Excellent interview if you speak French (I'm fluent) Grand Talk : Jérôme Guillen, vice-pdt de Tesla - YouTube
It's very recent (October 3) since they mentioned the October 9th event. Jerome answers questions about the SuperCharger network, what Tesla is about, how the car is designed and the updates functions. He's very good at speaking and knows his stuff. They did ask about future plans and what the October event was about but he demurred. They also ask about driver assistances and driverless technology and he does admit it's something Tesla is working on. He also mentions Model 3 since they were asking about a cheaper car. He states 3 or 4 years for that. It's too bad the submitters didn't enable the transcript or translation options on Youtube.
I think you put an extra letter in his last name. A Montréal paper misspelled his name this week too.
Very interesting interview, thanks for sharing. Not a summary, but some points i found noteworthy (i'm not native french speaking, so correct me if wrong): About autonomous driving: Focus on assistant driving on highways JG: "very feasible (if not "easy" IIRC), autonomous parking, "yes"; Self-driving car: "No". You could sense, that he'd like to reveal more, but had to hide behind vague answers. (I'm confident that we'll hear something about driver assist and semi-autonomous parking on Oct. 9th.) When asked about if Tesla will be developing an electric bicycle, he speaks about Tesla being a very small company, concentrating on cars (as of now), but the Model 3 will be a platform with iterations, one of them being Pick-up. He also states, that the development of Model 3 is well underway. He confirms 35'000 MS produced in 2014 and seems very confident abut it. Superchargers: when asked if other cards could charge at Tesla SC he answers: theoretically yes, but none of the actual cars can take that much power.. Funny enough he talked very little about AWD and Model X...
This was a great interview, thank you for sharing @Trev. Jerome is very well spoken if not a little subdued. I hope this doesn't get me in trouble, but I love the way the French speak French (I live in Quebec...). You can tell that Jerome's accent has started to wane, but he still uses all the right French expressions and words. Even the interviewers mentioned this... I also noticed they didn't mention the Model X much, but I did see it pop up on the video in the background. They asked him about CarPlay and he skimmed the question by mentioning the car is always connected to the internet but that Tesla was open to that kind of thing -- rather vague. They also asked if users would be able to customize the UI, and he said not for now... his tone hinted that it may be possible eventually. The tech show is doing car-related episodes because of the Paris auto show.
Jérôme didn't correct the hosts when they introduced him as one of of Tesla's co-founders, so he's clearly preparing a coup.
Jerome is a good speaker, but he's a lot more evasive than Elon when asked questions and consequently I often don't feel I get much out of him I haven't seen in a press release. I suppose people that complain about Elon's frankness prefer Jerome's style.
Yes I did feel like he didn't REALLY commit to anything. He said things like "it's possible", or "perhaps in the future" a lot. Whereas Elon will say "In January, we'll have x".
My perception is that no one at Tesla wants to get out "ahead" of Elon when it comes to talking about future developments. I think they are wise to be circumspect in that regard. I think Elon has complete control over the direction and timing of Tesla development. As he said once (paraphrasing) "Things I say will happen generally do happen though not always as soon as I say they will".
True. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing Jerome. He's fantastic and I think he's a great executive and representative for Tesla. He does a fine job of explaining things effectively and eloquently when discussing Tesla, which is great for folks that don't follow it closely. It's for us Tesla obsessives that Jerome's interviews aren't as interesting as Elon's because with Elon you might here concrete details that Jerome wouldn't give out. Plus, Elon's details and style speak more to the engineer in me.
Jerome is fantastic but Elon goes "rogue" every once and a while and starts revealing things. Throwing out "soon" and "near future". Jerome seems to be much more disciplined, while Elon wants to tell you more, but knows he should hold back. My French isn't great, but it was still worth 30 minutes to watch.
Couple more interesting fact stated: Jerome has the OS version after the next in his US car, two version ahead. They insist in testing. The beta version for customers is internally called "Early Access Program" When asked about installing Superchargers in cities there where a slight delay (some hesitation) in the answer, and he then slowly said "Well... In some cities perhaps..." The third generation will be a platform, there will be multiple models. Third gen is 3-4 years from now. After the third gen "Elon already stated that there might be a pickup truck" About the "D": he said: "We really want to focus on innovation and technology, so THIS is the next step towards it.
Was there a slightly awkward moment where the hosts complimented Jérôme on his French? I told myself I didn't really hear that, but I just read here that it's not normally an auto show, so I guess the interviewers didn't know Jérôme and didn't do quite enough homework. Edit: I have to apologize to the hosts and correct myself. They were actually were pointing out to listeners that Jérôme was French, in case anyone was wondering why his French was so good
Your answer is in the smilie, not really. But it also looks like our sales VP forgot his native tongue a bit, not once the 2 gonzos had to translate his impromptu anglo-néologismes to proper Gaulic.