Hi, my name is Franz von Holzhausen. I had a
design for Tesla. I've been doing this for about
15 years now.
I got into designing cars, actually through my
dad. My dad is a designer. I heard about
this great school in Los Angeles called Art Center
and started my career with Volkswagen and Audi
and then have been through various companies
through the years. And till I got the phone call
from Elon one day, I was working at Mazda at the
time and had been there for about three and a
half years. You know, we were doing really
exciting stuff and but I also felt like Mazda
wasn't really focused on sustainability.
And I had been reading about this little car
company that was using batteries and putting
them in cars. And I think I read it in
Popular Science or something in article, and
I was really intrigued.
And then through a friend got connected to
Elon and we had a really great conversation.
I went up to meet him at Space X and was just
really impressed with what he was pulling
together at that time.
This is mid 2008 and so both Tesla and SpaceX
were in their infancy and just really getting
started. But I just felt like, here's a company
and a guy incredibly focused on
sustainability, trying to do something that no
other car company was doing and be 100%
electric. And, you know, we connected and I don't
know the rest is kind of the history that's around
us.
What is it like to have Elon Musk as a boss?
He was a great boss. I mean, he's always pushing
the boundaries, always pushing the limits and
always keeps us trying to be as radical as
possible, never accepting the status quo,
always trying to take one extra step to make
sure something is perfect. He cares a ton
about what the customer perception is.
How does the customer relate to the product?
What's the experience they're going to have?
And he cares deeply about that.
And so we are constantly worried about that as
well and constantly focus on that.
So I mean, he's just like I said, he's just
always pushing us and exacting getting the the
best out of everybody on the team.
Are there any moments when the two of you
disagreed on a design element?
Any stories that come to mind?
Yeah, I mean, we've agreed to disagree and
but ultimately, he's the boss.
Talk about the Cybertruck design.
How did this design come to be?
The Cybertruck is one of these rare moments where,
in a way, form followed function.
A lot of times we put the form in front of the
function. Especially in the automotive world.
And it's really tough to mix the two.
But Cybertruck is really born out of the idea of a
different way of manufacturing, a material
that put the toughness on the outside.
So we really wanted to use stainless steel as a
material so that the hardest part of the
vehicle was on the outside, not the delicate
paint. And it felt right for a truck that's used
in like a Swiss army knife in any kind of
environment has to be tough.
So stainless steel is really tough to form,
especially when you make it bulletproof or thicker
to withstand impacts and not be damaged.
And so we really looked at new ways of
manufacturing. You could only break form and form
it in one direction.
You can't do compound curves or things with the
thickness of the stainless steel that
we're using. So it really led us to a design
that was really planar, really simplistic, and it
was also a chance to break the paradigm of
what pickup trucks have been for the past 60 or
70 years. The same there's kind of this
three box shape, and we just thought from an
aerodynamic perspective, having a covered back a
sloping roof would also be helpful.
And oddly enough, it may not look it, but the
CYBERTRUCK is an incredibly aerodynamic
vehicle.
I'm curious if you have a favorite design, favorite
feature, something that you're most proud of.
Favorite one is the one that's coming.
I think that it can't talk about.
I'm really excited about Cybertruck.
I think this vehicle has the chance to be
something really radical in a pretty normal space,
So I'm looking forward to that shakeup and
seeing them out on the street and it's
incredibly functional. It's not just the way it
looks, it's as functional as any of its
competitors, if not more.
And so I think people use it in ways that we
can't even expect, and it'll be great to see how
that how that plays out.
Oh, my fucking God.
The window smashing was definitely not a thing
that we expected to happen.
I had been in the back prior to getting on
stage, you know, throwing this ball out
the window multiple times. It didn't break.
And we have you know, we showed video proof of
that. But that moment was a little bit of a
heart drop. But at the end of the day, it
actually ended up being something really special.
And I think after the fact, when I was talking
with people in the audience, they're like,
that was supposed to happen, right?
Well, at least the ball didn't go through the
window and kill anybody or anything.
So it became a meme very quickly, and I think it
really helped Cybertruck take on a whole cultish
beating of its own, I guess.
How different will the production cybertruck be
from this vehicle behind you?
And also what's taking so long to get it off the
production line?
There's a lot of new things in Cybertruck when
we're reinventing a product, sometimes we
have to go through these processes just to to
prove it out. We had this idea that using
making an exoskeleton vehicle could work.
And so we've been using that time to make sure
that that actually is working. And the
Cybertruck will look, for all intents and
purposes, just like the one behind us, maybe
slightly smaller, a few percentages.
But in general, this is what the truck will look
like. There was a moment where I thought when I
first joined Tesla that it would be great to see
multiple Teslas in one drive experience around
town. And now, you know, it's hard to go anywhere
without seeing a bunch of Teslas.
So it's great to see the impact that Tesla has had
in people's lives, but also how it's changed the
industry and really push this idea that an EV can
be better than an internal combustion
vehicle. And Cybertruck will continue that that
story.
Some people hate the Cybertruck design, the
other people love it. How does that make you
feel? Was that sort of the idea behind it?
It wasn't the idea behind it.
I think it was just about making.
Again, the the form follows the function and
creating something that's different and
taking a chance and being bold, but still
being safe and functional and hitting
all the attributes for what a pickup truck
should be. And there's no reason why you can't
change the recipe.
There are a lot of unique features on Teslas, like
the door handles, for example.
Why does Tesla decide to push the boundaries on
small features like that?
Some of these small features, like the door
handles, are just really great.
First touch points.
The handle is the thing that greets you when you
approach the car. And so to have the handle come
out magically as you approach it and give you
your first kind of handshake really gave a
slight anthropomorphic feel to the car, just
humanized it a little bit, allows you to not
just be stepping into a really cold machine.
It was a warming gesture and it's also very
aerodynamic to not have door handles hanging out
in the wind on the side of the car.
So we combined those kinds of things.
Tesla isn't beholden to what's been done in the
past, and we're always trying to push the
boundaries and deliver on a promise of something
fun, something enjoyable, and something
that you would love to own and tell your friends
about.
I was curious about the semi.
Was that the first time you've worked on a semi
truck before?
Actually, it was, and we got really involved in
what it means to be a driver user, how the
routes work, how trucks are used and but not
knowing that didn't stop us.
And in fact it was quite liberating to approach it
from a really clean sheet.
And by having a completely different
package than what exists currently, we allowed to
come up with a completely different end
result and one that's way better for the driver
or the user of the product.
There's much more interior cabin space.
There's a much better view.
We put our safety systems into it,
including autopilot.
There's no fumes, there's no vibrations,
just a better overall working space for the
driver.
Where do you get your inspiration?
My inspiration comes from anywhere.
I've been like looking out the the window of a
plane or I used to be a cyclist and just getting
out on the road and clearing my head kind of
allows for ideas to come, like running around
with my kids. Inspiration really comes
from anywhere and I can't really pinpoint it
or or expect to be able to be inspired at a
specific time or moment.
It just have to be aware and open eyed and open
ear and absorb.
Was there a car when you were a little boy that
you loved something that inspired you?
A favorite car?
I think my favorite car, my all time favorite car
is a 62 to 50 GTO.
I mean, it's quintessential it's an
insane car.
But I'm also a big fan of this kind of wedge
era. So the early contortions and that
whole that whole kind of flat, low sports cars, I
was always a those were always posters on my
wall. I'm driving a model S plaid right now,
and it's it's an incredible car.
It's arguably the best car we've built is the
fastest car on the road at any moment.
You know, you're faster than anybody else, but
it's safe.
You can put my family fits in it.
I can put bicycles in it.
It's yeah, it's a great all round car.
It's still, you know, from the inception of the
design that we started in 2008, it still looks
modern and fresh on the road today.
I am curious how different it is to design
for EVs compared to a gas powered car.
Designing an EV is, and especially the way that
we architect our vehicles with a battery
pack on the floor and the drive units between
the wheels. It really allows basically
everything above that kind of skateboard or
platform to be the people space.
The space that we designed for the people
is there's no longer a big clunky mass of metal
in front of you or a transmission tunnel and a
mission, you know, exhaust pipes, etc.,
running down the middle of the car.
That's open space.
So we have a lot of opportunity to give back
to the customer or give back to the to the owner
of the car space.
So there's a front trunk, there's a Model S
that like we put seven people in the car because
we didn't have all these things that are
traditionally found in internal combustion
engine layout, vehicle semi's, a pretty radical
approach to an industry that hasn't seen change
in the architecture of vehicle since the
inception. And so by removing the motor and
the transmission in front of the vehicle, we
could put the driver in the middle for the best
command view.
We could move him really far forward and create a
really teardrop shape around the driver that
goes back to the cab for an incredibly aero
efficient package.
So there's a lot of liberties that come with
it. At the same time, cars right now have four
wheels and they need to hold people and they need
to be safe. And so there's a lot of
challenges that we have to overcome to
stylistically make the cars look pretty and not
feel like they're overregulated.
And that's one of the challenges that we're
always facing. Designing a car can happen in your
mind pretty quickly.
Cybertruck was actually a quick sketch and the
idea was there.
Model S Model three These cars were a lot
longer to really evolve and try to really extract
an athletic poise out of a vehicle, something that
felt like it was efficient.
We use the word efficient a lot, and so
we tried to design around this idea of
efficiency. The inspiration can come from
anywhere. You can formulate that into an
idea quickly or you can it can take a while to
really getting from the idea to the production
car. We're working on trying to do that in two
years. Think the future of transportation is
going to change pretty radically.
I feel like we're on the precipice of that.
With the advent of autonomy, with autonomous
vehicles becoming the norm and no longer do you
have to drive yourself to a destination or be
the driver of the vehicle, the vehicle
that's driving you.
You can think of changes are the way that we use
the vehicles, the way that we transport
ourselves around.
We're pretty used to it already in planes and air
travel and trains and busses to some degree.
But I think the next step is really the
automobile. And I think that autonomy is going to
really radically change the form of the car, how
it's used, the interior space, potentially the
ownership experience as well. I've worked at a
bunch of different manufacturers around the
globe, and I think Tesla is just unique in its all
in approach to sustainability.
There is no kind of parachute, there's no
backup plan. We sink or swim on the products that
we produce. Elon is incredibly driven.
We're driven behind that.
We all believe in the mission. And I think when
you see the impact that we've been able to have
in a few short years into an industry that has
not changed in many, many years, it's
rewarding in a way. And it it's it it's
motivating. And it keeps us going because there's
much more that we want to do.
And there's, you know, we need to we need to
change faster in order to help save our planet.
How do you feel about having your work in a
museum?
I mean, it's not all my work. I represent a
little bit of the piece of the puzzle here.
This is an amazing focus on the Tesla team.
It's nice to see, you know, there's artwork and
the representation of people from our studio,
the engineering, work, manufacturing, all of it
coming together in one place. So I've been
involved in quite a few of the projects here and
it's it's great to see it all come together in
one piece. And it's also a nice walk down memory
lane. You know, when you're so focused on
what's the next thing, sometimes you forget to
look back at what you've accomplished along the
way. And this is a really great showcase of
the accomplishments that Tesla has done in the
past 15 years.
What advice do you have to young designers, in
particular, auto designers?
Yeah, I think, you know, it's it's when I was a
kid, like when I learned that you could be a car
designer, it felt like being an astronaut.
You know, you hear these ideas of, like, chase
your dreams and go after it.
But in that instance, you really have to
there's opportunities for you to get involved
and learn the craft and go to some.
There's a few amazing schools that can really
teach you and put you in a position to get
involved in some of these manufacturers in
places like this. And if you have any aspiration
to do that, do it because it's incredibly
rewarding and it's it's incredibly fun.
The reward is seeing how people spend their hard
earned money on something that you've
created and get joy and satisfaction out of it.
That's the best feeling.