Elon Musk and Sandy Munro discuss the Cybertruck!

Hey boys and girls, I have Mr. Musk with us today. First off, thank you so much for agreeing. I don't know what time it is, but it's late, and you've got two more hours to go. So we're going to fly through this as quick as possible. Sure, make it painful. Anyway, first off, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Well, I think that so far, we haven't really released a heck of a lot, but we've got something like five hours of video and whatnot that I know people are going to be very, very interested in. In fact, I've already gotten a little note from Jim Farley saying, 'When are you going to release the information?' So I know everybody is really interested in this. I just have one quick question for you. This has been a hell of a week based on what I've seen on X. What was the high point as far as you're concerned with what happened this week, apart from the fact that you released it?

You may not know this, but I take Tesla as working at the speed of thought, not like everybody else does with committees and whatnot. You guys seem to be able to spot something that should be done, and maybe other people have spotted it as well, but you actually get it done. That's like self-driving. I've driven it, I'm very impressed. I did give him one suggestion though. Taking it the first time into a great big parking garage that was winding, I asked the guys whether or not there's something you can do about putting a little bar on the bottom so I can see where the hell my wheels are. They said, 'No, software done.' And I think they may have implemented it already. That's what I mean by speed of thought. I like that kind of stuff.

This episode of Munro Live is brought to you by the Three-Dimensional Services Group. Hey boys and girls, I'm here with Dan, and we're at Three-Dimensional Services Group. Dan, this is pretty impressive. Why don't you give us a little background on what you guys do here?

Okay, well, the Three-Dimensional Services Group was founded by Douglas Peterson 31 years ago. We've grown into the world's largest, most capable, and most agile prototype and low-volume manufacturer. In essence, we're a job shop on steroids. We work with the world's most innovative companies to validate their designs, and then we're able to take our low-volume manufacturing processes and scale them across a massive amount of equipment to allow us to support volumes that a traditional prototype shop would never be able to support. We're always working with our clients to accelerate their product development timelines and enable them to be as successful as possible by bringing their products to market as quickly as possible.

So you've got some of the big names here. FUK is one of the machines that most companies aspire to, but you said you've got 18 more coming or something?

16 coming over the next coming months, taking us to 88 machines in total. These are from brands like Starrag, Bavius, Hermle, FUK, HOS, YCM. We've got a variety of mills for a variety of applications. Metal stamping is the core of our business. This press right here is one of the larger beds we have. This is a 1500-ton press. It's one of 127 presses that we have company-wide. They've all got a variety of configurations, allowing us to take on a variety of jobs. This is the core of our business. We are vertically integrated from a tool design perspective, run all our own parts, and then laser cut them as well. This is all handled in-house, vertically integrated at a significant scale.

So how many presses do you have then?

127 presses ranging from 20 tons to 5,000 tons.

5,000? Really? What do you do on a 5,000-ton press?

Tubular hydroforming.

Ah, hydroforming. Okay, good. So we're moved over here, and we're now standing in front of a Trumpf 7045 or 740 Trumpf laser. We're going to hear a little bit about its capability. It's got five axes. This is a 5-axis laser?

We've got 25 Trumpf 5-axis systems company-wide. This particular version is a 6-kilowatt machine. These are the finest 5-axis laser cutting machines available on the market.

So this is really the top-of-the-line Trumpf equipment.

Its software is integrated with our 2D lasers, allowing for us to cut blanks and instantly bring them over here and bend a perfect part repeatedly. We're going to be able to produce very, very precision parts very quickly at a significant scale with this sort of equipment. We're very grateful to our partners at Trumpf that have given us this equipment to use here.

Okay, so Dan, I can see that we're moving pieces over here, and we're standing in front of some sort of a 3-axis welding system or a cutting system?

It's a cutting system. This is our Trumpf TruStore system. We've got a twin tower feeding a butterfly configuration. 25040, 12 kW 2D lasers are running off of this automation system, allowing us to keep these lasers running as efficiently as possible. The speed of these lasers when we get up to the power that we currently have absolutely necessitates this automation, allowing us to keep the laser running as often as possible.

You know, it's funny, not really funny, but to me it's very interesting. You have a pre-production facility that I'm sure pretty much everybody would die to have. I'm surprised that you're not twice as big, because everything you're doing here is things that OEMs and tier ones should be doing. I've seen progress slow right down with other companies, with bigger OEMs of any type, whether it's aerospace or appliances. They always slow down because they try and do it internally. This is the best thing as far as I'm concerned. Looking at what you got going on here, it seems to me that if I was in that kind of a situation, that's what I'd want from you. So that's my assessment of everything I'm seeing here today.

Yeah, we appreciate that. We want to work with the world's most innovative companies. We want to work with the companies that want to go fast and really change the world. We are a job shop. All of the capabilities that everybody's seen here are available to anybody that wants them. It's as simple as just sending us your data and getting a project started.

Thanks to the Three-Dimensional Services Group for sponsoring this video. Whether you're looking to source metal stamping, precision CNC machining, laser cutting, welded assembly, or plastic injection molding, the Three-Dimensional Services Group should be the source to transform your EV, aerospace, appliance, or technology designs into reality while also providing a bridge to start production.

48 volts. I mean, it's been a long time that it's been 12 volts. Far too long. 60 years. So I've got a question for you. How difficult was it to move from 12 to 48? Because I know when the S came out, or the Plaid came out, I wasn't happy. I thought you were going to do it on that. I was looking for that big weight reduction and cutting all the wire and whatnot. But this one you got it in. So how difficult was it to get that to happen?

But you did even more because you went to the new bus system. In the 80s when I was still working for Ford, I did everything I could to try and get us to go to a bus system that failed. We couldn't get that to happen. Once it failed, that's it. We can never go back again. It failed, it'll never work. But you guys made it work. I heard a couple of different numbers, somewhere around 70% of the communication wire disappeared. 48 volt, who cares, it's gone. This is another thing that multiplexing was the name that it used to be called. Multiplexing was really good, but it was too slow. You've got it to work. Maybe you could explain who came up with it, when did you decide that you were going to go in that direction? Was it part of the 48 volt discussion or how did that work?

Without sounding like I'm sucking up, because I almost never do, I just think it's because of leadership. I've worked with many different car companies, some of them big, some of them small. To make a decision like that usually involves a bunch of MBAs and lawyers. As soon as that comes into play, boom, I don't care what the engineer says. If you haven't got a leader that's going to say, 'No, I don't care, just do it,' that kind of obvious idea to an engineer is totally oblivious to people who count beans and basically try to make you do nothing new.

And then there's the other roadblock, the national roadblock. You've got steer by wire. Steer by wire is awesome. I didn't really spend much time on it in the Cybertruck presentation because it was hard to explain why it's going to be great, but if you drive the car, it's immediately obvious.

The other good thing too is this has rear wheel steering. When I first got into it, it's very nerve-wracking or imposing. First time you get in this thing, it's a very expensive truck. I got maybe a couple of minutes with Rich Auto who made all this stuff happen. He said, 'This, this, this, and this,' and then he had to go because he had a lot of stuff to prepare. So we got out. The very first thing I noticed was I got to get out of this parking spot. With rear wheel steering along with front wheel steering, it turned on a dime. This is not like trying to turn the Queen Mary around. In a parking lot, this is going to kick everyone's tail. It turns like a small car even though it's a big car. That was another thing that has been talked about for years but never implemented. This truck has got so many applications that engineers have been talking about since I don't know when. This is kind of like everything that I was hoping to see. I'm very excited. I also haven't been the biggest fan of the Model 3 and Model Y's back seat. This one here is a monster. I'm really delighted with that. I brought it around, showed it to everybody, they absolutely love that back seat.

Yeah, I drove it around. I love the big... There's a bunch of people at J Motors when we were trying to help them out. I said, 'Why do we have two windshield wipers? Why don't we just put one?' Yours doesn't have it, but I wanted a cam action that would catch both sides. You don't need it. That windshield is so huge and that blade is so gigantic, like a katana blade. It's like a giant sword. It works reasonably well. I don't know how you arranged that we were going to drive in the rain and the fog and the mud, but it worked out quite good because we've got tons of really good footage on how that thing works. I love a lot of it. Your guys told me all about the stainless steel. It's a 300 series custom alloy that we made. The big thing for me was when I found out it would be austenitic because you can't have rust. But I didn't know that you take the austenite, work harden it, and now it's martensitic. Hence the reason I couldn't understand the bullets. I do some hunting and I've shot through stainless steel in the past, but with martensitic, there's no chance. That was a big surprise. I've got a question for you though. What was the biggest hold up? Everybody's been holding their breath for at least four years. What really was the biggest challenge?

At the end of the day, I wasn't going to try and answer that. A lot of people have been asking. First off, we were under an NDA kind of thing. Then people were asking me the same question over and over again, and I'm thinking, 'You know what, this would be a good time for you to shut up, Sandy, and let's find out for sure.' That's exactly what I was thinking.

It was true for everyone. Nobody was immune to that stuff.

I've got another question then. I've been asked by Bloomberg and a bunch of these different news magazines, what's the volume going to be for this thing in 12 months? What are you looking at?

When we went down, they were dry cycling the machines. I'm a pretty good guesser. It looked to me like this thing could be produced at one every 60 seconds, 60 jobs an hour. Your other ones, when I went through here before, the Model Y was doing about 43 seconds. I got exactly the same number when I went through Berlin. I think at 60 jobs per hour is kind of like where everybody else is. Nobody's at 43. Nobody. So that's unique. That's great for the 3 and the Y. I'm just hoping this thing will ramp up quickly. I talked to... Oh, we missed you at the party last night. I'm sure you had other things on your mind. There was about 2,000 people there. BeeEx had this party. It was really kind of cool. If you could have been there, or maybe just been a fly on the wall to hear what everyone had to say. There was plenty of cheering and plenty of people anxiously awaiting their delivery on this. I think that this is without a question of a doubt the most brilliant product that I've worked on. We worked on the Mini, but not the original one. When Issigonis brought that out, that was a big deal. On this one here, I think that this is the most iconic vehicle that we've seen in at least 30 or 40 years.

It's an armored personnel carrier from the future. Quite frankly, I wanted to do something like this when I was working at Land Rover. There was a thing called Judge Dredd. Judge Dredd would drive this car for sure. That's what we wanted to do. I wanted to buy the frames, ship them over to the states, and then I would put a Judge Dredd body on it. They wouldn't go for it. 'No, no, no, that'll never work.' This, on the other hand, is just absolutely phenomenal. When we were driving, there was fog and muck. The wing mirrors were continuously fogging up, but it didn't matter once I found out that I could just turn a turn signal on and see what was going on. If I needed to see something else, flip on the turn signal, the camera comes up as clear as day. Perfect. Then I find out that you can also wash the lenses off. Brilliant. I just don't understand why it is that no one else has kind of jumped into this. Everybody else says, 'Oh, there's a regulation,' and that means we just got to stop right there. That's the stupid part. I got a chance to see all the stuff. I'm really kind of impressed from an engineering standpoint. This is like nothing. Nobody's got anything quite like this. I know you're pressed for time, but I have just one other thing I'd like to talk about a little bit. We have this iconic vehicle, and it'll be great. I'm hoping I can get a couple of them. I know that this is going to be a great vehicle, but there's the other guys that are also dying to get a Tesla: the $25,000 Tesla. I'm wondering where that is exactly. Where are you with that?

Oh, okay. Well, there you go. I'm hoping that's not too far down the line. I really would like to see something where we can... I'm told that the one that I'm looking for is the Beast, the Tri Motor. I'd like to get two of those. That vehicle is like $100,000 plus. I think that's the right price for this, but it's not the right price for the kid that wants to take one to college. That's why I'm kind of anxious to find out what can be done for those others that want to get into electrification but can't. If we can't do that, then let me shift gears. What do you think about the new...?

Is this going to have the unboxed system, or would that be too much of a question?

I can hardly wait. It's going to be cool.

I thought it was going to be in Mexico or something.

This place here seems to be growing every time I come here. It seems to get bigger.

I kept hearing 'Phase One.' This is Phase One. I can't imagine what all the other phases must be.

Well, I got lost in the Pentagon too. It's easy to do that. This building is so unique. Ever since Albert Kahn showed us, 'Hey, let's have a flat building and gobble up a whole bunch of property, and then we don't have to go up and down.' We actually have floors on this building. What's that?

What's nice about it is I start with the light stuff and I move it down to the heavy stuff, and then I drive it out the door. That seat system over there is a great example. People have talked about doing that, but nobody had the guts to do that. By the way, I don't know if you know it, but my office chair is a Model Y seat that I put little rollers on. It's really comfortable. I have a real problem with my back, and that's the only thing... I haven't gone to the chiropractor in over a year and a half now because that seat... I have no idea, we've taken them apart, but I'm not a seat engineer. That just seems to be perfect for everybody that I know of that sits in the front seats. They absolutely love them. Having those and popping them in, all the glorious stuff you did with how manufacturing should be done, it drives me wild why other people haven't done anything. I hate to start drooling all over you, but I think it's just great leadership. I really appreciate that.

So let me ask an adventurous question. I made a lot of noise about what I think the future is going to look like. One of the things that I've said is that probably the biggest car company on the planet will be BYD, and then I'm putting Tesla in second simply because BYD's got such a head start. I've heard plenty of people criticizing that. Who do you think is going to be the winners and losers in the car industry?

Exactly right. There are two giants, three giants that I think are going to come down real hard, and one in particular, but I just decided I don't want to go down that path. What I want to do is basically just tell you that this has really been phenomenal. I'm really hoping that somehow I can make something happen for us to, well for me first off, to drive something around, and then secondly something that we can tear down for the rest of the planet. By the way, I forgot, I even have a gift for you. There you go. You can open it up. It's got a little flap in the front. Here you go. There you are. I gave one bottle cap opener. Yes. You can glue it to the fridge too. There's a bridge magnet. Bottle opener. Thank you. You're welcome. It's not much, but I really think it's the least I can do for all the stuff that you've done for Munro. You put us on the map. It's been a rough first half of this year. This part of the year seems to be going a whole lot better. I want to be cognizant of your time and consider it. I'd like to thank you. By the way, I've got one other thing. Both of us are aliens. We're aliens. Okay. Both of us. You came from Canada and before that South Africa. I came from Canada. I found that Americans have kind of lost their way a little bit thinking about history. There's this guy Thomas Jefferson. He used to say, 'In matters of fashion, go with the flow. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.' I'm going to end this with shaking your hand, thanking you for standing like a rock when you're sitting on a stage and someone is trying to humiliate you. I told everybody I won't go into this and I'm not going to get all emotional, but to me, I've watched that one clip that people have been putting out to me and putting up against... I forgot their name. Disneyland or whatever. At the end of the day, I will never take my grandchildren ever to that place ever. You have to wonder what would Walt Disney think of the company that is his namesake today. I think Walt Disney's turning in his grave faster than a drill bit. I believe that it won't take too much longer before somebody goes, 'Hey, you know what, we shouldn't be having this shoved down our throat any longer,' and then there'll be a big change. But it isn't going to happen next week, that's for sure. That's unfortunate. I love the first step for me right now. I think that people have gone completely stupid. I think that people have fallen into that same trap as what Nazi Germany had, where mass stupidity took over and created a real giant mess. It took a World War to quell those incredibly bad thinking and stuff like that. I'm hoping that it won't take a third world war to make something like that change the way we're thinking. I do believe that somebody has to start looking at what's going on in the education system. Listening to people talk, I just have to get up and walk away. It's very difficult for me to hire people because if I hear that kind of stuff... We both chose this country. It wasn't just that we got born here. We came here because this was the land of opportunity.

I'd say that we're getting real close to a watershed. When that happens, it's very difficult to make the water go uphill. I'm very nervous. I don't know why or how this has happened. That's not my area of expertise, but I do know what I see. I want to try to figure that out. I think some of these things started probably earlier than people realize. I think when they started with the politically correct philosophy, that was kind of like where it started. Now it's gotten so ridiculous it's not even funny. I don't know how that's going to change. It's really just another way of saying you have to lie to fit in. More and more you have to lie to fit in. Eventually that house of cards of lies will collapse. It always does, it always has. But when it collapses, who gets crushed? Is there any recovery from something like that? How damn dumb can people be?

Exactly. The only way to lose in the United States will be if we tear it down from the inside. It seems to me that there's a lot of that stuff going on right now.

That's the truth. I know your son needs to get to bed. Quite frankly, we were at that last night and I'm fading fast. I had about six cups of coffee. It was a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Elon. I really appreciate it.

Thanks very much everybody for watching, and Elon for giving up his time. I don't know what time it is, but if you've got to go back to work for another two hours, I'd say you qualify as a candidate. If you ever need a job, you can come to Munro. Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you.