Bali. Elon Musk blamed a power outage as he was remotely addressing the gathering of business leaders at the B20 forum in Bali on Monday from the United States, sitting in the dark with only his face visible.
"We had a power outage three minutes before this call, my apology. That's why I'm entirely in the dark," the world's richest man according to Forbes said in the video call.
The audio was not perfect and there were often overlapping voices between him and the moderator, Indonesian businessman Anindya Bakrie.
“Elon, you are lucky because you have an unprofessional moderator – it’s the first time I’m doing it,” Anindya began by cracking a joke.
Both men wore the same green Batik which Anindya said had been sent across 15,000 kilometers of the globe to Texas.
Anindya asked why Musk didn’t travel to Bali and relax amid so many headlines about him following his controversial acquisition of social media giant Twitter.
“That sounds fantastic but you know my workload has recently increased quite a lot,” Musk said. But he offered little information on the latest situation on Twitter, despite reports that thousands of employees were fired after his arrival.
Asked about how he manages his time while at the helm of several hi-tech companies that also include spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX, Musk said he must dedicate his entire time at work seven days a week.
"It’s not something that I would like to recommend, frankly. I don’t know what else to say,” he said.
“I just look at this video and it's so bizarre. I'm sitting here in the dark surrounded by candles."
Anindya, the CEO of holding company Bakrie & Brothers, asked if there is a possibility for Tesla to produce more affordable cars for developing countries with big enough GDP to join the G20 like Indonesia and India: “The Model-i maybe?”
“We do think that making a much more affordable vehicle would make a lot of sense and we should do something,” Musk replied.
Musk also talked about his preference for tunnels over flying cars to beat the traffic and the prospect of using rockets as a transportation means.
He said flying cars risk “falling on your head” and rocket vehicles will take people from one point to another at 20 times the speed of sound.
