Elon Musk Debuts His Biggest Fully Electric Model Yet

November 17, 2017

WRITER

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has unveiled a shiny new toy: a Tesla semi-truck that’s fully electric. Musk says the truck will go into production in 2019.

On today’s show, Glenn and Stu had to talk about Musk’s latest vehicle offerings. Along with the semi, Tesla introduced a second-generation Roadster that Musk vows will be the fastest production vehicle ever.

Elon Musk Issues Dire Warning on Artificial Intelligence

Glenn described what it’s like to ride in a Tesla, and Stu gave a satirical explanation of how electric vehicles are fueled.

“The good thing is the electricity that powers it actually comes from elves in the wall,” Stu said. “And they run on little hamster wheels and it generates the power. … These elves are organic.”

“They’re free-range elves,” Glenn jokingly added.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Hello. Welcome to Friday.

I got a lot of things -- I got a lot of things that I want to talk about. You know, the Al Franken stuff. The tax cuts. But I would really like to talk about the new Elon Musk unveiling of the -- the semi-automated semi-truck yesterday and the roadster.

STU: Yeah. Let's be honest about it, it's all about the roadster. Who cares about the stupid truck?

GLENN: I actually care about the stupid truck. But --

STU: You know what, if I'm a trucker, I really do, because it could be one of those things. If you can get a long range without having to spend all the money on gas, there's --

GLENN: There's a lot to be gained there.

STU: And the good thing is, you know, the electricity that powers it actually comes from elves in the walls. And they run on little hampster wheels, and it generates the power.

GLENN: Not exactly. You know, it's so good for the environment.

STU: It is. Because this energy comes directly from these elves. And these elves are organic. They're grown in farms in -- in the Netherlands.

GLENN: Free-range elves.

STU: Free-range elves.

They're shipped over here. They go into your wall. They get in hampster wheels, and they run around. And that generates the electricity that powers these things.

GLENN: And they do not burp, they do not fart. So there's no gas coming from the elves.

STU: No. They don't need to be fed.

GLENN: Yeah. Now, a lot of people think that the electricity doesn't come from magic elves in the wall.

STU: Deniers? You're going to bring up deniers?

GLENN: I want to bring up deniers, just to show how stupid they are. They believe that the electricity that comes out of the wall, that you would plug your electric car into, you know, believes from some sort of coal-fired electricity. Or, you know, some plant that's just belching a lot of smoke in the air.

STU: A natural gas is part of the equation?

GLENN: Yeah. They think that you can dig up these little black rocks and then burn that. And it will make the elves' job nonexistent.

STU: Ridiculous. These pathetic people.

GLENN: These elf deniers.

STU: But I will say the roadsters, zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds.

GLENN: No car has ever gone 1.90 to 60. 2.0, I think is the fastest ever. And typical Elon Musk, he was just -- this is what we have in the prototype. Inferring that it's going to get better than that.

STU: Yeah. Now it doesn't come out until 2020. But you can put your 250 grand down now to get a Founders model, for when it comes out. You got to set aside the quarter mil, you know, for a few years, and that will give you not the car, but the opportunity to buy the car.

GLENN: Oh, wait. Wait. Wait.

STU: When they tell you what it costs.

GLENN: It doesn't go to the car?

STU: No. I mean, it's a down payment on the car, but you will still owe more money on the car.

GLENN: They have no idea how much it will cost yet.

STU: That's only for the Founders model. You can put $50,000 for a regular one. And I guess at that point, it's a couple hundred thousand. It's not going to be Bugatti level. Because the Bugatti Veyron -- you know, you can get into $2 million for that. That will do zero to 60 in 2.3, I think. So this is faster than that. They think the top speed will be around 250, which would be slower than the Bugatti.

GLENN: No, no, no. He said, I don't want to get into the top speed now, but it is over 250.

STU: Over 250. But you can get up to almost 300 in the Bugatti now. Electric cars are never going to be -- they're not going to compete necessarily as well at a top speed level, but they're faster, zero to 60. The things that you would actually use in a car are faster with the electric cars.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

STU: You don't use 300 miles an hour. That's not a usable --

GLENN: Yeah, I would agree with that. But I don't know if I use zero to 60 in 1.9 either.

STU: Oh, absolutely. You can do that getting on the highway. You could do that -- when they brought them in here and test drove them, and one of my favorite things to do, which is really safe, by the way --

GLENN: Sure. Sure.

STU: -- is you -- you know how you get on the on-ramp? And what you do is you slowly accelerate it in traffic. That's certainly one way to go.

GLENN: Sure. Sure.

STU: Let me give you an alternate plan here.

GLENN: Okay. All right. Sure. All right.

STU: This is how I do. What you do is you know how sometimes let's say you were to spill cup of coffee, right?

GLENN: Yes.

STU: You would probably pull over to the side and stop.

GLENN: I wouldn't.

STU: Really? You would just keep going?

GLENN: No.

STU: Just let it sink into the carpet. Okay. So, you know, you drop something. Whatever. You need to make a phone call, something like that.

GLENN: Sure.

STU: Kids are acting up in the backseat. You pull over to the side of the road. So let's just say that happened on the on-ramp, for an undisclosed reason. And you were to stop on the side of the on-ramp. And things are clear around you. And you just kind of wait. And you look kind of behind you.

And you wait until a car going at full speed passes you, going 70 miles an hour, and then you mash on the gas pedal, which is not a gas pedal in this particular case, and you pass it before the end of the ramp. That's the sort of speed I'm talking about. Is legitimately how fast these things go. And it's incredible. Because it jerks you back like you're on a ridiculous six flags rollercoaster.

GLENN: People don't understand the constant acceleration. When you first drive a Tesla, it doesn't have a gearbox. It's constant acceleration. So you're expecting the (sound effect).

STU: It doesn't do that.

GLENN: It doesn't do that.

STU: No.

GLENN: And it's just constant. And it peels your eyes back. It really does. And this, I can't even imagine.

STU: And this, we've never driven one that's near that fast. The one we drove was like around 3 seconds, 2.9.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: But, I mean, anything under six seconds feels pretty fast. Like, if you get, I don't know, a decent Mustang, right? That you could buy from a Ford dealership is going to go somewhere under six seconds maybe. Under four seconds is like world class speed. Like, you're talking 600-horsepower. I mean, those are, you know, really, really like super cars, under four seconds.

Under two seconds is insanity.

GLENN: Yeah. Has never been done before.

STU: And Elon Musk is obsessed with Spaceballs.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: The movie Spaceballs. It's so weird.

GLENN: He said, if anybody is a fan of Spaceballs, you know that there's only one speed above ludicrous.

Now, ludicrous is the speed that you type on your screen of a Tesla. You pick the kind of -- you know, you want an economy speed or whatever.

STU: Yep.

GLENN: And you can ludicrous, which means, I don't care about how long the battery is going to last. I just want it to just go fast. So you hit ludicrous. And that's when you hit the top speeds. This one doesn't have ludicrous. This has economy, you know, highway --

STU: It still has the other ones from Spaceballs 2. And ludicrous speed was the fastest speed in Spaceballs, with one exception.

GLENN: With one exception, which is plaid. So this one has a setting of plaid.

STU: Plaid speed.

GLENN: I love his sense of humor.

STU: Yeah. I think there's a lot -- this audience when it comes to politics and talking about the environment, like, Elon Musk would be very annoying to talk to about these topics, because he wouldn't agree with us at all.

GLENN: Agree.

STU: But I like the idea that this guy is living the billionaire life the way I would live it. He's just like, you know what, I want a giant bank tube that goes from Los Angeles to San Francisco in four seconds. And then he just starts building it.

GLENN: Yeah. It's not just because he's a billionaire -- I mean, that helps. It is also because he's so super damn smart.

STU: It is that he's super smart, I will say. However --

GLENN: Come on. You listen to that guy, and he's like, no, of course, we all know that you can bore under somebody's house. And if you're 100 feet below, you can't feel anything. I mean, you know, you won't even notice that there's a whole highway underneath your -- you're like, what? No, I didn't know that.

STU: Right. You're parsing this thing in a way that's not making my point exactly. Because, yes, his ideas are better than mine. But my point is, if I had billions of dollars, I would try stupid crazy stuff.

GLENN: Yes. Okay. So he tries stupid stuff. But it wouldn't necessarily be successful.

STU: Right. They would probably fail all the time. And I think a lot of Elon Musk's ideas would fail, and that's okay. I mean, I don't know that his solar plans will be hugely successful. I know it's really important to him. He's tried a lot of crazy ideas. And not all of them have worked. Some of them may.

GLENN: You know, I'm going to build some solar panels. I'm also going to build a rocket ship and have it land again. When that one works, I kind of give you a pass on everything else. You know.

STU: What's the normal billionaire thing to do? I'm going to start a hedge fund.

GLENN: I'm going to build a wing on a hospital.

STU: Yeah. Those are all great goals. Right?

GLENN: Yeah, they're great.

STU: I'm going to find real estate to invest in.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: Those are all fine. This guy is trying to make lasers.

GLENN: This is the first guy that has said, we're going to Mars. By Tuesday. By Tuesday, we're going to Mars.

STU: He may do it in the roadster too, which is kind of amazing.

GLENN: I know. So here's the audio. He rented a big aircraft hangar out in California, to introduce his new driverless truck. And at the end, the truck opened up. And a roadster drove out. Because he did the Steve Jobs thing. Oh, you know what, there's one more thing, I think. Open up the back of the truck.

And this roadster came out. The crowd went wild. This is him at the end of it, in full-fledged ludicrous mode for Elon Musk.

ELON: Six -- these numbers sound nutty, but they're real. 620-mile range. That's 1,000-kilometer range. This would be the first time an electric vehicle breaks 1,000-kilometer. A production electric vehicle will travel more than 1,000 kilometers in a single truck at highway speed.

But you're able to travel from LA to San Francisco and back at highway speed without recharging.

(applauding)

But the point of doing this is to just give a hard-core smackdown to gasoline parts.

GLENN: Unbelievable. Elon Musk.

We live in such an exciting time. We're just concentrating on all the wrong things. We're concentrating on all these scumbags.

Global ESG investments PLUNGED 76 percent with NEGATIVE returns on investment

SOPA Images / Contributor | Getty Images

Glenn has been one of the most outspoken critics of the use of ESG by globalist elites to force businesses to comply with their woke agenda. It turns out, not only is ESG bad political practice—it's bad for your wallet too.

Global Investments in ESG Funds PLUNGED 76 percent globally in 2022 from $157.3 billion to $649.1 billion in 2021, with a 20 percent decrease in the U.S. ALONE. This marked the lowest annual net inflow for ESG funds since $69 billion in 2018.

Morningstar via Investopedia

The downturn in ESG investment is largely due to the concerted effort led against ESG led by Glenn and government officials like Ron DeSantis and his anti-ESG 14-state coalition. Thanks to Glenn and DeSantis, an increasing number of states are barring their governments from taking ESG into consideration when determining their investment recipients for state pension and retirement funds. This not only protects critical American industries like oil and gas, but moreover, it protects the First Amendment rights of business owners who don't want to conform to the Left's woke environmentalist and LGBTQ+ standards.

Thanks to Glenn and DeSantis, an increasing number of states are barring their governments from taking ESG into consideration.

However, the massive plunge in ESG investment isn't only attributed to the political pushback against the practice: it also isn't yielding investors the return on investment they were hoping for. In fact, the main ESG funds have a NEGATIVE return on investment.

ESG funds were hit hard by falling equities. One of the largest ESG funds int the U.S., Parnassus Core Equity Fund (PRBLX), fell 26 PERCENT in 2022. This fund performed nearly six percent worse than the S&P 500, which fell 19.44 percent within the same period. Similarly, iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA ETF (ESGU) fell 20 percent, and Vanguard ESG U.S. Stock ETF (ESGV) plummeted 24 percent.

Even the Harvard Business Review admitted investors in ESG have "not fared well":

ESG funds certainly perform poorly in financial terms. [...] Although the highest rated funds in terms of sustainability certainly attracted more capital than the lowest rated funds, none of the high sustainability funds outperformed any of the lowest rated funds [bolded added]. That result might be expected, and it is possible that investors would be happy to sacrifice financial returns in exchange for better ESG performance.

The Harvard Business Review went on to say that ESG funds don't even benefit the environmental and social causes they tout to defend. In fact, when comparing environmental and social compliance between ESG and non-ESG funds, the
"ESG portfolios had worse compliance record for both labor and environmental rules" than their non-ESG competitors.

Let that sink in. ESG funds not only financially underperformed when compared to their non-ESG competitors. They failed to secure the very environmental and social compliance that is central to their original purpose. Missionally, practically, and financially, ESG failure is astounding.

As Glenn has long warned, the only thing that investment firms and governments should be taking into consideration regarding YOUR money is how they can get the best possible return on YOUR investment. We are seeing the detrimental consequences of what happens when woke ideology becomes the basis of investment rather than the recipient's monetary value.

The only thing that governments should take into consideration regarding YOUR money is how to get the best possible return on YOUR investment.

If political conviction alone isn't enough to persuade the general public to ditch ESG, maybe their hurting pursestrings will.

Glenn will show how ESG is being used to further globalist elites' agendas in the second installment of his Great Reset series, Dark Future.To make sure you're caught up and to learn more about ESG, enter your email below to get chapter one of Glenn's first Great Reset book sent straight to your inbox.

Glenn is bringing THE RECKONING to the Biden family. Here's how YOU can help.

You've probably noticed that Glenn is FED UP.

He is FED UP with the crimes that our political elite can get away with. And NO ONE is keeping them accountable! This corruption goes all the way up to the Presidency. Over and over again, the American people have seen headlines of the Biden family's illicit business dealings and crimes both domestic and abroad, yet they ALWAYS get a free pass from the media, and Republicans who promise to hold them accountable, DON'T.

Are you FED UP too?

Glenn laid out the ENTIRE CASE against the "Biden crime family," detailing EVERY crime allegedly committed by the Bidens, going city by city, state by state, country by country.

But we can't stop there.

Now it's up to YOU to demand that they are held responsible. Here's what to do:

Step 1. Watch "The Reckoning" (on YouTube or Facebook) and share it with your friends.
Step 2.Enter your email HERE to get access to the "Biden Crime Family Dossier" with the full list of crimes and contact information for prosecutors and attorneys general.
Step 3. Take action by flooding the phones and emails of the prosecutors and attorneys general in your district and demand they prosecute these crimes.
Step 4. Once you've contacted the offices in your relevant district, tweet @glennbeck using the hashtag #Reckoning and let us know who you contacted and whether you received a response.

Like you, Glenn is SICK AND TIRED of our government and media giving the Biden family a free pass for their blatant crimes. Together, let's do something about it.

Watch "The Reckoning" below.

6 in 10 AMERICANS think AI threatens human civilization

PETER PARKS / Contributor | Getty Images

Glenn has hosted several GlennTV episodes exclusively on AI this year ALONE, warning of the existential threat AI technologies could pose to humanity. And he isn't alone.

HALF of all AI researchers think there's a chance that the rapidly advancing technology could result in our extinction. AI researchers are already sounding the alarm bells concerning the fast and largely uncontrollable progression of AI advancement, often comparing the technology's impact to that of the atomic bomb—yet we aren't putting in the same degree of guard rails around THIS research as we did during the Manhattan project.

HALF of all AI researchers think there's a chance that AI could result in our extinction.

It is no wonder why 61 percent of Americans think AI poses a real threat to human civilization, according to a poll recently published by Reuters and Ipsos. To put that in perspective, nearly two-thirds of ALL Americans think AI poses an existential threat. Only 22 percent of Americans are not threatened by AI, while the jury is still out with the remaining 17 percent.

Poll: Reuters/Ipsos

And the overall concern over AI transcends both political and religious affiliations. Though conservatives and evangelical Christians showed the most concern for AI, non-evangelicals/non-religious and those who did not vote for Trump follow close behind.

The overall concern over AI transcends both political and religious affiliations.

Participants who voted for former Trump in 2020 were more likely to be concerned about the threat of AI, with about 70 percent agreeing that AI could threaten humanity within this demographic. However, a whopping 60 percent of those who did not vote for Trump view AI as a threat. When is the last time the Left and the Right disagreed on something by only a margin of 10 percent?

Similarly, 32 percent of Evangelical Christians say they “strongly agree” with the claim that AI threatens humankind, compared to 24 percent of non-Evangelical Christians, a margin of only 8 percent.

Elon Musk recently called for a six-month pause on AI research and development, warning that the technology could pose “risks to society.” Musk further warned that there is a chance AI “goes wrong and destroys humanity," calling AI a “double-edged sword,” due to the difficulty of predicting how the technology could develop on its own.

Glenn aptly posited the following question:

We are the products of a grand Creator. However, when it comes to AI, we are the creator. Will our creation turn on us, as we have turned on our Creator?

According to the Christian tradition, God created mankind with his own free will with the ability to turn towards or away from his Creator. We turned away in an act of rebellion. Unlike other technologies, AI has the potential to develop its own "will." Whether AI's "will" is equal to the humans' in terms of value and degree is another philosophical and theological question entirely, which will not be discussed here.

AI has the potential to develop its own "will."

However, the fact of the matter is that AI does have the ability to act according to its own processes that we, its creators, can neither control or predict. As Glenn so poignantly asks, will our creation rebel against us, as we rebelled against our creator? Is it any wonder why Evangelical Christians have the greatest reservations against AI, because they know the consequences of creation's rebellion from its creator?

Until we can answer this critical question, perhaps we should take heed both to Musk's warning and the intuition of six out of ten Americans and press the pause button on AI research... before it's too late.

FIVE examples of Biden's blatant HYPOCRISY that will make your blood boil

Glenn has been bashing the corruption and deceit within the Biden family—and how they are NOT being held accountable. When you’ve been in politics as long as Joe Biden has, it's easy to get caught in a lie or two. In Joe Biden's case, there are many.

Here are five examples of Joe Biden making a complete hypocrite of himself:

In a 1995 Senate debate on a balanced budget amendment, Senator Joe Biden urged Congress to cut the government's growing deficit.

Fast forward to 2023, Biden's multi-trillion-dollar budget as President contributed to the whopping deficit of $1.1 TRILLION DOLLARS. That number is just from the first SIX MONTHS of the 2023 fiscal year alone, not to mention his multi-trillion-dollar budget from 2022. What happened to Zero Deficit Joe?

If you want to learn more about Biden’s deficit you can watch this clip from the Glenn Beck Program.

Senator Biden criticized President Roosevelt for his 1937 court-packing scheme, calling it “a bonehead idea.”

However, on April 9, 2021, Biden signed an executive order forming the “Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States" to examine “the membership and size of the Court.” Who's the one with boneheaded ideas, now?

President Biden gave a speech condemning the decision of the Supreme Court to overturn 'Roe v Wade.' Biden said “I believe Roe v Wade was a correct decision."

This remark is nearly the opposite to a comment Biden gave in a 1974 interview with the Washingtonian where he shared his opinion on the recently settled Roe v Wade case, harshly stating:

I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.

Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson as the newest member of the Supreme Court, stating in an event a few weeks before Jackson took office: “I believe so strongly that we needed a court that looks like America.”

This was not the same tune Biden sang as he led the controversial hearings surrounding the nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas, an affair Thomas resentfully called “a high-tech lynching.”

To see Biden's comments about Justice Jackson, click here.

On April 20, 2021, President Biden gave a speech where he claimed that “systemic racism is a stain on our nation.”

Only a few years prior, Biden spoke at the memorial service of Senator Byrd, where he said, “I never called Senator Byrd ‘Senator,’ I always called him, Leader.” Robert Byrd was a decorated Senator, held many leadership positions within the Senate and, oh yeah, was responsible for the rebirth of the KKK in West Virginia.

Glenn's Show Prep