Elon Musk had an eventful 2024, what with his hard push into right-wing politics and leveraging his X social media platform and considerable influence to help Donald Trump win the presidential election.
Putting politics aside for a moment, it’s worth focusing on another Musk pastime: making promises for Tesla.
The Tesla CEO’s promises — and repeated missed deadlines — have become a primary thread in the Tesla storyline. And they’ve always had an eye-popping quality that captured the imagination of investors and helped drive up the value of Tesla stock, giving the company a valuation of $1.3 trillion. There was his claim in 2015 that Tesla vehicles would be self-driving in two years, that cross-country driverless road-trips would be enabled by the end of 2017, and that Tesla owners would be able to earn money via a massive driverless ride-hailing network in 2020.
And while Tesla has cemented its place in history books thanks to building and selling millions of electric vehicles, none of the above promises (nor many others) have come to pass.
But that hasn’t stopped Musk from making more promises in 2024. Here’s an accounting of those promises and when he expects them to become reality.
The $25,000 EV
In 2024 alone, Musk pledged to unveil a $25,000 EV, then scrapped it in April to prioritize a robotaxi prototype — a decision that led to mass layoffs as Tesla pursued its “next phase of growth.”
Musk has flip-flopped on whether the affordable EV would ever come to market. But during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, Musk said the idea of building a $25,000 car with a steering wheel and pedals is “pointless” and “silly.” He said the only car he’d sell at that price point would be the Cybercab.
During the call, an analyst asked if Tesla would make a lower-cost EV that’s not the Cybercab, and Musk replied that all of the company’s cars moving forward would be autonomous. He also said that of the 7 million vehicles Tesla has built to date, the “vast majority” are “capable of autonomy,” and that Tesla is “currently making on the order of 35,000 autonomous vehicles a week.” Musk is clearly using a loose definition of autonomy here, because Tesla still does not produce vehicles that are safe to use without a human behind the wheel.
(Flashback: Musk originally promised in 2016, in a since-deleted post on Tesla’s website, that “All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware,” and that only a software update would be needed to turn regular old Teslas into self-driving cars. That didn’t happen, and Tesla has had to upgrade cars with older hardware.)
It’s also worth noting that during that earnings call, Musk said that he expects vehicle growth to reach 20% to 30% in 2025 due to “lower cost vehicles” and the “advent of autonomy.”
Start production on the Cybercab by 2025 or 2026
Tesla unveiled 20 Cybercab prototypes at a flashy Hollywood event in October, and Musk took the opportunity to share some plans for the vehicles, as well as Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving (FSD) software. FSD is Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system that can perform many automated driving tasks, but still requires a human to remain attentive behind the wheel and take over if needed.
Musk told customers they would be able to one day buy a robotaxi — a two-door, two-seat vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals — for less than $30,000. He also said that the average operating cost of the Cybercab will reduce over time to only $0.20 per mile. And he said Tesla would start production on the purpose-built AVs in 2025 or 2026.
(Flashback: Musk said in 2022 that Tesla would mass-produce robotaxis by 2024. Before that, in 2019, he said that Tesla would have a million robotaxis on roads by 2020. Musk has promised that Tesla would solve full self-driving “next year” since at least 2016.)
A few weeks later, during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, Musk said Tesla would reach “volume production in ’26,” and that the company was eventually “aiming for at least 2 million units a year of Cybercab.”
Current federal regulations that require vehicles to be built with certain safety standards, like manual human controls, could be roadblocks for Tesla to mass produce its Cybercabs. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently proposed new rules that would fast-track exemptions for such vehicles, but they would require companies to share more data with the agency, like crash reporting. Today, automakers are required to report crashes when ADAS or autonomous driving tech is engaged.
Musk has railed against the rule before, and President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly exploring scrapping it.
Robovan in development
During Tesla’s robotaxi reveal, the company also showed investors a Robovan prototype. At the time Musk didn’t share any concrete plans for the vehicle, but in November he posted on X that the Robovan is in development, along with “some other things.”
(Flashback: In 2016, Musk said Tesla would start building a minibus using the Model X chassis in two to three years.)
“Unsupervised FSD” and autonomous ride-hail in 2025
At the event, Musk also promised that Model 3 and Model Y owners would be able to use an “unsupervised” version of FSD in California and Texas in 2025.
It wasn’t, and still isn’t, clear what Musk meant by “unsupervised” FSD. Today, Tesla’s FSD is still not fully autonomous, and to dispel any confusion, Tesla this year began referring to the software as “supervised FSD.” Removing the supervision could mean that Tesla plans to remove the driver, or it could mean that Tesla plans to offer a Level 3 autonomous system that allows drivers to go hands-off, eyes-off for a portion of their ride.
During Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, Musk took the promise of unsupervised FSD a step further. He said he hopes to launch a service that will let people hail self-driving Teslas in California and Texas in 2025. He also claimed Tesla had begun testing the service in the Bay Area with employees.
(Context: There are several tiers of permits required to test and deploy autonomous vehicles in California. Tesla has held a permit to test AVs with a safety driver in the front seat since 2015, but the Department of Motor Vehicles told TechCrunch in October that Tesla last reported using that permit in 2019.)
It’s not clear if Tesla plans to launch this ride-hail service with its robotaxis or with existing Tesla Model 3 and Model Y owners. Tesla’s first-quarter earnings presentation included a mock-up of a future Tesla ride-hail app, and the company has for years teased the idea of a ride-hailing network using Teslas that had been updated to drive fully autonomously. The idea is similar to Uber, only Tesla owners would add their properly equipped self-driving vehicles to the automaker’s ride-hailing app to make extra cash when the cars are not in use. Tesla would take 25% to 30% of the revenue.
Finally, during Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call, Musk said Tesla was in talks with a “major automaker” to license FSD, but so far has not announced any such deals.
“Over a thousand Optimus robots working at Tesla” in 2025
Musk has made some out-there promises about Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot. During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting, Musk promised that Tesla would move into “limited production” of the Optimus next year, with “over 1,000, or a few thousand, Optimus robots working at Tesla” in 2025. He also said he expects Optimus to be on sale by 2026. In a post on X, the billionaire executive added that he expects to have more Optimus bots available for use by other companies in 2026.
He did not specify if the bots would be working fully autonomously, or if they would be remotely controlled by humans, as they were during Tesla’s robotaxi reveal event in October.
(Context: While humanoid robots are improving to the point of being able to autonomously complete specific tasks, many experts say generalized robotics is still years away due to a lack of training data.)
Aside from manufacturing promises, Musk also predicted that Optimus could one day lift Tesla’s market cap to $25 trillion. That’s roughly seven times the current market caps of Apple and Nvidia. At the end of December, Tesla’s market cap was around $1.42 trillion, which is almost a 160% increase from the $550 billion market cap before Trump won the presidential election.
Have we missed anything? Feel free to reach out to rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com.
