Quotes from Elon Musk

Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars.

Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.

The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far - the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

When people really understand it's do or die [and] if we work hard and pull through, it's going to be a great outcome; people will give it everything they've got.

It's a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work.

Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I've got kids and responsibilities, so I can't be my own test pilot. That wouldn't be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it's a sensible thing to do.

A utility can handle up to 20% of production from solar and that helps the grid because it produces electricity when needed. Solar power peaks in the middle of the day and that's also when air conditioning is running and businesses are operating, so power production matches usage.

I'm a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.

I'm personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I'm not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don't believe in climate change - they think oil will last forever.

Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure - the law firms, the real estate, all that - that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.

I could go and buy one of the islands in theBahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom, but I am much more interested in trying to build andcreate a new company.

Stationary storage will be as big as the car business long term. The growth rate will probably be several times what it is for the car business.

I'm glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That's cool.

Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.

Nobody wants to buy a $60, 000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90, 000 for an electric sports car.

There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.

Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code - with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It's very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.

I care very deeply about the people at Tesla. I feel like I have a great debt to the people of Tesla who are making the company successful.

With DNA, you have to be able to tell which genes are turned on or off. Current DNA sequencing cannot do that. The next generation of DNA sequencing needs to be able to do this. If somebody invents this, then we can start to very precisely identify cures for diseases.

I was born in Africa. I came to California because it's really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don't see a viable competitor.

The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication.