Okay,
welcome back to the thirty fourth
episode of Tesla to Mars.
Today we have a very special guest.
He's called Cern Basher,
and this is the first of
many episodes to come
because we're going to do a
robot taxi countdown until
the robot taxi starts
rolling out in Austin, Texas.
For today,
we're going to start off with a
video from Elon Musk.
about the transatlantic
trade union and then we'll
dive straight into the
episode and florian will be
the host today of our
session I I hope that um I
hope that the united states
and europe can establish a very close
partnership.
We obviously are there's an
alliance already,
but I'm hopeful that there
can be a very close
relationship with America and Europe.
And I'm hopeful, for example,
with the tariffs that that
at the end of the day,
I hope it is agreed that
both Europe and the United
States should move ideally, in my view,
to a zero tariff situation,
effectively creating a free
trade zone between Europe
and North America.
And that would be my,
that's what I hope occurs.
I hope that... All right.
Florian and Damian,
can you tell us what we saw just now?
Yeah, sure.
In the video,
he also talked that he
suggested that to Trump.
But one of the areas we are
very passionate about in this podcast is,
let's say, the Age of Abundance,
which is Tesla's new mission.
We always had Tesla's
mission to accelerate the
world to sustainable energy,
and now it's working
towards a sustainable abundance for all.
which is, I think,
more in line with the whole
mosque economy that that
has been created.
So not only Tesla,
the boric company and all
the companies within within
within that realm.
And
I think this transatlantic alliance,
sort of new alliance
between the US and Europe.
First of all,
I personally like that idea a lot,
so I'm all in favor.
But I think it's a big
stepping stone towards sort
of the golden era,
age of abundance and
revival of the West that we
are seeing here.
and today with uh with a
guest from from overseas we
thought well let's already
take a step into that
direction and uh and uh
work towards um yeah
working working more
closely with uh with with
people across across the
world yeah so we're
establishing our own
transatlantic bridge over
here so thanks cern for
giving us the possibility to to do so
um for today thank you for
coming on um the last time
we tried wasn't that
successful due to
technological difficulties
from our end not your end
for today I want to give
the floor to florian and
florian will be the
asking the questions because
we've looked at a lot of
your content we've
assembled some questions
which we think are the best
questions we could have
asked in limited time and
it will circle around a
couple topics so the first
topic will be robotaxi
fleet operations and investment strategy
The second topic will be a
little bit more about
Robotaxi unit economics and
the business models.
The third topic,
Tesla's competitive
position and future growth.
And the fourth and final
topic in our eyes is the
most fun topic to discuss.
And that's the Robotaxi revenue strategy,
community governance.
And Damian also already mentioned it,
the age of abundance.
So...
Florian, the floor is yours.
Maybe before we go there and
just touch a little bit
upon the point where we started, sir.
And so we're trying to
create a bridge from the US to Europe.
We have a lot of European
followers and a lot of
engagement with European followers.
Can you more or less paint
us a picture from your
point of view of like
what's happening with the terrorists?
Because here in the
Netherlands and in Europe,
it's fairly much driven by
the mainstream media.
So I think it would be good
to get some input from
somebody directly with a, I would say,
crisp view on the
a lot of things that are
happening in the world.
Sure.
Yeah, I can attempt to do that.
Let me also first add that
we also have a
trans-Pacific partnership
going here today as well.
I'm a New Zealand citizen.
I grew up in Canada.
I've lived in the US now for thirty years,
so I'm a citizen of three countries.
So let's extend this
trans-Atlantic partnership
to the Pacific as well.
Great.
All in.
Yeah.
New Zealand is a nation
that's left out of discussion.
So I'm forcibly including
him here in this discussion today.
You know,
sometimes it's easier actually to
see things clearly from
outside the nation that you're in.
So I'm curious about your
guys' perspective on this
whole tariff situation.
But my perspective is that, you know,
this is something that
Trump has been thinking
about now for forty years.
Right now,
people might question his
ability to think deeply about this stuff,
but make no mistake about it.
He's been talking about
trade imbalances now for forty years.
He was on the Larry King show, you know,
basically four years ago,
Oprah Winfrey as well.
Yeah, right.
So, you know,
this is an issue to the
extent that tariffs and more importantly,
probably non tariff trade
barriers of all different kinds.
And there's a.
four-page list of the
different types of
non-tariff trade barriers
that nations can throw at each other.
And by the way, the U.S.
is guilty of this as well.
It's not like we don't throw
up non-tariff trade
barriers to all kinds of nations.
We have a system of trade in
the world right now that's far from free.
Every country has carved out
all kinds of protections
for different types of groups.
And so this, I suppose,
is Trump's attempt at
trying to address that.
Will his strategy of making
the world deal with this all at once,
will that work out?
Or is this too big of a lift?
And I think that remains to be seen.
I think most of us believe
that Trump is a dealmaker.
He's made deals before.
He's renegotiated the US
free trade agreement with
Canada and Mexico in his first term.
And his eyes made that better.
And so how far is he willing
to go with this, I think,
is the question.
And I don't have the answer on that.
Time will tell.
For me, it's, I think, also...
the terrorists are sort of
one of the levers that Trump is pulling.
I also think that Elon is
very closely involved into
the thinking in this thing.
Otherwise,
you would not have Elon talk about
this on this italian event
and elon was already like
meeting world leaders over
the last four years right
so he he he was a little
bit um uh pre pre-rolling
himself into this
disposition already and in
in our podcast we we we
also followed initiatives
around those very closely
And, um,
we talked about those being a sort
of flywheel of, of five pillars.
We'll touch to the flywheel
later on because we have it
structured in the, in the comments.
Um, and it's, it's a very good topic,
so it's not to steal it, but, uh,
I would love to give the
stage to Florian to start
diving into the topics and
then those will be amongst
one of the talking points.
Okay.
Cool.
Well, thank you, Kees.
I think we're still in the
introduction round.
We would have loved to
introduce you and invite
you to our office where we normally sit,
but due to technical reasons,
we are not able to do that.
But I thought that was kind
of a good way to actually
build the bridge already
that we're trying to create.
Um, I was actually born in Venezuela,
so I'm South American by heart, uh,
and by, by head and by my parents, I'm,
uh, I'm Dutch.
So, uh,
I also would like to call me more
of a global citizen than, uh,
than a European.
Um, and, uh,
I think you guys touched upon
something that, uh,
Elon is talking about.
Trump is talking about
terrorists or for four years, I think.
It all started also with Reagan.
He also started this
conversation to get in that
time in the eighties to get
from this progressive
sixties and seventies to the eighties.
And I think we are in the
kind of similar kind of
culture shift where we go
from being woke to more right.
So I think there are a lot
of similar things happening
in this world.
Well,
I just want to also explain a little
bit about our background
between CERN and iSELF.
We approach each other on X,
and it also shows the power of X.
I think you sent out a
valuation of Tesla in a
beautiful report and I reacted to that.
Thank you for this.
And I used it for an
inspiration in my
management team to explain
what the valuation could be.
And you talked about a Tesla
being worth a seventy two K
if Robotaxi arrives.
So we started this
discussion about
depreciation and our current model,
et cetera.
and um now we are here two
years later and we're
having big discussions with
our funders about residual
values and in sixty days
there's another paradigm
starting where uh tesla
starting with their um with
their robot taxi and
residual values could could
be turned around completely so um
um we also discussed in that
time that I went on a
podcast with herbert and
you watched that podcast
and you said uh what an
amazing story I would like
to learn more about it and
by the way I love that
you're building a robot
taxi fleet and by the way I
already bought
so I I replied yeah I also
buy fifty or cyber trucks
in private so we are doing
the same thing that shows
the power of x you know
it's like there are totally
different people around the
world doing exactly the
same thing and they're
thinking the same so um it
was a pleasure to meet you
cern in that time and um I
think the last two years
we've been back and forth a
lot trying to understand
what this is actually doing
and that this is actually
building a robot taxi fleet
And we also discussed of
maybe becoming partners in the U.S.
So we could bring our
knowledge of Mr. Green to the U.S.
and start together a Robotaxi fleet.
So I think the core
questions that we want to
address here is around the
Robotaxi business model.
um and uh this is going to
be our first episode in uh
what we will call our
countdown to robo taxi uh
episode so we will we will
do like ten episodes until
june uh all talk about robo
taxi so we will be happy to
have you more and not only today but um
We'd love to invite you for
more episodes about this.
If we don't manage to get
all the questions answered today,
we will have some other editions.
You're actually the first
one that actually has already a fleet,
and now we're waiting for
the moment that it can wake
up and become a robot taxi fleet, right?
So how is it right now for
you to have sort of five
thousand Teslas under your belt,
but still waiting for that capability?
I can imagine that sometimes
you wake up in the middle
of the night and think,
when is it going to happen?
Yeah, well, uh,
we already building this
fleet for ten years as of
two thousand thirteen.
So, um, I think patience is the core,
core habit here or the core value.
And, uh, I mean,
patience will eventually pay out big time,
um, when this future will happen.
And I think we only need like.
What is it?
Forty five, sixty days,
because we will see this
future actually going to happen.
So I'm happy.
It's five.
Is it one hundred percent of
your fleet that is capable of FSD?
Yeah, well, according to my theory,
I think it's capable.
According to Kay's theory, it's not.
We're still having this
discussion about whether
V-III is also capable of
becoming a robot taxi, yes or no.
What's your picture on that, Cern?
Do you think V-III is
capable of becoming a robot taxi?
Yeah, Hardware III versus Hardware IV.
Yeah.
yeah I think it's uh highly
likely that something will
need to be done there with
the hardware but you know
what the economics of
robotaxi make it a slam
dunk opportunity you would
spend several thousand
dollars upgrading the
hardware perhaps even the
cameras if you need to
because the the revenue
upside is enormous so
whether it's capable on day one
or not remains to be seen
but it will be capable in
fairly short order I think
that would be pretty
important for tesla to take
care of and then florian
just to comment on on what
you've built I I see you
right now as having
essentially you know five
thousand caterpillars
waiting for the day they
turn into butterflies and
I'm not sure if the logo on
the mr green on your shirt
there is a butterfly but it
looks like a lot from here
like a butterfly taking flight
Let's rebrand it that way.
And CERN,
if you would assign a probability
to the fleet of Florian
becoming a robot taxi fleet at this point,
what would be your probability?
Oh,
I think Tesla has signaled a very clear
intention about having
non-Tesla owned vehicles in the fleet.
They've certainly talked
about individuals being
able to put their vehicle in the fleet.
And to me,
then it makes extreme sense to
have a enterprise doing the same thing.
The nice thing about Mr. Green,
for example,
let's say they're rolling out
a robo taxi network service
across Europe.
So you would sort of start
maybe city by city or a few
cities at once.
When you start,
you want to make sure that
you've got enough vehicles
in that market so that you
can offer a proper service.
And I think fleet operators like Mr. Green,
I think,
would be a great partner for
Tesla in helping them roll
it out across the continent.
Same thing here in the US.
And so that's really attractive, I think,
for Tesla, because that's, you know,
five thousand vehicles they
don't have to make.
At least initially, obviously, over time,
they're going to make
millions of vehicles,
but the larger the fleet
and the quicker you get to that size,
the better off it's going
to be for everybody.
Yeah,
it looks like that Tesla abandoned
that idea a little bit of
operating them themselves
and more sort of open
sourcing that whole fleet
management idea to entrepreneurs.
Yeah, and for me,
that's a pretty obvious
decision because the
Robotaxi model is so profitable.
If Tesla doesn't share it,
they actually open
themselves up to all kinds
of political attack.
Right.
So in the U S you know,
Trump is not going to
remain in power forever.
It's quite likely at some point, the,
you know, the Democrats have,
have a president.
Right.
And so you want to make sure
that you've got enough
constituents benefiting
from this new powerful business model.
It's very clear to me when I
run the numbers, the Tesla only models,
the most profitable by far,
because they don't have to
share the revenue with anybody.
But from a, just a, you know,
political monopolistic standpoint,
Sharing that wealth around I
think is going to be very important.
And of course,
with humanoid robots coming down the pipe,
that's even more important
than that scenario.
yeah I think if you look
look at the war chest now
of Tesla as well they have
like thirty billion plus on
the on the balance sheet
right so they have some
capital to deploy there and
I think it's it's better
there's been a lot of
discussion around it uh of
how to use that capital
maybe buy some stock Etc
but I think most sense
makes to put it where it
makes the most money which
is with robot taxi
essentially are you looking
at it from the same point of view sir
Yeah,
the capital expense of Robotaxi isn't
so terrible because the
vehicles are going to pay
for themselves in about six months.
So that's not too big of a deal.
When I look at my models,
Tesla is going to have an
abundance of cash flow
pretty quickly after
Robotaxi is rolled out.
I'm not in the camp that
says that Tesla should
start buying back stock today.
I mean,
certainly it would be nice for the
stock price,
but I think Tesla needs to
make sure that they've got
the financial resources
necessary to invest in
particularly compute.
I think they're going to be
spending a lot of money on
that for the foreseeable future.
We have an interesting
question about that as well,
the compute later on.
And it also makes sense to
open up this as a sort of
business opportunity for
people that are excited about this thing.
If you look at the last two decades,
the companies that have
been winning Alibaba,
let's say fun companies, Apple,
Google, Amazon,
and they all sort of open
up a sort of ecosystem for
entrepreneurs where they
can work with AWS,
but also the Amazon store,
Google with SEO,
Alibaba with buying and selling goods.
I've been an Amazon seller
for a couple of years,
and I always thought about
Jeff Bezos waking up every morning like,
wow,
how amazing is it that one million
entrepreneurs wake up every
day working as hard as they
possibly can to actually
grow your own business?
So in Tesla's case,
that's a really good point.
In Tesla's case,
the Robotaxi network is a
platform for other services.
everybody's focused on you
know ride hailing and
that's the first use case
but it extends way beyond
that to you know package
delivery and all kinds of
other services that can be
delivered on a robo taxi
network um this idea of
having like a mobile office
for example tesla again is
like you said they're going
to want to partner partner
with entrepreneurs that
have different ideas about
how to you know put robo
taxis in the world and
offer additional services
And we're still in the early
innings of that.
Like there's so many stuff
that's still to be thought of.
Like you,
you can think of some services right now,
but I think once it gets up
and rolling up and running, then the,
the creativity will flow.
You could have a bar on wheels.
Yeah.
Right.
You don't need to go to a
bar anymore vehicle and
drink if you want to.
And it could be a, you know,
unique experience wine
tasting experience or
something right that's the
same that robert scobel
said to us as service that
I'm personally hoping for
is that uh I can rent out
my dog so my parents can
just the dogs just walks in
the cyber cap you know has
a big can of food there
where he walks in and he
gets delivered to my
parents that they can walk
him out yeah many crazy
things will occur and
And a lot of people talk
about sort of dojo as sort
of AWS of Tesla.
But this cyber cap and this
whole robot taxi thing will
open up so many
opportunities for
entrepreneurs all over the world.
And I think that's to become a dead scale.
It's only possible when you
have thousands or millions
of entrepreneurs waking up every day
and using your your products
and services to help their
customers and grow together
that's right and I think
the cyber cab is the the
vehicle that solves the
transportation issue in
terms of moving humans
around but the robo van is
the one that truly opens up
business opportunities on
this on this platform right
you could have you know
wedding parties use the
robo van you could have
kids use that instead of a
school bus you could have
pop-up stores pop-up
restaurants pop-up bars
Food trucks, all that stuff.
Yeah, with a larger vehicle.
Are you more excited about
that van or the cab?
Or is it a sort of equal big
opportunity in your eyes?
Yeah,
I'm excited about the entire platform
and what that provides.
I actually think that one
day the transport of humans
could actually be almost free.
That Tesla and its partners
will make their money on
these other services.
But initially, obviously,
the ride share part is significant.
The revenue stream from that will be huge.
But I think like a lot of things,
like when Amazon opened up,
you couldn't have imagined
what Amazon could become.
And I think it's the same
thing with this platform.
We can see now some ideas.
We're talking about some
ideas that what it could offer,
but there's probably a
thousand things that we're
not thinking of.
Yeah.
I also remember that story
with Jeff Bezos with,
when he bought a warehouse
that was way too big for
the capabilities or the
things that Amazon had at the,
at a certain point,
they just had one hundred,
one percent of one hundred
of the space being used for
Amazon there themselves.
So they, so they approached Toys R Us to,
to, to get in.
And from there on that, that whole yeah,
fly view of third party
sellers came across.
But that was also not like a
very well thought out business move.
It was just happened to become that way.
And for me,
we talked a lot about sort of
technology adoption.
So with software, for example,
with WhatsApp,
the adoption was like two
years before getting to one
billion users.
But this business has a sort
of big physical aspect in
it since it still has to be manufactured.
Do you think
Do you think to get to sort
of enormous skills,
Tesla will expand on their
own capabilities to manufacture?
But do you think there will
be cybercaps from different
brands at a certain point?
Yeah,
I think if you would have asked me a
year ago,
I think I would have said I'm
hopeful that other
manufacturers will partner
with Tesla in some way and
provide different vehicles
and be a part of this.
If you ask me the same question today,
I'm less hopeful on that.
which I suppose, financially speaking,
may be better for Tesla,
but I think it spells the
likely death of many automakers,
unfortunately.
Now, maybe it's not too late,
but it's going to take a while, I think,
for other automakers to
engineer FSD into their vehicles.
It's not just, you know,
you don't slap on the
cameras and put the hardware in the car.
For most of them,
it will be too late already.
Yeah,
and this is something we also talk
about a lot is we have this
thesis that Tesla is
currently eating one
hundred percent of the
profits of the EV market
because nobody is making
EVs at a profit yet.
Right.
Let alone being on the verge
of launching cybercaps.
And I think this is
something very much
appreciated in the market
that actually nobody is
making money on EVs.
The capabilities of EVs are
much better than ICE
vehicles already at this point.
And everybody's selling at a loss.
So Tesla is competing
against companies that are
loss making at this moment.
So how long is that bubble still?
The analogy for me is that
you've got farmers tilling
the field by hand.
And you've got a company that's invented,
you know,
horses that till the field and
it's better.
But the game is not even that.
Now you've got a company making tractors.
So the original farmers are
trying to catch up to the
guys with horses.
But their game is actually
in tractors and no one's
really recognizing that yet.
It's a good way to paint the
picture indeed.
Tesla's so far ahead, right?
If they can pop out a cyber
cab every five seconds out
of their factory, I mean,
the other automakers are
just dead in the water.
There's lightning fast, by the way.
And millions of tractors
entering the road very soon.
Yeah.
Let's see.
Before we hijack the whole
meeting with all kinds of sidesteps,
and there are millions with Tesla,
Florian.
Yeah, thank you, Kenny.
I was hoping to ask you some
questions as well, Cern,
about actually what we've
been talking about in the
last ten minutes.
But I think the core of the
questions are like,
if you are an entrepreneur,
if you are seeing this happening,
what are the possibilities
for you as an entrepreneur?
So what I would like to ask you is,
what's the difference in roy
between buying a used tesla
versus um versus a cybercap
for example so if you're an
entrepreneur right now you
will you are um you're
seeing what elon is doing
you're you have the
ambition to become a
shepherd what would you
advise him would you advise
him to buy a secondhand
tesla or would you say no
please wait and um and buy a cybercap
Yeah, that's a good question.
I have theorized that the
value of a secondhand Tesla
goes up dramatically once
the Robotaxi network is in
operation because you're
turning a depreciating
machine now into a money-making machine.
You've fundamentally changed
what that vehicle is.
So there is an opportunity, I think,
to purchase Tesla vehicles
secondhand that are FSD capable
um with purchased fsd again
tesla has said that they'll
make whole those those
those folks right if you've
got purchased fsd in your
car um that they'll you
know they'll make it
robotaxi ready now whether
it's ai five chip remains
to be seen maybe it might
be something else but
either way it'll be able to
be a money-making machine
so that seems like a pretty
reasonable way to go
And the nice thing about the
existing Tesla vehicles is
you can carry more than two passengers.
Now,
maybe there are some other issues that
we haven't thought of yet in terms of,
you know,
what happens if somebody leaves
the door open and stuff like that, right?
Whereas the cyber cab,
that happens automatically.
If Tesla does make good on
their promise to sell cyber
cabs to people, sure,
they can make the car for, what,
twenty thousand dollars,
twenty five thousand?
What are they going to sell it to you for?
I don't think they're going
to sell it to you for
twenty five thousand dollars.
Why would you sell a money
making machine so cheaply?
So I think the lower risk
opportunity probably is to
pick up some used Teslas
that are robo taxi ready.
Because it's unclear to me
what the cyber cab will
actually be sold for.
I believe there are some
orders already placed for
cybercaps by the bigger fleet owners,
which is not made out in the open yet,
but I think they're already
opening up for orders.
If that would be the case,
it would also go to Mr. Green, right?
Cern, would you think that the use case of,
let's say,
the existing fleet and the
cybercap is different?
So even talked about the
Airbnb model for sort of
mix between Airbnb and Uber.
It seems that the cyber cap
is sort of the more on the
Uber side and the ride
hailing seems to be a
little bit more on the Airbnb side.
Do you,
do you think there's a difference there?
Yes, there is.
I mean,
I think that ultimately I think
we'll have very specific
vehicles for very specific use cases.
Right.
So for example,
just to expand the
conversation to the cyber truck,
every now and then it's
really handy to have a
truck to haul stuff around.
Yeah.
Right.
My mom just recently got a
new big screen TV.
Couldn't fit that in my car.
It wouldn't fit in the Model Y,
but it fit beautifully in
the cyber truck.
So there's all kinds of use
cases where you want
different form factors for vehicles.
In terms of moving people around,
the cyber cab's perfect for, let's say,
ninety percent of the needs
that people have.
But you do need other
vehicles in the fleet to
provide that optionality
for larger group sizes or
to carry certain things.
And so that's going to be important.
I also think that, by the way,
that the amount of revenue
you get for carrying three
or four people should be
more than what you would
get if you carry just two people.
Definitely.
There comes the Model Y. Yeah.
so if I understand you
correctly a certain um if
an entrepreneur wants to
start becoming a shepherd
it doesn't really matter if
he starts with a used tesla
um because the residual
value of that car will
eventually increase to a
certain amount which is
good enough for him to take
that risk um but there he
could also wait and see
what this is going to offer
with the cyber cap but if I
listen to you correctly you
don't think that tesla will
They have been telling that
they would like to offer
them for like thirty K. So
are you saying that you
don't think that they're
going to offer it for thirty K?
Well, just think about this, though,
if you offer a vehicle for
thirty K and that vehicle can make.
That's to say,
ninety thousand dollars a year.
You've undersold the vehicle now,
of course,
Tesla can make some of this up
by taking some of the
revenue from Robotaxi,
which they will do.
So there's two things at play, right?
There's the value of the car
and what the car is worth, right,
as a money-making machine.
And then, of course,
there's Tesla's take rate
on the revenue from the operation of it.
So in theory,
I guess they could sell the car cheaply,
but then they're going to
have a much higher take
rate on the Robotaxi revenue, right?
And it's the same issue with
the cost of the FSD.
know on one hand you could
say fsd should be worth a
lot because of what it can
do it turns something into
a money making machine on
the other hand you could
argue that well they should
sell fsd really cheaply for
individual use but when you
put your vehicle in the
robo taxi network they
should get a higher
percentage of the revenue
because you're using fsd
that they've developed
which is very valuable and
you're making money off of that
So I guess they've got
different levers to pull, Florian,
in terms of how they do it.
So I suppose they could sell
the cyber cab cheaply if they wanted to.
Yeah, indeed.
So that's also my follow up
question is like,
does it really matter if
you buy a used car or a new
car if you are going to
build like a fleet of cars
which you will put on the
robo taxi fleet on the on
the robo taxi network?
Yeah, I think if you are building a fleet,
you probably want to sort of
have a term structure, I guess,
of vehicles, right?
You want some older ones,
you want some newer ones,
and you kind of want to turn them over,
right?
And so you've kind of got
this fleet that's, you know,
not all one year, right?
Let's say you want vehicles
that maybe have been
produced over the last, you know,
five or six years, right?
And then the ones that are
older wear out and you
replace those with a newer
batch of vehicles.
But I do think that there
may be a nice opportunity
with used Teslas that have purchased FSD.
Because right now,
when you buy those in the used car market,
there is not much of a premium,
if anything,
for having FSD that's part of
the vehicle.
The market doesn't
appreciate this or price this in.
And you see that from an
analyst point of view as well.
Nobody really prices in the
robot actually revenues from it.
But are you saying that if
you have a used Tesla, you bought FSD,
that the money you paid for
FSD is not something
current sellers getting back?
Correct.
Okay.
That's already an interesting one.
Yeah.
And particularly if Tesla
makes good on their promise
to upgrade those vehicles
to whatever hardware is
necessary to make them robotaxi ready.
And I think they will do
that because if you look at
the revenue upside,
just a simple hardware adjustment,
even though it might prove
difficult because of the
form factor issues and stuff like that,
it will make sense.
It will justify the investment.
Oh, I think so.
And even if Tesla didn't,
I think the individual
owner would justify their
investment of a couple of
three thousand dollars themselves.
Yeah.
Cern,
like an underlying question that I
have comes from the following.
So Damien and I have been
buying Amazon businesses as
well over the last couple of years.
And I still vividly remember
a couple of guys coming on
the call and I said, well, you did great.
You build a company with
like twenty million of revenue and three,
four million of EBITDA.
It's awesome what you've built.
They were like, yeah, well,
we put a half a million
bucks in this company.
We could better have bought
some Amazon stock,
didn't have to do anything,
and our returns would have been better.
And I think we're dealing here with,
let's say, the same type of arbitrage.
So we have a bit of an idea
of where Tesla is going and
also what underlying
business opportunities are.
How do you look at that
information arbitrage?
If we would do, let's say,
more efforts for a robot taxi fleet,
there should also be a higher return.
How do you look at that in
comparison to the Tesla stock currently?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I think there's a lot of
depth to that to really dig into.
But just at a surface level,
if you are looking for income, right,
then building a business
and generating income
stream makes a lot of sense.
If you're looking for maximum growth,
then being a passive
investor in a company like Tesla,
which doesn't pay dividends at this point,
is the easier way to go.
And frankly,
also probably less risky and
more diversified as well,
even though it's a single company.
Now, ideally, you do both, right?
Yes, both are good ideas.
You can make money on both ideas.
I think also once the market
starts recognizing this as
a valid business,
as a business opportunity,
then you enter a whole new
world where capital is
slowly becoming available.
And this opportunity is now
being opened for more and
more entrepreneurs entering
a certain market.
Because, you know,
who else like money making machines?
Well, obviously banks, right?
Or let's say new economy things,
new economy initiatives
that are decentralized
finance like or initiatives
that are in the crypto space.
So I think once the
opportunity is there and
recognized and our
assumptions on that
opportunity is that it's
going to be a very big opportunity.
Not only a lot of money will
flow to the capital markets,
but also a ton of money
will flow to the markets to
utilize this opportunity
for the people that want to jump on it.
The other thing too, guys,
is that RoboTaxi, in my mind,
is a Trojan horse for humanoid robots.
Yeah.
If you have a business around RoboTaxi,
you're now giving yourself
optionality to be a player
in the humanoid bot opportunity,
which is an order of magnitude bigger.
So it's a testing ground essentially for,
uh, for the, for the optimist, uh,
future.
Yeah.
Crazy to realize, you know,
there are days that are not
waking up to this, but end of the year,
there will be four or five
thousand working in Tesla factories, uh,
already.
So, you know,
being caught by the tractor is already,
uh, it's already a big one, but, uh, uh,
the, the,
the Lamborghini tractor is
already on his way.
Right.
Yeah,
that's why we have to extend the
analogy to the next, the next thing,
right?
Yeah.
Maybe, uh,
maybe because I liked it remark a lot, uh,
about the Trojan horse that
you just made about building this, uh,
this setting up this shepherd business,
that it's actually a Trojan
horse who set up this humanoid.
Can you elaborate a little
bit how these two businesses can, uh,
can affect each other and, uh,
and leverage each other?
Sure.
Yeah.
Florian,
I've heard you talk about the
cyber cab and other Tesla
vehicles are robots on wheels.
And robots with wheels that
can move stuff are great,
but they're limited in what they can do.
They can move stuff around
and that's hugely important
in our society.
Moving stuff is a big business globally,
right?
People, goods, et cetera, huge business.
Look at Amazon,
look at the shipping companies,
huge business.
But even bigger than that is
everything else that we do.
And so with humanoid robots,
we have an AI-powered
machine that for the first
time in human history will
be able to out-compete us
at some point with respect
to the work that we are
able to do as humans.
The humanoid robot can work
seven thousand hours a year.
I don't know about you guys,
but I can't come close to that.
right want to nope and
especially not doing manual
labor in the same time like
exactly stop dexterity
creating but also
assembling right and
they're only going to get
better over time whereas
humans get to a point and
then you kind of plateau
and then level off so
anyway the examples go on
but the humanoid robot will
be able to do eventually
anything that a human can do
from a labor perspective and
maybe even more,
but just from a labor perspective,
the human race has never
had a machine that can
outcompete us in that way.
We've had specialized
machines that can do
certain things better,
but we've never had a
general purpose machine
that can do anything that a human can do.
And without a human coming
to operate that machine.
That's right.
And so having a Robotaxi fleet,
having robots on wheels is
going to be important in
moving these humanoid robots around.
So if you are a fleet
operator for the robots on wheels,
that will serve you well in
terms of positioning the
other robots where they
need to be to provide other
services on top of that
Robotaxi network of just
moving stuff from point A
to point B. So for example,
package delivery,
how do you get the package
from the vehicle to your doorstep?
Exactly.
So you use, use,
it's a very hard problem that, that,
that many companies are
working very hard on like,
like Uber and Amazon on
sort of the last mile delivery.
That's sort of the Holy grail and, uh,
where, where everybody's looking for,
but the humanoid would easily, uh,
solve that, that issue.
Well, it's the last, the last, the last,
the last, the last, the last, the last,
the last, the last,
And maybe the robot will
just throw it on the
doorstep and that'll be great.
It'll look like Michael
Jordan when it throws your package.
With a catapult.
Go ahead.
No, go ahead.
It's fine.
I'm actually kind of
intrigued by your Trojan
horse kind of analogy because
uh of course you're right
that um when you have a
logistic company with robo
caps you're able to deliver
those humanoids to the
place where you want to go
but um case and I have been
working on something the
last few months which is
also um getting more and
more uh out in the open is that um
that the physical AI is
built upon data from real world data.
So the cars which are
driving around already are
already accumulating a lot
of data in order to build
the foundation model to
create a self-driving car.
But that self-driving car,
the brains of that car can
be copy pasted to the
brains of the humanoid.
With with the only exception
is that the cars are not
allowed to drive there
where humans are actually walking but
Maybe, Kees,
you can explain a little bit
about what we're doing with
the data and how we see it
as a business model also for Shepard's.
Because there are a lot of
people already working on this.
It's like,
how can we accumulate this real
world data in order to
deploy the humanoids?
And as of
At this moment,
we only know that Tesla is
accumulating the data for themselves,
but maybe we can,
and also Tesla can use that
data to bring it to third
party operators working in
this new world.
So maybe Kees,
you can explain a little bit
about what I'm trying to say.
Yeah,
so we've been tapping into the fleet
API for quite some time now.
And of course,
you're gathering immense
amounts of video data from
multiple camera angles.
You could be able to store
that data and sell it to
third parties that might
map out whole cities.
or charging data or voice control data.
There's a lot of valuable
information that we can map
out the world.
And I think right now it's
very difficult to pinpoint
a specific value to that.
And I'm not sure if anybody
really takes this into
account into their Tesla valuations.
um so very curious how you
look towards that and
because like we are
interested in um you laid
out that three-step model
like tesla can operate
themselves you have a fleet
operator and you have
individual owners our
vision is more we are the
fleet operator running our
own fleet but also in the
meanwhile enabling private
owners and small fleet operators
where we gather or
accumulate all that data
and we will be able to utilize that data.
Just a quick comment on that, by the way.
As an individual vehicle owner,
let's say I contribute my
vehicle to the fleet for
four hours today.
Do I get paid based on the
activity of my individual vehicle?
That's an open question because
My individual vehicle might
not be optimized to produce
the most revenue.
Tesla,
as the fleet operator or as the
network operator,
might want to actually
position my vehicle in a
certain place in case
someone needs a ride.
So my vehicle actually may
not see a lot of action.
So should I not get paid
just because it's sitting
there when other people's
vehicles may have had more rides?
So there's the structure of
the network and how that's going to work,
I think, that remains to be seen.
um I'm sorry I I went on
such a tangent I've
forgotten your question yeah so
um maybe I can hop in and uh
we can talk about it
further is that um what we
what we are uh we're
working with some companies
what their names again
their case um well there's
multiple companies so you
like uh you have a lot of
fleet api companies out
there uh of course one of
those is standard fleet the
first third party uh
a partner of Tesla and that,
but you can extend it
further because Resla, for instance,
and we might too, we're using a fleet.
So they're doing the back
end day to day operations, combining,
enabling people to run their business.
But more the consumer
oriented stuff is companies
like Ziva Global or
matter ai that sell usb
drives to store that video
data instead of just the
flash drive that's in the
tesla vehicle and there's
tons of companies out there
so yeah and and also natix
for example um they're all
uh trying to get a position
In the car.
So what they do is they they
put the USB on the on the
car and they collect the
data and that data you can sell again.
So we've been talking about them.
What what's the value of the
data and to whom are you
going to sell that data?
So at this moment, they only sell it to,
for example, insurance companies.
Yeah.
And they say that they are
ready to see whether an
accident happened and how
it happened and who was
actually involved in the accident.
Just as we are seeing right
now with the crazy Nazi
people spraying and scratching the cars.
There's actually valuable
data because you know who it is, you know,
and you can actually go after it.
So that's the same with an
accident and with insurance.
So they told us that that
data is worth around fifty
to one hundred euros per month per car.
Wow.
So that's and that's just one use case.
Yeah.
So I think they were talking
about the data being a
value of about between two
and four dollars per mile.
so um I don't know how many
miles this already
collected but I think it's
in in the billions with a
value of two dollars per
mile how is this actually
put on the balance sheet of
tesla is is it already on
the balance sheet of tesla
for example and um and how
is this going to play out
for third-party players and
how is this thinking about
this kind of business models
Yeah.
So actually, again,
there's a lot of depth to this.
So think about the different
potential customers, right?
You've got municipalities, governments,
local governments,
cities that could benefit
from a lot of the data
coming from the vehicles,
whether it's real-time
pothole detection and alert, right?
There's a pothole here.
Go fix it.
Or even just issues with the
infrastructure,
like the traffic light's not working,
or the signpost,
someone hit it and it's
fallen on the road,
or a tree has fallen over.
All that kind of stuff would
be tremendously valuable to
municipalities.
I would imagine in that case,
Tesla might just provide
that for free and say, hey,
we're being a good company here.
We're helping you out.
Good Samaritan.
We're helping make the
roadways safer for everybody.
That kind of stuff.
That would be great.
And then at the other extreme,
who is going to pay a ton
of money for this information?
Well, that's Wall Street.
So if you're a hedge fund
and you want to keep track
of certain things,
like how many cars are in a
parking lot in front of a certain store,
or how many Amazon trucks
do you see on the road,
whatever data they want to track,
this would be one way to
facilitate that in a
certain area if they cared about that.
Now they're already using
satellite imagery.
There's companies that
provide that every single
day to Wall Street in terms
of where ships are and how
many cars in a parking lot
and stuff like that.
So those are the two extremes, I think,
in terms of maybe getting
data for free and then
being willing to pay a ton
of money for it.
And then there's a bunch of
companies kind of in the
middle that probably would
pay for portions of the
data that's relevant to them.
And certainly insurance companies, uh,
would be a big customer.
Um, so yeah, I think that's,
that's an interesting one.
The other one is advertising.
You can advertise on the
outside of the vehicle.
You could advertise on the
inside of the vehicle.
And then it kind of related
to it is you can create,
because the vehicle is, you know,
GROK powered,
the vehicle could be your guide.
And you could have this guided experience.
So if I travel to Amsterdam,
I could get in a cyber cab
and it could take me around
the city and tell me
everything about what I'm seeing.
Yeah.
Right.
And then I could say, you know,
take me to the best
restaurant in this area
that serves this kind of
food and it would take me there.
And by the way, the restaurants would pay.
Yeah,
I liked I liked the direction where
it's going from.
I think if you look at what Elon is doing,
Elon never works in the day-to-day,
right?
So he's always ten years
ahead and works on where he wants to go.
Um, yeah, I, I really liked what you,
what you posted about, uh, the,
the functions that each of
Elan company had put
together in one slide and
the X and XAI from my point of view,
one of the first
consolidations that we're
going to see within the, the, the,
the Elan empire.
And, uh,
with X they're working on the everything.
store everything app right
so all the goods and
services that you use in
your daily life can be
powered by uh by x xai is
exploring is trying to
understand the secrets of the universe so
Therefore,
it really needs the real world
data that Optimus and the
cybercaps are providing.
And right now we have a fleet of globally,
let's say, of ten million.
But ten years from now,
there will be a fleet of
probably one hundred fifty
to two hundred fifty million cars.
I'm very excited about Kees
and Florian already working
on the API store because I
think that API and the app
store are sort of early
innings where Tesla is developing because
especially when the fleet is that large,
to two hundred million,
two hundred fifty million ish.
That also has never happened in the world.
The same counts for Optimus.
Like,
is it already crowded in the restaurant?
So that information is going
to become so real time.
Um, and, and especially if you see like,
okay,
I want to drive around in only that
feature would be already fun.
Like drive around the Sydney, bam.
And, and some, uh, FSD, uh, car will,
will accept that offer.
You pay like one,
one dollar and then off you go.
So you can think about
millions of things there.
Um, said that is from my point of view,
something inevitable.
And we cannot,
Ilan also talked about using
the cars as the total
compute of all the cars together.
It's also something valuable
that is going to happen
because in the end,
even if you drive ten hours a day,
there's still fourteen
hours of compute left and
you have that battery
already in place that can power that.
But those are things.
that we cannot envision how
it's going to look like,
but it's going to be
inevitable that this stuff
is all going to happen.
Think about how useful it
would be for police forces.
They're looking for a certain vehicle.
Now with the whole Robotaxi fleet,
you can basically look at
every license plate of
every car on the road
instantly and tell the
police exactly where that vehicle is.
So there's all kinds of
applications for that data.
And, of course,
it's the perfect thing for
AI to parse through and
find out what's relevant
with all the data that's coming in.
It's something that Kees and
I looked at when we visited the GIGA
factory in Berlin, the opening,
we got the opportunity to
walk around and see everything,
all the lineup.
And at the end,
we saw this chip and with eight cameras.
And I said to Kees,
I think this is the most
important part of the whole factory.
So we touched upon the
cameras actually getting
all the data in there,
but we also have a compute in the car.
So I think you touched upon this as well,
Cern, about the inference compute,
which is available in the car.
Can you elaborate and maybe
talk a little bit about
what you think the value is
going to be of that compute in the car?
yeah I built a model for
this florian uh probably a
year and a half ago now and
it was really just a stab
in the dark and it still is
but there's no doubt that
if you have a powerful
computer in the vehicle
that that is very useful for ai inference
You shared some slides with me,
and I would love to show it.
In which document is that?
I don't think I sent that to you.
I'm happy to send it to you,
but it's kind of an old
model at this point.
I actually worked with James
Delma a little bit on that,
and he and I basically
concluded that at this point,
we don't know what the
pricing would look like.
But certainly at scale,
it's a very valuable thing.
Yeah,
I think we also discussed a little
bit about it, Cern, is that with AI,
you need compute.
And with compute,
you need a lot of energy.
So with the cars already
having a compute in there
and also their batteries already in there,
it's like a distributed
force of AI already in place.
So if you add all the
gigawatt hours in battery
already in place of the six,
seven million cars already
roaming the world,
together with the compute power in there,
there's already kind of a
use case only for having
some models running on that
computer in the car.
So we definitely need an
expert like James Dahmer to
really explain this,
but I think we are already
kind of grasping the idea
of how this could play out.
Sorry, Kenny.
I think they're already doing right.
I read something about it.
What are they doing?
Well,
I think they're already partly using
using a part of the fleet
to run some of the models.
I think even mentioned it or
someone mentioned it in the
last couple of weeks.
Well, let's say that supercluster,
what they have,
they what have they paid
with XAI for that whole
superclusters like twenty billion,
something in that realm.
or that is the fundraise
that XAI has been doing to build compute.
Well,
let's say the computer within a Tesla
costs two and a half thousand dollars.
Then you can divide that
twenty billion to the two
and a half thousand and see
how many cars you need to
come to the same compute as
that super cluster, as a rough estimation,
because those are
specialized computers and I
understand all that.
But the amount of compute
will start exceeding that
very rapidly when cars are
coming off the line every five seconds.
And it's a combination, too,
of the car is going to need
that compute itself, perhaps.
But certainly when it's idle,
you can use that compute, right,
for other things,
less maybe time sensitive type work.
um it remains to be seen
it's certainly a nice asset
and the other thing that
we're not mentioning is the
same ship is in the
humanoid robot it's an
optimus as well right now
maybe there's one chip
instead of two in there but
still it doesn't take many
optimists to get you know
equal to the fleet of the
vehicle so they're going to
have a massive mobile
distributed inference capability
Yeah,
I'm not as technically advanced as
most of the people are,
but is it possible to train
like AI models on that
computer as well that are
in the cars and maybe an
optimist in a while?
I don't think so.
I don't think it would be
optimized for that.
I think it's more for inference, which.
Ninety five percent of what
we need for AI ultimately
will be inference once you
build the model.
So it's good.
It's going to be in the right place.
So sort of a napkin
calculation to have twenty
billion in compute requires
roughly eight million cars
to get on the road.
So when you're then at the
point of having twenty
million cars being built annually,
then you see how much
compute also is going to be
just by selling cars.
It's crazy.
I mean, this is going to be amazing.
And I think we need to do a
deep dive into this in one
of our next episodes.
So we need to invite
somebody who's going to
help us explain this.
I think for this episode,
we would like to touch on two more items.
One is the Age of Abundance,
which I want to discuss in ten minutes.
But we also wanted to
discuss the Doge flywheel.
Maybe, Damien,
you can answer some
questions about this and
how you envision this Doge
being a flywheel for Tesla as well.
Yeah, yeah.
And just flywheel for let's
let Bridget for that sort
of age of abundance.
And obviously there's a lot
of dirt where let's say we
as a society as a whole
need to go through.
So a lot of secrets are being revealed,
a lot of things,
how sort of the system has
been operating behind the scenes.
But
Yeah, for me,
I think that's a lot of noise
and not very much signal
that we're hearing there.
So we talked about it in our
podcast that the whole Doge
operation is a sort of five
pillar flywheel that Elon
has created there.
So the first one is
obviously cost savings.
So people keep more money in the pocket.
And we start seeing the
savings of those being
openly being published on their website.
The second is less regulation.
What that means for
companies is so much money
is now being spent of
lawyers and administration
just to keep your business running.
Depends on what kind of sector you are.
But let's say you're in the
banking system.
Well, you already need like
fifty two hundred million a
year to just uh operate
your your bank and a lot of
these people will start you
know need to uh start doing
something else but if you
think about it from a sort
of productivity standpoint
those people are just
referees on the field and
not and not players so I
think that whole efficiency
thing is uh is um it's not
only less rules and
regulation but also people
being freeing up and
starting being more productive
Yeah.
Entering more productive roles.
So even touch on that.
And that's point number three.
So people moving from a sort
of bad operating system to
a more efficient operating
system and use the analogy
of East Berlin versus West
Berlin at that point.
So that will go into to add.
We have seen the cost savings already.
So point number one is already in place.
We have seen the efficiency.
So Doge is also publishing
the amount of rules and
words being used in things.
And we start already seeing
sort of job numbers that
are quite positive in the US.
So that means a lot of new
initiatives are being
started and investments are being made.
The fourth pillar is
obviously a very important one,
the lower interest rates,
because now you keep more
money in your pocket as a
government as well,
so you can have better conditions there.
Therefore,
less cost for people in their daily lives,
because in the end,
the consumers are paying
that interest rate.
be it by mortgages,
being by goods or services,
just be more expensive.
And the fifth pillar is that
it just becomes more
attractive to work and
start your company.
Because if there's less
rules or regulations and
there's more access to
people and there's more
money that you keep in your pocket,
then the incentives are
aligned to sort of start
your own business and
become more entrepreneurial.
So there's a lot of data
that shows the less
bureaucratic a country is,
the more entrepreneurial
becomes and the more
uh the more wealth you
create as a as a company
and I think all those five
uh uh pillars will
influence tesla very much
for the good because um
because those teslas are
are being used for people
in their daily lives so
financing becomes more attractive
um that that's the thing
people have more money in
the pocket so they can buy
a sort of car in in that
sort of segment um do it
yeah maybe that's a bit of
an optimist view on on how
things go but um I think we
already seen the first uh
the first things in in
interest rates coming down
and uh savings that are
being made that this
flywheels now already start
uh start rolling
Yeah,
I think that's a really good observation.
And actually,
I would even extend it a little further.
And this takes us right into
this idea of sustainable abundance.
Right.
So again, as I mentioned,
for the first time in human history,
we're developing a machine
that can outcompete us.
So think about this.
You've got a nation that has
that and a nation that doesn't.
It doesn't take much to
imagine that the nation
that doesn't have that
suddenly is not competitive
against the nation that does.
and so for me doge is kind
of a metaphor for the
process that every country
every company and basically
every family needs to go
through to make sure that
they're not wasting that
they're saving that they're
efficient etc etc because
this change that is about
to come with ai powered
humanoid robots and cars
that drive themselves is such a powerful
competitive force on the
world that we've never seen before.
And it's going to hit us so quickly.
And I don't think really
hardly anybody appreciates
how rapid this change is going to come.
So think about this too,
in terms of let's just
imagine a world where all
labor is done by a humanoid robot.
Let's assume that eventually
we get to the point where
bots are that capable.
Now think about your family.
You've got parents,
one or two that work and
they provide for the kids.
Okay.
And most families provide
whatever they can for the kids, right?
Like we're not looking for
the kids to work.
Now, hundreds of years ago,
that was the case.
Kids used to work.
But now we don't do that so much anymore,
at least in the Western world.
Kenny is being raised as a kid to work.
There you go.
There's always a few exceptions.
But think about the humanoid
robot world where adults no
longer need to work to
provide for the family at the extreme.
So in that sense,
we all become kids in that
sense and that we're
dependent upon this new
form of labor to provide things for us.
Now you could imagine that
that might end badly if we
all sit around and eat ice
cream and lay on the couch
all day because we don't need to work.
And I suppose a few people
will opt to do that.
But it also frees up humans
from the toil of labor.
There's no more need to
exchange labor for money
and scarcity becomes a thing of the past.
And of course,
there's this human nature
view that has always lived
out there that a human is
lazy by nature and that has
held back like a universal basic income,
for instance,
to pop up whilst experiments,
however minor they were all
around the globe,
prove the exact opposite.
That's right.
And we're about to test that theory,
I think, at scale pretty rapidly.
Because initially,
humanoid certainly will be
a tool for us to be better at our jobs.
It'll be like an assistant.
And then it'll start taking
the jobs that humans don't want.
That's great.
And then it's going to start
taking every job.
And the change will be like that.
I don't know when that is.
It might be ten, fifteen years from now,
but that point is coming.
In the early days,
it's going to look really clumsy.
These robots today still
look pretty clumsy.
Walking like Joe Biden or
whoever you want to know
what they're walking like.
But make no mistake,
they are the worst they're
ever going to be right now.
You just need to think
forward a little bit and
it's a profound change on
the entire world.
So I think back to your point that
Doge, I think,
is just the process that we
all need to go through.
And I'm really interested to
see which country is next
in line to do a Doge-type effort.
And the quicker that countries do that,
the better off they will be.
Because in this world that's coming,
it's going to be a force of
deflation like we've never seen before.
And so if you're not already
efficient and lean,
it's going to be a very painful process.
Can you explain why that's
going to be a painful process?
Because it feels a little
bit contradictory.
If there's enough money
being made by robots,
why do you care about
efficiency in the government?
Well,
it's the transition that I think is
risky.
Exactly.
And like before we dive into it,
because a very good question, Florian,
and I've put it on screen a bit before,
but there's this article by
Roboflock and he said
actually that in order to
get to that state of abundance,
we now need to put in
the most effort and the hard
work to actually prepare for that.
And I think, yeah, Cern,
you're going to enlighten us.
But this article,
I can recommend it to everyone.
It's from Ed Roboflock.
He is laying it out perfectly here.
And also he's basing his
work on Tony Siba and other things.
I'm in order of, let's say, next in line,
sir.
And I'm, I think,
optimistic because Elon
always famously wears his
tech support T-shirt.
So he builds this this up
from a technological solution.
And and I even, you know,
have been I've been talking
with with Florian about XAI.
sort of shadow running the
operations on X because he
just wants to have the
wizard engineers building
sort of the future of that app.
And I think same goes for
government because it's
such a headache to work
with the cobalt and all the
legacy technology.
I was called that ex-founder
of Airbnb that is on board.
You talked briefly about
sort of having an Apple or
Airbnb like experience for
all your stuff for the government.
And this is also what was
being touched on one of the
earlier interviews with Marc Andreessen,
where he talked about what
these guys are building in
the background.
It's like the truly groundbreaking stuff.
So now it's a lot of noise
with some cops and all the
bills that are being published.
So that's just a sort of stage one work.
Same with Twitter, right?
So let's keep the things in the air,
make sure it's not loss making anymore.
And from there on,
we start the innovation part.
And since the legacy is so
painful with systems of fifty years old,
it will be probably
overhauled in one big overtake.
And that sort of template of
how to operate these kind
of things will be then
more easily let's say
accessible for governments
around the world let's hope
so yeah and I think what
the point that I want to
try to emphasize here too
is that you know the system
that we have in the united
states is critical for
developing this technology
but as this technology
propagates through society
the system that I think and
by and large that we we
have we see more in europe
is going to be more
necessary in terms of that
mindset in terms of taking
care of people and and
dealing with the fallout of
this as people start to
lose their jobs to robots
those people need to be
taken care of in some way
that's that's respectful
that works economically
yeah right and not allowed
to become a political force
that's trying to stop this
technology because if we
stop it you know what china is not
No, I will be late.
We'll be late.
And so this is a very key time.
And, and particularly now with the,
like in the United States
with the political environment,
I've often said that if I
was an advisor to the democratic party,
I would get them to embrace
Elon more than Trump is embracing him.
They should be fighting over
guys like him.
Yeah.
And that, that that's,
they're doing the exact
opposite right now.
And they're so underestimating.
what this guy is capable of.
I think he explained it
pretty well in the same
interview that we just
showed in the beginning
about setting up a free terrorist zone.
He also mentioned in that
same interview is that the
people who are not in favor
of this are the current establishment
And those are the big, big companies.
The big companies,
they have their cash flows,
they have their dividends,
they have their shareholders, et cetera.
And the big companies are
not known for innovation.
So they know they're going
to lose against innovation.
So what do they do in order
to stop innovation is they
build a lot of rules.
Complexity.
And they thrive on scarcity.
Yes.
They thrive on scarcity of goods.
But the most important thing is, is, uh,
we should keep innovation at,
at the low lowest point as
possible because innovation
is going to really disrupt us.
So I think that's the, the,
the real problem right now
is that we have to shift
from the establishment to,
to new innovation,
which is already knocking on our door.
China is already doing this.
So China is the new world.
And we, Europe, and together with US,
are the old world.
And we are trying to keep it
in the same place.
But we are seeing that we
are getting disrupted.
So I think we are in an
amazing transition phase
where actually a lot of
things are going to break.
But there's also a lot of
things which we can build up again.
And this is this age of
abundance that Ilan is talking about.
Yeah, first.
So what I'm trying to go to
is to that article that you
were showing a case is actually,
it's a pretty good article.
And if you pop it up,
I can walk through a little
bit through it to see if we can
touch upon some stuff which
are written in that article
but one of the things that
um so we we learned from
elon like three weeks ago
four weeks ago that the new
mission of tesla is the
sustainable abundance um
and this is actually the
mission for humanity's future
So we talked about what does
abundance mean?
Well,
abundance means that we don't need to
work anymore.
We don't need money anymore.
We have a lot of abundance.
So he tells there's already
some abundance already in our world,
which is the Internet and water supply.
But he also says that he got
some lessons from reading
the Ian Banks series.
And Ilan referred to these
books several times to
explain to people how he
sees this future of abundance.
And this book talks about AI
and humanity actually
converging and living in a
world where there's abundance.
So it's amazing that we are
actually going into this place.
This is the place that he
wants us to go to.
So in this world,
work transforms into an
optional activity driven by
personal interest and not
by economic necessity anymore.
Money loses its relevance
and time takes center stage.
So that's what I wanted to
talk about is if we are
entering a world with robot
taxis and humanoids and those assets,
real world assets are
producing real world cash flow
Who is going to get all that cash flow?
So if all that cash flow is going to Tesla,
we will get an issue, people revolting,
hey,
I'm losing my job and all the money
is going to Tesla.
So what I wanted to ask you, sir, is,
how does tesla think about
this issue and how is tesla
and elon and how's the
community of tesla thinking
about who's going to own
these assets and how are
they are they going to be
funded yeah now these are
important questions and I
actually had an interaction
with elon last summer on
this um where I had a post
about whether tesla would
rent out the robots or sell
them and elon's response was both yep
And so the fact that he's
saying that we're going to
sell them is an important
answer to this question.
It's much like the answer to
the Robotaxi Network in
terms of selling cybercaps to people.
He's giving people the
ability to earn income for themselves,
both on the cars and with
humanoid robots.
And I think that's important.
I think he recognizes the
issue that if one company
controls all these machines,
that's not going to work.
You have a rebellion on your hand.
They're going to storm your
company with pitchforks and
take everything.
And they're already doing it.
They're already trying to do that.
Yeah.
Right.
And so you have to share the wealth.
You have to make sure that
to the extent possible,
we leave no one behind.
Now, of course, in reality,
that's impossible, but you have to try.
So if we are all assuming
that this is the case,
so Tesla needs to share
their cash flows with the community.
How is this going to look like?
Because I've been I've been
trying to to find a solution for this.
So how how is a thirty
thousand dollar cyber cap
going to be funded then?
He said, is that going to be funded by
a single family or how is
this going to work out?
What's your idea on that?
Well, I mean,
I think initially it's fairly
clear because, you know,
the world isn't going to
change that quickly initially, right?
It's at the extreme other
end where you start to question things.
And Elon's made the comment about,
you know, what is money at this point,
right?
Yeah.
But early on, I think it's pretty clear.
It's
you're buying a money making machine.
So you pay thirty thousand dollars for it.
You can finance that through a bank,
maybe even through Tesla directly,
most likely through a bank,
just like you would any other auto loan.
And then you put that
vehicle in the fleet and
you start earning an income.
And it's highly likely that
that income on that vehicle
is more than you paid for
just in the first year.
And so that's going to
attract a lot of people to that business.
And there's going to be Uber drivers,
for example,
that are put out of work that
probably sell their vehicle
and buy a cyber cab and
make some money that way.
So I think that's pretty clear.
It's just as this then
filters through the economy
and starts taking away more
drivers' jobs and other
people's jobs with the humanoid bots,
how does that transition look?
And unfortunately,
I think there's a role for
nation states in this.
And of course,
that's where it gets political.
And that's where it gets, you know,
we're going to have two
camps on this in terms of
how they think about it,
at least here in the U.S.
Will nation states be able to do this?
Aren't we going towards a more global,
new form of state?
Because nation state
building is already two
hundred years old and in
the old paradigm of capitalism.
You can easily think about
cities like Abu Dhabi or
Dubai that wants to say, well,
we're a cybercap operated
city from day one.
They're a little bit more
totalitarian in their rules.
The more totalitarian
countries will probably be
the first to introduce this.
And the sooner you do it, the better,
because it's going to put
you in a more competitive
position for a whole bunch
of other stuff.
Everything you have to offer
your city and just the
quality of living of the
people goes up with so many
points at once.
In the positive scenario and
the negative scenario,
it will help more control.
because you can track where
cars are at Cedra and you
basically can control what
the cars are doing probably
to a certain extent.
But yeah,
we're going to enter many of
these sort of the first to
adapt will have a very much
competitive advantage
situations in the next ten years.
was a video of watching last
night they were talking
about the advent of the
automobile and that the uk
could have set itself up as
one of the major world
manufacturers but when
automobiles were first
introduced there they had a
red flag rule someone had
to walk in front of the car
waving a red flag because
cars were so dangerous to
people yeah and you had to
have two drivers in the car
So of course, regulations, you know,
totally stymied any
advantage that they
might've had in the UK in
terms of being able to
build these things because
the demand wasn't there
because of the rules.
And I think we run the same
risk with this technology,
but we have to recognize
that this is absolutely
critical because if we don't do it,
someone else will.
If I may ask,
I can understand that a lot
of our listeners are not as
far advanced in this age of
abundance as Florian and you, Cern.
Let's say if I'm a regular
person and maybe an
entrepreneur or also on, let's say,
a bigger scale for a country,
how can I as a person or as
a country be...
positioned in the right way
to make most use of this
age that is coming upon us?
What would be your advice if
I would be asking you that
if we're sitting in a bar
or now here in a podcast?
Yeah,
I think it's to find a way to be a
part of this new movement,
whether it's Robotaxi and
being a vehicle or a small fleet owner,
or in the case of humanoid robots,
positioning yourself to be
a part of that movement as well, because
one thing I know for sure I
would want to try to own a
few of those machines that
are changing the world I'd
rather own the machines
changing the world than be
subject to a machine that's
changing my world right and
that's just inevitable I'm
sorry it's just inevitable
it's coming I don't know
when it might be longer in
the dis in the future than
I think it is it might be
twenty five years from now
for all I know but it also
could be as quick as five years from now
And so I think you want to
be prepared for that change.
It's coming.
Humanity's seen other
massive changes before.
It's just that none of us
have lived through them.
We've read about them in
history books and they seem like nice,
neat changes where we go
from riding a horse to driving a car.
But you know what?
The history of that was a mess, right?
They had dirt roads.
These roads were covered in
mud and these cars were
tearing up the roads and
all the horse owners were complaining and
And the gasoline was a mess.
Like there was so many
issues with that transition.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
And then I'm also curious to
hear Florian's view on it,
because he has a bright
mind and has always
busy with, let's say,
ten years down the line.
But I went a little bit
deeper on what are the things,
like with AI as well, right?
So what are the things in
the past we had that things would change?
And the funny thing is you
wouldn't imagine,
but when boats went from sailing to,
let's say,
automatic boats or boats like steamboats,
They had hybrids.
Can you imagine?
It looks so silly right now,
but we're doing exactly the
same with cars.
So it was for me a moment of epiphany.
But for me,
and I'm a guy who always works
in Excel and the guys make
fun of me all the time and
PDFs and everything that
fits in it is my truth.
But there's a lot in vision as well,
and I'm trying to
get on the train and I think
I'm more advanced than general people,
but I try to get people with me and I say,
like, read these books or do this stuff.
But I think you have to get
in the knit of it.
So I had an AI training last
week and that just opens your mind.
There's so much opportunity
and things that are going on.
As you say,
like being just involved in
this transition would be
good for everyone.
Maybe Florian,
you have an idea and also
maybe concrete action
points for listeners to get
on the bandwagon here.
Yeah, I do have a few.
So if you don't buy a Tesla,
you're buying a horse.
Definitely.
That's why I definitely on the on the AI,
because, you know,
many people are having a
jet GPT or a grog.
Grok, you know,
membership or how do you call it?
But there you pay like one hundred bucks,
two hundred bucks.
Well, average employee in your company,
well,
let's say cost between five thousand
and ten thousand euros or a
dollar at any given point.
So I was having a
discussions with my I'm
setting up a new company right now.
So I said, gents,
we need to double down if
we have like five K or ten
K monthly memberships or
things or courses or whatever we have.
So learning from my past.
So I have a history of online advertising.
And I remember the days
starting to advertise when
Google clicks were just one
cent and Facebook clicks
were just one cent.
And I remember like, oh, well, our
uh our rate for email
addresses is now ten cents
that's way way too much so
we we were very
conservative about that
opportunity what was at
hand right now so I will
say if you if you pay ten
thousand euros in
subscriptions for ai at
this moment it's still just
one basically one high paid
employee that you that you
have uh working there and
will benefit you
tremendously if you start
understanding that that world and
humanoids and robot taxis
are just one part of that
whole super intelligence
that is starting to become
reality in front of our eyes.
Yeah, and I would just add too,
just again from a big picture standpoint,
you think about parents and
what they do for their kids.
What do we do?
We protect them.
We provide for them, right?
We educate them.
We guide them and we care for them.
And that's exactly what
humanoid robots are going
to do for all of humanity.
Again, whether you like it or not,
there's pros and cons to all this,
but we're developing
machines that are truly intelligent.
You look at them today, they're clumsy,
but they're only going to get better.
And so we better find a way
to adapt to this as quickly
as possible because it's coming.
there's opportunity in that
there has to be right.
Can either there, anytime there's a change,
there has to be opportunity
for people somewhere in that change.
Yeah.
Whether you choose to see it or not.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
I th I think we'll adapt in the end.
Of course.
The opportunity it will bring is that we,
as a,
as a conscious beings are freed up
of being a slave to money.
Yeah.
And that's something which
is completely behind.
It's such a new paradigm
that we need to get used to it,
but we will get used to it
and we will get into a new
kind of consciousness and
higher consciousness.
The implications are super big.
And we will also be connected to the AI.
So with Neuralink coming,
there will be the first
persons who are actually going to
going to be as brave to
actually connect with AI
and learn languages in a
few minutes or whatever.
And there will be people who say, well,
I'm too scared to do it.
So the new divide will not
be between rich and poor,
but between connected to AI or not.
There's going to be a
totally different kind of
mindset about that.
So that's maybe the more
important discussions that
we need to have.
I had one more question for you,
but I don't know if we have time anymore,
Kees.
Well,
I think we still have a little bit of
time.
Let's say we extend it with, let's say,
ten to fifteen minutes.
After ten minutes,
I'll give a sign and then we'll stop.
Kenny, you go ahead.
You wanted to ask something.
Yeah,
I don't want to waste too much of the
time,
but I think like I tried to go back
to history, you know,
and there have been so many
times when we've had the same as well.
I think like machines that
we saw coming on the landscaping,
you know, when we had farms,
everybody thought everybody
would lose this.
Yeah, industrial revolution came from it.
So I think there will be
always a use for people,
and I think it will be more
to the creative part,
because now a lot of my
time actually goes in my
work to doing structured
things that are ninety percent the same,
while the ten percent, I think,
is the most nice stuff to focus on.
So I hope we will transition
to focusing more on the ten percent,
using our creativity and
using that for a full day.
Damian, don't make a shit.
Don't say anything.
I was saying, Kenny,
I was focusing a hundred
percent on all the good stuff,
but that is also not good for your brain.
You need some structure as well sometimes.
Yeah.
I've seen,
I've seen it can bring a lot of
carnage as well.
Yes.
But that doesn't,
that doesn't account for everyone.
We're seeing people at the
other side here.
So if you think about it,
we're all going to have our
own personal coaches.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, Damian,
we were sitting one time in
his garden and he has some
gym stuff laying around.
So he was like,
what happens if Optimus is here?
He can look at your posture is right.
You can say, do pushups.
You need to move.
Maybe you get some data like, hey,
your blood pressure is too high.
Relax a little bit.
So it can help you advance
in all kinds of stuff.
So I can't wait to have it
around the house.
I'm building my new company on this idea.
I'm building a company in health,
so increasing our health as humans.
So my idea was Elon is
taking care of the machines.
What is my vision on helping humans?
One of the things that we're
building are we're just
collecting a lot of
equipment that is collecting data.
So we say we provide the sensors.
So we have sensors that can
measure your body composition,
your heart rate, all that.
And normally it was just
impossible to just, um,
to just make sense of all the data and,
and, and,
and come with a sort of congruent advice.
Uh,
but my idea is that sensors will have a
huge value in,
in the world because it
feeds the AI with the,
with the data we're, we're collecting.
Yeah.
I think Optimus too is one giant sensor.
Um, you know, he'll,
he'll be able to tell you in real time,
the quality of the air that
you're breathing.
Yeah.
Just all kinds of stuff like that is huge.
For now, I have Optimus behind me,
making me work.
He's got the hammer in his hand.
But hopefully in the future,
I'll be standing behind him.
You can imagine all those
fingers having different
sensors so he can measure
body temperature, room temperature.
Yeah, you got it.
If somebody's got a flu or not,
those things are very easily detectable,
but we're just not used to
having all these sensors around.
That's right.
I think for you, Damian,
it will be very confronting
because you will see also
some gaps in your
personality and other flaws.
I think you will have a big list,
but let's not go there
because then we need
another day for this podcast.
Let's go to that million dollar question,
Florian.
yeah so uh before I want to
do that maybe you can find
the the the advertisement
which frank made for the
tesla robo taxi do you know
which one I'm talking about
I was saying you mean with
grok in the car as well
yeah it's amazing this is a
girl who's being picked up
by the robo taxi yeah
Maybe we can put it on the screen.
Is it possible, Florian?
I know how it looks like.
Sort of final video then?
No, but let's have Kees be busy with that.
But I saw something going
back to the Robotaxi CERN
in the business model.
This guy Phil Beisel put out
an excellent article
regarding the business
model and how it's going to
change everything.
And he also talked about
this disruption that the
cars made to the horses, etc.
So he made the same analogy.
And I saw a remark of you
where you were talking
about the repositioning of the cars,
which will be key.
So for Robotaxi to actually
become a real disruption,
it needs to drive enough
miles in order to get
enough cars off the road.
So the utilization is going
to be like a key driver.
And a key driver for having
a high utilization is
actually repositioning.
So what I read is that you
were talking about this
kind of an AI model trying
to get this problem out of the way.
Can you elaborate a little
bit about that and why you
think repositioning is such
a key element in this business model?
Sure.
Yeah, that's a good question.
And Phil and I have talked
about this as well.
The customer experience with
Robotaxi is going to depend
on having a vehicle
immediately available or
close to immediately available, right?
A lot of times you can
schedule your departure,
but many times it's spontaneous.
You want a vehicle,
you want to walk outside,
grab a taxi and go.
So in that case,
and in order for that to work,
you need to reposition the
vehicles in places where
people are likely to need them.
Well, how do you figure that out?
Well, you need to know where people are.
You need to know what people
are going to do.
So if you are a Robotaxi
Network subscriber,
then the network may learn
some of your habits,
like when you go to work
and when you leave work, et cetera.
Or even that,
just the vehicles driving
around can notice that
there is a congregation of
people at this sporting event,
and it's likely at some
point that those people are
going to want to go home.
or a concert or something, right?
And so you need the
capabilities of AI to parse
through all that data about
what's going on in a city
to figure out then where to
optimally place the vehicles.
It's too complex of a
problem for a person to figure out.
Now, obviously, if there's a concert,
then it's pretty obvious,
or a football game,
you know you're gonna need
to position vehicles next to those venues,
but it's more nuanced than that.
I would also say too,
from a Robotaxi revenue perspective,
So one of the keys is that
if you can drive your cost
of operation down,
then you can afford to
actually have a very low
utilization rate on a per
vehicle basis and still end
up with revenue for the
network that's very high.
Because again,
you're providing a service
to customers that is so
compelling at an attractive price.
And that was to my point
earlier about as an
individual vehicle owner,
I don't necessarily want to
be paid on the use of my vehicle,
but more of the vehicles in
the network during the time
that I put my vehicle in.
Because if my vehicle is
sitting for four hours and
I don't get paid, that's no good to me.
But still,
that was very useful for the network.
That may actually help the
network optimize its total revenue.
Yep.
Florian,
I'm not sure if I answered your question,
but touched on a difference.
Definitely.
And it also reminded me of
something I think Alexander
Mertz also mentioned is
that also the repositioning
AI model behind the
repositioning will also
help increase the value proposition.
Because if I just came back
from a visit to France with the airplane,
I came to the airport, I ordered an Uber,
but I had to time the
moment the Uber was
actually coming and I was at that place.
And it's always that I have
to wait for like five to ten minutes.
But with an AI repositioning
model behind it,
it will probably become
like less than one minute.
That's actually the value
proposition enhancement as well.
So that was something I
wanted to add as well.
But that's what popped up in
my mind when you answered this question.
Yeah,
I would imagine as a Robotaxi Network
subscriber, for example,
it'll know where you are at all times.
And if you're walking through an airport,
right,
it knows where you are and it can
more properly time
the arrival of the vehicle
with your arrival,
that kind of stuff is possible for sure.
Yeah,
and it would also make sense that you
have a lot of premium
versions where you first
align always and all that,
especially in the first, let's say,
five years of this.
Same as airlines, skip the line and yeah.
And certain preferences,
they might even be able to
provide certain things in
the vehicle like drinks and food,
for example,
that's in line with your
preference eventually.
It'll just hop over to Moet Chandon,
put a bottle inside, some water.
That's right.
What I would like to do is
also like if you're sitting in the car,
your time is going to be
spent very differently, right?
So now you're still like
looking at the wheel, at least in Europe,
you have to still hold it as well.
I hope you're looking at the road,
not the wheel.
Sorry,
at the road and the wheel sometimes.
Where is it?
But I think it will change completely.
Like I said to my girlfriend as well,
when we went on vacation,
we left like early morning, came, I think,
like in the night at our
destination in Europe.
And if there would be a robot taxi,
I would just say,
let's hop on the robot taxi
at like nine in the evening,
sleep and then next day.
So it's going to change the dynamics of
like travel through the roads very much,
but also what,
what would you do with your time?
And like, if it's during the day, I,
a lot of the times jump in
my car and then go for a
business meeting and I'm in
the car for an hour.
I would like to do work or
maybe like discuss with grok.
Like I have some ideas.
Uh, can you make a list?
I need to order some food.
I don't know, you know,
so there's going to be a
lot of opportunity there as well.
It'll give us a lot of more opportunity.
I think to spend time with
friends and family that we
maybe don't have today
because either it's,
You have to drive yourself
and you don't want to
because it's tiring or you
just don't have time.
If you're able to work in the vehicle,
then you will have time
because you're just like we are now.
We're sitting there.
Why not be moving at the
same time and then getting
to the point that you want
to be after the meeting's over?
It's going to restructure
the whole way that people move around.
It's going to disrupt airlines.
It's going to disrupt public transit.
It's going to disrupt trains,
not to mention Uber and taxi services.
It's the biggest transition
since electricity.
If you think about the
transition that people had in electricity,
how much of a change in
your daily life that will have suddenly,
you know,
you didn't have to go to bed at
seven p.m.
because you could stay up.
and many of these things
were very revolutionary so
before electricity it was
even the case that people
were um sleeping in two
parts in the night so one
they start sleeping very
early then in the middle of
the night they woke up to
just chit chat with the
neighbors and then go back
to sleep again until it was
uh light again so that
period was just very long
And you would never say that
electricity would have
disrupt such a normal habit,
but many of our sort of
normal habits in day-to-day
life will be completely
overhauled by all these
opportunities that these
technologies are going to bring.
And Jensen Wong of Nvidia
says that AI is so foundational,
it's like electricity.
Yeah.
It's going to be infused
into absolutely everything.
Everything.
I think so as well.
That's a nice bombshell to end on.
And it's almost one hundred year,
one hundred fifty
electricity is not so long
time ago in this grand scheme of things.
So that's right.
The crazy thing before we go that case,
I know we have to wrap up.
So there's only one thing I
would like to mention.
So like back in the days,
you have this movie which
is called The Man Who Made America.
I think, Damian,
we've discussed it a couple of times.
And there's actually I think
it's Edison or somebody
else who's going to be
backed by JP Morgan.
And they have a certain way
to drive electricity.
And everybody backs him, you know,
because he's the most smart
guy in the world.
And then somebody else comes
along with a different
solution for electricity,
which is really going to be it, you know.
So I hope Elon is the latter
and not the former.
But it always trickles in my mind,
like even if you have the
most smart guy in the sense,
also with FSD or whatever,
it can always be that there is coming...
different technologies or
whatever that takes over.
But I think for now they're leading,
so that's all good.
But it always pops to my
mind when it's funny
because I'm on the
Wikipedia page of the
electricity transition.
One of the topics
is that electricity was the
liberator of the woman
because of all the machines,
washing machines, centrifuge, fridge,
all that.
It was electrical
housekeeping was apparently before,
just after the First World War,
a very big thing.
And it was really being seen
at the time as something
that liberated women.
First feminist wave.
And humanoid robots will
liberate humanity.
Humanity, exactly.
Choose your words carefully,
not eliminate.
Right.
Slight difference.
Let's end on a positive note there, Cern.
Let's liberate humanity.
Let's liberate Cern.
We've held him hostage for
quite a while now.
We found the video, so...
yeah we're just gonna we're
gonna close off with this
video uh thank you so much
cern for uh being here with
us and taking the time and
I hope to invite you as a
guest um again in the
coming uh uh ten episodes
uh where we're going down
to the robotics future uh
so for everyone thanks for
tuning in thanks for
listening thanks for
watching thanks for paying
attention and having the
patience and let's close
off with this video
Blind me to the moon.
Honey!
Are we flying it?
It's time for love.