Elon Musk’s promises for Tesla in 2024, from robotaxis to Optimus bots | TechCrunch
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.