Original subtitles

This program may contain scenes of Repetitive Flashing Images and some strong language from the start

There's not a lot of human beings like you. You know that? You're an oddity to chimps like me.

We're all chimps. Some of us are a little more confused.

When I watch you doing all these things, I'm like,

"How does this fucker have all this time and all this energy and all these ideas,

"and then people just let him do these things?"

Because I'm an alien.

INTERVIEWER: If you had to describe Elon to an alien,

how would you describe him?

Well, I think of Elon as the alien.

I don't know - "Meet your fellow countryman."

No, um...

I wonder, if there was one intelligent being that we created,

you know, like some Al creature... Yeah. ..that's superior to people?

Maybe it would just hang around with us for a little while,

like you've been doing, and then fix a bunch of shit.

Maybe that's the way. HE LAUGHS

I might have some mutation or something like that.

You might. Do you think you do?

Probably. Do you wonder?

Like, when you're around normal people, you're like, "Hmm."

I always used to think of him... He had this...was a sort of

benevolent alien.

You know, he would be, you know, "Hello."

I think he could kind of see the way the world was going,

in a way I just...| just did not understand.

How connected is this technology going to be in our life?

It will be, at some point, indistinguishable from reality.

Your phone is already an extension of you.

You're already a cyborg.

If you assume any improvements at all,

you will be essentially a snapshot into a computer at any time.

If your biological self dies,

you could just upload into a new unit.

Or civilisation will end.

One of those two things will occur.

Pass that whiskey.

HE CH UCKLES This is too freaky.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I was thinking about this for a long time, by the way.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

NARRATOR: Elon Musk is the richest man who has ever lived

but says he doesn't own a house.

DONALD TRUMP: He's a little different than a lot of other people.

He truly embodies big thinking and risk taking.

With a few taps from his fingers,

global markets can crash and soar.

NEWS ANCHOR: CEO Elon Musk creating chaos with a single tweet.

Bizarre, shook confidence.

Probably sleep deprived.

This company is not run properly.

He is creating a chip that can be put into our brains.

Yeah, a chip and a bunch of tiny wires.

And it would do what? Could you input?

Could you download Jim? Mm-hm.

Yes. Well, what...? HE LAUGHS

And right now, he's building rockets that could take 100 people to Mars.

His power and wealth continue to grow.

No-one on Earth is doing more to change the world.

Come on over, man.

Why...why? Why would you want to talk to me?

Because you are...you are the dude, my friend.

You are the dude.

He's clone things that no other country can do.

It's quite magnificent.

INTERVIEWER: You're his mum. Yes.

And his greatest champion. Yes.

He's so dangerous.

Completely, totally irresponsible.

ELON: It's not as much fun being me as you'd think.

I'm not sure I want to be me.

It seems a little strange to be handing it all over

to private enterprise, but I guess I'm kind of stuck in the past, huh?

"Unstable." "Reckless."

I'm just being me.

We used up all the 100 million.

And then, there was the big recession.

In the end, I had to invest everything.

Why did you want to take the risks?

These businesses that you've gone into.

Have to say, at times, I've wondered.

Um...

But, you know, like, creating a company

is almost like having a child.

So, it's sort of like how do you say your child should not have food?

You have to feed it and nurse it. Yeah.

Take care of it, even if it ruins you.

Yeah.

There were some tough times in...end of 2008.

How did you get through that period of crisis?

Yeah.

Can we just break for a second? I... Sure. Of course, yeah.

I'm not sure if it was worth it.

Sure hope so. Sure hope it was worth it.

In 2009,

Elon Musk is a bruised and weary man.

The father of five has invested all of his money in his two companies,

SpaceX, making rockets, and Tesla electric cars.

Running a company does have its drawbacks.

A friend of mine has a good phrase - it's like eating glass

and staring into the abyss.

Ancl you agree with that? Yeah.

Ancl if you don't eat the glass, you're not going to be successful.

This is Elon. Hi.

Tesla narrowly scraped through last year's global financial crisis.

And now, Hon has a new car -

the Model S -

that he hopes will be the first

mass-produced, all-electric car in history.

Again, thanks for coming here.

I think you'll be pretty excited what we...about what

we're about to unveil.

Somebody kick me that flashlight.

I really believe that the sedan is absolute vapourware.

There is no way that Tesla has the cash on hand

in order to be able to truly develop their own sedan.

This is the first mass-manufactured electric car.

This is something that is...

They've got a prototype that they're going to show,

and they're going to start taking deposits, which I find

just an amazing act of gall.

Just been a very, very high workload.

Ancl then, between SpaceX, Tesla and kids, it's...there's just...

...really not enough time in the clay, so not enough time to sleep and...

It was really awful.

He'd ploughed his money into Tesla and SpaceX.

He was under incredible stress.

I was worried he was going to have a heart attack.

I just kept thinking, "God,

"I've just got to keep this guy alive."

The honest answer is,

I'm not looking forward to the party tonight.

All night long, I'll be selling cars for five hours,

after selling cars for five hours before that.

HE LAUGHS AND SIGHS

It won't be fun for me.

It was one of the bad Christmases.

He'd forgotten to get me a Christmas present.

We were in Boulder, Colorado.

So, there's loads and loads of snow, and we were in bed.

Ancl he said, "I do...you know..."

He said, "It's not that I don't love you.

"I do really, really love you.

"It's just it's, like, you know, my brain is exploding."

Ancl I was like, "No, I know. It's fine."

And he sort of got up in the middle of the night and disappeared.

I was like, "Where's...where has he gone?"

Ancl he came back two hours later,

and he'd gone outside in his T-shirt and shorts, barefoot,

and he'd gone and, like, dug through the snow

and picked flowers for...

Like, he'd walked all over Boulder and, like, came back

with a little bouquet of picked flowers.

"Because I just wanted to show you how much I loved you."

He was very supportive of me having a career.

But I had to come back and do St Trinian's 2,

and it was the first time we'd been apart, and he sent

two lorry-loads of flowers to set for me,

and he'd also found out from production the name

of every woman on set, and he'd sent them all flowers and champagne

and chocolate, so that, then, when he came to visit,

everyone was like, "Oh, hi."

REPORTERS CLAMOUR

MAN: Talulah, sign the card here.

I remember, at the premier,

he came along and he was holding my umbrella for me

while I was doing some signings.

No-one knew who Elon was.

CROWD: Talulah! Talulah!

He was very sweet and lovely and very supportive.

Two years after meeting Tallulah...

...Elon's divorce from the mother of his five children comes through.

I wanted to get married in the UK and Elon said,

"You know, it's up to you."

I wanted a religious ceremony.

Elon just went along with it.

# She said I love you more than words can say... #

We just had really good fun. I love Fred Astaire.

So, I'd introduced Elon to Fred Astaire movies,

and then Elon got very into Fred Astaire

because he admired his sort of technical proficiency.

On the morning of the wedding, I got him a sort of top hat and cane

as a joke, and I said,

"ls there anything you would like at the wedding,

you know, that's important to you?

Ancl he said, "Yes, I would like there to be hovercraft and eels."

My hovercraft is full of eels.

So, we had hovercraft and eels at our wedding.

After the wedding, we went to Paris on honeymoon.

Couldn't be a long, long honeymoon, obviously, because of work.

But we managed a couple of clays in Paris, and he took some meetings

while we were there.

But, yeah, it was lovely.

It was really nice.

Elon and Talulah are building a new life together.

But there's a major problem.

Court documents from Elon's divorce show that, for months,

he's been using emergency loans from friends

to pay his divorce costs

and living expenses.

A year after promising the world's first mass-produced,

all-electric car,

Tesla has so far only made a few prototypes

and has neither the factory or the staff to produce the cars.

Elon decides to gamble.

For the first time in 50 years, a car company is being floated

on the US Stock Exchange.

If the stocks do well, Elon will have the money

to ramp up production.

He'll know his fate by the closing bell.

Tesla motors, they're making their debut on the Nasdaq today.

Now, the company has yet to make a profit, even for a single quarter.

You know what? This company has yet to make a dime.

It has lost $290 Million.

Tesla's to sell, sell, sell.

You don't want to own this stock. You don't want to lease it.

Heck, you don't even...

You shouldn't even rent the darn thing.

I think Elon was pretty stressed out that clay.

You could see it on his face

that he was under some under some pressure

and worried about how it was all going to come together.

Elon, a huge day for Tesla, the company going public.

Like many start-up companies, you lose money.

The company has lost about $260 million since its inception.

Yeah. You're going public.

You want the public to invest in Tesla.

We were this car company that had no money,

that was, you know, making this crazy car in Silicon Valley

and without any automotive expert.

So, everyone was like, "They're never going to make it.

"What are they doing?"

We weren't even close to being a household name.

There was definite risk.

There's no place to charge the stupid thing right now.

You have to...you have to... That's the least of them, Joe. Really?

How do you begin mass market production

of an electric vehicle?

You're guaranteeing that this is going to be built

and that you can get production ramped up on this model?

Because in the auto industry, a lot of people are saying,

"Not going to happen."

Well, you know, I think people, at this point,

ought to be a little bit more optimistic

about the future of Tesla.

I remember the energy kind of in the studio,

right before they rang the bell.

I mean, it was palpable.

Well, big losses on Wall Street today, as we've been reporting.

And it's just the same for just about any US stock

you care to name except one.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It's a result that almost no-one saw coming.

The shares go stratospheric,

valuing the company at $2.2 billion.

At the end of the day, Elon's own stake in the company

is worth $650 million.

Tesla's always been the problem child.

I suppose, all the sort of intensity of, you know,

"It's us against the world.

"We're about to die any second."

We had a lot of bloggers maintaining a Tesla death watch.

A day-by-day count of how long before Tesla will die. Right.

Tesla has this cool factor that a lot of car companies

out there just don't have.

Flush with a new cash injection,

Hon gets to work.

Well, we have a very big sign.

He buys a factory in Fremont, California, for $42 million.

It has the capacity to mass-produce the Model S, but Elon needs someone

to help sell his electric dreams to petrol-obsessed America.

George Blankenship.

G-E-O-R-G-E.

Blankenship - B-L-A-N-K-E-N-S-H-I-P.

He chooses the man Steve jobs trusted to launch the Apple stores

across the globe.

I retired from Apple, and I started getting these emails.

"George, Elon Musk would like to speak to you. Give me a call."

H E CH UCKLES Delete.

I mean, I assumed this was junk mail.

Ho“ got on the phone, and we started chafing.

"Why don't you come work for the company?"

I was like, "I've retired,

"and I need to spend time with my wife and kids and stuff."

He said, "Oh, come out to LA."

I met with Elon, and I thought he was special.

He asked me, "You know, if you were going to bring Tesla EVs to market,

"How would you do it?"

I said, "Well, I'd do it just like Apple."

There's a whole education thing we had to go through at Apple,

and there's going to be a whole education thing,

we're going to have to do with EVs.

"How much does it cost to charge? And how do I charge this?

And there's all these questions out there.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

The Roadster was proof of concept, but the Model S was the first car

that was really meant for people to drive like a regular car.

We would talk to people about the car and show it to them

and all that, and then they'd say, "Well, how do I get one of these?"

And with a straight face, we would look them in the eye,

and we would say,

"Well, give me $5,000 today,

"and |'ll...|'ll give you a car in a couple of years."

They'd go, "What?" We'd go, "Yeah.

"You give me a $5,000 deposit today, and we'll send you a car

"in a couple of years."

"You're kidding."

Just go, "No, no. That's what we do.

"We'll give you a reservation number, and...

"Unless you want one of the first 1,000.

"If you want one of the first 1,000, you've got to give me $40,000 today,

"and I'll send you a car in a couple of years."

And people did it.

Elon has sold his customers a vision of the future.

Yeah. It looks really amazing in the pictures.

Green, fast, sleek.

Completely away from gas.

And so I decided you got to put your money where your mouth is

and support it.

Under George W Bush, the American government

had also bought into Elon's future plans.

In late 2008,

NASA granted Elon's rocket company, SpaceX, a $1.6 billion contract

to take over the duties of the retiring Space Shuttle.

It was incredible.

SHUTTLE BLASTS

And then, Obama got decked.

It was a sort of amazing moment in history.

Ancl so, we...we sat on the stage for his inauguration.

The thing I do remember is that Elon hadn't appropriately packed,

and it started snowing, and he had to borrow the driver's

coat and hat, because otherwise he would have frozen to death.

I think, at that point, I was like, "Shall I just pack for you

"when we go on trips?"

He was like, "OK, probably a good idea."

OFFICIANT: Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution

of the United States.

Preserve, protect and defend

the Constitution of the United States.

So help you God. So help me God.

Congratulations, Mr President.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

BAND PLAYS, FIREWORKS BANG

# Can't explain all the feelings that you're making me feel

# My heart's in overdrive... #

So, today, I'd like to talk about the next chapter in this story,

not just to continue on the same path.

We want to leap into the future.

# Touching you, touching me... #

The bottom line is, nobody is more committed

to manned space flight than I am.

But we've got to do it in a smart way.

# I believe in a thing called love

# just listen to the rhythm of my heart... #

Governments are just really bad at cost efficiency.

They tend to do things expensively and inefficiently.

People in Washington, driven, sometimes, less by vision

than by politics, have neglected Nasa's mission -

space exploration in the 21st century.

Do you consider yourself a visionary?

I suppose...| suppose I've been a visionary. Yeah.

I think the reality of being president

is that you're actually, like, the captain of a very huge ship

and have a small rudder. HE CHUCKLES

You know, I'm generally a fan

of, like, minimal government interference.

Like, the government should be kind of like the referee

but not the player.

Ancl there shouldn't be too many referees.

Are there some pitfalls and some risks?

I mean, it seems like you're creating

intellectual material that wouldn't be good, maybe, in the wrong hands.

I mean, as far as being able to go send something

up into space, does the govern...?

Is there any resistance from the government?

No, the government is...the US government is our primary customer.

NASA took a risk.

We were a small company, very unproven.

We had, like, I don't know,

300 people maybe.

We went from, like, launching a small rocket to working

on the transportation system to the International Space Station.

Jumping into this huge responsibility was a major step -

you know, suddenly, in the big league.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

With the retirement of the last ever Space Shuttle,

the US government is now reliant on SpaceX to make good its promise

to resupply the International Space Station.

The young start-up has to upscale fast.

I jokingly describe myself as the Pied Piper of super nerds.

My role is essentially to go find people 1,000 times smarter than me,

get them excited about solving a really hard problem.

One of the ways that we explained what the SpaceX culture was,

and this was in order to be really honest with people -

SpaceX is special forces.

We take on the missions that others deem impossible.

This will be the hardest thing you will ever do in your life.

It is the kind of personality that wants to be a Navy SEAL -

the engineering equivalent of that.

It will be bruising and punishing and uncomfortable every clay.

Growth is rarely comfortable.

If you are comfortable, you are probably not growing.

To work for Elon is to be comfortable

in a constant state of discomfort.

He has 10,000 times more what the average person has

streaming through their brain at any given time.

Our ability to think about and analyse a problem

is nothing compared to how his brain works.

Elon aspires to be, like, the greatest engineer

in the history of the world.

He does have the cognitive horsepower of the geniuses

that we have seen come before us.

INTERVIEWER: But he is not Einstein is he?

I think he is smarter than Einstein.

But then, there's another company that's specifically focused

on cancer, kind of more of a near-term thing.

Ancl I think that's going to be one of the key things to solving

a lot of diseases, actually, which is to just basically

write a program me that destroys the disease. Right.

Ancl then...and code it...

just code. just code, right? Yeah, it's just software. Yeah.

As well as rockets and cars,

Elon's interests are growing.

Elon starts tweeting about his interests

in artificial intelligence,

something he refers to as "summoning the demon".

We're building progressively greater intelligence.

Ancl the percentage of intelligence that is not human is increasing.

Ancl eventually, we will represent

a very small percentage of intelligence.

Are you honestly, legitimately concerned about this?

Is, like, Al one of your main worries? Yes.

He later goes on to confess his deepest fears

on thejoe Rogan podcast to a worldwide audience.

It's going to be very tempting to use Al as a weapon.

You scare the shit out of me when you talk about Al.

Ancl no-one's really paying attention too much,

other than people like you.

I tried to convince people to slow down.

Slow down Al.

This was futile. Nobody listened.

Nobody listened. No-one. We met with Obama.

Ancl what did he say?

No-one seemed to realise where this was going.

I don't want the government to handle this.

Who do you want to handle it? I want you to handle this. Oh, geez.

Yeah. I feel like you're the one who could ring the bell better.

There's not a million Elon Musk's.

There's one.

Do you think about that?

Hmm.

I don't think...

...| don't think you'd necessarily want to be me.

It's launch day.

Ten years after SpaceX was founded,

the company is operating on the world stage.

A perfect launch must lead to a precise deployment

of the Dragon capsule, which will then dock autonomously

with the International Space Station.

I was the launch chief engineer.

My job was to make sure everything goes right.

MAN OVER RADIO: T-minus one minute.

The flight computer's in control of the vehicle.

A rocket is a risky product.

You've just got to keep your nerves,

and you got to...you got to basically do your job,

and then trust your data and trust your tests.

Trust your work.

T-minus 30 seconds.

We're going to launch our Dragon spaceship on a Falcon 9 rocket.

Dragon will then manoeuvre over to the Space Station,

figure out the position and orientation,

and then go through a series of steps,

where it gets closer and closer to the Space Station

and eventually clocks.

There's a lot that could go wrong. I mean, really, a lot.

I cannot emphasise that enough.

This mission may not succeed.

Five, four, three, two, one, zero. ROCKET BLASTS

Falcon 9 has cleared the tower.

DOLLY SINGH: You have to remember,

a rocket is, like, essentially, a miracle.

80,000 custom components.

One wire, one millimetre off, anything off by the smallest margin,

and you are clone.

PRESENTER: Launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as Nasa's turns

to the private sector to resupply the International Space Station.

Only four governments in the world have the capability of doing

what SpaceX is attempting to accomplish.

It seems a little strange to be handing it all over

to private enterprise, but I guess I'm kind of stuck in the past, huh?

HANS KOENIGSMANN: For a rocket mission,

everything is over in ten minutes.

You see the satellite being deployed and you can head to the party.

Not true for Dragon. HE CH UCKLES

COMMENTATOR: Rendezvous is one of the trickiest manoeuvres in space,

to bring together two spacecraft going five miles a second.

Initiating the capture of the Dragon.

Standing by.

OVER RADIO: Copy. Confirm.

When Dragon clocks with the Space Station,

first, it gets grappled by the arm,

then it gets moved over to a berthing port.

Ancl then, that port has to be actually fitting

whatever you have on the Dragon side.

Ancl you never have a chance to actually check that

because the hardware is on the Space Station.

So, the first time you do this is actually when you do

the first mission, and you just...you just hope

this all works at the end of the clay.

Official hatch-opening time for the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

4.53am, Central Time.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

We also got a little desert, just like you said.

Got a little ice cream.

Can I have a big hand for our friends at NASA

who helped make this happen? Guys! Woohoo!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The mission is a complete success.

But some established aerospace figures aren't happy.

REPORTER: SpaceX's lack of experience bothers

some NASA legends, like Apollo astronauts

Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan.

Welcome, Mr Neil Armstrong, who was commander of Apollo 11.

SPEECH INAUDIBLE

Turn the button on.

How about that? That's good.

With regard to President Obama's 2010 plan, I have yet to find

a person in NASA, the Defence Department,

the Air Force, the National Academies, industry,

or academia that had any knowledge of the plan

prior to its announcement.

I support the encouragement of newcomers toward their goal

of lower-cost access to space.

But having cut my teeth in rockets more than 50 years ago,

I am not confident.

Now is the time for wiser heads

in Congress of the United States to prevail.

Now is the time to overrule

this administration's pledge to mediocrity.

Folks who propose such a limited architecture

do not yet know what they don't know.

There are people who say about you

that you don't know what you don't know.

Well, I suppose that's true of anyone.

How can anyone know what they don't know?

When critics say you can't do this,

your answer to them is...? We've clone it.

Neil, Jim Lovell and I have come to a unanimous conclusion

that this is, in fact, a blueprint for a mission to nowhere.

You know, there are American heroes who don't like this idea,

and I wonder what you think of that.

I was very sad to see that because those guys are...

Yeah.

You know, those guys are heroes of mine, so it's really tough.

You know, I wish they would come and visit and see the hardware

that we're doing here.

Ancl I think that would change their mind.

They inspired you to do this, didn't they?

Yes.

Ancl to see them casting stones in your direction?

It's difficult.

TALULAH RILEY: He has a kind of innocence to him.

What I mean by that is that he feels with incredible purity,

the emotion that he is feeling at the time,

whatever that emotion is.

He feels things very, very deeply.

So, you know, I've heard it said that he's cold and emotionless,

and that could not be further from the truth.

He is the most emotional person I know.

One of the things I remember, really early on, is we were...

We'd gone to the cinema, and we were watching some comedy.

Ancl Elon found the film so funny that he literally fell on the floor

and was, like, rolling around, holding his tummy laughing,

and everyone else in the cinema was looking at us, like,

"What the hell is going on over there?"

Ancl I was sort of like, "No, come on, get up off the floor."

But he was he was just enraptured by what was on the screen,

and he was feeling it.

Ancl he feels things.

And, you know, if he feels anger, you know it - it's there.

You know, anything, he...it's...it's...

It goes deep.

He told me all about his childhood growing up.

I think his childhood shaped him in a lot of ways.

I think he knows what it's like to be bottom of the pack, to be hurt

by people that you should be able to trust.

Ancl obviously, I think that leaves scars.

You grew up in South Africa?

Yes. Yeah.

I left when I was 17, by myself.

I had a backpack of clothes and a suitcase of books, and that's it.

Did you have a happy childhood? No. It was terrible.

Are you serious? Yes.

Why was it terrible? HE CH UCKLES

I had this one guy who would want to see me,

and when I had nothing else to do, then I would see him.

But he was very insulting

to people and rude and I didn't

really like him that much.

But then otherwise I'd just sit at home, you know.

After a couple of years, my brother banned him

from seeing me.

For two years, I didn't see him.

I graduated and went to live in Cape Town and he came to visit me,

just turned up with an engagement ring and I said, "I'll never wear it."

Ancl then he went back and told my family that I'd agreed to marry him,

which surprised my family because they didn't know

I was seeing him, and I wasn't.

Ancl then I just got this telegram from my parents.

"Congratulations. The wedding arrangements are made.

"The invites are out, and 800 people are coming."

I called him, I said, "What do you mean, I'm marrying you?"

Ancl he said, "I will change when we get married

"because then I'll be kinder and nicer.

"I'm just aggressive because you won't marry me."

Sol did believe him.

Ancl then I fell pregnant on honeymoon.

Then the abuse started right away, beating me up if I didn't do

as I was told.

I came back from honeymoon, bruised and pregnant,

and then I didn't want my family to know.

So then you just put up with it because you have no choice.

Elon, while he was a little boy...

...he grew up in a very violent home.

Like, for example, when I always had to drive the car

and he would be punching me and Elon would be between the seats,

hitting his father to stop him punching me. When he would be at

home and punching me, Kimbaland Tosca would be crying in the corner

because they were really babies.

Elon was five, Kimbal four, Tosca three.

Elon would be hitting his clad at the back of his legs.

Ancl then when he was eight, we left.

Our father has serious issues.

OK, well, so you didn't have a happy childhood.

It was very violent.

His father, Errol,

denies all the allegations of domestic abuse.

After two years, Elon said he wanted to go and live with his father.

And that made me very sad.

Very sad because I didn't see why he would have wanted to do that.

His father had the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

I couldn't afford books.

I mean, he'd read everything in the library in Durban,

so he had the opportunity to actually read

the whole encyclopaedias.

I could call him any time and ask him any subject,

anything in the world.

I do know that you were bullied at school and had... I was almost

beaten to death, if you call that bullied.

He was shy and awkward at school.

Elon didn't have many friends.

Pupils at Elon's school saw him as strange...

...and he was systematically bullied for years.

A gang beat up his best friend, making him agree never to hang

around with Elon.

On one occasion, Elon was pushed down a flight of stairs and beaten

violently, leaving him in hospital for weeks.

It's no surprise then that as an adult, he's a fighter determined

to succeed and prove everyone wrong.

All right. It is now time.

It is the moment we've been waiting for for a long time.

Time to deliver Model S.

CHEERING

Yes!

Delivery of model S.

We decided that we should make an event of this.

Yes.

I was sort of emcee.

I got the opportunity to be emcee and I came out and I sort of

fired up the crowd.

There are a lot of people who said this day would never come.

We did it!

CHEERING

The person who is going to drive this, have the best car

in the solar system.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Elon Musk.

What the Model S is fundamentally about is that an electric car

can in fact be the best car in the world.

Time to start delivering Model S.

Give Jeff his, his car keys.

All right.

Thank you.

Let him go.

The PR drive for the models is up and running...

...but manufacturing is slow.

The cars need to be rolling off the production line

in their thousands.

So far, Tesla has made ten.

Tesla!

The hype is bolstered by the models becoming the first ever electric car

to win the industry's prestigious Car of the Year award.

Congratulations, Elon.

Despite the chasm between hype and economic reality, Elon makes

a bold claim to investors.

Just a couple of questions.

The first one is, how confident are you that you guys are moving

in the right direction there?

I really feel that, that Tesla has turned a corner.

We're very confident of achieving a small profit in the first quarter.

Elon tweeted, "Tesla will be profitable in Q1, 2013."

Should we talk about this?

In the first quarter, we expect to produce and deliver

almost 5,000 cars.

We had to deliver 4,750 cars.

In Q2 of 2012,

we delivered 12 cars.

People will view this as a turning point in time when an electric car

company became a truly viable company.

I think that's how this period will be looked at in the future.

He asked us to do the impossible,

but he model led that himself.

So, you know, how are you going

to tell the hardest-working man

in the world that like, no, I can't get that done?

Hon, good to see you.

You too.

We're ready to walk over to the factory. Walk over there? OK.

Do you ever think you're going too quickly?

The faster we can accelerate the advent of electric cars, the better

the world will be so, I think...

But as you well know, it's a fine line

between growing and meeting demand and making sure

that you don't stumble along the way.

Well, I have no doubt that we will stumble, and we certainly

have stumbled in the past, and no doubt we'll stumble in the future.

But, yeah, but we want to go as fast as we possibly can without maybe

falling totally flat on our face.

It was tough.

I mean, four hours of sleep at night.

My wife left and went to Florida.

You know, she left around the 15th of February.

She said, "I can't watch you any more."

It was the toughest month I ever worked.

He assumed that we weren't doing enough fast enough to deliver

enough cars in Q1 of 2013.

Too little, too late.

He kept saying, "Too little, too late."

There were moments when he would get, he would definitely get upset.

And you've heard of him firing people on the spot. Yes.

All of that happened. When Elon was behaving badly,

I would kind of liken it to a toddler. Right?

Like that was having a tantrum about something or upset about something.

Yeah, my desk is in the factory. It's just right over there.

I can show you where it is.

He wants to take us by his desk.

He moved his desk over to near my desk so that he could watch

what was going on every single day.

I think it's important for a leader to be at the front lines.

My biggest challenge is ramping up production.

And so what's that about?

It's about being in the factory and understanding where the issues are.

Ancl so I want the very opposite of being up in an ivory tower.

I want to be in the middle of the battle.

And so that means putting my desk in the middle of the factory.

So that's where it is.

It's a noticeably clean desk with the exception of the award.

Yeah. I mean, it's got... I guess it's my the Phototrend award,

my sunglasses and coffee.

Yeah, this is my, this is my desk.

I think failure is bad.

I don't think it's good, but if something's important enough,

then you do it, even though the risk of failure is high.

My advice, if somebody wants to start a company,

is they should bear in mind that the most likely outcome is,

is that it's not going to work and they should only do

it if they feel that they are really compelled to do it, you know.

There were a number of times that I witnessed Elon

sleeping in the factory, showing people how important

it is to be focused on finding a solution.

Because if Elon Musk can take the time to sleep there and be there

24 hours a clay, everyone else should make the time.

Factory's ramping up, you know, and they're building cars,

but it's going to be close.

Could they build enough?

And we're halfway through the quarter and we weren't making it.

We were not making it, and...

I'm getting emotional here because this was really a tough time.

And we started bringing people from Europe, bringing people

from all over to help deliver cars.

The IT team was washing cars, other departments, marketing was driving

them to the other end of the parking lot and...

I started an email trail to Elon every night telling him,

"Here's how many you sold. Here's how many delivered.

"That's how many we have deposits on. And here's where we stand."

And it didn't look good.

It did not look good.

And he would... I would send it to him at 11.30 and he'd respond back

at 11.35, and it just didn't look good.

And he let me know.

Then on the Tuesday, the last week of the quarter, I sent him one

and I remember it as if it was yesterday.

He said, "This looks promising."

And it was Saturday at 3.00,

we delivered the 4,750th car at 3.00.

We made $11 million that quarter, put us over the hump.

Stock went from $20 to $90.

And Tesla became a viable company.

I stood up on the desk like this, called everybody around,

and I said...

"You guys have no idea how impactful it is what you just did.

"You can't understand it.

"But what you just did is monumental, not just for Tesla,

"but for what we're going to do for mankind.

"You should all feel extraordinary sense of accomplishment."

We were a real company on March 31st, 2013.

19 years after starting his first company,

Elon Musk now has a net worth of $11 billion.

Tesla is starting to become a household name

with mass market appeal.

And SpaceX has cornered the lucrative market in launching

commercial satellites into orbit.

But despite all of these achievements, Elon Musk has always

dreamt of one ultimate goal.

If you look at things on an historical time scale,

the multibillion year history of Earth itself,

you can really point to about half a dozen major steps on the evolution

of life - single-celled life, life moving from the oceans to land.

Mammals, consciousness, you know, those are sort of like the big ones.

On that scale also would fit the extension of life

to multiple planets.

But a critical element is making reusable orbital craft.

In any mode of transport,

if you had a reusable vehicle or expendable vehicle,

it would be a night and clay difference.

I mean, how many people would have driven

here if their car was single-use. Yeah.

We've got this weird situation in space where vehicles can only

be used once.

If you want a return journey, you've got to like

tow one behind you.

So the huge breakthrough that SpaceX aspires to achieve,

and this is a very difficult thing, is to make a fully reusable

orbital launch vehicle.

SpaceX is fundamentally a vehicle to make a thriving future

for humanity in space possible.

You cannot do that with $200 million rockets.

That is the equivalent of buying a yacht, sailing it from here

to France, and then essentially setting it on fire.

That makes no sense.

After each supply trip to the International Space Station,

SpaceX attempt to land their rockets safely so they can be used again.

You're one of the CEOs of SpaceX, and I'm incredibly excited...

The CEO. You're THE CEO? Oh, I'm sorry.

Your goal is to try to land the Falcon rocket on a barge at sea

so you can re-use... A ship, technically. A ship?

If it's got engines, it's a ship. OK.

We have footage of... This is the last attempt, I think, to land

the rocket after it successfully delivered a payload.

Here it goes.

Come on, baby.

You can do it.

It broke the leg on landing.

It broke more than that.

So we're still looking at data. We need to analyse what happened.

It certainly needs more work in the next couple of missions.

So far, many of SpaceX's attempts to land the Falcon

rocket have failed.

Liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket...

On the next trip to the space station,

there's a bigger problem.

Falcon has cleared the tower.

We have important payload on board.

We have a clocking adapt or for the space station.

We had a spacesuit on there, too.

Ancl of course, food and water and oxygen, all the things

that the astronauts need.

Their survival depends on you.

Vehicle on course, on track.

I had my head down. I was launch chief engineer.

I was looking at the data and I looked at the video data.

At 137 seconds...

"suddenly the rocket disappears.

Ancl I look up again and then the rocket is gone.

Ancl I was thinking, where did it go?

Ancl then we see these, these metal pieces raining down.

Ancl it was it was clear it exploded or, you know, fell apart in flight.

Caught by surprise while on a break...

...Elon speaks to the press.

Elon. Elon.

Can you talk for a second?

Yeah...

Sorry.

Jet lagged and everything.

Our goal is to have the most reliable rocket ever.

Because this is going to be launching astronauts in a couple

of years so it needs to be super, super reliable.

All right.

The failure of the rocket launch is a setback for SpaceX,

but more damaging for Elon are the stories around Tesla.

Madre.

Now bad news for Tesla motors.

It's now the target of a federal investigation into why two

of the company's Model S vehicles have caught fire this year.

A small number of Tesla car fires has a large effect on a company

trying to appeal to a global marketplace.

My kids are going to be in the car. My friends will be in the car. You guys will be in the car.

We care deeply about making sure that this is the safest vehicle

in the world. It's a brand-new car.

Three Model S's have now caught fire.

Two after hitting debris and one after the driver hit

a concrete wall.

Nobody was hurt, but what is getting hurt are Tesla shares.

They've shed about 12% since yesterday, dragging Tesla's market

cap down by about $3 Billion.

Yeah, no problem.

Elon goes on the offensive to defend Tesla.

Three fires in these Tesla

vehicles with the most recent one in the past week.

The headlines are extremely misleading.

In fact, if fire risk is your concern, you would have a great deal

of difficulty being in any better car than the Model S.

I don't... Not at all. That's not true.

That's a common misperception.

How do you turn around the image of an electric car?

Our three non-injurious fires got more national headlines

than a quarter million deadly gasoline car fires.

That's mad.

What the heck is going on?

Are you quite thin-skinned about this stuff?

Well...

I mean, I really care about Tesla and about the Model S

and everything, so it's hard to be dispassionate about that.

You know, it's a lot of blood, sweat and tears

from a lot of people.

Frustrated the bad press won't go away,

Elon repeatedly takes to Twitter.

With five minutes of research, you can get to the truth very quickly.

Six months after the Falcon 9 explosion, Elon is desperate

for a good-news story.

Today, SpaceX are trying to safely land its reusable rocket.

A historic first step towards the mission to Mars.

So far, we only tried to land on the ships.

And then here we go.

It's the first launch after this major anomaly where we lose

the whole payload on the way to the space station.

Ancl it is the first launch that tries to land on land.

Countdown, we had certain issues where we needed to make decisions,

is this good or not?

I wanted Elon to decide.

Ancl he was thinking and I just... I know he was thinking,

and will come to a result. I just wanted to remind him,

we got one minute left.

As calmly as possible.

Do you see anything on the sensors that's a problem?

No, right now, nothing.

Go for launch.

Ancl then we decide to go.

Come on, baby.

We see it do the landing burn.

Ancl then we hear this boom and the boom coincides

with the rocket disappearing.

OK, this is bad.

But mostly bad.

So we looked at the screen again and there's the rocket.

It's standing up.

CHEERING

It was incredible. That was one of the best clays of my life.

I'm really thankful for seeing first-hand that humanity can do

impossible things and they are only impossible until somebody

pulls them off.

Elon is never satisfied, but that is what makes him who he is.

It's just sitting there.

Look at that. What!

Holy smokes, man.

I think he's an incredible gift to the world.

He is arguably the best leader on the face of the planet.

I would take the bad with the good because if you mess with the recipe,

you might mess with the magic.

His brain is fundamentally more efficient.

There are times where like I might think I disagree, but like,

he's probably like, thought it through in a way that I haven't

thought about it.

If he asked me to jump, I'm going to ask him how high?

TRUMP: And this is just the beginning. They're going to Mars.

No!

Oh-oh. Got a new tweet from Elon Musk.

"I am selling almost all physical possessions, will own no house."

I think when Elon tweets, he just goes what's in his mind

at the moment.

Some I understand and some I don't.

Ancl he's described his father as emotionally abusive.

My father has his serious issues.

My name is Errol Graham Musk.

I'm Elon's father.