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How many years and how many billions of dollars can one man
promise a future that never arrives before someone demands
accountability? Now this is self driving tech
from Tesla. We're talking about FSD.
And since 2016, Elon Musk has made bold, detailed, and very
public claims about Tesla's ability to deliver fully
autonomous vehicles. He told customers that the road
to robo taxis and driverless cross country trips was just a
year or so away. He said the hardware already
existed. He described a future of cars
that drove themselves while people sat back and watched or
even slept. Now, those statements weren't
vague hints or cautious predictions, though.
They're treated as guarantees by Tesla's most loyal fans, and,
more importantly, by Tesla's paying customers.
And nearly a decade later, the promised reality has not
arrived. But the profits certainly have
for Tesla and Elon, and the gap between those two truths raises
uncomfortable questions about what Tesla is actually selling
now. Since the first wave of
autonomous driving claims in 2016, Musk has repeated his
promise almost every year, each time with slight variations and
fresh urgency. In October 2016, he said that a
Tesla would complete a full autonomous trip from Los Angeles
to New York by the end of 2017. And it didn't.
In April 2019, he claimed over 1,000,000 Teslas would soon hit
the road with the hardware necessary for full autonomy that
the company would launch a Robo taxi in 2020.
That service hasn't arrived. It hasn't yet, and in January of
2020, Musk said full self driving would be a feature
complete by the end of the year. This is the phrase that sounded
promising, but meant very little to the people that were driving
the cars that were expecting to sit back and relax, take a nap,
and have their car drive for them.
Now, the system still required constant driver supervision, so
none of that actually happened. Now, each of these statements
was not only incorrect in hindsight, but deeply misleading
in the moment. When the promise milestone came,
it went. There were no public apologies
or retractions. There was only a new promise set
one year ahead, again and again and again.
And the public has now been subjected to the cycle for
almost a decade. In January 2021, Musk and Tesla
would achieve Level 5 autonomy, the highest category of self
driving where there's no human input, by the end of that year.
And that didn't happen. Tesla continued to sell its Full
Self Driving feature at a steep price, even as the tech
continued to demand that drivers keep their hands on the wheel
and remain alert at all times. More recently, in early 2025,
Musk said Full Self Driving would launch in Austin as a paid
service this summer. Now, that version, according to
available descriptions, still won't allow drivers to fully
disengage from operating the vehicle.
In other words, it still doesn't Full Self Driving, but it still
costs the customer $12,000. Now, the money Tesla has made
off this feature cannot be dismissed as a rounding error.
For every Tesla owner who added Full Self Driving to their
vehicle of the time of purchase, and many of them did, is $12,000
collected upfront. Many of those buyers paid years
ago, and they're still waiting for what they were told they'd
eventually receive. Because Tesla treats this
feature as software, not a separate product, there are no
refunds offered, and if the system doesn't meet
expectations, customers just can't get their money back.
Tesla simply keeps the cash now. That business model has raised
serious concerns, though, and this is a huge problem.
The company is exploiting customer trust while avoiding
meaningful accountability. And despite having a product
name that suggests it delivers complete vehicle autonomy, full
self driving still requires near constant oversight by the
driver. In some cases, the software has
caused erratic or unsafe driving behaviors, according to safety
investigations and user reports. Yet Tesla continues to market
and sell the feature with language that implies
breakthrough autonomy. Now, Musk's defenders often
argue that predicting timelines and technology is increasingly
difficult, especially in emerging fields like AI.
They say breakthroughs are non linear and the innovation is
unpredictable. Now that's all true, but it
doesn't explain a pattern of consistent public over promising
followed by failure without correction.
Now, Tesla hasn't just been optimistic though.
The company has repeatedly set timelines that it did not meet
and has never provided refunds to customers who paid for
autonomy they never received. Now, and it's not Tesla's stock
price, brand image, and customer loyalty are all shaped in part
by the belief that the company is leading the future of
transportation. It's an idea that Tesla is on
the cusp of full autonomy, and it adds value to the company and
also to Musk's public reputation and to his bank account.
It's a narrative that feeds directly into the stock market
valuation and manipulation, giving Tesla a financial
incentive to maintain it even when the technology falls short.
And when looking at how this effects everyday people like
you, the people that want to buy a Tesla, the consequences become
clearer. Thousands of Tesla buyers paid
extra, in many cases as far back as 2016, for a product that
hasn't come close to delivering what they expected and what was
promised. Some believe they were
purchasing future proof technology, convinced that Tesla
would unlock full autonomy through software updates.
Now, that belief was not irrational.
It was supported by statements the Musk made personally in
interviews, on earnings calls, and on social media.
And in practical terms, this means ordinary customers have
been bearing the financial risk of Tesla's technical
shortcomings. They paid in advance for
something that was never finished, and their money helped
the company pad its revenue and profit margins for years.
Elon Musk is getting extremely rich from this, and Tesla's
earnings reports benefited from these FSD sales.
The company's valuation, Musk's personal wealth were boosted by
that perception of technical momentum.
There's also a safety component that can't be ignored.
When drivers believe their cars are more autonomous than they
truly are, they may place undue trust in systems not equipped to
handle real world complexity without supervision.
Federal safety regulators have documented multiple incidents in
which Tesla driver assist systems failed in critical
moments. Some of these failures have led
to crashes, and in those cases, the blurred line between
advanced driver assistance and full autonomy becomes absolutely
dangerous. Yet even in the face of
technical setbacks, legal pressure, and growing
skepticism, Tesla continues to operate without formal
regulation around how it markets and sells its software.
While some lawmakers have called for closer scrutiny, so far
there's been no consistent federal framework to stop
companies from using terms like full self driving unless they
meet specific standards. And part of the reason that Musk
has been able to maintain this pattern is because of the way he
communicates using X. He often announces updates or
predictions directly to his massive following, bypassing
formal press channels, and his fans interpret these statements
as absolute truths. Many believe that delays are the
result of bad luck or external obstacles, not Elon Musk
promising something that the Tesla engineers cannot deliver
now. That creates a powerful echo
chamber where disappointment is constantly postponed.
The timeline shifts from year to year.
The goal posts move, but the emotional investment remains.
Some customers say they still believe that Tesla will
eventually deliver, even after being let down for almost 10
years. That long term loyalty, rooted
more in belief than in actual evidence of FSD, allows Tesla to
keep selling a product that doesn't even exist in the form
that Elon Musk has promised. Now, Wall Street has rewarded
that approach, though Despite repeated delays, the prospect of
autonomy continues to inflate Tesla's value.
Analysts cite the potential of Full Self driving as a future
revenue stream, even though the technology has missed every
milestone so far. This speculative optimism
continues to shape public perception, even as the actual
performance of the software remains underwhelming.
The question that looms over all of this is not whether Tesla
will one day achieve true full autonomy.
They will eventually. It's one of the customers who
paid 10s of thousands of dollars based on promises from nearly a
decade ago will ever receive what they were sold.
Some of these people have sold their cars already, so they paid
$12,000 for something that they will never, ever be able to use.
They might have moved on to a different brand, and there's no
way to move full self driving from Tesla to another brand now.
If they don't get it, will anyone be held responsible?
And without enforcement, companies can keep making these
wild claims without being obligated to fulfill them.
Musk's long string of missed targets has made this apparent.
There's no external mechanism currently in place that forces
Tesla to either deliver the Primus software or issue refunds
for what was not provided. Now these customers stuck in a
loop of waiting and a hoping while the company moves on to
the next promise and continues to gather money from these
people that are suckered into spending $12,000 on something
that doesn't exist. Now in the end, the real product
Tesla has been selling may not be full self driving at all.
Maybe belief. A belief that the company is on
the edge of solving a absolutely insanely complex problem.
A belief that your $12,000 investment will someday pay off,
not just for you, but for the company.
And you're part of that. You're part of this community.
It's a belief that Elon Musk knows something that the rest of
us don't. But belief isn't technology.
Belief doesn't drive a car safely through a construction
zone or detect a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
Belief doesn't make a feature full if it still needs human
intervention. And after nearly 10 years of
shifting deadlines, missed goals and cost the upgrades and maybe
time to stop asking when Tesla will deliver self driving, the
better question is whether the ever intent to deliver it at all
or whether the plan was always to keep selling the dream one
year at a time. Hey, thank you so much for
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