest and least lucky and most foolish part of the entire production line. And you could say to first approximation, there are 10,000 things that have to go right at least for …
Oct 31, 2023 · The Joe Rogan Experience · asked by Joe Rogan
Q: Even when you decided to get involved with Tesla, did you have any idea of how difficult this would be?
I thought it would be pretty difficult. I thought our probability of success was less than 10%. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, it would be foolish to think anything else other than that. I mean, even at this point, the only car companies that have not gone bankrupt are Ford and Tesla. American car companies. General Motors went bankrupt and Chrysler went bankrupt in 2009. There's some chance they'll go bankrupt again. Ford and …
In his own posts on X
@elonmusk · Aug 25, 2025
@fchollet He doesn’t understand how hard it is to scale up production and that making prototypes is trivial compared to the immense pain of volume manufacturing. There is no Hollywood movie about this fundamental truth. But he is not wrong longer term. 20 years max.
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Sep 7, 2025
@pbeisel Optimus is a hard problem in engineering, design and especially manufacturing
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Sep 13, 2025
Bigtime. Production at scale is 100X harder than making a prototype. There is no movie that illustrates this. https://t.co/MedTDic2B6
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Oct 22, 2025
@davidpattersonx People don’t understand how hard manufacturing is. It will take many years before enough robots are built to matter.
View on X ↗
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