--- title: 'My Career is Mars and Cars.' TIME's 2021 Person of the Year Elon Musk in Conversation With Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal | TIME description: For Elon Musk, Monday evening was a family affair. Waving to his mother Maye Musk in the audience, and balancing his toddler X Æ A-Xii (pronounced “X”) on his knee, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO sat down for a Q&A with TIME Editor in Chief Edward Felsenthal. Musk had just been named TIME 2021 Person of the Year, and gathered with TIME editors and members of the TIME 100 community in New York City to discuss his selection. canonical: https://time.com/video/5IWSHt29/ og:title: 'My Career is Mars and Cars.' TIME's 2021 Person of the Year Elon Musk in Conversation With Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal og:description: For Elon Musk, Monday evening was a family affair. Waving to his mother Maye Musk in the audience, and balancing his toddler X Æ A-Xii (pronounced “X”) on his knee, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO sat down for a Q&A with TIME Editor in Chief Edward Felsenthal. Musk had just been named TIME 2021 Person of the Year, and gathered with TIME editors and members of the TIME 100 community in New York City to discuss his selection. og:url: https://time.com/video/5IWSHt29/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/5IWSHt29/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'My Career is Mars and Cars.' TIME's 2021 Person of the Year Elon Musk in Conversation With Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal twitter:description: For Elon Musk, Monday evening was a family affair. Waving to his mother Maye Musk in the audience, and balancing his toddler X Æ A-Xii (pronounced “X”) on his knee, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO sat down for a Q&A with TIME Editor in Chief Edward Felsenthal. Musk had just been named TIME 2021 Person of the Year, and gathered with TIME editors and members of the TIME 100 community in New York City to discuss his selection. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/5IWSHt29/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 'My Career is Mars and Cars.' TIME's 2021 Person of the Year Elon Musk in Conversation With Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 'My Career is Mars and Cars.' TIME's 2021 Person of the Year Elon Musk in Conversation With Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal [Watch (HLS stream): 'My Career is Mars and Cars.' TIME's 2021 Person of the Year Elon Musk in Conversation With Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/5IWSHt29.m3u8) (4:05)  _Published 2021-12-14. For Elon Musk, Monday evening was a family affair. Waving to his mother Maye Musk in the audience, and balancing his toddler X Æ A-Xii (pronounced “X”) on his knee, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO sat down for a Q&A with TIME Editor in Chief Edward Felsenthal. Musk had just been named TIME 2021 Person of the Year, and gathered with TIME editors and members of the TIME 100 community in New York City to discuss his selection._ --- Jun 4, 2024 2:20 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [TIME Editor in Chief Edward Edward Felsenthal Introduces TIME 100 Talks](/video/fF6WJxkW/) ### TIME Editor in Chief Edward Edward Felsenthal Introduces TIME 100 Talks [Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal Opens The First TIME 100 Health Summit](/video/cHSDCvbH/) ### Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal Opens The First TIME 100 Health Summit [Edward Felsenthal on the Future of TIME and the Power of the TIME 100](/video/WbMlnz6l/) ### Edward Felsenthal on the Future of TIME and the Power of the TIME 100 --- ## Transcript What's more important Rockets are cars? Actually, that's a good first question. Well, I guess I guess it was important. I just might my career is a Mars in cars, so. Yeah, I think we need to transition to sustainable energy and become a spacefaring civilization. Starting with space. Why haven't you gone? You know, besos went up, Branson went off. Do you want to go off? Is that on your to-do list in 22? Or how do you think about that yourself? I will go up at some point, but the I mean that there is an online class B that by which I aspire to guide my actions and that is to take a set of actions that maximizes, probably a future is good and hopefully not pay the the road to hell with good intentions. So, The SpaceX is the pointy Stakes is spacex's to help make Humanity's bayspring civilization and ultimately a multi-planet species. So as to expand the scope and scale Consciousness and ultimately better, understand what questions to ask about the answer, which is the universe. Switching to risk in the context of Tesla and autopilot Auto driving. I mean one of our competitors had a big piece on that this weekend, but it's not all the way thought through and it's written in a back to risk. How do you think about? Obviously that's not zero risk, either your Paving away in that area or country is important because people spend hours and hours a week early and I'm stuck in traffic in and then there's people that died in order accidents at worldwide. There's about a million Automotive deaths per year. So the vast majority of which are due to driver error. So and so if we can have more time to me that that would eventually sold, you know, save on the order of A Million Lives per year and there's about 10 million serious accidents where there's a permanent injury per year. So it's one of those things where you're not going to get rewarded for this really for the for the life that you save, but you will definitely be playing for the last that you don't save. So and I mean it was something. Somebody said that he said that, you know, even if you Say goodnight to the lives with him so that you don't say we're going to see you. The people are worried about democracy, the future of democracy, the state of democracy, part of, that's tied to Silicon Valley. Are you at? My question is, are you worried about democracy are asking me things, you know, if you used to complain, but I mean, talk, the matter is, this is the most prosperous time in human history. So expectations are just too because I like it. How we're good things. Get people's, expectations will always How to recalibrate to how things are but, you know, if you would you rather be and, and by the way, have you actually read? History? Is why some bread? So I think we know where should be. I think, probably happier with the way things are then then maybe it's a nice people are ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"'My Career is Mars and Cars.' 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