List of predictions for autonomous Tesla vehicles by Elon Musk


This is a list of predictions for autonomous Tesla vehicles made by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Inc. The predictions concern Tesla's suite of advanced driver assistance system functions, marketed as of 2025 as "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)", and provide estimates for when Tesla will achieve fully autonomous driving, requiring no human intervention, which SAE considers Level 5 automation. Tesla does not classify FSD according to the SAE levels of autonomy, but has acknowledged that full autonomy is "dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions".
Musk has publicly stated estimated timelines and intended capabilities of the system since at least 2013. FSD and Autopilot are classified as SAE Level 2 ADAS, as of 2024. A lawsuit filed in February 2023 by Tesla investors alleging that Musk committed securities fraud by making misleading statements about the development timeline of autonomous Tesla vehicles was dismissed without prejudice in September 2024; the judge ruled that Tesla's legal team successfully argued that Elon Musk's statements were "corporate puffery", i.e., vague corporate optimism.
DatePredictionQuoteMet
"We should be able to do 90 percent of miles driven within three years."
"A Tesla car next year will probably be 90-percent capable of autopilot. Like, so 90 percent of your miles can be on auto. For sure highway travel."
Oct 20142023"I think we’ll be able to achieve true autonomous driving, where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination,"
"From a technology standpoint, Tesla will have a car that can do full autonomy in about three years, maybe a bit sooner."
"We're going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years."
"Ultimately you'll be able to summon your car anywhere … your car can get to you. I think that within two years, you'll be able to summon your car from across the country. It will meet you wherever your phone is … and it will just automatically charge itself along the entire journey."
"I consider autonomous driving to be a basically solved problem.... We're less than two years away from complete autonomy. Regulators however will take at least another year; they'll want to see billions of miles of data."
"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 Times Square in New York, and then having the car go park itself, by the end of next year. Without the need for a single touch, including the charger."
"November or December of this year, we should be able to go from a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York, no controls touched at any point during the entire journey."
"I think about two years. So the real trick of it is not how do you make it work say 99.9 percent of the time, because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you're probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn't be, certainly."
" going to kind of be like for self-driving. It will feel like well this is a lame driver, lame driver. Like okay, that's a pretty good driver. Like holy cow, this driver's good. It'll be like that. I mean, timing-wise, I think we could probably do a coast-to-coast drive in three months, six months at the outside."
Mar 2018Dec 2019"Self-driving will encompass all modes of driving by the end of next year."
"You know, I think we'll get to full self-driving next year. As a generalized solution, I think. But that's a... Like we're on track to do that next year. So I don't know. I don't think anyone else is on track to do it next year."
"I think we will be feature complete — full self-driving — this year, meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without an intervention, this year. I would say I am of certain of that. That is not a question mark."
"I feel very confident predicting that there will be autonomous robotaxis from Tesla next year — not in all jurisdictions because we won't have regulatory approval everywhere." "From our standpoint, if you fast forward a year, maybe a year and three months, but next year for sure, we'll have over a million robotaxis on the road."
" functionality still looking good for this year. Regulatory approval is the big unknown."
"I'm extremely confident that level five - or essentially complete autonomy - will happen and I think will happen very quickly. I feel like we are very close. I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year. There are no fundamental challenges remaining. There are many small problems. And then there's the challenge of solving all those small problems and putting the whole system together."
"And it's now actually more -- it's more common than not for the car to have no interventions, even on a complex drive. So -- and this is -- basically I'm highly confident the car will drive itself for the reliability in excess of a human this year. This is a very big deal."
"The whole road system is made for biological neural nets and eyes. And so actually, when you think about it, in order to solve driving, we have to solve neural nets and cameras to a degree of capability that is on par with, or really exceeds humans. And I think we will achieve that this year."
"The two technologies I am focused on, trying to ideally get done before the end of the year, are getting our Starship into orbit... and then having Tesla cars to be able to do self-driving.... Have self-driving in wide release at least in the U.S., and... potentially in Europe, depending on regulatory approval."
"I mean, it does look like gonna happen this year.... Well, we're now at the point where the car can drive on highways and in cities with and where a human dimension is extremely rare. So I mean, just – I was able to drive for several days, just dropping a navigation pin in random locations in the Greater Austin area with no interventions. And the same in San Francisco, which is a very difficult place to drive."
Jul 2023Dec 2023"I think we’ll achieve full self-driving, maybe what you would call four or five, I think later this year."
"People have sort of made fun of me and perhaps quite fairly have made fun of me, my predictions about achieving full self-driving have been optimistic in the past... I'm the boy who cried FSD, but I think we'll be better than human by the end of this year. I've been wrong in the past, I may be wrong this time."
"You know, I really think lots of car companies should be asking for licenses. we've had some tentative conversations, but I think they don't believe it's real quite yet. I think that that will become obvious probably this year."
"We do expect actually to start fully autonomous, unsupervised FSD in Texas and California next year. And obviously that's with the Model 3 and Model Y and then we expect to be in production with the CyberCab which is really highly optimized for autonomous transport in probably, well, I tend to be a little optimistic with time frames... but in 2026. So yeah, before 2027, let me put it that way."
"We do expect actually to start fully autonomous, unsupervised FSD in Texas and California next year. And obviously that's with the Model 3 and Model Y and then we expect to be in production with the CyberCab which is really highly optimized for autonomous transport in probably, well, I tend to be a little optimistic with time frames... but in 2026. So yeah, before 2027, let me put it that way."
"We're going to be launching unsupervised Full Self-Driving as a paid service in Austin in June."
"The acid test is, can you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination and I'm confident that will be available in many cities in the US by the end of this year."
"I predict that there will be millions of Teslas operating fully autonomously in the second half of next year."
28.06.2025"Tentatively, June 22. We are being super paranoid about safety, so the date could shift. First Tesla that drives itself from factory end of line all the way to a customer house is June 28."
"I think we'll probably have autonomous ride hailing in probably half the population of the U.S. by the end of the year. That's at least our goal subject to regulatory approvals."
"I think will be available for unsupervised personal use by the end of this year in certain geographies."
"We haven't really thought hard about . We need to make sure it works when the vehicles are fully under our control. It's kind of one step at a time here. We don't want to jump the gun. As I said, we're being paranoid about safety. But I guess next year is — I'd say confidently next year. I'm not sure when next year, but confidently next year, people would be able to add or subtract their car to the Tesla, Inc. fleet."
“ Should be no safety driver by end of year.”
" the CyberCab, which is a specific model that we're making, does not have a steering wheel or pedals. So this is clearly, there's no fallback mechanism here. It's like this car either drives itself or it does not drive. We expect to start production in April. As always, it's just an S curve of the production rate is an S curve, so it starts off very slowly and then grows exponentially, then you hit the linear, and then ultimately it asymptotes at whatever your target volume is. We would expect over time to make far more CyberCabs than all of our other vehicles combined."
"We expect to have fully autonomous vehicles in probably somewhere between a quarter and half of the United States by the end of the year, pending regulatory approval. A big factor would be if there's some kind of federal preemption for autonomous vehicles. In the absence of that, you have to go on a city-by-city or state-by-state basis. Nonetheless, even if it is city-by-city, state-by-state, we expect to be in dozens of major cities by the end of the year."

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