As both fans and foes of Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk are well aware, the man really, really likes to wave his hands in the air and make big, game-changing promises.
Many will remember his sci-fi-esque Hyperloop system, which he spent a lot of time talking about in the 2010s. SpaceX trademarked the concept of a series of tubes that could shoot passengers from point A to point B in record time, but the concept never got past the point of a test track built around the SpaceX Hawthorne facility.
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Then there was the 2011 Wall Street Journal interview where Musk said that SpaceX had the capability to send a person to Mars in a decade (or at worst, 15 to 20 years). By 2021, that had not happened. He later said that date had changed to 2028.
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We have to also touch on full autonomous driving, or Autopilot, as it’s called in Tesla lingo. Despite promises that his cars would drive themselves, the numerous accidents that have piled up when full self-driving (FSD) was in use have led to major scrutiny for Tesla. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is currently investigating the situation.
Now Musk has made a new promise, and considering his track record, you may want to take it with a grain of salt.
The futuristic Cybertruck is just one of the Tesla vehicles mentioned in the Tesla tweet.
Image source: Tesla
Musk makes a new autonomous driving promise
In a tweet shared on the official Tesla X account on April 15, a post from the Tesla AI official account was reshared alongside a video that shows a line of cars driving out of a Tesla facility unmanned.
The tweet reads, “Giga Texas production now uses FSD Unsupervised to deliver cars from end of line to the outbound logistics lot. Over 50,000 driverless miles have been accrued between California and Texas factories so far.”
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The thread goes on to promise that “Model Ys autonomously navigate a 1.4 mile trip on a road shared with pedestrians, cars, semi trucks, construction equipment & more.” It also makes a promise about Cybertrucks, saying, “Cybertrucks autonomously navigate a 0.6 mile route traversing beneath one of America’s fastest highways, emerging through a steep 17% grade to reach their destination.”
The official Tesla account left a note along with the reshared post, saying, “One day it’ll drive itself right to your house.”
Will Musk deliver in June?
During Tesla’s January earnings call, Musk promised that the debut of full self-driving is in sight this year.
“We’re going to be launching unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service in Austin in June,” the CEO said. “So, I talked to the team. We feel confident in being able to do an initial launch of unsupervised, no one in the car, full self-driving in Austin in June. We already have Teslas operating autonomously unsupervised full self-driving at our factory in Fremont, and we’ll soon be doing that at our factory in Texas.”
Tesla previously told customers that its full self-driving technology (FSD) requires supervision at all times, so it’s worth noting the word “unsupervised” here.
It’s also noteworthy that if this big launch goes to plan, it will basically duplicate the same experience that Alphabet-owned Waymo has been running for several years. The company has successfully offered rides in self-driving vehicles via a partnership with Uber and just announced it’s expanding the service to Atlanta this year.
In the meantime, Tesla stock has been on a bumpy ride for the last year, with a 3% drop in value since the same time in 2024.
Related: Tesla Cybertruck owners are going to hate Tesla’s latest move
