Insane Mode Quotes

“Lucid Motors was started under the name Atieva (which stood for “advanced technologies in electric vehicle applications” and was pronounced “ah-tee-va”) in Mountain View in 2008 (or December 31, 2007, to be precise) by Bernard Tse, who was a vice president at Tesla before it launched the Roadster. Hong Kong–born Tse had studied engineering at the University of Illinois, where he met his wife, Grace. In the early 1980s, the couple had started a computer manufacturing company called Wyse, which at its peak in the early 1990s registered sales of more than $480 million a year. Tse joined Tesla’s board of directors in 2003 at the request of his close friend Martin Eberhard, the company’s original CEO, who sought Tse’s expertise in engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain. Tse would eventually step off the board to lead a division called the Tesla Energy Group. The group planned to make electric power trains for other manufacturers, who needed them for their electric car programs. Tse, who didn’t respond to my requests to be interviewed, left Tesla around the time of Eberhard’s departure and decided to start Atieva, his own electric car company. Atieva’s plan was to start by focusing on the power train, with the aim of eventually producing a car. The company pitched itself to investors as a power train supplier and won deals to power some city buses in China, through which it could further develop and improve its technology. Within a few years, the company had raised about $40 million, much of it from the Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm Venrock, and employed thirty people, mostly power train engineers, in the United States, as well as the same number of factory workers in Asia. By 2014, it was ready to start work on a sedan, which it planned to sell in the United States and China. That year, it raised about $200 million from Chinese investors, according to sources close to the company.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“the Stone Age ended. Not because we ran out of stones”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“One characteristic of disruptive technologies, as the electric car has the potential to be, is that their market penetration tends to start slowly and then accelerate rapidly”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“What happened with salt is not that it was displaced by a superior ionic compound. It was displaced by a superior system. The same thing is happening with oil.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“compact SUV, a pickup truck, a heavy-duty truck, and a small bus”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“It’s difficult to turn a supertanker”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“Starting in 2025, it will make no financial sense to purchase a new gasoline car in any market.. gasoline cars will be the 21st century equivalent of the horse carriages by 2030.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“The 2011 Chinese National Patent Development Strategy highlighted seven industries to focus on in the coming decade: biotechnology, high-end equipment manufacturing, broadband infrastructure, high-end semiconductors, energy conservation, alternative energy, and clean-energy vehicles. In 2017, it added artificial intelligence to the list.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“Better to have failed trying than to have failed to try”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough,”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“It will be but a short time before demand for storage batteries will create one of the most enormous industries in the land,” he said at the time. Musk would make similar claims 113 years later.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“there would be a man who would make sport of creating companies that did what others said was impossible”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“Salt didn’t die as a global and strategic commodity because somebody found another molecule that they could go dig up in the dirt that was better.” The real culprit was refrigeration, which seemingly came out of nowhere. “Who would have thought?”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“In August 2016, Ford announced plans to bring a Level 4 selfdriving car—without pedals or a steering wheel—to market by 2021.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“It was 1908 when Henry Ford unveiled the first Model T, a product that would reorient the infrastructure of civilization, and around which civilization would reorient itself. Just over a century later, Elon Musk unveiled the Model S at a time when civilization is more than ready for a cultural rebirth—one that could be catalyzed by something as innocuous as a beautiful car that drives itself. Autonomy, after all, is a term not limited to the automatic control of a motor vehicle. Its meaning also speaks of self-determination. It is through the power of this autonomy that we can turn a revolution into a renaissance.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“in European history from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, comes from an eighteen-minute YouTube video produced by the author and philosophy guru Alain de Botton’s School of Life. De Botton dedicates a few minutes of the video to educating viewers about the Renaissance leaders’ zeal for building beautiful cities. You can count on one hand the number of cities built since the 1600s that can rival the elegance of cities that sprung up on the Italian Peninsula during the three-hundred-odd years of the Renaissance, de Botton says in the video. Sure, he concedes, the old urban planners didn’t have to worry about cars or zoning laws, but they had a mission and were extremely direct and didactic in carrying it out. “City fathers across the Italian Peninsula had fallen in love with a remarkable new idea: that their cities should be the focus of an unparalleled attention to beauty,”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“Many major automakers have established research centers in Silicon Valley to work on autonomy, including Nissan, Toyota, Mercedes, Ford, and GM. The newcomers—Apple, Lucid Motors, Faraday Future, Byton, and Nio—have made autonomy central to their business models and established software development teams in California. Che He Jia and Singulato Motors are working on the technology in Beijing and Shanghai. In the meantime, other tech companies and start-ups, such as Uber, Lyft, Comma.ai, Nauto, Luminar, Aurora, Caracal, Starsky Robotics, and Zoox, are all chasing variations of the self-driving prize, be it for cars, buses, or trucks.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“In August 2016, Ford announced plans to bring a Level 4 selfdriving car—without pedals or a steering wheel—to market by 2021. Other automakers have been working on similarly aggressive plans. Fiat Chrysler has partnered with Google’s Waymo to develop a fleet of self-driving hybrid minivans. GM, through its partnership with Lyft, has plans to bring Chevy Bolt robotaxis to the road as quickly as possible.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“for Level 1 the car had some advanced driver-assistance technology, such as automatic emergency braking, but the driver still controlled the vehicle at all times. Level 5 was the highest, at which a car would have no controls for human drivers whatsoever. At that point, you could read a book, take a nap, or watch a movie while the car drove itself. Google has tested fully autonomous vehicles to a Level 5 designation, meaning the cars could perform all “safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip,” but they haven’t yet left the test circuit. The development of autonomous vehicles goes hand in hand with the development of electric vehicles, because self-driving cars are best controlled by drive-by-wire systems, in which electrical signals and digital controls, rather than mechanical functions, operate a car’s core systems, such as steering, acceleration, and braking.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“In May 2016, there appeared a website called WhoIsElonMusk .com. Most prominent on the site was an autoplaying video on the home page that featured foreboding music and the dark, smoky-voiced narration of a true-crime TV show. It spent two minutes shifting through B-roll footage and clips pilfered from documentaries about Musk.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“Norway is working on a combination of taxes, subsidies, infrastructure, and other incentives in an effort to end sales of gasoline cars in the country by 2025. In October 2016, Germany’s federal council voted for a nonbinding resolution to end all sales of gasoline cars with internal combustion engines by 2030. In May 2017, India’s power minister announced a plan to have only electric cars—and “not a single petrol or diesel car”—sold in the country from 2030 on. Both the UK and France have said they will end sales of diesel and gasoline cars by 2040. And even China has said it will set a date that will signal the end of all gasoline car sales in the country (although it hasn’t said what that date will be). All these scenarios could have a drastic effect on the uptake of electric vehicles, which would in turn have a dramatic impact on the consumption of oil.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“Could the electric car follow the same path? Count Elon Musk among the believers. ‘‘At the beginning of last year [2015], we had fifty thousand cars in total on the roads worldwide, and then last year we produced another fifty thousand cars,” he said in January 2016. “So the total fleet of Tesla vehicles doubled last year. It will approximately double again this year.” We shouldn’t take Musk’s word for it, of course—Tesla’s 2016 production fell about twenty-five thousand cars short of doubling the previous year’s tally—but consider that many of the effects that spur demand for electric vehicles are only just starting to take hold. The decline of battery prices, which will make electric cars more affordable, is probably the biggest factor influencing demand, but there are others. For a start, many hundreds of millions of people still don’t know a thing about electric vehicles that aren’t golf carts or hybrids like the Toyota Prius.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“both Tesla and GM think battery prices will come down fast enough for electric cars to be more affordable than equivalent gasoline cars by the early 2020s. The Chevy Bolt sells for less than $35,000, after subsidies. Tesla plans to be producing Model 3s at a rate of hundreds of thousands a year by 2019. Other electric car companies, new and old, are developing competitive strategies. It is still difficult to predict how quickly the sales of electric cars will overtake those of gasoline vehicles. Even assuming all goes well for Tesla and their electric competitors, it could take years, or decades. Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s study estimated that electric cars will account for 35 percent of new car sales by 2040. That’s based on battery prices decreasing at a slower rate than Tesla and GM anticipate. But, as noted earlier, gasoline cars will face the difficult task of competing with electric cars that are both cheaper and better.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“a man shouted from the crowd: “How can we help?” Musk didn’t hesitate. “I mean, I know you guys think global warming is real,” he said, close to laughter, “but the crazy thing is, a lot of people out there don’t. It blows my mind.” He wanted his followers to spread the word. “There’s a nonstop propaganda campaign from the fossil fuel industry. They’re just defending themselves. It’s kind of what you would expect”—he shrugged—“but they just, it’s nonstop—and they have, like, a thousand times more money than we do.” The partygoers booed the absent foes. Musk urged them to fight back against the messages that muddied the science of climate change and complicated the advent of a sustainable energy future.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“the years ahead, Tesla would also expand its vehicle fleet, adding a compact SUV, a pickup truck, a heavy-duty truck, and a small bus into the mix. The buses would be autonomous, to be summoned by smartphone app, or via buttons at existing stops. The advent of full self-driving capability, which Musk said would ultimately be safer than human-driven vehicles by an order of magnitude, would also enable a business built around car-sharing. Owners could add their cars to Tesla’s shared fleet to generate income when they weren’t using them. In cities where there weren’t enough customer-owned cars to meet the demand for such shared-use cases, Tesla would operate its own fleet—a move that would put it in direct competition with Lyft and Uber.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“In May 2017, the company replaced Fields as CEO with Jim Hackett, who had been responsible for Ford’s autonomous driving efforts. To realize its forward-looking vision and become a leader in automotive technology, Ford would need the services of the world’s best software developers, which would mean competing not only against other automakers but also against Silicon Valley’s hottest companies. In the new era of automotive, software is king. With that shift comes an opening for software-focused companies like Tesla. “In many cases, large car companies or truck companies are not focused on software, they’re not focused on sensors or batteries,” Straubel said in 2016. “And this gives an opportunity for innovation for new companies and new entrants to play on a bit more of a level playing field than there ever was in the past.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“The tech start-up world from which Musk hails embraces disruption as one of its organizing principles, encouraged in part by the influential blog TechCrunch, which named its flagship conference, TechCrunch Disrupt, for the concept. Silicon Valley’s budding capitalists have long been encouraged to use their software prowess and processes to disrupt existing industries, and hence we have Facebook, which disrupted the news media industry, Airbnb, which disrupted hotels, and crowdfunding, which disrupted traditional investing. When Ted Craver asked Musk to share his thoughts on disruption with an audience of old-school electricity providers, you could see why the chairman might nervously fiddle with his pen. Could Tesla, with its emerging energy-storage business, disrupt the utilities? It might have come as some comfort to those at the conference that Musk is no fan of disruption. Indeed, he and Straubel were probably there to convince utilities to work with Tesla on energy storage projects that could benefit both parties. But the industry’s fear that it might have been on the wrong side of history would not have dissipated completely. The same was true for at least one auto industry leader. The man who, until May 2017, was CEO of the Ford Motor Company is one person who does appear to be a fan of disruption. Mark Fields, a Harvard business grad and Clayton Christensen follower, was fifty-three when he was appointed to succeed outgoing CEO Alan Mulally.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“On battery technology, other automakers have a long way to catch up to Tesla, which has its own battery production facility and a development head start of at least four years. Then, what do other automakers know about delivering software updates to their customers over the air? GM has said it will bring over-the-air updates to its general fleet “before 2020.” But what advantages have the incumbents ceded to Tesla while it has been collecting and learning from fleet data since the Model S hit the roads in 2012? No electric all-wheel-drive car has been put into production by any company other than Tesla. No car company has a charging network that comes close to being as extensive as the one Tesla has been working on since 2o12. In the United States, no automaker has been able to sell directly to consumers or establish its own Apple-like retail stores.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“battery prices will fall to $100 per kilowatt-hour by 2023 just by following the 16 percent per year cost improvement that the world saw between 2010 and 2016. And that’s probably a conservative estimate. GM has predicted that its lithium-ion cell costs will hit $100 per kilowatt-hour by 2021. Keep in mind that these cost reductions require no breakthrough in battery technology, and they don’t take into account improvements likely to arise from increased competition, consolidation, scale, and innovation as automakers and utilities push further into the market. The effect will be dramatic.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil

“The average efficiency of an internal combustion engine in converting fuel into a car’s forward energy ranges from about 14 to 30 percent. For the electric car, it’s about 90 percent. But the real difficulty for anyone arguing the case for gasoline cars is found in the economics. We are fast approaching a time when gasoline cars will no longer be able to compete with electric cars on price. To date, the number one factor holding Tesla back from offering cheaper cars has been the energy cost per unit of its lithium-ion battery packs, which is why it started by selling only high-end vehicles in which the cost of the battery could be absorbed by the premium price point. Tesla has never revealed exactly how much of its cars’ costs can be attributed to the battery pack, but in 2013, chief technology officer JB Straubel told the MIT Technology Review that it accounts for less than a quarter of the cost of each vehicle—which for the eighty-five kilowatt-hour Model S, at that time, would have put the battery pack somewhere in the $18,000 to $25,000 range (assuming Straubel was factoring feature-rich versions of the car into his calculations). That would have put the cost per kilowatt-hour of the battery pack at anywhere between $210 and $300.”
― Hamish McKenzie, Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil