"First principles is a physics way of looking at the world. You boil things down to the most fundamental truths and then reason up from there. (For example) people may say 'battery packs are really expensive and that is the way they will always be'. No, that's pretty dumb. If you apply that reasoning to anything new, you wouldn't ever be able to get to that new thing." - Elon Musk

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First principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world.

You boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say, okay, what are we sure is true and then reason up from there.

Somebody could say, in fact people do, that battery packs are really expensive and that's just the way they'll always be because that's the way they've been in the past.

If you apply that reasoning to anything new, you wouldn't be able to ever get to that new thing.

So the first principles would be to say, okay, what are the material constituents of the batteries?

What is the spot market value of the material constituents?

So you can say, okay, it's got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, and some polymers for separation, and a steel can.

If we bought that in London Metal Exchange, what would each of those things cost?

Like, oh, it's like $80 per kilowatt hour.

So clearly, you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than.


Speaker 0: First principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world. You boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say, okay, what are we sure is true and then reason up from there. Somebody could say, in fact people do, that battery packs are really expensive and that's just the way they'll always be because that's the way they've been in the past. No, that's pretty dumb. If you apply that reasoning to anything new, you wouldn't be able to ever get to that new thing.

So the first principles would be to say, okay, what are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the spot market value of the material constituents? So you can say, okay, it's got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, and some polymers for separation, and a steel can. If we bought that in London Metal Exchange, what would each of those things cost? Like, oh, it's like $80 per kilowatt hour.

So clearly, you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than.

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Elon Musk: First Principles