Elon Musk promises Tesla in 2024, from robotaxis to Optimus robots
Elon Musk has had an eventful 2024, thanks to his strong push into right-wing politics and leveraging his X social media platform and significant influence to help. Donald Trump Winning the presidential elections.
Putting politics aside for a moment, it’s worth focusing on another hobby of Musk’s: making promises to Tesla.
The Tesla CEO’s promises — and repeated unmet deadlines — have become a central theme in the Tesla story. And it always had an eye-catching quality that captured investors’ imaginations and helped drive up the value of Tesla’s stock, giving the company a leg up Worth $1.3 trillion. There was a claim in 2015 that Tesla cars would be like this Autonomous driving within two yearswhich Driverless road trips across the country It will be activated by the end of 2017, and Tesla owners will be able to make money via a massive driverless ride-hailing network in 2020.
While Tesla has cemented its place in the history books by building and selling millions of electric cars, none of the above promises (nor many others) have materialized.
But this did not prevent Musk from making more promises in 2024. Below is a description of those promises and when he expects them to become reality.
$25,000 EV
In 2024 alone, Musk I pledged to unveil Then $25,000 EV She canceled it In April to prioritize a robotaxi prototype, a decision that led to… Mass layoffs While Tesla pursued its “next phase of growth.”
Musk has it Floundering About whether or not an affordable electric car will 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 “nonsense” 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 make a low-cost electric car other than the Cybercab, and Musk replied that all of the company’s upcoming cars would be self-driving. He also said that of the 7 million vehicles Tesla has built so far, the “vast majority” are “capable of autonomy,” and that Tesla is “currently making up to 35,000 self-driving vehicles per week.” Musk is clearly using a loose definition of autonomy here, because Tesla still doesn’t 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 in production now have full self-driving hardware,” and that only a software update would be needed to convert older Tesla cars. Regular to self-driving cars. Cars. But this did not happen, and Tesla was forced to upgrade its cars with outdated hardware.)
It’s also worth noting that during that earnings call, Musk said he expects vehicle growth to reach 20% to 30% in 2025 due to “low-cost vehicles” and “the emergence of autonomy.”
Cybercab production to begin by 2025 or 2026
Tesla has unveiled 20 Cybercab prototypes At a flashy Hollywood event in October, Musk took the opportunity to share some plans for the vehicles, as well as Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving (FSD) program. 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 necessary.
Musk told customers they would one day be able to buy a robotaxi — a two-door, two-seat vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals — for less than $30,000. He also said the average cost of operating a Cybercab will drop over time to just $0.20 per mile. He said Tesla will begin production of self-driving vehicles designed for this purpose in 2025 or 2026.
(Flashback: Musk said in 2022 that Tesla will do so Production of automated taxis on a large scale by 2024. Before that, in 2019, he said Tesla would do so One million taxis on the roads by 2020. Musk has promised that Tesla will solve the problem of 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 “production volume in 2016,” and that the company was eventually “aiming to produce at least 2 million units per year of the Cybercab.”
Existing federal regulations requiring vehicles to be built with certain safety standards, such as manual human control, could be so Roadblocks For Tesla to mass produce its taxis. Recently National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Proposed new rules This would speed up exemptions for such vehicles, but would require companies to share more data with the agency, such as reporting crashes. Today, automakers are required to report accidents when using advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) or self-driving technology.
Musk has objected to this rule before, and President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is said to have as well Explore canceling it.
Robofan in development
While unveiling the Tesla Robotaxi, the company also showed investors a prototype of the Robovan. At the time, Musk didn’t share any concrete plans for the vehicle, but he announced as much in November Published on X The two robots are under development, along with “some other things.”
(Flashback: In 2016, Musk said Tesla would do so Start building a minibus Using a Model
“Unsupervised FSD” and autonomous driving in 2025
At the event, Musk also promised that Model 3 and Y owners will be able to use an “uncensored” version of FSD in California and Texas in 2025.
It wasn’t, and still isn’t, clear what Musk means by “unsupervised” FSD. Today, Tesla’s FSD program is still not completely autonomous, and to dispel any confusion, Tesla this year began referring to the program as “supervised FSD.” Removing supervision could mean that Tesla plans to remove the driver, or it could mean that Tesla plans to introduce a Level 3 autonomous system that allows drivers to be hands-off for part of their journey.
During Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, Musk took the promise of unsupervised FSD one step further. He said he hopes to launch a service that will allow people… We applaud Tesla’s self-driving cars in California and Texas in 2025. He also claimed that Tesla has begun testing the service in the Bay Area with employees.
(Context: There are several levels of permits required to test and deploy autonomous vehicles in California. Tesla has had permission to test autonomous vehicles with a safe driver in the front seat since 2015, but the DMV told TechCrunch in October that Tesla last reported using this permit in 2019.)
It’s not clear if Tesla plans to launch this ride-hailing service through robotaxis or with existing Tesla Model 3 and Model Y owners. Tesla’s first-quarter earnings presentation included a mock-up of Tesla’s future ride-hailing app, and the company has for years teased the idea of creating a ride-hailing network using Tesla cars that have been updated to drive fully autonomously. The idea is similar to Uber, in that only Tesla owners would add their properly equipped self-driving cars to the automaker’s ride-hailing app to earn extra money when the cars are not in use. Tesla will receive 25% to 30% of revenues.
Finally, during Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call, Musk said that Tesla is in talks with a “major automaker” to license FSD, but has not yet announced any such deals.
“More than a thousand Optimus robots working at Tesla” in 2025
Musk has made some public promises about Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot. During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting, Musk promised that Tesla would move to “limited production” of Optimus next year, with “more than 1,000, or a few thousand, Optimus robots operating at Tesla” in 2025. He also said he expects that Optimus would be too. On sale by 2026. In a Share on XThe billionaire CEO added that he expects to have more Optimus robots available for use by other companies in 2026.
He did not specify whether or not the robots would operate completely autonomously Remote control by humansas happened during Tesla’s robotic car reveal event in October.
(Context: While humanoid robots are improving to the point that they are able to complete specific tasks autonomously, many experts say generalized robots are still years away due to a lack of training data).
Aside from the manufacturing promises, Musk also predicted that Optimus could one day push Tesla’s market value to $25 trillion. This is almost Seven times The current market capitalization of Apple and Nvidia. At the end of December, Tesla’s market capitalization was approximately $1.42 trillion, representing an increase of approximately 160% from the market value of $550 billion before Trump won the presidential election.
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