Elon Musk Tesla’s top 3 messages this year – from numerous public and private statements

Elon Musk Tesla’s top 3 messages this year – from numerous public and private statements

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published in December 26, 2020 |
by Zachary Shahan

December 26, 2020 in Zachary Shahan

Tesla * CEO Elon Musk tweeted more than 3,000 times this year. We in CleanTechnica follow his tweets closely as he provides a lot of information about Tesla via tweet and even gives a lot of news via Twitter. In addition, I interacted with Elon several times this year on Twitter on a variety of Tesla topics (autopilot, solar and gigafactories, for example) – a privilege that we may not have again. Following his tweets closely, as well as benefiting from this semi-personal interaction on various topics, I collected three central messages from Elon this year. Take a look below and tell us in the comments below the article whether you agree or not.

Seat factory Tesla Fremont Zach Shahan Kyle Campo Chanan Bos CleanTechnica

1. It’s the team, not him.

Several times before this year, of course, Elon thanked Tesla’s core executive team and tens of thousands of people across the company very much for making Tesla what it is today. Tesla is not a man – he is a vast network of men and women working hard every day. In fact, I would say it is well beyond that – it fits the description of a social movement in many ways. The most critical of us like to call it a cult, but I think Tesla’s mission, the vision of how to fulfill that mission and the methods make him a social movement more than a “cult”. And the fun thing about the Tesla social movement is that even a lot of kids are enthusiastically involved and really advance the mission by engaging their parents in the fun.

Returning to the company itself, however, although Elon has profusely thanked the entire Tesla team in the past (including at annual shareholder meetings), he seemed especially quick to direct thanks and praise to them this year. And it was not just in several public tweets, but also in DM on Twitter a few times. Whether referring to autopilot, manufacturing, factory building or anything else, Elon’s message was clear: thanks to the huge team of amazing people who are making things happen at a fast pace and with superior quality.

When I started trying to better understand the Autopilot team and process, after discovering that there were almost 200 Tesla Autopilot software engineers, just over 100 hardware engineers “on the chip side” and 500 highly qualified labelers (expanding to 1,000), I was about to publish an article about these “Autopilot Jedi engineers” (as I called them). Elon’s final point echoed comments that started the whole topic. He wanted to be extra sure that I wasn’t giving him much praise. He wrote:

“But, please put my quote in bold what people experience in cars is the result of a large number of extremely talented engineers working hard. Please give me the minimum credit. ”(Emphasis added, on request)

Tesla Fremont factory offices

Inside the Tesla Fremont factory. Zach Shahan / CleanTechnica’s photo.

Even in response, a few months later, to a complimenting comment on the progress of “Total Self-Driving” that Tesla was making, he replied, “Thanks, the team did a great job” – instead of just “Thanks” or a Twitter heart. Repeatedly this year, Elon’s emphasis has been on praising the Tesla team.

2. Engineering, engineering, engineering.

In a note, Elon said to me, “Yes, the vast majority of what I do every day is heavy engineering in many disciplines. I am chief engineer for SpaceX and Tesla. That would be a more accurate title than CEO. ”(Technically, the CEO would still work for the Engineering Director, and I’ve been using him from time to time since Elon wrote this.)

Interestingly, Elon credits his father for much of his engineering experience and passion. If you have followed the story of your life a little, you know that mentions of your father are few and rare, and rarely positive. In fact, I don’t remember seeing any positive comments about your father before this. This is a personal matter that I do not intend to address (here or ever), but it made this statement even more surprising and impactful: “I had the advantage of growing up with a father who was a brilliant electrical and mechanical engineer, who effectively taught me in better engineering than most teachers before I even entered college. “

In fact, there have been several times this year when Elon basically indicated that Tesla’s # 1 bottleneck was getting top-notch engineers.

Fortunately, Tesla (and SpaceX) has a history of attracting many of the best engineers. This may be the # 1 ingredient for success.

3. Manufacturing will be Tesla’s strongest card.

While a lot of love and emphasis is placed on Tesla’s consumer-oriented cars and technology, Elon has repeatedly emphasized in 2020 that Tesla’s strongest card, its superior leadership value, will increasingly be in manufacturing.

In August, in response to some questions, he commented: “It is the machine that builds the machine. Tesla’s long-term competitive advantage will be manufacturing. ”He has said similar things publicly over the years, but apparently no more than in 2020. Overall, this unfolds in a big package called gigafactory.

This does not mean that Tesla will sell factories. 😉 It just means that Tesla’s factories are unique productions, where Tesla puts many of its resources and makes many of its innovations.

Clarifying to anyone who may have had the wrong impression, he wrote to me: “I just want to say that we produced the factory as a giant machine that we designed and improved each version, instead of just copying other automakers that have contractors and suppliers that do all the work (ie catalog engineering). “

As usual, a central element of this and because Tesla seems to be so successful on that front, is that they try to use the first principles as much as possible when developing the manufacturing systems and improving them, instead of just following a copy and paste approach. “Use the first principles of physics to design the car and the factory together,” added Elon.

Interestingly, one more big point, and one that I not seeing him doing it routinely, is that a big part of Tesla’s manufacturing innovation is (as with cars) actually on the software side. “The factory system already has more software than the car and is likely to be an order of magnitude in the longer term.”

Tesla Gigafactory employees in Shanghai China

An old Tesla model 3 at the Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai, China, surrounded by Tesla employees. Tesla’s photo.

This summarizes what I found to be the main points of Elon Musk in relation to Tesla in 2020. If you thought that something else was emphasized much more, or had another big lesson or two, speak below in the comments. One of our biggest contributions in CleanTechnica it is to provide a place for thoughtful and reasonable people to have genuine discussions about clean technology (and sometimes other issues).

*Engineering Director

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16-month Tesla Model 3 SR + review

Tag: Elon Musk, Tesla, Tesla Autopilot, Tesla Power, Tesla Engineering, Tesla Factories, Tesla Giga Factories, Tesla Solar


About the author

Zachary Shahan is trying to help society to help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here in CleanTechnica as its director, editor-in-chief and CEO. Zach is recognized worldwide as an expert in electric vehicles, solar energy and energy storage. He lectured on clean technology at conferences in India, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Holland, USA, Canada and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in NIO [NIO]Tesla [TSLA]and Xpeng [XPEV]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any kind.



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