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Elon Musk has had an eventful 2024, which has seen him take a hard line on right-wing politics and use the X social media platform and his considerable influence to help. Donald Trump win the presidential election.
Putting politics aside for a moment, it’s worth focusing on another of Musk’s pastimes: making promises for Tesla.
The Tesla CEO’s promises — and repeatedly missed deadlines — have become central to the Tesla storyline. And they’ve always had a standout quality that has captured investors’ imaginations and helped drive up Tesla’s stock value. its value is 1.3 trillion dollars. In 2015, there was a claim that there would be Tesla cars self-governance for two yearsthat cross-country driverless road trips It will be launched by the end of 2017, and Tesla owners will be able to earn money in 2020 through a large network of driverless vehicles.
While Tesla cemented its place in the history books by building and selling millions of electric cars, none of the above promises (or many others) came to pass.
But that hasn’t stopped Musk from making more promises in 2024. A report on these promises and when they will be realized awaits.
A $25,000 HOUSE
Musk in 2024 alone promised to open then a $25,000 HOUSE broke decided in April to favor a robotaxi prototype massive layoffs As Tesla continues its “next phase of growth.”
There is musk flip-flop on whether an affordable EV will ever hit the 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 was “nonsensical” and “ridiculous.” He said the only car he would sell at that price would be the Cybercab.
During the call, an analyst asked if Tesla would produce a cheaper EV that wasn’t a Cybercab, and Musk replied that all of the company’s cars going forward would be autonomous. He also said that the “vast majority” of the 7 million cars Tesla has built to date are “autonomous capable” and that Tesla is “currently producing 35,000 autonomous vehicles per week on order.” Musk is obviously using a loose definition of autonomy here, since Tesla still doesn’t make cars that are safe to use without a human behind the wheel.
(Flashback: Musk originally promised in a since-deleted post on Tesla’s website in 2016 that “all Tesla cars in production will have fully self-driving hardware” and that a plain old Tesla would only need a software update to become a self-driving car. cars. This did not happen and Tesla had to upgrade their cars with older equipment.)
It’s also worth noting that during that earnings call, Musk said he expects car growth to reach 20% to 30% in 2025 due to “lower-cost cars” and the “emergence of autonomy.”
Start production on the Cybercab by 2025 or 2026
Tesla unveiled 20 Cybercab prototypes At a lavish event in Hollywood in October, Musk took the opportunity to share some plans for the cars, as well as Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software. FSD is Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system that can perform many automated driving tasks, but still requires you to stay focused behind the wheel and take over if necessary.
Musk told customers they could one day buy a two-door, two-seat robotax with no steering wheel or pedals for less than $30,000. He also said Cybercab’s average operating cost will drop to just $0.20 per mile over time. And he said Tesla will start producing purpose-built AVs in 2025 or 2026.
(Flashback: Musk said that in 2022 Tesla will Mass production of robotax by 2024. Before that, in 2019, he said there would be a Tesla One million robotax on the roads by 2020. Musk has promised that Tesla will tackle full self-driving “next year” from at least 2016.)
A few weeks later, during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, Musk said Tesla said it will reach “volume production in ’26” and that the company is eventually “targeting at least 2 million Cybercabs per year.”
Current federal regulations require vehicles to be built to certain safety standards, such as manual human controls obstacles Tesla needs to mass produce its Cybercabs. Recently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed new rules it would speed up exemptions for such vehicles, but they would require companies to share more information with the agency, such as accident reports. Today, car manufacturers are required to report accidents when ADAS or autonomous driving technology is introduced.
Musk has previously opposed the rule, and President-elect Donald Trump reportedly has a transition team investigates breaking it.
Robova in development
During Tesla’s robotics demonstration, the company also showed investors the Robovan prototype. At the time, Musk didn’t share any specific plans for the car, but in November, he did Posted in X That Robova is in development along with “a few other things.”
(Flashback: In 2016, Musk said Tesla would start building a van Use the Model X chassis for two to three years.)
“Unsupervised FSD” and autonomous driving in 2025
At the event, Musk also promised that Model 3 and Model Y owners will be able to use an “unsupervised” version of FSD in California and Texas in 2025.
It was and still is not clear what Musk meant by “uncontrolled” FSD. Today, Tesla’s FSD is still not fully autonomous, and to clear up any confusion, Tesla this year began referring to the software as “controlled FSD.” Removing control could mean that Tesla plans to eliminate the driver, or it could mean that Tesla plans to offer a Level 3 autonomous system that allows drivers to hold hands, close their eyes, for part of their rides.
During Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, Musk took the unsupervised FSD promise a step further. He said he hopes to launch a service that will enable people All hail the self-driving Teslas in California and Texas in 2025. He also claimed that Tesla has begun testing the service with employees in the Bay Area.
(Context: Several levels of permits are required to test and deploy autonomous vehicles in California. Tesla has had permission 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 said it last used this permission in 2019.)
It is unclear whether Tesla plans to launch this ride-hailing service with its robotaxis or with existing Tesla Model 3 and Model Y owners. Tesla’s first-quarter earnings presentation included a mockup of the future Tesla ride-hail program, and the company has for years teased the idea of a car network using updated Teslas to drive fully autonomously. The idea is similar to Uber, only Tesla owners would add properly equipped vehicles to the automaker’s ride-hailing program to earn extra cash when the cars aren’t being used. Tesla would receive 25% to 30% of the revenue.
Finally, during Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call, Musk said Tesla is in talks with a “major automaker” to license FSD, but has so far not announced any such deal.
By 2025, “Tesla has over a thousand Optimus robots working”
Musk made some promises about Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus. During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting, Musk promised that Tesla will go into “limited production” of Optimus in 2025, with “1,000 or more Optimus robots working at Tesla.” He also said he expected Optimus to be. It will go on sale by 2026. a Type in Xthe billionaire executive added that he expects more Optimus bots to be available for use by other companies in 2026.
He did not specify whether or not the bots will operate fully autonomously controlled remotely by humansLike Tesla’s robot taxi demonstration in October.
(Context: (Although humanoid robots have improved to the point where they can perform specific tasks autonomously, many experts say that generalized robotics is still years away due to a lack of training data.)
Aside from the production promises, Musk also predicted that Optimus could one day boost Tesla’s market value to $25 trillion. This is approx seven times Current market prices of Apple and Nvidia. At the end of December, Tesla’s market cap was about $1.42 trillion, an increase of almost 160% from its $550 billion market cap before Trump won the presidency.
Did we miss something? Feel free to reach out to Rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com.
