My mind feels like a wild storm. I have a fountain of ideas. I have more ideas than I could possibly execute. Innovation is not the problem. Execution is the problem.183
There is never a shortage of ideas. I find ideas to be somewhat trivial, but the execution of good ideas is extremely difficult. Prototypes are easy; production is hard. Production and being cash flow positive is excruciating pain. Product ideas are nearly irrelevant.184
You only build value in a company if you do hard work to solve tough problems. That’s why companies are valuable. It’s why they should be valuable, and largely why they are.
Tesla is a hardcore technology company. We do serious engineering. We do real manufacturing as well. We do hardcore manufacturing. Coils of aluminum and plastic pellets go into one end of the factory and cars come out the other. We did all the vehicle engineering, all the powertrain engineering, all the software. The evidence for us solving hard engineering problems is that Toyota, Daimler, and Mercedes buy electric powertrains from us. If it was easy, they would do it.185
The idea of going to Mars is not hard; that’s irrelevant.
Getting to Mars is the hard part.