Elon Musk once again captures media attention with the statement that a humanoid robot called Tesla Bot will be presented to the public in a year. There is a lot of talk about the functions of this robot and many details about it sound really impressive, but this bombastic announcement followed soon after Musk’s confession that the beta version of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system “is actually not great”. Musk’s announcements about the release of the FSD 9.2 beta version have on several occasions promised the public that it is a complete software that is coming to market. When the launch was delayed, there was only talk of launching a test beta, but even that will obviously not be done now due to difficulties.
While Musk and his associates are indeed pushing the boundaries of several industries, some of his statements promise revolutionary moments. For the public, Musk’s promises are increasingly becoming the subject of debate as their failures accumulate a dose of skepticism and the question arises as to whether all of his announcements should be taken seriously.
Let’s recall some of Musk’s announcements and what were their results…
Autopilot
In 2014, Musk predicted that self-driving systems would be so much improved by 2020 that everyone would be able to “literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination.” Although it is evident how far Tesla has progressed in this field seven years later, it appears that with today’s level of car autonomy, sleeping while driving may be a catastrophic mistake for any driver.
Musk promised a high level of vehicle autonomy by the end of 2021, but the outcome is exactly the one we mentioned earlier – the FSD 9.2 Beta turned out not to work.
Robotaxi
The end of 2020 was the deadline for the delivery of Robotaxi, i.e. approximately one million of their copies were to flood the city streets. Musk set a deadline during 2019, stating that his promises are often not within the set limits, but he confirmed the announcement.
Unfortunately, Robotaxis are currently far from being widely used on city roads and taxi owners are far from sitting home while sending their vehicles on the streets according to the schedule by the request of users via the smartphone app.
Going to Mars
SpaceX was founded as a company in 2002 and represents Musk’s great success. The company made its first trip to Earth orbit in 2008, did great research and innovation in the practice of landing and reusing rockets, launched Falcon Heavy as the most powerful rocket system in the world, and transferred astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) in a completely new and different transport means. All of the company’s successes have indeed improved the space industry, but Musk’s promises to go to Mars are constantly prolonged and have changed deadlines.
Musk first hoped this could happen by 2010. After that, he announced the same for 2018 and then 2022, and now the new deadline is 2024.
Sending Astronauts to the Moon
However, the current focus has been removed from Mars because he is working on a project to send astronauts to the Moon, which was also pointed out by former U.S. President Donald Trump as NASA’s goal by 2024.
Musk’s SpaceX is working on developing the Starship spacecraft for a mission to the moon, and Musk made a prediction in 2019 – he announced that the astronauts will be on the Moon by 2023, but Starship has so far failed to meet any of the initial targets of which a test flight into Earth orbit in July this year was the most important.
Hyperloop
Musk’s projects in the ‘background’ also had some announcements that have not been fulfilled so far.
Hyperloop, an extremely fast single-lane vehicle in a vacuum tube, was announced in 2013 as a background project. Various ideas have been circulating about the implementation of Hyperloop, later known as Loop, but in the headquarters of SpaceX today you can only see a couple of tunnels in which the vehicle is still being tested.
Neuralink
Another background project is Neuralink, a device that, after implant surgery, should be the link between the human brain and artificial intelligence (AI) via a computer interface.
Musk saw this project as a new direction for the development of AI and in 2019 announced that Neuralink would be implanted in the first patient by the end of the year. So far, none of that has happened.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that Musk’s companies, and this primarily refers to Tesla and SpaceX, are really doing revolutionary things with great success. The same is proved by the fact that at the beginning of the year, Tesla exceeded the market value of $ 800 billion.
We can understand Musk’s promises as we wish. They are so intriguing that even bookmakers and casinos offer to wager for real money on his endeavors. To learn more about how and where to bet on this, if that is your thing, go to TopCasinoExpert.com – a platform with a list of all the options you have regarding this.
In many situations, Musk’s promises do not provide accurate information and the deadlines communicated in them are often far from the actual completion of the project, so they can very easily be criticized and presented as a form of public manipulation. On the other hand, Musk’s promises will be viewed differently by many and simply singled out as the sheer audacity and knowledge needed to get to work with the technologies of the future to find new solutions to challenges that only a few can successfully face.
