Episode 501: Special Guest: Tesla Co-Founder JB Straubel

Tesla co-founder, current board member, and former Chief Technical Officer JB Straubel joins me to discuss Tesla's early days, his interest in batteries, building the first Gigafactory, his battery recycling efforts at Redwood Materials, and more. Enjoy! TIMECODES 10:45 Interview starts 11:33 More of a car guy or engineering guy? 12:14 Origin of his interest in batteries 12:47 Building his first EV…long before Tesla 14:43 Did he always want to go to Stanford for engineering? 15:35 How JB met Elon 17:55 Recalling when he helped build the first Lotus Elise engineering mule for Tesla 18:43 JB still has his original Tesla Roadster 20:30 On the origins of Gigafactory 1, aka Giga Nevada 21:28 What car(s) JB daily drives 24:11 How Tesla acquired the NUMMI plant from Toyota 25:16 What were the challenges of building the Model S versus the Roadster 27:41 How JB felt when the Model S started winning awards, like Motor Trend's Car of the Year 29:07 Did Panasonic get on board with Giga 1 right away? 32:21 How Model 3's "production Hell" was for JB 33:33 When JB felt like Tesla was going to be OK 35:07 When he started thinking about battery recycling 36:41 How JB feels about EV FUD 38:08 Battery recycling actually leads to better quality batteries 39:17 Figuring out what it would take to start Redwood Materials 41:03 It's not just about EV batteries 42:15 Redwood Materials' not-so-secret master plan 43:48 Goals for scaling Redwood Materials 45:04 Expansion plans 46:20 A tidal wave of EV battery recycling is coming 47:24 How much education is needed on the corporate side? 48:42 What about educating the general public about battery recycling? 50:32 What can Tesla/EV owners do to help spread the word about battery recycling? 52:07 Yes, you can send your ready-to-be-recycled batteries to Redwood Materials If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support my efforts, please check out my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/teslapodcast and consider a monthly pledge. Every little bit helps and there are stacking bonuses in it for you at each pledge level, like early access to each episode at the $5 tier and the weekly Lightning Round bonus mini-episode (AND the early access!) at the $10 tier! And NO ADS at every tier! FOR FIRST-TIME TESLA BUYERS: The referral program is back and it's the best one in a while! You can get $2500 off of your Model 3 or $500 off your classic Model Y purchase (or $1000 off of Cybertruck, Model S, or Model X) by ordering through my referral link. Clicking this will take you to the Tesla website where you can order with the discount applied: https://ts.la/ryan73014 And don't forget to leave a message on the Ride the Lightning hotline anytime with a question, comment, or discussion topic for next week's show! The toll-free number to call or Skype is 1-888-989-8752. INTERESTED IN AN EXTENDED WARRANTY FOR YOUR TESLA? Be a part of the future of transportation with XCare, the first extended warranty designed & built exclusively for EV owners, by EV owners. Use the code Lightning to get $100 off our "One-time Payment" option! Go to www.xcelerateauto.com/xcare to find the extended warranty policy that's right for you and your Tesla. P.S. Get 15% off your first order of awesome aftermarket Tesla accessories at AbstractOcean.com by using the code RTLpodcast at checkout. Grab the SnapPlate front license plate bracket for any Tesla at https://everyamp.com/RTL/ (don't forget the coupon code RTL too!).