Elon Musk: I Mastered Manufacturing Because Tesla and SpaceX Left Me No Choice

Elon Musk: I became very good at manufacturing because we had to insource everything at SpaceX and Tesla.

“It's not as though I wanted to insource manufacturing, it's just that I was unable to outsource it effectively. The idea, at the beginning of Tesla, was that we would outsource almost all the manufacturing. But then it turned out there were no good companies to outsource manufacturing to. Really, it wasn't feasible.

Over time, we had to insource almost everything for Tesla and the same for SpaceX. I became very good at manufacturing because I had to. There was no choice.

At this point, I might know more about manufacturing than any human ever has because I've manufactured so many different things in so many different arenas.”