Elon Musk ended 2025 with a long list of extra-hyped public promises that did not happen… yet again. As usual, these promises were made in interviews, earnings calls, podcasts, posts on Twitter (now X), and public events throughout the year.
The promises cut across SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, and Elon’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
According to Cryptopolitan’s analysis, the missed targets trace back years, because in 2011, Elon told The Wall Street Journal a human would reach Mars within ten years. Over fourteen years later, no human mission exists.
In 2016, Elon appeared at Recode’s Code Conference with Kara Swisher, journalist and host, and Walt Mossberg, veteran technology columnist.He revised the Mars plan again.Rockets would head to Mars in 2018.Missions would follow every 26 months.Humans would launch in 2024 and arrive in 2025.
Elon said, “If things go according to plan, we should be able to launch people probably in 2024 with arrival in 2025.” That year ended without a Mars launch.
Elon’s ally Jared Isaacman had to fight tooth and nail to win a nomination as NASA chief, which only came in late November, forcing SpaceX to focus on Earth orbit and testing. Oh and also, the public dates shared years earlier expired without updates matching those promises.
Then the Hyperloop idea, something Elon once described it as a fastest way to move people between cities in different countries by 2025.
Tesla Robotaxi launch failed to match Elon’s public claims
In July during Tesla Q2 2025 earnings call, Cryptopolitan reported that Elon falsely promised investors that robotaxis would cover half of the U.S. population by year-end. He said, “I believe half of the population of the US will be covered by Tesla’s robotaxi by the end of the year.”
Austin, Texas is still the only city with active robotaxi operations, and even there, a report from The New York Times says that local residents rarely saw the vehicles. When they did, the cars were not fully autonomous. Each vehicle reportedly still carried a human safety monitor.
The promise of empty cars came earlier. During a 2024 fourth-quarter earnings call, Elon said Teslas would operate in Austin without anyone inside by June. “Teslas will be in the wild with no one in them, in June in Austin,” he said. Texas rules required a human monitor. The monitors stayed.
In September, Elon posted on X that the safety driver would leave by year-end. “The safety driver is just there for the first few months,” he wrote. In October, he repeated the timeline on another earnings call. In December, at an xAI hackathon, he said, “Unsupervised is pretty much solved.”
AI, Roadster demos, and DOGE cuts missed targets
In 2024, Elon replied to Logan Kilpatrick, developer advocate at Google AI Studio, on X. Logan asked, “How long until AGI?” Elon replied, “Next year.”
Welp, AGI is still not here as of January 1st 2026.
November brought another promise on The Joe Rogan Experience. Joe Rogan, podcast host, asked about the long-awaited Tesla Roadster, announced in 2017 with preorders taken. Elon said, “We’re getting close to demonstrating the prototype.”
He said the demo would be unforgettable and hoped it would happen before year-end. No demo happened. The Roadster did not launch. He also talked about launching flying cars while mentioning Peter Thiel, his frenemy entrepreneur and investor. Clearly, no flying car has appeared.
After Donald Trump won reelection, Elon famously took charge of DOGE, a new federal group, and vowed to cut $2 trillion in waste, fraud, and abuse. The number dropped to $1 trillion, then later fell to hundreds of billions.
