Everything Quotes

Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.

I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don't believe in climate change - they think oil will last forever.

I was born in Africa. I came to California because it's really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don't see a viable competitor.

Facebook is quite entrenched and has a network effect. It's hard to break into a network once it's formed.

The problem with car dealerships is you've already decided what you want to buy before you even go there, and you're really just going there to talk through some annoying negotiation.

Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That's pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.

I'm trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

We are the first species capable of self-annihilation.

If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

I've been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I'm getting really tired of Disneyland.

Winning 'Motor Trend' Car of the year is probably the closest thing to winning the Oscar or Emmy of the car industry.

Even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we're going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.

What most people know but don't realize they know is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn't there, we'd be a frozen ice ball at three degrees Kelvin, and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.

SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.

I don't think it's a good idea to plan to sell a company.

I'd like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that's not just e-mail with a view.

There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

In order for us to have a future that's exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we're a space-bearing civilization.

As you heat the planet up, it's just like boiling a pot.

I think long term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the U.S. and in Asia.

I'm glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That's cool.

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

Generally, the view that I've had on Twitter is if you're on Twitter, you're in, like, the meme - you're in meme war land. If you're on Twitter, you're in the arena. And so, essentially, if you attack me, it is therefore OK for me to attack back.

I'm a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.

I think whenever something is - whenever there's something that affects the public good, then there does need to be some form of public oversight.

What I'm trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.

I care very deeply about the people at Tesla. I feel like I have a great debt to the people of Tesla who are making the company successful.

It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.

It is true that SpaceX is partially a government contractor, but it would be unfair to say that SpaceX is entirely a government contractor.

I've actually made a prediction that within 30 years a majority of new cars made in the United States will be electric. And I don't mean hybrid, I mean fully electric.

Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.

It's obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.

I usually describe myself as an engineer; that's basically what I've been doing since I was a kid.

A battery by definition is a collection of cells. So the cell is a little can of chemicals. And the challenge is taking a very high-energy cell, and a large number of them, and combining them safely into a large battery.

I have made the mistaken assumption - and I will attempt to be better at this - of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake.

My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars - this is very important - so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there.

For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it's been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I'd just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.

Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.

I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.

You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.

So we originally expected to make about 35 gigawatt hours at the cell level and about 50 gigawatt hours at the module or pack level. Now we are expecting to do about 150 gigawatt hours in the same volumetric space as the original design.

If you had to buy a new plane every time you flew somewhere, it would be incredibly expensive.

Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.

I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.

The X is an amazing car, but we kind of got carried away with the art and technology. Obviously, you want great art. You want great technology. But we did get a little distracted from our mission, which was to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.

I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.

Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars.