List of predictions for autonomous Tesla vehicles by Elon Musk (en.wikipedia.org)

This compilation tracks Elon Musk’s public timeline for Tesla reaching fully autonomous (SAE Level 5) driving — a string of optimistic target dates stretching back to 2013. Many high-profile predictions (coast‑to‑coast drives, millions of robotaxis, camera/NN parity with humans) have missed their deadlines. Tesla’s systems are still classified as Level 2 ADAS as of early 2024, but the company has delivered incremental milestones: Autopilot hardware and highway features in 2015, a wide FSD Beta release in Nov 2022, and the June 22, 2025 launch of a paid unsupervised FSD service in Austin that uses a front-seat safety monitor with an emergency-stop button; Musk also reported an end‑to‑end factory-to-home Robotaxi drive on June 28, 2025, after which the software was rolled back. Investor litigation over Musk’s timelines was dismissed in 2024 as “corporate puffery.” Technically, Tesla’s path emphasizes camera-based neural nets and large-scale fleet data ("billions of miles") to reach reliability exceeding human drivers — a prerequisite for regulatory approval and widespread unsupervised operation. Current deployments remain domain‑limited with human‑supervision and teleoperator contingencies; Musk’s newer targets include robotaxi fleets and the CyberCab platform, but many timelines remain TBD. For the AI/ML community, Tesla’s saga underscores the challenge of validating edge cases, defining safety metrics that surpass human performance, and integrating large-scale online learning, regulatory constraints, and operational safety into production autonomous systems.