Tesla and Elon Musk - the future of electric cars | DW Documentary

electric car maker tesla got off to a lightning start and quickly pulled ahead of the classic car brands the big automotive companies that exist today are either going to have to change dramatically or die this is the man who did it elon musk a star in the silicon valley firmament hey everyone he celebrated like a pop star his story is one of david against the goliaths of the car industry but what is behind tesla's success women in a tesla if you could look into a tesla factory which isn't that easy you'd find there's an awful lot of german know-how and in silicon valley itself we hear another story losses running into billions chaos in production and stressed out employees your body kind of just gives up doing the exact same thing for 12 hours a night how long will tesla's lead last all the car makers are gearing up tesla's rivals in germany are playing their cards close to their chests how dangerous are they the shock is passed and german companies are closing fast [Music] has switched to tesla he drives one hundred percent electric strikes in this outdoor underwater you get in the car you close the door and it's like you're in another world you don't have any ambient noise anymore you don't hear the engine the car's very very relaxing to drive and it's also good for the environment i used to drive a diesel because i cover a lot of kilometers but you just have to stand behind a car like that and use your nose and then you know that it can't be good tesla's clean image gleams but it costs money more than 70 000 euros for the economy version of the s model with autopilot of course i don't have to worry so much about the little things anymore slowing down keeping my distance accelerating again the car does it all by itself it's more of a driving assistant autopilot would steer the car itself there have been some spectacular accidents and even tesla has issued warnings you've still got to pay attention to the road what it can't do is exit the motorway or things like that kai hermann drives emission free through his hometown of lauf on their pignets he overlooks occasional defects the non-operational autopilot camera the jammed exterior mirror or the internet browser you can see it up here normally this advertising should run through here but it's not working you can find a lot of complaints about tesla's defects on the internet but just as much support as well it call upsets in handy no matter whether it's a mobile phone or a television or something like that you already assume it won't function 100 that some of the smaller things won't work [Music] making mistakes and making improvements that's tesla's principle the latest updates to its software are always available until now the achilles heel of all e-cars has been the frequent need to stop and recharge tesla promises long-range driving the hammond family is packing for a summer holiday that's not enough t-shirts you'll have to take some more as always i've got too much i'll have another look in a minute the hammonds are off to italy four people and a a dog kilometers all electric how are they going to manage that tesla has made the e-car an object of desire but does the battle of tesla's david against the oil companies goliath ring true what goes on at the tesla factory on the edge of silicon valley for a year we've been asking to visit and see the cars in production but we've never had a reply so we're going there anyway our camera on the sidewalk alerts security they say no recordings or interviews and tell us to leave behind the factory tesla workers are camping in the parking lot a remarkable picture by german standards um maybe talk to you we're from german television nobody wants to talk to us here either then we get lucky let's take a bath and blow a bubble or two zachary hodges worked at tesla until he couldn't take the strain anymore how kind he didn't want to put himself and his family's future at risk any longer he is the probably the reason why i decided to leave tesla so um he he was growing his mom got pregnant um right around the time i got hurt at first zachary was totally enthusiastic about the tesla story and eagerly joined in the company video shows the production line in the best light but he remembers the factory differently everything here looks a lot brighter it definitely looks cleaner than i than i remember it actually showed the robot i worked on every single day that's the cleaner part right before that's the dirtiest section that not surprised they weren't showing now the amount of hours that we were that we had to work is essentially 12-hour days every single day um most of the time it was seven days a week or six days a week usually worked on on saturdays sometimes we were i think the the max was like 40 some days straight there's definitely more humans involved than they are showing here [Music] at some point his body could no longer withstand the constant strain repetitive work injuries is probably the most common thing you just your body kind of just gives up doing the exact same thing for 12 hours a night the health and safety authority has also recorded a whole series of accidents at tesla [Music] the robotic arms can't reach everything so you have to manually drill holes in and you know and then pop rivets in and so um the drill bits very sharp they die out in about two cars so probably about a couple of minutes so i was 12 hours a night putting my entire body weight to drill holes into the car it was like 21 holes and you had to pop in um and then actually that didn't actually what i think i was just wiping a car down with a cloth and then my arm gave out and my back gave out for months he was unable to work and even now he still needs physiotherapy how does that fit in with tesla's own glossy story [Music] elon musk mr tesla he stands in the limelight and sells the story of squeaky clean tesla putting the old car industry on notice he knows how to present himself but he still refuses an interview [Applause] hello he has a huge fan base is it justified we tracked down an old friend of his i'm going to send my girlfriend today adio restc heads the founder institute a business incubator for high-tech companies he's known elon since his student days i've known elon musk for 25 years um arguably one of his best friends we actually started a uh a nightclub in our college house at the university of pennsylvania and we use the proceeds from the nightclub to cover our living expenses high tech an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to make a profit all this falls on fertile ground here here we're going to sandhill road sandhill road most of the venture capital inside of america is situated on sandhill road most startups fail but if they succeed it's mainly here in palo alto in silicon valley so you'll see this sort of small quaint little town and it's probably responsible for the vast majority of innovation created around the world today google was started in a building just like that except right up ahead paypal was started and another one of these buildings paypal is the internet's financial giant a startup by young entrepreneurs elon musk was one of the co-founders musk and his colleagues sold it to ebay for a billion and a half dollars tesla was originally also a startup set up by electric car enthusiasts here on the first floor is the cradle of the company elon musk brought millions from the paypal sale and quickly took over the helm from founder martin aberhard [Music] how did musk manage to overtake the old car companies with a startup stuttgart based innovation consultant oliver geiner has a surprising answer tesla was significantly faster than the german car industry in developing a battery car but it still used their help he shows us what's in a tesla [Music] the wheel sensor and brake management systems are made by bosch the entire air suspension comes from continental the steering gears are from set friedrichshafen today known as robot bosch automotive and the door handles were developed with the company bose koboek inside controls come from daimler and the sound system from a young swabian company around 40 suppliers have been involved including german suppliers for rear view and cosmetic mirrors previously daimler generously supported the newcomer with capital and german know-how it turns out tesla's successful model strategy isn't original either interestingly tesla has adopted the classic automobile manufacturer's strategy first of all start with premium technology in the higher vehicle classes and only then gradually transfer it to other vehicle classes in principle tesla has done what the germans have been doing very successfully for a very long time and translated that into electromobility in contrast german car makers had switched their strategy for electric mobility competing with small but expensive e-cars now mercedes and audi have also introduced larger electric off-road vehicles and porsche is directly challenging tesla's successful s model a meeting in an underground car park in barcelona the new electric porsche the ticon is intended to overtake the tesla the team test engineers from stuttgart their mission readiness for series production but as inconspicuously as possible the car's design is top secret inside and out chief engineer robert maya always keeps an eye on the competition secretly all the car makers are feverishly working on electric cars the competition for the future of the e-car is in full swing we don't want to talk a lot about the styling of the vehicle's interior yet so we won't show our competitors our new ideas too early but just a few minutes later the electric porsche's cover is blown the police pull it over while it's still in town other drivers also take photos of the newcomer the tesla challenger is already on the radar but for porsche road testing is a must the electric tycon should work in all situations even in the heat here that test is especially important for the batteries everyone knows that a laptop simply loses run time and capacity after a certain time this is because its batteries more frequently operate in either very high or very low temperature ranges it's the same with the electric car batteries that get too cold or too hot break down faster and have less power and performance is porsche's top priority you can accelerate the vehicle from 0 to 110 times in a row with the value we specify and that will be a very good value you can accelerate from 0 to 200 four times in a row without any loss of power at any point the engineers at porsche are sure they can surpass the tesla and they also want to beat the americans in terms of quality but they aren't there yet we've just had a start-up problem with one of our five vehicles and our colleagues are now resetting it there's an established procedure for this which we must now carry out it'll only take a moment then the car will be ready again car 5's running we're coming good it's working we're leaving the car park and turning right so now the test can continue the fault was actually a stroke of luck for the swabian engineers because they want to find the faults before the customers do [Music] unlike other brands that use a combustion engine body with an electric motor porsche has a new approach with an extra low position for the battery you can see it very clearly when you drive into the curve the low centre of gravity makes the vehicle even more stable and you drive around bends like contracts this combined with the acceleration typical of electric motors could probably leave most gas guzzlers behind but the engineers still have countless curves hundreds of thousands of kilometers and every imaginable test situation ahead of them in less than a year they want to beat tesla in the sales room too even though the porsche is likely to cost around 20 000 euros more back in california a dioresci doesn't believe that the established european car makers will have it so easy against tesla not with his friend elon musk at the top elon musk in particular is very successful because he's a strong engineer probably one of the strongest engineers that have ever lived and in addition to that he's very determined wackiness is the key to success here only if something is completely new almost revolutionary can it leave the established companies in the dust as with paypal and tesla they have also shown this with another project that they started together elon and i started working on space together in approximately 2000 and we we worked on a company called life to mars for one year where we were trying to develop a mission to mars that's how elon musk's other big company spacex came to be it's a private space flight company something that was once almost inconceivable and even less affordable while spacex he took a small fortune and turned it into a large fortune so he inverted the paradigm [Music] spacex now regularly shoots satellites into space the tests are also good advertising for tesla [Music] to cut costs musk recovers the missiles which is new but his vision goes much further we need to be a multi-planetary species it is our manifest destiny at this point to have a sustainable ongoing colony or civilization off planet and then if you look at the planets in our solar solar system there is literally one that makes sense and that's mars [Music] but musk has great plans on earth too the hyperloop is a high-speed traffic network of tubes based on the same principle as the pneumatic tube in this case the pods will be self-powered musk has already had students from all over the world working on them most from germany there is a lot of activity here at munich technical university's prototype workshop dozens of students are competing against 20 top universities from all over the world the team that comes up with a hyperloop the fastest wins how much we're learning here it's indescribable incomparable totally unlike a semester in a lecture hall the munich students have already won one of elon musk's competitions twice but he wants to up the pace and calls on them to compete again and again yes i think he's very smart he did very well with the hyperloop because he didn't have enough time in the beginning so he had the idea to get different students and people working on it without pay um they're packing for the contest in california the competition of the top universities has begun the students from munich are working under high pressure making the final preparations on their module in the testing tube musk gives a speech that fires them all up and we're seeing student teams come from here and and create companies and i think that that's really what we want to try and encourage is like try different ideas create new organizations uh try to make the future a really interesting place the race itself will barely last 10 seconds but will give a verdict on months of hard work they follow the journey in the tube through a camera in the capsule [Music] [Applause] 467 kilometers per hour a new record munich has won [Applause] german know-how for elon musk and a handshake from the billionaire as a thank you we was there with the children and watched with us cheered with us that was actually quite spontaneous the budding engineers admire the idiosyncratic company boss and imitate his way of working our deadlines are very difficult to meet and we rarely do meet them we tend to finish later but this way of working forces virtually everyone to work at full tilt always doing as much as possible this is a good example in the week before shipping the two electronics guys who programmed the whole control system slept eight hours in five days i'm in friendship barely achievable goals and constant pressure is that the musk system [Applause] i'm stretched the entire thing out zachary hodges has experienced the permanent stress in the tesla factory he got sick and feels abandoned yeah they're blaming us for getting hurt knowing that they basically work us until we're almost dead every single day and then blame it on us it was a victimization that i just it didn't sit right with me um it was it was kind of a terrible feeling to feel that way he's unwilling to believe the glowing tesla story anymore even though tesla says it took note of the situation and changed the workflow you know when you first get in there they treat you you get all i'm all excited that you're part of something and then you see how expendable you are as the factory worker when you get hurt zachary's left tesla and he's not the only one [Music] in a small village in the oligoi region of southern bavaria we meet a man who dedicated himself to elon musk body and soul philip schroeder was the manager of tesla in germany if the phone rang and you know it was his number you sometimes got a bit nervous above all the allotted times were always very very short and there was always a lot of pressure says the manager who's a self-confessed workaholic he commutes between locations worldwide and manages an eco power company without a fixed desk well why not if you ask my fiance she'll say i'm always working as long as my head's still attached and i'm not sleeping the issue is always how you define it i say that in a busy week with a lot of traveling i worked 90 hours but otherwise i'm between 70 and 80. [Music] at tesla he worked hard and learned a lot especially how important a good story is not just the product the vision to say i'm attacking the automotive industry where it's very hard to gain a foothold to improve the world and to prove that it works with all my capital i could still go bankrupt i believe it really awakens remarkable sympathy among customers when someone really thinks ahead takes risks and then goes their own way schroeder also drives a tesla as a company car in his new company the secret of tesla's success in germany is quite clear to him the tesla fast charging stations on the edge of the motorways called supercharger which he helped to set up all over the country without the superchargers we wouldn't have sold a single car in germany this is because germany is a nation of automobiles and people like to drive long distances very quickly and the high speeds on the motorway mean consumption is higher that's how he beat the german car makers all set for the holidays the hammonds are off to italy when they bought their tesla the supercharger network convinced them one 000 kilometers under purely electric power with a camera on the roof they have the smaller battery which has a range of about 400 kilometers so they actually only have to recharge twice but the hammonds want to recharge in five shorter stops as tesla recommends that's about half an hour of forced break each time including at the brenner pass tanya heman isn't bothered you get used to it really quickly even the brakes you sit and you aren't getting any younger so it's quite good if you can stretch your legs every now and then i actually think it's good in particular the hammonds want to drive clean thanks to hydropower they are still a rarity here in the mountains because an e-mobile is only as clean as the electricity it's charging with disaster we made the mistake of driving on a saturday and that of course is the day when everybody's traveling we left at three o'clock in the morning and thought we might have the worst behind us but it was a disaster stop and go just stop and go the vehicle's long range calms their nerves but the bigger the battery the worse it is for the environment a battery consumes a lot of electricity and reduces the climate advantage so it could still take a long time until the electric car overtakes the combustion engine in any environmental comparison [Music] it's obvious that something like this makes headlines especially with tesla another production problem [Music] an electric car battery today has materials that are mined in countries that sometimes have questionable environmental standards and occupational safety batteries contain cobalt which mainly comes from the congo and we mustn't forget that first these countries are also tightening their standards due to pressure from the car industry and second these materials are being used less and less tesla assumes that today's batteries use only a third of the cobalt used in the batteries it originally developed the hammonds are hoping for further improvements in environmental protection they see their exhaust exhaust-free electric car as a step towards clean driving and want to be part of it even though with traffic jams and refueling stops it took them 17 hours to cover the 1000 kilometers and they ended up pretty frazzled [Laughter] we were exhausted but we were given a great welcome with dinner on the terrace it was a bit cool that day but it was very nice to be received by the family there after the stopover they drive their tesla sports car to the riviera that was quite an adventure we weren't even aware of it in advance this house was sort of in the prairie 20 to 25 minutes down a switchback it was extremely narrow in places and partly unsealed but somehow we got to the house the tesla immediately grounded in the driveway and my husband had to move some rocks out of the way it sits low for sure electricity filling stations or even fast charging stations are thin on the ground here but what else are the sockets in the house for you can't plug it in at the same time as the dishwasher for example for example when the dishwasher starts up it could blow the fuse so being in italy is still quite an adventure but nothing was going on overnight anyway so we plugged it in in the evening and unplugged it the next morning and then we had enough no time pressure it isn't a problem in the end they have a relaxed holiday with their e-car whereas at tesla summer 2018 is anything but relaxed the new small model 3 is supposed to conquer the mass market hundreds of thousands of customers have pre-ordered it but production is running much slower than planned and there are new problems in the factory all the time elon musk puts on a brave face and turns the first delivery into his own show over the next six to nine months he jokes about the production problems the um i mean and frankly we're going to be in production hell welcome welcome welcome to production hell laughter from the fans but zachary hodges actually went through tesla's production hell he describes one incident remember one time we looked up and we're like that car's not supposed to be doing that and the robots got confused and that was all the times we had to ship the parts from germany were out for quite a while because the two arms collided themselves in and smashed the two body parts together and ripped off one of the arms so that was a crazy thing luckily no one got hurt that's exactly what tesla's been having so much trouble with over the past few months programming that level of automation which assumes that hundreds of robots have to interact with each other is no trivial matter the solution to many of these problems will apparently come from gromann a global market leader in automation tesla also relies on made in germany in car and battery production women if you could look into a tesla factory which isn't that easy you'd find there's an awful lot of german know-how involved on the one hand tesla's recruited real specialists partly from established car manufacturers and the other hand tesla's taking a very close look at which suppliers from germany they can use the americans bought up grommand straight away after the takeover the workforce in the region protested that wages were too low with the help of the ige mattel union they have got largely what they wanted unlike in the united states during a meeting where elon was there one person had the courage to say yeah we're all doing great are we going to get a union soon and elon calmly said you know that's something that we definitely want to get later you know we still got to build right now is right now is not the time broke it down money wise what would make sense you know he was very persuasive on that the person who asked that question we never saw again i'm not saying you know he was immediately fired or it was because of that but it was something that we were we felt from the people above us let's not talk about without trade unions musk can put more pressure on the workers in the factory in the usa we're gonna do everything we possibly can to get you the car as soon as possible uh so we're gonna work day and night to to do right by by the loyalty that you've shown us in summer 2018 elon musk is hit with a perfect storm not only his customers but also his shareholders are breathing down his neck he says he takes sleeping pills appears in a video podcast smoking a joint and fires off irritating messages threatening on twitter to sell tesla the stock is on a roller coaster ride and the stock exchange supervisory authority has to intervene but by the fall tesla returns some surprisingly positive figures the company has been making losses for years and no company can survive only making losses the point comes when a company also makes a profit there have been enough times in recent years when tesla seemed to be on the verge of bankruptcy and would have to be sold off it's remarkable but that wasn't the case elon musk himself made fun of the fact that the company was on the verge of bankruptcy personally i assume that this is what they have in mind for the future simply because the technology is now there the customer base is there the vehicles are now available in the mass market that means the company will also have the opportunity to make profits in the coming years something that is sorely needed back in stuttgart we can see that tesla is running out of time this is the new factory for the electric porsche tycon for project manager stefan vekbach setting up production is just as important as the development of the electric cars they can develop the most beautiful thing in the world but if they can't really produce at the necessary level of quality it doesn't make sense with a hundred years of experience in car manufacturing behind them the traditional brands are now aiming to catch up and play to their advantages not just in automation we have a team with decades of experience in sports car construction and we will transfer this experience this quality to the taikon the pre-series production of the electric porsche is so far top secret the project manager and his chief engineer meet here regularly they also want to beat tesla in production not just on the road they have solved many problems in the thai con by now but chief engineer robert meyer won't rest in the last phase before the pure start of serious production we are to a large extent dealing with software optimization the systems today are very strongly networked so it's really important that we can analyze and optimize diagnostic or error memory issues we managed to do that even from spain but tesla still has a head start its network of fast chargers it took a long time for the german car industry to react in the future the new consortium ionity is supposed to make recharging as fast and convenient as with the tesla the germans may be late but now they're faster this vehicle is going to be the first to travel on 800 volts that will cut the charging time almost in half i think it's the big game changer the thai cam will be the first to use a charging capacity of almost 300 kilowatts faster charging faster driving faster construction is this the key to success but perhaps the dual between the german car manufacturers and tesla won't really be decisive at all a player of the next generation is already appearing on the car horizon byton the abbreviation for bytes on wheels we take an exclusive look into the workshop of the future there's a lot of german know-how here too came from bmw yeah fantastic what's the difference to bmw in silicon valley where you have to tackle issues right away and get things going then work out the next steps sometimes spontaneous ideas like fixing my cameras or trying out algorithms are the most important things to do many in the bite and management team come from german car companies the bosses with the biggest capital come from china here in silicon valley they can take advantage of young talent and the high pace of development the really hot topics end up here on the table where three or four of us make the decisions not a big committee or senior executives we simply bring together people who can contribute so the decisions are made here even sensitive topics they're completely rethinking the electric car what are you doing right now at the moment we're looking at the instrumentalization the different camera views that the vehicle makes available to the driver it's about autonomous driving with lots of entertainment so the front seats here can soon be turned to face backwards as well one important concept that we're tackling at biden is the lounge theme i like to call this the moving living room it's not just about driving dynamics it's about developing a good sense of space i don't drive a sports car i actually drive a vehicle that allows me to feel comfortable it's about perception this whole issue of user experience and i think what's clearly changing even with traditional vehicles is that driving alone is no longer the only point goron was previously with tesla for him biden is one step further in technology and in dealing with employees i felt it was top-down management although of course that could also have to do with the situation in many places and i don't think that's something i miss the chinese donors want to develop the car as a mobile living room or an improved electronic games room they come from the consumer electronics industry and want to move a lot of units made in china tesla is no longer a hunter here but the hunted elon musk's friend admits tesla is an old company right now the the difference that the diff a lot of its stuff is a little bit antiquated but they are keeping abreast with trends tesla is not the only solution for the hammond family either tanya herman is looking for an electric replacement for her vw golf station wagon but the tesla model s is too big and too expensive for the city and the new smaller model 3 does not convince the couple either [Music] so far no decision about a new car has been made because the optimum that i envisage is not yet on the market [Music] they prefer to wait because new tempting offers are emerging it says the price including battery is between 16 and 20 000 euros this is the sort of deal people will go for whether new or established car brands the e-mobile is becoming cheaper better and more versatile worldwide the times when tesla could just pull ahead of traditional car brands are over we have a very exciting race and i'm curious how this neck and neck race will be judged in four or five years i'm confident that by then the germans would be quite far ahead simply in the end elon musk's tesla will soon be just one of many [Music] you

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 337,504

Rating: 3.1869419 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, Elon Musk, Tesla, electric, tesla elon musk, elon musk tesla, electric car, tesla motors, driver, musk, elon, car industry, model, transport, tesla model 3, model 3, elon musk interview, electric car 2019, electric cars 2019, electric car build, electric car acceleration, electric vehicle, electric cars, electric vehicles, best electric cars, Porsche, China, DW, DW Documentary

Id: RTZdzFCmIgs

Length: 42min 26sec (2546 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 10 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/loozerr]

I doubt a documentary which dares to criticize Tesla will do well on Reddit.