Today Elon Musk laid out his views on electricity-generating solar roofs, the Tesla-SolarCity merger, SpaceX’s return to flight and artificial intelligence during an extraordinary 30-minute telephone interview on CNBC.
His timeliest comments may relate to next week’s presidential election: Musk gave a lukewarm endorsement to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I would say it’s not going to make much of a difference one way or the other, honestly,” he said. “I think Hillary’s economic policies and her environmental policies particularly are the right ones, you know? Yeah. Also, I don’t think this is the finest moment of our democracy in general. But so it goes.”
So what about GOP candidate Donald Trump? “I feel a bit stronger that probably he’s not the right guy,” Musk said. “He just doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.”
Musk – who’s the billionaire CEO of the SpaceX rocket venture and the Tesla electric-car concern as well as chairman of SolarCity, a producer of solar panels – touched on a wide range of topics, with occasional commentary from one of Tesla’s biggest investors, billionaire Ron Baron.
