Everything Elon Musk promised in 2025, but didn’t deliver

By now, everyone knows that Elon Musk is very optimistic when it comes to making predictions.

That’s a nice way of putting it. To be frank, Musk is a “bullshit artist.” He makes promises he can’t keep. For example, everyone is probably very familiar with his infamous 2011 interview with the Wall Street Journal where he said he would put a man on Mars in 10 years. That was 14 years ago now and we are a long way from sending anyone to Mars. Years ago, Musk also touted his planned Hyperloop train system as a way to quickly transport people between cities; this never came to fruition and was probably a ruse to stop other transit projects.

With 2025 almost over, Mashable has decided to revisit its predictions for this year. Time is up. What did Musk promise for this year that didn’t come to fruition?

People on Mars by 2025

Yes, I just mentioned that 2011 Wall Street Journal interview where Musk promised to put a man on Mars in 10 years. However, this is a completely different promise than Elon Musk’s promise of a man on Mars.

Back in 2016 – about four years after his 10th birthday WSJ claim – Musk made an appearance during Recode 2016 Code Conference. During a conversation with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, Musk pushed back his previous Mars arrival prediction that placed humans on the Red Planet by 2021. According to Musk, SpaceX would begin sending rockets to Mars by 2018, followed by a new Mars mission every 26 months, and SO they would start sending people.

“If things go as planned, we should be able to launch people probably in 2024 and arrive in 2025,” Musk said, referring to colonists arriving on the planet.

No, 2025 has passed and we are still not on Mars.

The Tesla robotaxis would cover half of the American population

Take a walk outside. How many Tesla robotaxis do you see? None, you say? And you say you live in Austin, Texas – the only place in the United States where robo-taxis currently operate?

It’s strange. Because in July, during Tesla’s second-quarter financial report, Musk told investors that Tesla’s robo-taxi would serve half the country.

“I think half of the US population will be covered by Tesla’s robo-taxi by the end of the year,” Musk said.

Obviously, this is not true. And a new report from New York Times Last week, we found that even Austin residents rarely, if ever, encounter Tesla’s robotaxis.

As EV socket Electrek pointed out at the time of his statement, it was absurd on Musk’s part. Yet he made the claim with a straight face and investors believed him.

Fully driverless Tesla robotaxis

Speaking of Tesla’s robotaxis, if you encounter one, did you know you’ll actually find a human safety monitor inside? You will, despite what Musk previously promised.

“Teslas will be in the wild, with no one on board, in June in Austin,” Musk said said last year during a fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call. “It’s not some far-off mythical situation, it’s five or six months away.”

Although Tesla’s robotaxi service arrived in Austin during this period, they were “without anyone on board.” The level of autonomy at which Tesla operates requires a human safety monitor ride inside the vehicle, in accordance with Texas regulations.

But Musk has repeatedly promised in recent months that these human safety monitors would be removed by the end of 2025.

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Musk said it in a job in September on the

“The safety pilot is only there for the first few months to be even safer,” Musk said. “There should be no more safety drivers by the end of the year.”

Musk reiterated this timeline during an earnings conference call in October.

“We anticipate there will be no safety drivers in at least a large part of Austin by the end of this year, so within a few months,” Musk said. said.

And then Musk repeated this claim in early December during an xAI hackathon.

“Unsupervised mode is pretty much solved at this point,” declared Musk. “So there will be Tesla robo-taxis operating in Austin with no one on board. Not even anyone in the passenger seat in about three weeks.”

Last week, Musk job that he took a ride in a fully driverless Tesla robotaxi in Austin. A Tesla employee shared a video from inside a driverless ride as well. However, it appears to be testing, as regular customers are still reporting that human safety monitors are still part of the ride, at least since late December.

xAI would reach AGI

Artificial general intelligence or AGI is basically the holy grail of today’s AI-obsessed tech industry. AGI can be defined as the type of artificial intelligence we are promised in science fiction movies. This is not a large language model that can appear human, like existing AI, but an AI that can actually perform intellectual tasks just like a human. He can think, learn, reason and act.

In 2024, in a response on his social media platform X, Musk said his AI company xAI will reach AGI in 2025.

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“How long until the AGI?” » posted Logan Kilpatrick of Google AI Studio.

“Next year”, Musk replied.

“Big if it’s true,” Kilpatrick replied.

Well, surprise. It wasn’t true.

According to a new report from Business InsiderMusk has since moved the goalposts and claims that xAI could reach AGI in the next few years and potentially even by next year! We’ll report in late 2026, unless Musk’s version of Skynet has taken over.

A flying car / Demo of the long-awaited Tesla Roadster

This is a combination of two potential promises, as it remains unclear what Musk was actually referring to in Joe Rogan’s podcast in November.

During an appearance on the Joe Rogan ExperienceMusk claimed Tesla would launch a demo of the highly anticipated Roadster, a vehicle the company announced and began taking pre-orders for in 2017. The Tesla Roadster still hasn’t been released eight years later.

“We are about to demonstrate the prototype,” Musk told Rogan during the show. “I think it will be…one thing I can guarantee is that this product demo will be unforgettable.”

When asked for a timeline from Rogan, Musk replied “hopefully before the end of the year.”

However, Musk went furtherrecalling that his “friend” Peter Thiel said that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. Rogan questioned Musk in more detail, but Musk only implied that Thief should be able to buy a flying car and that we should all wait to see the demo.

So, was Musk saying the Roadster could fly? Was Musk really serious about the flying car? Who knows. But 2025 is now over and we don’t have a flying car or Roadster demonstration, so Musk hasn’t kept his promises either.

DOGE would reduce “waste, fraud and abuse” by $2 trillion

After Donald Trump’s re-election, Musk was given the opportunity to lead a new quasi-governmental agency called DOGE, in which he pledged to cut $2 trillion of what he described as “waste, fraud and abuse.”

DOGE quickly became very controversial as Musk and his very young team struggled to find real “waste, fraud and abuse” in the federal government. Many allegations of DOGE fraud were debunked and the group had a penchant for posting inaccurate data which put the group in a more favorable light.

Musk’s promise of $2 trillion in cuts quickly turned into a promise of $1 trillion in cuts. This promise of 1,000 billion dollars? This amount was soon rounded up to hundreds of billions.

Now, a new analysis of the New York Times as well as the right CATO Institutefound that DOGE had not actually backed up anything. Many government contacts that DOGE claimed to cancel are still active. In fact, government spending in fact, he went up under the supervision of DOGE.

“The federal government spent $7.6 trillion in the first 11 months of calendar year 2025, about $248 billion more in November 2025 compared to the same month in 2024,” the CATO Institute says. analysis said.

Although Musk failed to keep his DOGE promises, the cuts he did make to USAID and foreign aid programs have would have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Good year?

This article reflects the opinions of the author.