Elon Musk’s Missed Full Self-Driving Targets Are Even Wilder Than I Remembered

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There’s been a bit debate occurring these days about whether or not Tesla Full Self-Driving is “successfully” Stage 4 autonomous driving or continues to be only a Stage 2 driver-assist system. Yesterday, I shared a remark from a reader explaining that it’s really Stage 2++ now. I’ll come again to that in a minute, however first, there’s one other reader remark that deserves some consideration.

I’ve lined a variety of occasions that Elon Musk’s predictions for when Tesla would implement true, unsupervised, full self driving have been off for a few decade. And so they proceed to be off. Nonetheless, simply how off they had been greater than 10 years in the past is one thing I didn’t totally keep in mind.

Right here’s the total remark from longtime reader “delphi23,” bringing us approach again to January 2016:

“I feel we’ll most likely have autonomous ride-hailing in most likely half the inhabitants of the U.S. by the top of the 12 months,” Musk mentioned on July 23, 2025

What number of years do you add for every of the Musk prediction qualifiers: “pretty assured”, “fairly assured”, “most likely” and so forth.

I keep in mind Musk in 2016 predicting a Mannequin S going coast to coast “by the top of 2017”. And he was requested if that would come with charging and he responded sure (“When clarifying how a cross-country journey would work with no human driver to plug the automobile in, Musk referenced automated charging know-how“). Anyway, 9 years later it seems to have taken place, solely with people doing the charging.

A January 2016 tweet mentioned:

“In the end you’ll be capable to summon your automobile wherever… I feel that inside two years, you’ll be capable to summon your automobile from throughout the nation. It would meet you wherever your telephone is… and it’ll simply routinely cost itself alongside the whole journey.”

We have now talked about that coast-to-coast journey a number of occasions, however I fully forgot that Musk additionally talked about charging in that approach. After all, there was the previous Tesla “snake charger” prototype, and it was assumed Tesla would look to roll these out throughout the nation to cost self-driving automobiles. However we’ve solely ever actually seen the one.

Maybe individuals didn’t count on the coast-to-coast journey and automated chargers to be greater than a advertising ploy utilizing a selected route and only a handful of specifically deployed snake chargers, not one thing broadly attainable, however then that subsequent declare about having the ability to summon your automobile from throughout the nation was clearly a shopper product prediction. By 2018, Tesla drivers had been supposed to have the ability to summon their vehicles from throughout the nation and their vehicles would simply drive to them! A lot for that.

Has Tesla Full Self Driving (Supervised) gotten a lot better? Sure, it has. However how can anybody belief any of Musk’s predictions or plans when he’s greater than a decade off like this when discussing issues which might be an enormous a part of his firm’s services and products?

Because of delphi23 for bringing this up. Certainly, what do the qualifies “pretty assured” and “fairly assured” and “most likely” really imply after they come from Elon Musk?

Oh, coming again to present Tesla FSD being Stage 2++ fairly than Stage 4 autonomous driving, right here’s that remark from Steve Shaw once more explaining why that’s the case, and a number of the explanation why you continue to can’t summon a Tesla automobile from throughout the nation:

“It’s true that Tesla’s basic mannequin signifies that knowledge helps all over the place, not simply in Austin. That’s seemingly a part of why FSD (Supervised) in shopper vehicles has improved. And it ought to imply they’ll roll out robotaxi service quicker over time. AFTER we see lots of of vehicles making many journeys per day in a number of Texas cities. Up to now, it’s nonetheless unproven.

“The analyst’s factors are a fantastic description of what’s colloquially known as ‘L2++’: Driver help that’s typically ready (in good climate) to drive the automobile, BUT the human driver should stay alert, able to intervene at any immediate, typically with out warning. Maybe is near L3 in restricted circumstances, corresponding to a divided freeway (in good climate).

“The opposite factors relate as to whether Tesla is near ‘secure sufficient for a robotaxi fleet’, in some cities. Possibly. A fleet is a managed scenario: we all know from current exposé that Tesla had ‘knowledge labelers’ mark each necessary function in Austin for months. This was then fed into AV coaching knowledge, to extend skill of robotaxis to acknowledge what they should acknowledge. I take into account that an alternative to MAPPING a metropolis: prior details about what’s the place.

“IMPORTANT: We’ll seemingly quickly see boasting about how shortly Tesla has gone from a small variety of robotaxi miles, to 10 million miles — WITHOUT a point out that almost all of these miles are from the five hundred vehicles in SF space, that function with a human driver. Registered as a standard (non robo-) human taxi service. Proves nothing. Every quarterly report and tweet continues this MISLEADING mingling of driverless and drivered ‘robotaxi’ miles!

“HOWEVER, it’s a lengthy methods from robotaxi providers to shopper L4. Too many variables as soon as it’s in individuals’s fingers. I personally received’t belief an ‘virtually L4’ that lacks LOCAL MAPS and RADAR (and/or LiDAR). No purpose for an AV to be as blind as an individual in unhealthy climate!

“If I used to be in authorities and had the authority, I’d require all shopper self-driving modes to incorporate direct reporting to the federal government company of such incidents. That’s, constructed into the sprint, could be an choice, after the automobile is stopped, for the individual to explain what occurred such that they needed to intervene. If we had these experiences, our different opinions about what Tesla has achieved wouldn’t be wanted. We’d know what Tesla is aware of, about how far they’re from secure autonomy.”

Yup.