Elon Musk

“Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.”

“A Prius is not a true hybrid, really. The current Prius is, like, 2 percent electric. It's a gasoline car with slightly better mileage.”

“Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.”

“Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That's pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.”

“When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.”

“You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.”

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

“The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.”

“The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished.”

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

“I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.”

“I'm anti-tax, but I'm pro-carbon tax.”

“The problem with car dealerships is you've already decided what you want to buy before you even go there, and you're really just going there to talk through some annoying negotiation.”

“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.”

“Rockets are cool. There's no getting around that.”

“The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.”

“My opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars.”

“Life is too short for long-term grudges.”

“It's OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”

“The X is an amazing car, but we kind of got carried away with the art and technology. Obviously, you want great art. You want great technology. But we did get a little distracted from our mission, which was to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.”

“I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It's the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.”