The interview was recorded at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, on April 6, just one day before the company’s Cyber Rodeo event to celebrate the grand opening of the factory. Musk shared his thoughts on what “a future worth getting excited about” might look like as he talked about the future of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and the world as a whole.
Musk said he does not see 2050 as a hard deadline for complete carbon neutrality. Instead, Musk believes the world is currently on a good path, so as long as we’re not complacent and have a high sense of urgency about moving towards a sustainable energy economy, “the future’s going to be great.”
Musk also touched on the future of energy. “If we continue to push hard, the future is bright and good from an energy standpoint.” Musk thinks that, over the course of the next couple of decades, Tesla could be responsible for 10% of the estimated total installed capacity it will take to transition transportation, electricity production, and heating to sustainability.
The Tesla CEO also talked about the company’s long-delayed Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology and why it is taking so long to perfect. “In order to solve full self-driving properly, you actually just have to solve real-world AI.”
“We will solve it this year,” Musk said with some confidence about achieving autonomous driving that is safer than a human driver. “I think this is the year.”
Tesla is planning a full release of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta to all of its North American customers who have purchased the $12,000 USD ($10,600 CAD) upgrade sometime this year.
Anderson also asked Musk about Optimus — the humanoid robot Tesla is developing and originally unveiled back in August of last year. “People have no idea. This is going to be bigger than the car,” he exclaimed as he described the potential applications of the project.
“I think we will have something pretty good at the prototype level this year, and it might be ready for at least a moderate volume production towards the end of next year,” Musk previously said about Optimus in another interview with Axel Springer SE CEO and WELT reporter Mathias Döpfner.
Musk went on to say that Optimus will eventually lead to a world with an abundance of goods and services that are not only readily available but also affordable.
This interview was originally teased at Musk’s live interview at the 2022 TED Conference in Vancouver last week, with only a short 8-9 minute clip shown. Anderson said they weren’t sure if Musk was able to travel to the Vancouver interview so they recorded one at Giga Texas as a backup plan.
Watch Elon Musk’s full interview with TED below:
