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‘Insane’ Quotes in 2014 from Elon Musk and the Tesla Motors Team
Elon Musk and the Tesla Motors team provided another year of inspiration and drama, with the gigafactory chase, Wall Street tweets and general company growing pains.
Here are seven quotes from some of the main players at Tesla Motors in 2014:
7. Automotive companies are pushing self-driving capabilities for next-generation cars and this is what Elon Musk said right before the Model S P85D announcement in California via CNN Money:
Musk: “A Tesla Car next year will probably be 90 percent capable of autopilot.” On the highway, Musk is “for sure” confident the car will be able to drive itself. Tesla’s a Silicon Valley company. If we’re not the leader, shame on us.”
6. Earlier this year, I posted a teardown of the Model S’s center stack (control screen) in “Video | Tesla Motors Teardown Unveils a Tech Company,” and Musk’s take on the company:
Musk: “We’re a technology company making electric cars. What’s very important is sustainable transport. Autonomous driving is a nice to have but not required; sustainable transport is what’s required.”
5. At the latest earnings conference call, an analyst posed the question on what would happen if a breakthrough battery technology came along and leapfrogged Tesla’s gigafactory strategy?
JB Straubel, CTO, Tesla Motors: “I would be pretty shocked if there were any major improvements that were close enough to commercialization that we haven’t been aware of or found out about. So, a lot of those improvements are rolled into our thinking and there’s great potential there.”
4. Here’s more JB Straubel talking about the gigafactory’s potential output last May:
JB Straubel: “15 GWH/yr will be targeted for stationary energy, to build stationary battery packs. We see the California mandate for stationary energy storage by 2020 and we’re (Tesla) quite a lot more bullish than that. We think that mandate will be met and far exceeded before the timeframe expires. We all should be thinking bigger.”
3. Fight the power…we can’t leave 2014 and not think about all the free market love espoused by so many politicos for this bleeding-edge, American automotive company. So many open arms in Texas, Ohio, Michigan and tubby in New Jersey.
This isn’t a quote, but a leaked in an email before Elon Musk went before the Texas Assembly in April.
Musk: It is crazy that Texas, which prides itself on individual freedom, has the most restrictive laws in the country protecting the big auto dealer groups from competition. If the people of Texas knew how bad this was, they would be up in arms, because they are getting ripped off by the auto dealers as a result (not saying they are all bad – there a few good ones, but many are extremely heinous).
2. The next couple quotes get back to the pure joy of Model S ownership. This is Musk talking about how his service centers will resemble a F1 pit stop crew back in July.
Musk: So instead of having one person per bay, the car gets slowly worked on over several days, it actually comes in and a team attacks it, and we’re constantly improving the tools and the metrics to say, how can we get the car perfect as fast as possible. We actually bring in people from Formula One to help with the training on this. And I think there’s a real opportunity to revolutionize the way service works.”
1. This quote is from the onstage introduction of the P85D at the All About D and “something else” event in October:
Musk: It’s (P85D) like your own personal rollercoaster that you can use at anytime. The target we had for performance (of this car) was to try and meet the acceleration of one of the greatest super cars of all time, the McLaren F1. We’re able to actually achieve a 3.2 second 0 to 60. [Audience: Woooohooo.] Yeah, it’s mad. We’re going to have an option in the options settings…you’re going to have three options: normal, sport and insane. It will actually say insane. It’s true.
Yep, it’s true. This American company is the living embodiment of “true grit” and here’s to more of it in 2015!
“But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. ~HST “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
News
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 faces wrath of the Texas skies
SpaceX pushed Starship Flight 13 to Friday, blaming weather instead of the previous engine issues.
SpaceX called off Thursday’s launch attempt of Starship Flight 13, pushing the mission to Friday because of weather tied to Tropical Storm Bertha. The company confirmed the delay on X, noting “Now targeting Friday, July 24 for Starship’s thirteenth flight test, due to weather. A key objective for the flight test is to get clear imagery from the ground of Starship’s heatshield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during ascent, which won’t be possible with today’s weather conditions.”
This is the second delay for Flight 13 in two weeks. SpaceX first tried to launch the mission on July 16, but the countdown ended in an automated abort at T-0 when four of Super Heavy Booster 20’s 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite. Musk said at the time that two Raptors would need to be removed and replaced, as Teslarati reported. The company spent the following week destacking Ship 40 and Booster 20, swapping engines, and running leak checks before restacking the vehicle on Pad 2 Wednesday night, according to Spaceflight Now’s live coverage.
Unlike the engine problem, Thursday’s delay has nothing to do with the hardware. SpaceX wants clean footage of Starship’s heat shield captured from the ground as the vehicle flies through max dynamic pressure, something the storm’s cloud cover over South Texas would not allow. The company said visibility should improve for Friday’s attempt, with the same 90 minute window opening at 5:45 p.m. CT.
Flight 13 will be the second outing for the V3 versions of Starship and Super Heavy, following their debut on Flight 12 in May. The mission carries 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, the first time SpaceX has flown operational satellites rather than mass simulators on Starship. Six of those satellites are fitted with cameras to inspect the heat shield from a different angle during ascent, giving engineers a second data source beyond the ground imagery the weather is currently blocking.
Booster 20 will attempt a boostback burn and a splashdown landing burn in the Gulf of America, while Ship 40 follows a suborbital trajectory toward a landing in the Indian Ocean. The flight plan largely mirrors Flight 12, though the booster will run a more aggressive ascent burn after max Q this time, and the ship’s heat shield includes load sensing tiles meant to measure stress at the higher dynamic pressure SpaceX is targeting.
If Friday’s attempt succeeds, Flight 13 could be the last suborbital test in the program. SpaceX is already looking to push for an orbital flight on Flight 14.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
Elon Musk clapped back at France’s decision to withhold the approval for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised system, projecting a clear and blunt message to French Transport Minister Phillippe Tabarot, after he publicly rejected the technology in its current form.
Tabarot outlines several concerns with Tesla Full Self-Driving in a detailed video statement, where he said, “The safety trade-offs are not yet sufficient to authorize it as it currently stands,” he said. He emphasized that FSD is not a true self-driving system and that the driver remains fully responsible.
Key issues Tabarot also brought up included allowing speeding when surrounding traffic exceeds limits and what he believes are insufficient guarantees of driver attention during complex urban maneuvers such as lane changes, intersections, and roundabouts.
Delaying the approval of FSD in France will cost lives
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
While acknowledging technological progress and France’s support for autonomous innovation, Tabarot stressed that deployment must prioritize road safety. He noted ongoing technical discussions with Tesla, the Netherlands, and other European partners, with further ecosystem meetings planned for the fall.
Musk’s rebuke highlights the human cost of regulatory caution. Tesla’s latest safety reports provide compelling data supporting accelerated adoption. In the most recent 12-month period, vehicles using FSD (Supervised) recorded one major collision per approximately 5.1 million miles driven, dramatically better than the U.S. national average of one crash per 698,000 miles.
Even Tesla vehicles driven manually with active safety features outperform the average by a wide margin. These figures come from billions of real-world miles of telemetry, showing FSD vehicles involved in far fewer incidents than both manual Teslas and the broader U.S. fleet.
Critics argue Tesla’s comparisons require careful scrutiny regarding reporting thresholds and fleet demographics, yet the data consistently positions FSD as a potential lifesaver. With road fatalities remaining a leading cause of death worldwide, Musk contends that proven safer technology should not face prolonged bureaucratic hurdles.
France’s measured approach reflects the broader European regulatory caution, which many, especially Musk, have been critical of in the past. However, as autonomous systems from Tesla and competitors like Waymo demonstrate superior safety in independent studies, pressure is mounting for harmonized approvals.
Musk’s warning carries the belief that every month of delay may equate to avoidable tragedies on European roads.
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 faces wrath of the Texas skies
Tesla stock tumbles after earnings, one of its sharpest single-day declines
