The Man Behind the Tesla Drone Shots: Joe Tegetmeyer Interview

Kind: captions Language: en Hey, so I'm out of here with Joe Tegtmeyer, drone pilot extraordinaire. I can't believe we have a great chance to talk to you. We love the work that you do. >> Thank you. >> You're probably more familiar with this facility than anybody else around here. Probably some of even the groundskeepers. >> Yeah, yeah. I I hear a lot that uh people that work at Tesla and Giga Texas learn more about what's going on for me than they do from the town. >> [laughter] >> It's It's absolutely amazing. So, tell tell us about uh what's been going on lately. What What have you been >> What has been going on lately? Wow. Well, there's just so much. I mean, it's actually amazing if you think across uh Tesla and SpaceX and everything, there's just so much going on. And a lot of the stuff that you hear is actually happening right here at Giga Texas. So, not only do you have the factory where we make uh Cybertrucks, Model Ys, and the cybercabs. Uh they also have Cortex 1 where they use for the training for the full self-driving. But, they're expanding way beyond that now. Uh we have the east support facilities uh kind of right behind you. That's where we have the east warehouse and wheels, which is where they bring in all the production uh parts, but they leave them in the trailers. They don't use the space inside the factory until they need it. So, it's almost like a just-in-time, but the stuff is here on site. So, it's a much more efficient way of doing things. And then right behind that, uh there's a whole bunch of uh cranes that are up working right now, and they're building something called the advanced technology chip fab. It's a joint venture between SpaceX and uh Tesla, and it's sort of the research and development and iterative uh process of building the next generation of chips and memories that's going to be used in future products like Optimus. It'll probably be used in the Starlink satellite uh uh uh system that they're going to be putting up in orbit, and uh a lot more. And then when they're done with the designs here, it'll be ported to another completely brand new facility about 200 mi from here up by College Station Uh and that's called Terafab and that's where they're going to have all of the production equipment to be able to make the the chips down to like the nanometer like two or less nanometer size. So the facility they're building here and the new one up at Grimes County will be joined together to meet that demand for chips in the future. Another big thing is up over here is the central support campus. That's where you have cortex two, which is Optimus University. So that's where they train the brain of Optimus and all that data center for that. That's mostly completed. They're still doing a little bit of construction, but that's almost fully online now. You have the die shop and the battery cathode plant where they take the lithium from the lithium plant down near Corpus Christi and then they make the cathode materials, which are then brought to the factory and made the 4680s. And then north of that is the north campus where they're building the the new 7 million square foot Optimus Factory where they're going to be building at least the ramp rate is to try to target 10 million robots a year once that comes online and that'll probably be towards the end of '27 before they start coming online and then probably '28 when it's really ready to go. >> Speaking of Optimus, we've heard a lot of rumors online that the Optimus facility that you're speaking of is a little bit ahead of schedule. >> Is it ahead of schedule? >> Yeah, we've heard that that they started breaking ground and they started building it before some people were aware of it. It all of a sudden >> Oh, yeah. Well, if you watched my channel, you would have known months before they built that it was coming cuz I was showing all that, but but yeah, I think it surprises people just how fast they are with construction here or at least in all of the the projects that are going on with Tesla, SpaceX and so forth is as soon as they say they're going to do it, they just get right on it. So if the land is cleared, the grade is done, they start putting in the footings, the foundations and the building start going up. And so they just don't waste time. This facility here is moving along quite quickly, but uh what I would mind remind everybody is it's one thing to build the structure, and it's another to put all of the stuff in it, the production equipment, uh get the lines, make sure they're tested, uh make sure everything's validated before they can actually produce something. So, there is still a long lead time, but one of the things you can do to mitigate that is just to construct it as quickly as possible. And they kind of use the the page of the out of the book that they did with the in Texas. They do something called uh agile project management, or in this case agile construction, and they do minimum essential capability. So, they'll build the minimum they need for what they for they're doing right now, and the rest of it might be empty, but they know that they're going to fill it later on. So, it's better to have the building and then fill it than wait for the building to be built. So, they really try to accelerate things that way. >> Wow, you know what? A lot of people probably have never heard of agile development. I'm you went right past that, but that's a pretty significant thing in software development and things of that nature. And for your information, it's roots Right. And so, to bring that into the manufacturing world is actually pretty nice. >> Well, it's not only just manufacturing, it's also on construction. So, they're doing both at the same time. They're constructing, and they're making the production lines at the same time. So, it's So, either one of them would be massive projects by themselves. Now, you put both on the on on the top of each other. So, now you have to worry about, you know, can you produce something while you're building a wall? Or do you need that wall before you start producing? So, they're working through that all of the time. And then on top of that, you still have the uh equipment. of the tooling, the dies, the machinery that they use is built in house, and they have uh Tesla automation over in Germany that makes a lot of that stuff. So, it's not like they can go to a catalog and just order it. They have to build it, too. So, they need to know the product, they need to know the space, and they need to have the equipment to all come together to be able to do what they do. It's just a phenomenal process that they have. >> It is. That That That's amazing. Okay, switching gears real quick. >> Okay. >> Because we talk about the drones that you fly, we talk about all the things that you cover, which is voluminous. We know we can't possibly talk about all the stuff that you cover. A lot of people don't know about you personally. >> Oh, me. Okay. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. We we've talked a little bit. We have some common background. Tell us about your personal background. >> All right. Well, me in a nutshell is growing up I was always into technology and space. I wanted to be an astronaut. So, I kind of focused on doing that. So, everything I did as a teenager and going to college and going to the Air Force to be a pilot was all designed to become an astronaut. I got my undergraduate and my graduate degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. I was a pilot in the Air Force and that was my my primary goal. Just timing and and you know, I'll get on myself a little bit. We had a great space program going for a long time that we kind of lost our way for a period of time. Now, we're finding that again and things like SpaceX, Blue Origin, all these commercial companies and what Jared Isaacman is doing with NASA is really allowing us to maybe realize all of those things that we talked about when I was young enough to do this. But I was just sort of in the wrong time for for what I wanted to do. So, I ended up just doing an Air Force career. And after that I worked at USAA for a while, then I took care of my mom, then I made a Joe's Last Chance Garage restoring and building Porsches and other cars. And And then I really wanted to get back into more technology stuff, learn about self-driving with Tesla and what they were doing. And of course, the factories. Thought, well, I could do this. And then it's opened up the world to now I'm doing a lot of SpaceX stuff, Tesla stuff, and everything in between. >> Right. And you mentioned the launches and things of that nature. Did we not just pass a milestone with SpaceX AI in the number of launches that they've had is catching up to everybody else. I mean, combined. >> Yeah. Well, there's a lot in that what you just asked. Uh the the first part of it is that SpaceX by driving down the cost of launch, especially with the Falcon 9 program, they have launched more mass to orbit and more satellites than anybody combined in the history of spaceflight. So, they really revolutionized that. And the way they did that, essentially, they solved the launch problem that everybody's had. And that is you build a launch system, but now you're searching for people that have payload, and you're hoping there's enough payload to justify the cost. Well, SpaceX turned that upside down. They said, "We're going to build Starlinks. That's the payload, and it's going to drive that revenue." So, they started using Starlinks and the launches to pay for themselves, and it turned out really great. They're doing that now with orbital AI data centers. Same thing, using Starship as the launch vehicle, the Starmines, the Starlinks, all that that goes on the Starship, that will drive the launch, which allows them to bring the cadence down, and then that will generate the revenue so that they can not only afford that, but also their future. So, I think that model is something that they've shown, and it works, and other people are now starting to realize that they need to adopt that. And one big part of that whole thing is reuse. So, you don't build an airplane and throw it away every time you go over the ocean, and now you got to buy a brand new one. You reuse it. And the same thing with launch vehicles. If you can do that, you drive the cost down, and it opens up the opportunities a lot more for everybody. >> So, China has started doing this. >> They have. >> Do you think they are going to catch up to SpaceX that quickly or do they have anything to worry about? Cuz you know they always try to do things cheaper. >> Yeah. I would think of it more of this way is we in the United States had these capabilities, and we let it kind of languish for a while. And then companies like SpaceX and other ones are coming online and showing us we can do all this. China, on the other hand, kind of took the slower role. They watched what was going on with the United States. They've looked at what some of the companies are doing and you know, for better or for worse, they're looking at what works and what doesn't. They're adopting their programs to use that and then they're building their capability and it is pretty substantial. I think they're farther along than most people think. But I don't know if if catching up to SpaceX is the right word. The question is is will their development be progressing at the right pace for them to hit their milestones and then what are their milestones? I think them going back to the moon for example, they'll probably go to the South Pole which is different than Apollo, but they're essentially doing an Apollo type mission. Whereas what SpaceX and NASA and all the other companies doing right now is we're going there to build an infrastructure, a base and stay. Very different scale. So, we'll see which approach works and how it all comes out in the the future. But I don't think you should just think of China as all they do is copy and they don't have great stuff. They're doing some amazing stuff and don't underestimate them. >> Right. I I think that's pretty much a general sentiment. I I agree. Well, thank you so much, Joe. I really appreciate everything. >> I appreciate letting me talk. I can I can talk a lot of different subjects and I hope it's I didn't talk too much. >> No, that that was great. I I absolutely love it. We love having you on. We'll We'll have to do this again sometime and we'll have to get you on the show. We'll We'll put you on there. We'd love to do it. >> Okay. Well, hopefully next time we'll do it down at Starbase for a launch or something. >> That sounds like a plan. >> All right. Cool. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it.