Every promise, dated. Every outcome, dated. Nothing else.
Combined years overdue · live
58.4190238
Summed across the 13 promises still waiting and the 5 that arrived late. It goes up by 13 seconds every second.
37documented
13still “coming next year”
16cancelled or reversed
2not yet due
—lies per $100B market cap
said 19 Oct 2016
Our goal is, and I feel pretty good about this goal, that we'll be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York, from home in LA to let's say dropping you off in Time Square in New York, and then having the car go park itself, by the end of next year.
Missed promisestill 8y 9m late
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
Press call announcing Autopilot Hardware 2 on every new Tesla. He added: "Without the need for a single touch, including the charger."
What happened: Tesla has never performed the promised demonstration drive. Owners have since driven coast to coast on FSD (Supervised) without intervening — David Moss covered 2,732 miles from Los Angeles to Myrtle Beach between 29 and 31 December 2025 — but FSD remains a Level 2 system that requires a licensed driver in the seat.
I think probably by the end of next year, self driving will encompass essentially all modes of driving and be at least 100-200 percent safer than a person, by the end of next year.
Missed promisestill 6y 9m late
— Elon Musk, primary source
Q&A with Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.
What happened: As of October 2026, Tesla sells its consumer system as Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which requires active driver supervision. Tesla's website lists autonomous robotaxi rides in six US cities: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa.
Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April
Missed promisestill 6y 5m late
— Elon Musk, primary source
Posted on Twitter on 19 March 2020, eight days after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Earlier in the same thread he had shared a New York Times link reporting no new domestic cases in China.
What happened: On 30 April 2020 the CDC's daily update reported 26,512 new US cases, bringing the totals to 1,031,659 cases and 60,057 deaths.
I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year.
Missed promisestill 5y 9m late
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
Tesla Autonomy Investor Day. CNBC reports he also said Tesla would have over 1 million robotaxis on the road the following year, and warned: "Sometimes I am not on time, but I get it done."
What happened: As of late September 2026, Tesla had 476 vehicles registered with Texas for driverless ride-hailing, 67 of them Cybercabs, and offered driverless rides in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. Driverless operation began on 22 January 2026 with a single vehicle.
The Roadster is scheduled to go into production in 2020.
Missed promisestill 5y 9m late
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
Surprise reveal at the Tesla Semi unveil in Hawthorne. $50,000 base reservation, $250,000 for the Founders Series. Wording is GeekWire's, attributing Musk — no recording of the event is archived.
What happened: As of late September 2026, no Roadster has been delivered. The unveil-to-production timeline slipped to 2022, 2023, 2024 and early 2025; a demo promised for April 2026 slid to August, which passed without one. Tesla then scheduled an unveiling for 1 October 2026 in Waco, Texas, and in late September moved it to 15 October, citing severe weather. Tesla's latest production guidance, from November 2025, points to 2027 or 2028.
I think we will achieve full self driving, depending on what level you call it, four or five, I think later this year.
Missed promisestill 2y 9m late
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
Video address to the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. Levels four and five are the top of the SAE scale: driving with no human needed, within set areas (four) or anywhere (five).
What happened: As of October 2026, Tesla has not let customers' cars drive themselves without supervision: it says its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) features "require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous." Its website lists autonomous rides only through its own robotaxi service, in six US cities: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa.
Our aspirational goal is to send our first cargo mission to Mars in 2022. … A second mission, with both cargo and crew, is targeted for 2024.
Missed promisestill 1y 9m late
— SpaceX, primary source
SpaceX's own Mars page, following the BFR update "Making Life Multiplanetary" at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide. Previously filed here under the 2016 IAC talk in Guadalajara, which was a different presentation.
What happened: As of late September 2026, nothing has been sent to Mars. Starship first reached orbit on its fourteenth flight, on 28 September 2026, and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites; SpaceX cut the mission short after one of the ship's engines shut down early during the climb to orbit.
When I say payments, I actually mean someone's entire financial life. If it involves money. It'll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it's not just like send $20 to my friend. I'm talking about, like, you won't need a bank account.
Missed promisestill 1y 9m late
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
X all-hands call, per audio obtained by The Verge, one year after the Twitter acquisition. On timing, in the same call: "It would blow my mind if we don't have that rolled out by the end of next year." CEO Linda Yaccarino called it a "full opportunity" in 2024. X was still applying for state money-transmitter licenses at the time.
What happened: X Money reached US Premium+ subscribers in late June 2026, eighteen months past the deadline, and X announced a wider US rollout on 27 July: a deposit account, peer-to-peer payments and a Visa debit card — with the accounts held at Cross River Bank, making "you won't need a bank account" a product that is itself a bank account. Since 2 September X has paid all US creators through it, and on 15 September it added a "Trade" button that sends users from ticker symbols to five outside brokerages and exchanges, where the trades actually happen. As of late September 2026 X Money is US-only, and the "entire financial life" platform remains undelivered.
If you define AGI as smarter than the smartest human, I think it's probably next year, within two years.
Missed promisestill 9m 6d late
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
X Spaces interview with Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norway's sovereign wealth fund, one of Tesla's largest shareholders. In the same call he said AI would be "smarter than any one human" by the end of 2025 and would exceed all humans combined within five years. Nine months earlier he had put full AGI at 2029.
What happened: As of late September 2026, no AI lab, including his own, has claimed AGI. Musk's own estimate collapsed: in October 2025 he put the odds of Grok 5 reaching AGI at "10% and rising," down from "probably next year." Grok 5 missed its Q1 and Q2 2026 windows and still has no release date; xAI shipped Grok 4.7 on 21 September instead. On 14 September Musk said Grok 5 would be xAI's first AGI model, without giving a date. His outer bound of "within two years" runs to the end of 2026.
The normal internal plan calls for roughly 10,000 Optimus robots to be built this year. … Will we succeed in building 10,000 exactly by the end of December this year? Probably not, but will we succeed in making several thousand? Yes, I think we will.
Missed promisestill 9m 6d late
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
Tesla Q4 2024 earnings call, where he added he was confident the several thousand robots would be "doing useful things by the end of the year." This raised his own June 2024 shareholder-meeting estimate of "a thousand to a couple thousand robots working in its factories" by 2025. On the same call he put Optimus's long-term revenue potential above $10 trillion.
What happened: The plan was abandoned by summer 2025, per reporting by The Information, amid difficulties with the robots' hands; Optimus engineering head Milan Kovac left in June 2025. Reporting found no evidence of even hundreds built in 2025. On the Q4 2025 earnings call Musk admitted Tesla had no Optimus robots doing useful work in its factories, and declined to say how many exist. In its Q1 2026 update, Tesla put the start of production on the repurposed Fremont line "later this year," and in July it said the first-generation lines were still being installed. In September The Information reported that the line had reached several hundred robots a week in August, but that the robots still could not handle general tasks. As of late September 2026, Tesla has shown no fleet of several thousand robots doing useful work.
Now, I can say that if you say, well, where will things end up, I think we'll end up with roughly 0.25 million Cybertrucks a year, but we're not -- I don't think we're going to reach that output rate next year. I think we'll probably reach it sometime in 2025.
Missed promisestill 9m 6d late
— Elon Musk, primary source
Tesla's Q3 2023 earnings call, six weeks before the first Cybertruck deliveries.
What happened: As of October 2026, Tesla does not report Cybertruck sales separately. In January 2026 Cox Automotive estimated 20,237 Cybertrucks sold in the US in 2025.
We're hoping later this year to do our first device implant for a human, enabling someone who is completely blind to see.
Missed promisestill 9m 6d late
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
Town hall event in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Blindsight is Neuralink's implant meant to give vision to blind people by stimulating the brain's visual cortex.
What happened: In May 2025 he moved the target to late 2025 or early 2026. As of October 2026, Neuralink has not announced a Blindsight implant in a human.
This is going to sound totally nuts, but I think we want to try to reach orbit in less than six months.
Missed promisedelivered 6y 6m late
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
Starship update at SpaceX's site in Boca Chica, Texas, in front of the Mk1 prototype. He added that if design and manufacturing kept improving exponentially, the estimate was accurate to within a few months.
What happened: The first full Starship stack launched on 20 April 2023 and did not reach orbit. Starship first reached orbit on its fourteenth flight, on 28 September 2026, about six and a half years after the target.
Tesla Semi unveil, Hawthorne. GeekWire reports Musk said the Semi "should become available in 2019". PepsiCo and Walmart pre-ordered.
What happened: PepsiCo took delivery of the first hand-built Semis on 1 December 2022, three years late. Volume production began at the dedicated Nevada plant, with the first truck off the high-volume line on 29 April 2026.
You will be able to complete your configuration as production nears in late 2021. Tri Motor AWD production is expected to begin in late 2022.
Missed promisedelivered 1y 10m late
— Tesla, primary source
Cybertruck unveiling at Tesla's design studio in Hawthorne, California, the same event that set the $39,900 starting price.
What happened: Tesla moved production to 2022 by August 2021, then to 2023 on its earnings call of 26 January 2022. On 15 July 2023 Tesla announced the first Cybertruck built at Giga Texas, and deliveries began on 30 November 2023.
Solar Roof installations will start summer of next year.
Missed promisecancelled 9y 9m after the promise
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
Solar Roof unveil on the Desperate Housewives set at Universal Studios. Wording is Electrek's, attributing Musk — no recording of the event is archived. The tiles on the houses were later revealed to be non-functional props.
What happened: On 20 August 2026 Electrek reported, citing two sources, that Tesla had told installers the tiles are no longer available to order. As of late September 2026 Tesla has made no formal announcement, and its Solar Roof page redirects to solar panels.
On September 17, 2018, SpaceX announced fashion innovator and globally recognized art curator Yusaku Maezawa will be the company's first private passenger flight around the Moon for 2023.
Missed promisecancelled 5y 8m after the promise
— SpaceX, primary source
Announced at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, on 17 September 2018: Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa would fly around the Moon on the BFR, later called Starship, with a group of artists.
What happened: On 9 November 2023 Maezawa said the flight would take longer. The dearMoon project announced its cancellation on 1 June 2024, saying a 2023 launch had become unfeasible and the schedule remained uncertain. As of October 2026, Starship has not flown a crew.
Cybertruck unveil. Also the night the 'armor glass' shattered on stage. Twice. The $39,900 figure was on the slide and in Tesla's order data, not spoken — the event transcript has Musk saying only "That's the price without any incentives".
What happened: As of late September 2026, no sub-$40,000 Cybertruck has ever been sold. At the November 2023 launch the cheapest listed trim was $60,990 and was deferred to 2025; the cheapest is now the Dual Motor AWD at $69,990, after a $59,990 introductory price ran for about ten days in February 2026.
Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion, yeah.
Backtrackedcancelled 1y 8m after the promise
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, nine days before the election, answering Howard Lutnick's question of how much DOGE could cut from the federal budget. Budget experts noted the entire discretionary budget was about $1.7 trillion. The DOGE executive order of 20 January 2025 set the unit's own termination date: 4 July 2026.
What happened: The walkdown began within ten weeks: in a 9 January 2025 X interview he called $2 trillion the "best-case outcome" with "a good shot at getting one"; by an April 2025 Cabinet meeting the figure was about $150 billion; leaving Washington in May 2025 he shifted to "over time we'll see $1 trillion." In November 2025 the OPM director told Reuters DOGE "doesn't exist" as a centralized entity, eight months before its mandate ended, and the US DOGE Service formally terminated on 4 July 2026 reporting $215 billion in savings — self-reported, without public accounting outside experts could verify, and about 11 cents of every promised dollar.
The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens. These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years.
Backtrackedcancelled 1y 5m after the promise
— Elon Musk, primary source
X post, two months after Starship's fourth test flight. Two weeks later he specified about five uncrewed ships for the window. By May 2025 he put the odds at 50-50 and said the first flight would carry Tesla Optimus robots as simulated crew, with a two-year wait if the window was missed.
What happened: SpaceX abandoned the 2026 Mars window ten months before it opened. On 6 February 2026 the Wall Street Journal reported SpaceX had told investors it would prioritise a March 2027 uncrewed lunar landing over Mars; on 8 February Musk confirmed the pivot on X, saying SpaceX had "already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon." In August 2026 SpaceX's Mars page offered cargo flights no earlier than 2028. Starship first reached orbit on 28 September 2026, but as of late September it had yet to demonstrate the ship-to-ship propellant transfer a Mars flight requires.
Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons will inform overall Mars architecture, details to come
Backtrackedcancelled 1y 2m after the promise
— SpaceX, primary source
SpaceX tweet of 27 April 2016. Red Dragon was to be an uncrewed Dragon 2 capsule landing on Mars under rocket power.
What happened: In February 2017 SpaceX moved Red Dragon to the 2020 window. On 19 July 2017 Musk said SpaceX had dropped propulsive landing for Dragon, the method Red Dragon depended on, and the mission was never flown. As of October 2026, no Dragon has gone to Mars.
We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year.
Backtrackedcancelled 11m 8d after the promise
— SpaceX, primary source
SpaceX statement of 27 February 2017. The two customers, who had paid a significant deposit, were to fly on a Crew Dragon launched by a Falcon Heavy once Crew Dragon was flying NASA missions.
What happened: As of October 2026, no private crew has flown around the Moon. On 5 February 2018 Musk said SpaceX had "kind of tabled" flying Crew Dragon on Falcon Heavy, and its crewed deep-space plans moved to the BFR, later called Starship.
The company plans to transport passengers between O'Hare and Block 37 in the Loop in approximately 12 minutes each way.
Missed promisecancelled 11m 5d after the promise
— City of Chicago, primary source
City of Chicago press release naming The Boring Company for the Express Loop. The release carries no build timeline; the "18 to 24 months" previously recorded here could not be sourced.
What happened: Never built. No tunnel was dug, and the project lapsed when Mayor Emanuel left office in May 2019.
Dojo two, we expect to have Dojo two operating at scale sometime next year.
Backtrackedcancelled 18d after the promise
— Elon Musk, primary source
Tesla's Q2 2025 earnings call. Dojo was Tesla's in-house supercomputer for training its self-driving software.
What happened: On 7 August 2025 Bloomberg reported that Tesla was disbanding its Dojo team and that Musk had ordered the effort shut down. Musk confirmed it on X, writing that Dojo 2 had become "an evolutionary dead end" once Tesla's chip plans converged on AI6. On 18 January 2026 Musk said Tesla would restart work on Dojo3, now that its AI5 chip design was in good shape.
Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on X. All proceeds will go to charity for veterans.
Backtrackedcancelled 9d after the promise
— Elon Musk, primary source
Posted the same morning he said he was "lifting weights throughout the day, preparing for the fight." Over the next five days he added that the bout would be run by his and Zuckerberg's foundations rather than the UFC, and that he had spoken to Italy's prime minister and culture minister, who had "agreed on an epic location" where "everything in camera frame will be ancient Rome." Original post used the 𝕏 glyph; AP transcribed it as X.
What happened: The fight never happened and no money was raised. Zuckerberg said he had offered August 26 2023 and got no confirmation, then closed it out on August 13: "I think we can all agree Elon isn't serious and it's time to move on." Two days later Musk posted a recap of the affair beginning "I joked on X about fighting Zuck." Dana White confirmed in June 2026 that the Rome offer had been real — roughly $150 million to the Colosseum, earmarked for an Italian restoration fund — and that it collapsed when no date was ever set.
I think probably, like I said, about three years from now, we're confident we can make a very compelling $25,000 electric vehicle that's also fully autonomous.
Backtrackedreversed after 1y 4m
— Elon Musk, primary source
Tesla Battery Day, Fremont, California. The price depended on battery and pack changes that Tesla said would cut its battery cost per kilowatt-hour by 56%.
What happened: On Tesla's earnings call of 26 January 2022, Musk said Tesla was not currently working on a $25,000 car. In October 2024 he called a $25,000 conventional car pointless. As of October 2026, Tesla sells no $25,000 car.
Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.
Backtrackedreversed after 21d
— Elon Musk, primary source
Tweet posted the day after he completed his purchase of Twitter.
What happened: On 18 November 2022 Musk said Kathy Griffin, Jordan Peterson and the Babylon Bee had been reinstated. On 19 November, after a poll of users, he reinstated Donald Trump's account. No content moderation council had convened. On 22 November 2022 Musk said a large coalition of activist groups had agreed not to try to starve Twitter of advertising revenue if he agreed to the council, and that they had broken the deal; activists who had met him denied making any such deal.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer
Watchingdue in 2m 24d
— Elon Musk, primary source
Quote-posted alongside a three-minute Odyssey dialogue scene built with Grok Imagine by another user, @heavypulp, days after Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opened in cinemas.
Musk said he expects the Cybercab to be in production by 2026 or "before 2027." The cost of the vehicle would be below $30,000.
Watchingdue in 2m 24d
— Elon Musk, contemporaneous report
The We, Robot event at Warner Bros. Studios, unveiling the two-seat robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals. On Tesla's investor call thirteen days later, the company said it was aiming for volume production of the Cybercab by the end of 2026.
What happened: Production has genuinely started: a first unit rolled off the Giga Texas line in February 2026, formal start of production was designated 24 April 2026, and VIN sightings suggest roughly 2,000 units by mid-August. Paid public rides began in Austin on 4 September, and by late September 67 Cybercabs were registered for driverless service in Texas. But Tesla's Q2 2026 shareholder letter dropped the plan to reach volume production of the Cybercab in 2026, and as of late September there is no price or order page, only an interest form for fleet buyers. Whether "in production before 2027" is kept at token volume while the volume commitment quietly died is what the clock will decide.
If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!
Watching
— Elon Musk, primary source
Tweeted during the acquisition bid, before the deal closed on 27 October 2022. During the acquisition dispute he estimated fake accounts at roughly 20% of the platform; Twitter's official figure was under 5%. The vow named no date.
What happened: Neither has happened. Independent 2025-2026 estimates put bots at 9-15% of all accounts, rising to 15-44% in political conversations, and a peer-reviewed study of his tenure as CEO found no substantial change in the concentration of inauthentic accounts. X's own actions concede the war continues: its head of product announced the removal of 1.7 million reply-flooding bots in October 2025, then a fresh crackdown in February 2026, with the search codebase rewritten because it was "getting hammered by AI agents."