Earlier quoted context omitted.
It always stuns me what people are able to explain away when it comes to these Captains of Industry. If we can realize the goal is ridiculous, surely the engineers who work on this full time will realize it's ridiculous.
And maybe their takeaway is the same as ours: "This is a big priority and I need to get it done ASAP". Isn't that exactly what Musk is trying to get across?
If you were in a meeting where an executive set a clearly impossible goal, would you be more likely to feel a huge swell of motivation or to grumble at the water cooler about clueless business types ignoring the engineers?