I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony

Feb 9, 2016

Dear Elon Musk

Mr. Musk, it’s really difficult to understand who you are as a person, what you’re doing, and why you’re doing what you’re doing. I used to think this, and I’m pretty sure most of the developed world is thinking this as well.

7 years ago, you saved Tesla and SpaceX from going extinct.

Thankfully, today, both companies have enjoyed significant success and received considerable support from the masses.

However, 7 years on, you’re still not quite understood…

It doesn’t help that in your interviews, your mind moves more quickly than you speak (hence get caught up in seemingly relevant, but overly technical analogies involving nervous systems and osmosis) — this means that 99% of your audience don’t quite get what you’re saying. They get lost, or miss your point entirely.

It doesn’t help that your interviewers get overly excited, interrupting or interjecting your thought process with their own anecdotes to demonstrate how clever they are, while you’re still working on your answer.

It must be frustrating.

So you got Tim Urban of Wait But Why to write about you and the industries you’re involved in, but all he did was tell us that you are the world’s raddest man. No shit, Sherlock.

I tried to read it. I got through the first post, and personally, I could not get through even half of it without feeling what a complete waste of time 70–80% of the material was.

I did not want to know about how quickly you eat a burger (in two bites?), or about how you tried to get a job at Netscape in 1995. I did not read the article to find out about your media appearances (Simpsons — pretty cool; Big Bang Theory — now that’s street cred), or even your journey in X/Paypal (I could Google that).

What I really wanted to know in less than 10 minutes was: 1) What you’re doing, and 2) Why you’re doing it

I couldn’t wait, so I decided to answer the question myself. As Justin Bieber sings in his comeback song of 2015, repeatedly: “What do you mean?”

So what I did last night, after an intense month of hustling my ass off to make ends meet, and trying to figure out my place in the world in a practical yet optimistic way (just as you did in the 90s, as I learned) — I took the time to head over the YouTube to watch a couple of your interviews: A recent one with Stanford, and the other with Vanity Fair (and the Y Combinator dude).

What I found was that your views are consistent; while you do deviate at times with an analogy or side topic (this is the point where most people get distracted and forget the initial/main point), by and large, the key ideas are:

Q1. Why are you doing what you’re doing?

The main challenge that humanity faces right now is:

The Earth does not have enough resources to support the world’s energy needs, at current energy consumption and production rates.

Energy plays an important role in many aspects of our lives. For example, we use electricity for lighting and cooling. We use fuel for transportation, heating, and cooking. Our energy production and use is interconnected with many other aspects of modern life, such as water consumption, use of goods and services, transportation, economic growth, land use, and population growth.

Moreover, the use and production of energy (mostly coming from fossil fuels) contribute to climate change. This leads to increases in temperature, rise in sea levels, and extreme climate events such as hurricanes and drought.

Mr. Musk recognises this, and acknowledges that we have to adapt for the sake of our future generations — or eventually go extinct once the planet can no longer support our population.

And in order to adapt, the only way forward is to figure out how to produce energy from more efficient, more sustainable sources.

From even longer term perspective: The world’s growing population size, with people living longer and lower mortality rates due to better nutrition and healthcare, means that our consumption rates may easily outpace the rate of energy production through traditional means. Simply put, our increasingly fragile Earth may simply be unable to handle the demands of the people who call it home.

Q2. What exactly are you doing, and how does that help humanity?

“I thought about, what are the problems that are most likely to affect the future of the world or the future of humanity? I think it’s extremely important that we have sustainable transport and sustainable energy production. That sort of overall sustainable energy problem is the biggest problem that we have to solve this century, independent of environmental concerns.

In fact, 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.”

A. Tesla

= Sustainable transport

Elon Musk: “Even if you take the same source fuel and produce power at the power plant and use it to charge electric cars, you’re still better off. So if you take, say, natural gas, which is the most prevalent hydrocarbon source fuel, if you burn that in a modern General Electric natural gas turbine, you’ll get about 60 percent efficiency. If you put that same fuel in an internal combustion engine car, you get about 20 percent efficiency… …So in effect, even after you’ve taken transmission loss into account and everything, even using the same source fuel, you’re at least twice as better off charging an electric car, then burning it at the power plant.”

Also, cars are really cool.

B. SolarCity

= Sustainable energy production, harnessing energy from the Sun

The sun is a virtually endless supply of energy that goes mostly untapped. The goal of SolarCity, America’s largest installer of residential solar panels, is to increase the efficiency of the rooftop solar panel to the point where it becomes a viable and sustainable source of energy for the entire world.

Elon Musk: “I’m extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power (more power from solar, than from any other source), and most likely a majority, and I predict it will be a plurality in less than 20 years.”

C. SpaceX

= Multi-Planetary Expansion to Mars (the closest to Earth) = Alternative Home for Humans

Elon Musk: “The goal of SpaceX is to try to advance rocket technology, and in particular to try to crack a problem that I think is vital for humanity to become a space-faring civilization,which is to have a rapidly and fully reusable rocket.”

“(SpaceX) slashed the cost of building a rocket by 75 percent made significant advances in the technology of the airframe, the engines, the electronics and the launch operation.”

“SpaceX, or some combination of companies and governments, needs to make progress in the direction of making life multi-planetary, of establishing a base on another planet, on Mars — being the only realistic option — and then building that base up until we’re a true multi-planet species.”

This leads to…

Q3. How do you decide what to focus on?

This boils down to two things: Market opportunity and the “bird in hand” principle.

Why did Elon Musk focus on the Internet in 1995? How did X / Paypal happen?

While he was working on developing hydrostorage technology for electric vehicles for his PhD at Stanford, Mr. Musk realised that this was not practically useful, it “adds to the tree of knowledge, but it’s not gonna really matter” in the bigger picture, in 1995.

24 year old Elon Musk noticed that the Internet was taking off, although most people were not aware of it. So, this was an opportunity to really do something substantial for the Internet. He could return to electric vehicle technology and energy source technology later, and anyway it would be “really frustrating” not to be part of it.

To be part of the Internet ecosystem wasn’t to “make a bunch of money”, but simply to be part of it: It occurred to Musk at the time that the Internet, anyone who had a connection, anywhere in the world, would have access to all the information.

Also, it was an easier challenge to take on at the time:

“The internet was also useful in the sense that, as with anything to do with software, it is a low capital endeavour.

The goal was really to make enough money to pay the rent — not to do anything beyond that.

I didn’t have any money, I just had a bunch of student debt.”

I feel you, sir. Thank God you hustled hard, made the right decisions, and made it out alive.

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At the end of the day, most decisions you made are based on the fundamental principle of “Usefulness Optimisation” i.e. Is what I’m doing as useful as it could be, given my current resources and opportunities?

At least that’s what it seems to me. Hope I got them right.

Please clarify if I got anything wrong, or if I could explain anything more clearly.

I identified with other points you brought up along the way, specifically your views towards practical design, Silicon Valley’s ecosystem, and your thoughts on the future. But that’s another story.

All the best for your future endeavours, and may the world understand you better in 2016.

Yours sincerely,

Sabrina Ooi

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