It’s a week of interviews for Tesla boss, Elon Musk. Earlier this week, he chatted to auto engineer Sandy Munro, and yesterday he spent 3.5 hours in a discussion with Joe Rogan.
This the third time Musk has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience and these interviews are always entertaining as we hear the humorous banter between Musk and Joe.
The latest Episode #1609 starts with a discussion of why Musk told his SpaceX engineers to make StarShip more pointy, referring to the comments made by Sascha Cohen Baron in the movie, The Dictator. After giving some in-depth views, the pair went onto to talk about aliens and interplanetary travel, which makes for interesting listening.
However, moving on to talk more about Tesla, Musk spoke about his dreams for the Roadster, even though they may seem a bit far-fetched for 2021. While he has hoped the future will see a rocket thruster package added to the Roadster to increase its already ludicrous speed, he now wants to see the Roadster hover.
“I want it to hover, and I was trying to figure out how to make this thing hover without, you know, killing people. Maybe it can hover like a meter above the ground, or something like that. If you plummet it’ll blow out the suspension but you’re not gonna die.”
For Elon Musk, that’s not a crazy idea, but it would definitely put the safety regulators into an uncontrollable spin, especially if Musk wants to see this feature in the 2022 release of the second-generation Roadster.
It’s become Musk’s approach to everything – push the boundaries, whether it’s in space or on the road. He has gone to that sphere and beyond of what manufacturers and consumers thought were impossible.
Last month, Tesla’s 2020 Earnings Report revealed the redesigns of the new Model S sedan and Model X SUV that are being delivered to market. The subject about the latest U-shaped yoke steering wheel came up and apparently it was a surprise to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Rogan challenged Musk as to whether the new steering wheel was actually legal to which Musk replied, “Yeah, I mean they use a yoke in Formula One.” As Rogan pointed, Formula One cars don’t quite make it to the city highways.
The talk show host also pointed out that he prefers to rest his hand on top of the steering wheel, and now there is nothing on the new steering mechanism that will allow that. Musk had a solution: “Well, Autopilot is getting good enough that you won’t need to drive most of the time,” Musk said. “I find you can rest your hand on your knee... it works great.”
Click here to listen to the full interview.
In other news, this week Musk’s brother, Kimbal who is also a Tesla board member, sold 30,000 of his Tesla shares for an estimated $25.6 million, according to a filing with the SEC.
Antonio Gracias, who is also another Tesla director, sold 150,000 shares earlier in February.
Kimbal Musk sold his portion at just over $850 per share, while Tesla’s stock closed at around $805 per share this Wednesday. As of last October, Kimbal held 600,000 shares, which made him the fifth largest insider stockholder. This week, his sale accounts for 5% of his shares.
The recent share sales have come after a quite a dramatic run for Tesla stocks with its share price up more than 400% compared to 12 months ago. But this week, Tesla shares saw a 6% drop over the last five trading days, which is being attributed to quality issues with the Made-in-China Tesla vehicles.
