!['[He] keeps selling his promises'](https://www.evshift.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/1772916131_GettyImages-2215639409.jpg "‘[He] keeps selling his promises’")
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Elon Musk is claiming Tesla will be among the first companies to create artificial general intelligence, his newest in a yearslong pattern of bold AI and autonomy predictions that never panned out, Electrek reported.
The company’s CEO posted that his automaker would “probably” be first to achieve AGI “in humanoid/atom-shaping form,” pointing to the company’s Optimus humanoid robot. It’s a familiar cycle: In 2023, Musk said Tesla vehicles had “a mind”; in 2024, he said AGI was coming by 2025; when that deadline passed, he shifted the target to 2026 and announced that humanity had entered “the Singularity.”
His track record with autonomous driving follows the same script.
Every year from 2019 to 2025, he said that fully self-driving cars would arrive before the calendar flipped. They never did. Tesla’s Robotaxi operation in Austin, Texas, runs about 30 cars, most sitting idle, with safety personnel still riding along.
On the business side, Tesla sold 1.63 million vehicles in 2025, which was 9% fewer than the year before. It was the second year in a row that the number went down. The company’s full-year revenue came in around $94.8 billion, about 3% less than the prior year, marking the first time annual sales figures shrank.
Per-share earnings sank about 33% compared to the year before. Over that same span, BYD sold 2.26 million electric cars, claiming the global top spot.
The AGI push raises questions for your wallet and the planet.
AI systems demand enormous amounts of electricity and water to power and cool the data centers that run them. As more companies race to build bigger AI infrastructure, energy grids face added strain, and those costs can show up in higher utility bills for everyday consumers.
AI shows promise for improving clean energy management, but the current buildout relies heavily on polluting energy sources. The data center powering Musk’s xAI venture has drawn criticism for working against the environmental progress Tesla’s electric cars have made.
One commenter on the Electrek article summed up a common frustration: “The Pied Piper Musky keeps selling his promises. That’s only part of the issue. Even large corporations like Bank of America bought into the narrative. They changed their rating of Tesla to a buy rating so of course the stock will be up today. Empty promises and the promise of future profits is all it takes.”
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