Not unlike Donald Trump, before Elon Musk became a favorite target of late-night shows, he enjoyed friendly relations with them as a guest.
In fact, over a period of 14 years, he guested with virtually every major late-night host, including Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Bill Maher.
But Musk’s very first encounter with a late-night host came in 2009 with none other than David Letterman.
It was a far friendlier interview than Musk would likely face today if he were to follow through on his offer to join Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. But it wasn’t politics that led to Musk’s late-night debut; it was his role in bringing electric cars to the market, a topic that was great interest to Letterman, who’s known to be both a car enthusiast and a proponent of renewable energy.
That’s not to say that the then-38-year-old Musk didn’t face a couple of challenging questions, including why his company had made the first highway-friendly mass market vehicle so expensive. (The Tesla Roadster carried a price tag of around $100,000.)
“Anyone who does buy the Tesla Roadster… is helping pay for the development of the lower-cost cars to follow,” Musk explained.
Indeed, Musk brought along a prototype of Tesla’s first sedan, the Model S, which he told Letterman would be sold for $49,000.
Musk happened to be accompanied backstage that day by Tad Friend, who was writing a profile about the Tesla CEO for The New Yorker at the time.
“Musk’s goal for the Letterman show was to demystify electric cars, and to explain how he’s going to fix Detroit from his headquarters, in Silicon Valley,” Friend wrote.
Also with him, the profile revealed, were Tesla employees who were there “to make sure he didn’t come across as a total geek.”
“They peppered him with talking points, most of which he seemed to ignore,” Friend wrote. “His assistant, Mary Beth Brown, told him, “And don’t be all engineery.”
Overall, Musk came across as neither too technical nor provocative in any of the ways we’ve come to expect of him.
It’s telling that the segment’s most provocative moment came not from Musk but from Letterman, when he derided GM’s plans to release the Chevy Volt, saying the car’s 40 mile range would “get you up the driveway and back.” (General Motors cried foul, pointing out that as a hybrid vehicle, the Volt’s range actually exceeded Tesla’s. Letterman subsequently apologized, and welcomed GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz on the show to offer a rebuttal.)
Watch Musk’s 2009 Letterman appearance at the top of this post.
