This is obviously a bittersweet moment where we're handing over the last of the Model S and Model X vehicles that we've produced. These vehicles really are what made Tesla into a great car company and profoundly changed what people's perception of an electric car was. People used to think electric cars were slow, low range, undesirable, really kind of like glorified golf carts that were not fun, didn't look good, and it was like wearing a hair shirt basically.
You kind of had to give up a little bit of your soul to be in an environmentally friendly vehicle.
Yeah. So really the profound thing that the Model S especially showed was that an electric car could actually be the best car of any period. So, I'd say that's the thing that's really most important about it. It was breaking the perception that electric cars are worse than other cars and showing that actually if you design it right with the incredibly talented Tesla team, you can actually make an electric car be better than any gasoline car. And as a result, Model S won not just a Motor Trend Car of the Year, but I think best car ever, I think.
And then we followed that up with the Model X which was the Faberge egg of cars. It was somewhat of an exercise in hubris frankly. But an incredible vehicle with so many special things about the Model X that probably most people who buy the car don't even realize exist.
And I'll tell you something like why maybe at a fundamental level why the Model S and Model X succeeded, which is that those cars were designed with love.
They really were. Every part of it inside and outside, every detail, even things people couldn't see, probably most people would not even experience or often not know existed, we put there because we loved the product. And I think that's at the heart of any great product, if the people making it genuinely love that product, just like when you genuinely love your kids, you care about things in a different way.
Yeah, you do. It's not like a spreadsheet thing. You do things to make the product amazing because you love it. And even if people don't even see all of those things, they feel a lot of those things and that's what translates to people wanting the product. That would be my advice for people out there who are making products or providing services is do something that you truly love and your customers will feel that love.
You guys all feel that. We feel it from all of them.
Right, I mean I think Elon when you look at our employees, right, like for our Fremont, Giga Nevada, these employees are playing a big role. And what Tesla Fremont did, right, I mean I was telling Elon a story that I was there in December 2015, 31st of December, I was right there and we factory gated 500 Model X's and I was like wow we were celebrating like crazy and now we're building 6,000 of those a week and this is laying a foundation for Tesla's future, all the global manufacturing, all the manufacturing sites. So, just want to say thank you to all the employees, all our suppliers. Thank you guys. Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, nobody thought we could do it, right? There were so many naysayers back in the day, but we actually ended up kind of creating a script of what we take for granted in vehicles today. And if you look at this list, I think in a weird sort of way, that's what everybody's copied us in. But Model S and Model X really started and innovated and created every one of these things on this list. And the automotive industry wouldn't be what it is today without that. I think we take a lot of this for granted.
Yeah. I mean, we actually started out designing the Model S in the back of the SpaceX factory. So, we didn't have a design studio as...
Or an engineering center or anything.
Well, we did have... we had St. Carlos. We had some of the engineering team. But pretty small team to say the least. And thank goodness Franz joined as head of design. It's been a pleasure working with you all this time.
Thank you for Lars and Rishi and everyone and the whole Tesla team. It's been an honor to work with such a talented group. But it's worth just reminiscing a little bit about how it started out.
Yeah. I mean those early days in the back corner of SpaceX and the tent, we didn't even have a design studio. We were on a floor like this, falling off and we would push the clay model of Model S through SpaceX factory every Friday and push it outside so we could evaluate it with Elon and right on Jack Northrop Drive. Every car driving by could see what we were doing, but nobody cared. It was like a garage band playing in Wembley Stadium, we were taking on the world with this amazing idea. But nobody really believed.
Yeah. The Model S was actually the first car we really made ourselves. Because with the original Roadster, Lotus did the non-powertrain portion of the car. And at Tesla, we designed and built the drivetrain and the battery pack, the charger and basically electrical stuff but we didn't build the rest of the car that was done by Lotus. So frankly if people ask me what are the chances of success of a company that's never built a car before building a car that would be Car of the Year by Motor Trend which is generally like the Academy Awards of cars, I'd say it's pretty unlikely, but we're going to try to build something and we really just tried to build a car that we thought would be awesome.
Yeah. A car that we all wanted.
Yeah. There weren't any market surveys or anything. It was just us judging. It's like, 'Oh, is this a good idea? Should we do this? Should we do air suspension? Sure, let's do it.' You know, it was like, 'What would you want in a car?'
Yeah. What would we want in a car? And giant touchscreens didn't exist in cars.
No iPad either at the time, remember? Yeah, we had to basically use stuff that was meant for laptops and notepads and stuff and then there wasn't any software so we had to write the software to make the touchscreen work. And yeah, it was pretty wild.
But now like almost every car has one.
Yeah. Yeah, it's normal now.
Model S just started that, right? It was the beginning and now everyone just thinks that is commonplace.
Yeah. And I actually drove my brother's founder Model S, one of the first 20 or so. And I thought, boy, it's actually probably going to have all sorts of issues, but it drives pretty well.
Yeah. I drove my 2012 here today. Nostalgia. It was a great car back then. It's still a great car now.
Yeah. A lot of that's pioneered by over-the-air updates, you know, didn't exist. The car gets better with time. So those older cars are better today than they were when we first delivered them.
So yeah, it was really a ton of stuff that we did here. And we kept improving it over time. I mean today's Model S and X have 40% fewer parts than the original. Only 3% of the parts that are currently in a Model S are what we started with. So we changed like 97% of the parts over the past 14 years. And obviously made huge improvements with self-driving.
Yeah. And originally didn't have anything like that.
Yeah, that's the one bad part about driving the 2012.
