The back story to Elon Musk's TED talk was Elon Musk

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, said Thursday that from a young age he had been driven by an “obsession with truth.” In the same interview, though, onstage at the 2022 TED Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, he tried to bend truth toward his own favorable interpretation and recast moments from his own personal history.

In a nearly hourlong interview, Mr. Musk publicly displayed what some have called his “reality distortion field,” a “Star Trek”-inspired term used to describe how successful business leaders like Apple’s Steve Jobs were able to convince workers that seemingly impossible visions could be realized. At Tesla and SpaceX, Mr. Musk's reality distortion field has been lionized as a major reason his companies have succeeded in mainstreaming electric vehicles and privatizing space launches.

On Thursday, a public audience got to see Mr. Musk's reality distortion field in full effect. In a video interview shown before the live discussion, he said this year would be when his company's vehicles achieved full self-driving capabilities. That followed a 2016 prediction that a Tesla would be able to drive across the country on its own within two years, and a statement in 2019 that he was “certain” his cars would be fully autonomous by the end of that year.

During the live interview, with Chris Anderson, the head of TED, Mr. Musk used some of his time to relitigate the founding of Tesla, which has been a sore spot for the world's richest human. For years, Mr. Musk has tried to dispel the notion that he is not a co-founder of the company even though he was not part of Tesla at its incorporation in 2003 and became involved with the company only by investing in it the next year. In 2009, Tesla's first chief executive, Martin Eberhard, settled a lawsuit with Tesla and stipulated there were five co-founders of the company, including Mr. Musk.

“A false narrative has been created by one of the other co-founders, Martin Eberhard, and I don’t want to get into the nastiness here, but I didn’t invest in an existing company,” Mr. Musk said at TED. “We created a company.”

He also took aim at the Securities and Exchange Commission as he revisited his 2018 attempt to take Tesla private. That episode, in which Mr. Musk tweeted that he had “funding secured” despite not having such financing, led to an S.E.C. investigation and lawsuit. He settled the case in 2018 by paying a $20 million fine and stepping down as chairman of the company.

On Thursday, he pushed to recast that recent history, claiming that he had been forced to concede to the S.E.C. because of Tesla’s “precarious financial situation” and pressure from banks providing working capital.

"The S.E.C. knew funding was secured, but they pursued an active public investigation nonetheless,” Mr. Musk said, adding: “I was forced to admit that I lied to save Tesla’s life, and that’s the only reason.”

He's also fighting that settlement in court. Last month, Mr. Musk's lawyers asked a federal judge to end a consent decree he signed with the S.E.C. as part of his 2018 settlement.

“I would never lie to shareholders,” Mr. Musk wrote in the legal filing. “I entered into the consent decree for the survival of Tesla, for the sake of its shareholders.”

— Ryan Mac
Musk, in a live interview, says he has a Plan B if Twitter's board rejects his offer.
Elon Musk was interviewed Thursday at the TED 2022 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, in an appearance that was arranged before the news of his bid broke.

11 a.m. Pacific time: Answering the last question of the interview, Mr. Musk says he is trying “his hardest” to deliver a good future for his children and for others. “I love humanity, and I think that we should fight for a good future for humanity and I think we should be optimism about the future and fight to make that optimism future happen.”

10:47 a.m.: Mr. Musk also described the manufacturing challenges he had faced at Tesla and discussed plans to grow the auto manufacturer.

10:43 a.m.: Mr. Musk declined to say what he would do if the Twitter board rejected his offer, but indicated he had a plan for that outcome, replying “Yes” when asked whether he had a Plan B. He also conceded, “I don't like to lose.”

10:41 a.m.: Mr. Musk insists funding was secured when he announced on Twitter that he planned to take Tesla private. “I was forced to concede to the S.E.C., unlawfully,” Mr. Musk said, referring to the regulators with an insulting word, adding, “and now it makes it look like I lied when I did not in fact lie.” He added, “I was forced to admit that I lied to save Tesla’s life, and that’s the only reason.”

10:39 a.m.: Mr. Musk, asked whether “funding is secured,” said that he could afford to buy Twitter if the company agreed to the deal. “I have sufficient assets,” he said, adding: “I can do it if possible.”

10:33 a.m.: Pressed several times about the role of human moderators and judgment in deciding which tweets should be removed