June 1, 2016

Elon Musk Is Promising a Real Revolution This Time

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Elon Musk spends all his time on the Tesla factory floor these days. Based on what he’s learned, he says that “physics first” principles will soon produce a production revolution:

In a freewheeling talk before shareholders Tuesday, Musk said he and his Tesla team will completely rethink the factory process, hoping to bring “factors of 10 or even 100 times” in improvements in efficiency….“The most important point I want to make is … that we’ve realized that the true difficulty and where the greatest potential lies is in building the factory,” Musk said.

Charging the world’s best automotive factories with using outmoded and inefficient systems, Musk said, “We can make dramatic improvements to the machine that makes the machine. A lot of people will not believe us about this, but I am absolutely convinced this can be accomplished.”

Well, he’s right about a lot of people not believing this. Increasing the efficiency of an auto factory by 100x is way, way beyond anything Musk has ever done before. Compared to that, building a nice battery-powered car or landing a rocket at sea is child’s play. I’ll believe this when Musk does more than just talk about it.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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