Comment by jqpabc123
21 hours ago
For years, we’ve been told that the 4680 cell was the “holy grail” that would allow Tesla to produce a $25,000 electric car.
For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition.
Just 6 months ago, we were told that Robotaxi would be available to half the US population by the end of the year.
https://electrek.co/2025/07/23/elon-musk-with-straight-face-...
There is an entire Wikipedia article about Musk's (mostly) failed predictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
Neat.
It's a bummer though that it's limited to Telsa. Would love to see a fuller one of his all bold statements about robotics, tunnel transportation, space travel, and AI.
This one was from a couple years back. The list could probably double with DOGE alone.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk...
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At what point is it fair to call the list something other than ‘predictions’
"Forward-looking statements" aka legal stock pumping.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-looking_statement)
Those are borderline lies that deceived both customers and investors.
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s/Predictions/Ketamine-and-adderall-fueled ramblings
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I guess when people stop believing them. Until then, they're words from a visionary that's building the future, who can get some things wrong / be over zealous etc. When people stop believing him, they become lies.
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Pump and dump scheme?
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According to the article, a court would call this "corporate puffery", but to me it's nothing but lies and grifting.
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Predicting is easy. Predicting correctly less so.
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"Tech Optimism"
I had no idea this existed, that's pretty damning.
The question - is Musk lying on purpose, or is this more 90-90 rule where he made (obviously wrong) assumptions based on current progress?
If he himself believes he can achieve his off-the-cuff deadlines or not doesn't matter for the rest of us: he already proven himself to be a fabulist, and after so many failed predictions, should know better than to air them in public, especially as he must be acutely aware that making such claims inflates his and his companies' net worth, and hence has legal implications. Only he cares not about those, as none of his past misdeeds had any serious consequences to himself.
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How about the possibility that the cost of lying is less than the capital gains that can be realized by lying about it? EM was only fined $20 million when he said he had secured funding to take the company private at $420/share [0]. The stock bounce from that "news" was in the billions.
As it stands, he can get a trillion dollar pay package if a something-trillion market cap target is hit.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/elon-musk-loses-...
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The latter implies there is any progress to project out from.
The only one that actually came true out of the long list was a 'prediction' he made about something happening in the same month.
The best counter argument to that is that he did manage to predict/make into reality electric vehicles (when going into that industry was crazy) and reusable rockets. If someone makes a thousand moonshot attempts but still succeeds with two that's impressive.
Electric vehicles were the first types of cars invented.
Musk also bought into Tesla.
So its not like he invented some kind of alien technology.
It was always about having good enough marketing to permit 10 years of R&D to make the car actually attractive.
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Something is missing here. Once you get two moonshots done, you have free pass to claim anything any number of times with zero results? I cannot agree.
he did manage to predict/make into reality electric vehicles (when going into that industry was crazy)
Nissan might like a word about that.
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> he did manage to predict/make into reality electric vehicles
I miss the morning delivery of milk to the doorstep. And the milk carts that used to deliver it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float
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Reusable rockets are a rehash of old tech that was considered - at the time - not economically feasible; Given how subject to interpretation spacex commercial numbers are, there is nothing indicating a clear cost or efficiency advantage compared with traditional launch systems so far. What we clearly know is that using software development methodologies to building critical hardware is as a bad idea as it sounds.
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"Predictions" feels like the wrong word for what a CEO is saying his company is intending to deliver.
Actually a very interesting article! Didn't know he'd been selling this lie for so long.
'failed predictions'
I am an old man.
In my youth we called this lies. Or investor deception.
Some would even go as far as calling what he claims fraud but hey...
When the weather forecast said it would rain on Friday and it didn’t was that also called a lie?
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That looks like it would make the basis of a nice Tesla class action law suit!
It’d be neat to have a dedicated site similar to killed by google.
See also elonmusk.today
"Tesla, where we make the impossible late"
I'm sure Godot will be along any moment now
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It's really amazing. Anyone still remembers Dojo ? 2 years ago or so they stated that they start to mass produce Dojo and it was supposed to be a top 5 supercomputer in the world by the end of 2024...
https://thedriven.io/2023/06/22/tesla-to-start-building-its-...
The Dojo team left tesla to do their own ASIC. https://www.theverge.com/news/756706/tesla-dojo-team-shut-do...
Yeah, that was already almost 1 year after they were supposedly planning to have the top 5 compute ...
The reality is they announced that as a pipe dream. Just like the FSD, Robotaxi, Optimus and 10 other projects that will never work - or more precisely, they will work but >10 years from now, and it won't be from Tesla but from a competitor.
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I suspect the departure was mutual... The team didn't seem on track to deliver anything workable.
The full Robotaxi rollout is going to happen as soon as they finish fulfilling the Roadster preorders.
so like 2080 or thereabouts?
2026 is the Year of Tesla on the Desktop.
Tesla fans have no ability to learn from past lies.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 65535 times...
Let's hope they used a short unsigned int, just one more time and they can start all over again!
Hey just fool them once more and the counter goes to zero
Maybe "cultists" is a better word than fans, with Musk as their guru.
The model Y is a genuinely good car... I can't think of an automaker with better software.
I've recently been shopping for another electric SUV and to be told that to get charging stops on your long trip 'through an app on your phone' instead of built into the navigation is.... Wild
Edit: it needs to be said that I consider a car a solution to the A to B problem, and nothing more :) This was one of the premium German automakers by the way. On a ~$50k car....
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It's incredible there is something wrong with a group of people completely unable to see when someone is lying to them. And no matter how many times they are lied to, as long as they are rich enough they believe them.
I don't know what to think anymore about this. He has continuously conned his way along and does it just long enough to jump to the next con.
Tesla is crashing and somehow people though giving him a huge pay package made sense. Cyber truck is flopping but now he's again living off government graft by having another company buy up the dead weight supply. Tesla is only around because of govt subsidy and now that that's dead he's turned to another govt spigot. While supposedly being opposed politically to what he's doing.
And time and time again people still make up excuses because they can't believe they were conned.
Probably the biggest sign AI is going to flop is him starting talking about it being right around the corner.
Little technical skills, no forecasting ability, we saw how much his "efficiency management" philosophy flopped when done in public via DOGE (vs behind the scenes in a private company) and yet people keep falling for it. As long as he can keep spitting out BS, people keep falling for it.
> Tesla is crashing and somehow people thought giving him a huge pay package made sense.
There’s only upside for shareholders.
Musk’s package is entirely performance-contingent and structured as 12 stock grants.
And the targets are very ambitious: valuation ($8.5 trillion) and operational goals (20M cars, 10M FSD, 1M robotaxis, $400B profit) over 10 years.
https://poole.ncsu.edu/thought-leadership/article/inside-the...
> There’s only upside for shareholders
On the other side of the coin, they really don't have a choice; either they attempt to provide leverage (and using non-realistic goals is excellent to avoid actually having to pay it), or any major misshap with any of the other businesses that may have as collateral tesla stock (either directly or indirectly) would basically bankrupt the company. And the scenario where Elon would attempt to do a sort of firesale on purpose just to take revenge isnt far-fetched either;
IMO The only way forward for them is to keep him happy for now, while attempting to either do damage control or graceful exits.
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Only simpletons can't see the end game of beautiful profits!
https://americanliterature.com/author/hans-christian-anderse...
I always thought the story ended with the emperor and his entourage being embarassed after the child said he's naked... but no, it ends even more close to real human behavior. (Sorry for writing a clickbait sentence).
I think you think about it in the wrong way. The obvious con is what hypes the fan base. They think they are in on it and that they will fool the "NPCs" or what ever they call normal people.
> Tesla is crashing
But the stock keeps hitting new all time highs.
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent" applies here.
Luckily I don't bet, I would have taken a huge short position and lost a bunch of money on Tesla years ago because they were already over valued by any plausible revenue projection, and yet the stock went up and up.
But worth remembering, the South Sea Company was worth the equivalent of a few trillion dollars too.
To the moon <rocket emoji> <diamond emoji> <hand emoji>
Not when accounting for inflation. Then that high was years back.
Well, he cashed in 2 billion of govt money for the moon mission and that doesn't look like it will fly.
Well, it is flying, it's the "refuel in space" and "re-entry in a manner such that it's reusable" parts which are questionable.
If something is literally incredible, then it's prudent to stop and consider whether it should be believed or that you have made an incorrect assumption. In this case, you wrongly assume that Musk is somehow being rewarded for something that happened in the past, or for something that might not even happen. The reality is that the pay package will only have value if Elon manages to dig Tesla out of the hole.
Despite how much conning you believe Musk has done (I won't refute it), Tesla is a company that actually builds cars, and while the Cybertruck flopped and anyone could see that coming from a mile away, that doesn't really affect the Tesla bottom line. That Musk grifted the government into buying them doesn't really do anything besides saving Tesla some money.
I wouldn't buy Tesla shares, I still don't really see their crazy valuation, but I would buy a Tesla car, as they are ostensibly awesome. If you disregard all the lying Musk has done it's still an epic car with unrivaled self driving capabilities.
That he starts talking about something historically has been a sign that some part of it is going to be a reality. You can stand apart from the crazy people who worship the ground he walks on, and still appreciate that he accomplishes great things. Whether it's through conning and grifting, or hard work and keen insight, there are still an electric car company and a rocket company where there weren't before.
Just stop reacting to people believing or shouting things or grotesque behaviors, and just look at the actual reality. It'll do you a lot better than just believing everything Musk says is BS.
The problem with the stock market is, even if you know with 100% certainty that EM is lying and Tesla is overvalued, you only can cash in that knowledge if the stock price makes contact with reality.
In fact even if every single shareholder in Tesla knows that the price is unsustainable they can still hold out for a greater fool for years. To a large extent you are betting on what the crowd will do, not what the company will do.
For this to work every single shareholder has to be in on the game. I wonder if the only reason it has gone on this long is because TSLA has so many required institutional investors stabilizing the market.
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Beyond a certain point it becomes self-reinforcing. You will distort everything else about your world view to support that lie. You will surround yourself with other people who believe it and live in a completely internally consistent reality, surrounded by a vast conspiracy trying to bring you down.
The really killer part is, I can't even be 100% certain that it's not me. I'm quite sure, and justify it solidly, but then, I would.
I feel the same re: killer part...
Maybe the smart people are the ones who can intuitively feel the stupidity of the masses and take advantage of that, whereas the dumb are the ones who are too cautious about houses of cards and unstable Ponzi schemes...
> there is something wrong with a group of people completely unable to see when someone is lying to them.
They mistakenly believe, like temporarily embarrassed millionaires/capitalists [1], that they are actually in the winning group.
[1] _ https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed
Did he always have this problem? I don't recall this from the early Tesla days. I have the totally subjective impression that the predictions have been getting worse and worse.
The thing seems to be that he's made the same claims since the beginning and things are always being pushed out every year .. "fully self driving taxis in 2 years"
He's the perfect salesman for giving investors hope, and delivers some things but promises everything.
The hyperloop.. Colonizing mars by 2025 I think was one claim..
Good article here https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk...
I'm happy he's pushed space access but everything else, he's coming across as a bit of a confidence man.
Very much yes.
There are 24 hours left in the year. Don't lose hope!
And Tesla's ability to tightly align promises with engineering and supply chain execution seems to be slipping
There's never been any such ability. Musk has been promising actual full self driving within a year or two yearly or multiple times a year since 2015 (and partial such since 2014 at least).
How should we consider other claims by CEOs, like claims made about the future of AI? What about claims made by politicians? Or claims made by the Federal Reserve?
With analysis? Like what else?
Throwing ones hands up in the air and giving up, would be valid if it was actually hard. The example you have given just mixes up CEOs, Politicians and the Fed.
Being charitable, this is a question of whether someone can understand all these domains well enough to make out good from bad. Yes - people have. It takes time, effort and a desire to learn these things, but its done regularly.
> For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition.
This is the specific comment I was replying to.
It isn't about throwing ones hands in the air, its about realizing that CEOs are always going to embellish the present as much as possible and make claims of the future that are aspirational at best.
I raise both politicians and the Fed because they both do the exact same thing when it comes to making claims of the future that they don't know will happen but hope will push people today in a certain direction.
I wasn't claiming that all three groups are the same, only that they all fall afoul of the frustrating type of claimed the earlier comment took issue with.
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But he says that every year in the earnings call, he will say it again in the q1 call. 'By september' full of confidence and no one calling him out.
"The car is driving itself. The human is only there for legal reasons." (Tesla, 2016)
Tesla video promoting self-driving was staged, engineer testifies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34415413 - January 2023 (342 comments)
This was also litigated in court where they admitted that when they tried to have the car drive itself it crashed into a fence
"It's technically true at any given point in time" - Felon Musk, probably.
I'm still sour of how easily I was deceived while being so happy when envisioning a future that won't come.
First with autopilot, then with boring's tunnels, then a $39k cybertruck, then ...
What's that saying about "fool me so many times I can't keep count" ?
Whatever angry feeling we may have towards Elon Musk, he's not the richest man on earth for nothing.
Lesson learned, till next time !
>>he's not the richest man on earth for nothing.
He engineers perceptions, finance, and govt funds, not technology. Every report and available evidence shows he is barely technologically astute, nevermind genius; the accomplishments of his teams are despite him not because of him.
Which is why a better description would be: The Greediest Man On Earth.
> Every report and available evidence shows he is barely technologically astute, nevermind genius; the accomplishments of his teams are despite him not because of him.
In particular, nothing that comes out of his mouth regarding AI makes any sense.
And still, people listen to him as if he was an expert. Go figure.
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Just stating that he does seem to inspire and build teams/orgs that do great things.
Both SpaceX and Tesla are accomplishments if you consider where their competitors are.
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> For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition.
Sometimes I wonder if Musk's astronomical pay package is an engineered rug pull on Tesla's investors. Imagine if they know the jig is up and intend to fleece stockholders one last time by leaving them holding the bag when the house of cards comes crumbling down.
And of those things we've been told, a high percentage of them have had to do with battery technology. Science is full of discoveries, science at scale doesn't always work out like we've hoped.
Everything I remember about the Jobs RDF was entirely about things like MacWorld Expo presentations. Selling lesser-performing products for more by claiming they did more with things like Photoshop bakeoffs, or with (claimed) style over substance. (I was a big long-term Mac user so I felt like Mac OS was enough of an advantage over Windows for a long time that it wasn't just style over substance.)
Musk just took it way further. When Jobs missed with the RDF it was on stuff like the G4 Cube being "cool" enough to make up for its issues. He wasn't promising miracles.
Took me some time to remember that RDF meant Reality Distortion Field.
Year isn't over yet, hah.
> Just 6 months ago, we were told that Robotaxi would be available to half the US population by the end of the year.
It's available! Everyone in the US can go to Austin and get a ride in a Tesla robotaxi!
Reports say there are only about 10 Robotaxis operating in Austin at any one time.
https://electrek.co/2025/12/22/tesla-robotaxi-project-austin...
https://www.teslarobotaxitracker.com/
So s/everyone/anyone/ I guess?
BYD Atto 3 enters the chat
Just wait another 6 months /s
Tesla isn't a car company it's a robotics company (2025)
Tesla isn't a robotics company it's a meme company (2027)
The one that intrigued me more was circa the 2017 era when Tesla was supposedly an energy company. That might have justified their valuation at the time, but it turned out to be dishonest spin.
Yet again, there are no adults and the shallow fabric of society fails to conceal the greed boner under the sheets.
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Tesla isn't a company (2029)
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https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/04/27/spacex-announces-plan-...
Remember in 2016 when people would be on Mars by 2018?
Please don't be so cynical. With the right mix of drugs, it is actually possible.
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