BREAKING : Tesla owners paid $3 Billion and got no FSD.
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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast. I'm thrilled to share some exciting news with you. Over the next two weeks, we're evolving. We'll be broadening our focus to cover all the tech titans shaping our world. You'll still get the latest insights on Elon Musk, plus so much more. So stay tuned for our official relaunch coming soon. Now let's get into this episode.

How many years and how many billions of dollars can one man promise a future that never arrives before someone demands accountability? Now, this is self-driving tech from Tesla. We're talking about FSD. And since 2016, Elon Musk has made bold

detailed and very public claims about Tesla's ability to deliver fully autonomous vehicles. He told customers that the road to robo-taxis and driverless cross-country trips was just a year or so away. He said the hardware already existed. He described a future of cars that drove themselves while people sat back and watched, or even slept. Now, those statements weren't vague hints or cautious predictions, though.

They're treated as guarantees by Tesla's most loyal fans, and more importantly, by Tesla's paying customers. And nearly a decade later, the promised reality has not arrived. But the profits certainly have for Tesla and Elon. And the gap between those two truths raises uncomfortable questions about what Tesla is actually selling.

Since the first wave of autonomous driving claims in 2016, Musk has repeated his promise almost every year, each time with slight variations and fresh urgency. In October 2016, he said that a Tesla would complete a full autonomous trip from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017. And it didn't. In April 2019, he claimed over a million Teslas

would soon hit the road with the hardware necessary for full autonomy, that the company would launch a robotaxi in 2020.

That service hasn't arrived. It hasn't yet. And in January of 2020, Musk said full self-driving would be a feature complete by the end of the year. This is a phrase that sounded promising, but meant very little to the people that were driving the cars that were expecting to sit back and relax, take a nap and have their car drive for them. Now, the system still required constant driver supervision. So none of that actually happened.

Now, each of these statements was not only incorrect in hindsight, but deeply misleading in the moment. When the promise milestone came and went, there were no public apologies or retractions

there was only a new promise, set one year ahead, again and again and again. And the public has now been subjected to this cycle for almost a decade. In January 2021, Musk and Tesla would achieve level 5 autonomy, the highest category of self-driving,

where there's no human input by the end of that year. And that didn't happen. Tesla continued to sell its full self-driving feature at a steep price, even as the tech continued to demand that drivers keep their hands on the wheel and remain alert at all times. More recently, in early 2025, Musk said full self-driving would launch in Austin as a paid service this summer.

Now that version, according to available descriptions, still won't allow drivers to fully disengage from operating the vehicle.

In other words, it still isn't full self-driving, but it still costs the customer $12,000. Now, the money Tesla has made off this feature cannot be dismissed as a rounding error. For every Tesla owner who added full self-driving to their vehicle at the time of purchase, and many of them did, that's $12,000 collected up front. Many of those buyers paid years ago, and they're still waiting for what they were told they'd eventually receive.

Because Tesla treats this feature as software, not a separate product. There are no refunds offered. And if the system doesn't meet expectations, customers just can't get their money back. Tesla simply keeps the cash. Now that business model has raised serious concerns though.

And this is a huge problem. The company is exploiting customer trust while avoiding meaningful accountability. And despite having a product name that suggests it delivers complete vehicle autonomy, full self-driving still requires near constant oversight by the driver. In some cases, the software has caused erratic or unsafe driving behaviors. According to safety investigations and user reports,

Yet Tesla continues to market and sell the feature with language that implies breakthrough autonomy.

Now, Musk's defenders often argue that predicting timelines and technology is increasingly difficult, especially in emerging fields like AI. They say breakthroughs are nonlinear and that innovation is unpredictable. Now, that's all true, but it doesn't explain a pattern of consistent public overpromising followed by failure without correction. Now, Tesla has

hasn't just been optimistic, though. The company has repeatedly set timelines that it did not meet and has never provided refunds to customers who paid for autonomy they never received. No, and it's not. As a contractor, I don't pay for materials I don't use. So why would I pay for stuff I don't need in my mobile plan? That's why the new MyBiz plan from Verizon Business is so perfect. Now I can choose exactly what I want and I only pay for what I need.

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Tesla's stock price, brand image, and customer loyalty are all shaped in part by the belief that the company is leading the future of transportation. It's an idea that Tesla is on the cusp of full autonomy, and it adds value to the company, and also to Musk's public reputation, and to his bank account. It's a narrative that feeds directly into the stock market valuation and manipulation, giving Tesla a financial incentive to maintain it,

even when the technology falls short. And when looking at how this affects everyday people like you, the people that want to buy a Tesla, the consequences become clearer. Thousands of Tesla buyers paid extra, in many cases as far back as 2016, for a product that hasn't come close to delivering what they expected and what was promised.

Some believe they were purchasing future-proof technology, convinced that Tesla would unlock full autonomy through software updates. Now, that belief was not irrational. It was supported by statements that Musk made personally in interviews, on earnings calls, and on social media. And in practical terms, this means ordinary customers have been bearing the financial risk of Tesla's technical shortcomings. They paid in advance for something that was never finished. And their money helped the company

had its revenue and profit margins for years. Elon Musk is getting extremely rich from this. And Tesla's earnings reports benefited from these FSD sales. The company's valuation, Musk's personal wealth, were boosted by that perception of technical momentum. There's also a safety component that can't be ignored.

When drivers believe their cars are more autonomous than they truly are, they may place undue trust in systems not equipped to handle real-world complexity without supervision. Federal safety regulators have documented multiple incidents in which Tesla driver-assist systems failed in critical moments. Some of these failures have led to crashes. And in those cases, the blurred line between advanced driver assistance and full autonomy becomes absolutely dangerous.

Yet even in the face of technical setbacks, legal pressure, and growing skepticism, Tesla continues to operate without formal regulation around how it markets and sells its software. While some lawmakers have called for closer scrutiny, so far there's been no consistent federal framework to stop companies from using terms like full self-driving unless they meet specific standards.

And part of the reason that Musk has been able to maintain this pattern is because of the way he communicates. Using X, he often announces updates or predictions directly to his massive following, bypassing formal press channels, and his fans interpret these statements as absolute truths. Many believe that delays are the result of bad luck or external obstacles, not Elon Musk promising something that the Tesla engineers cannot deliver.

Now that creates a powerful echo chamber where disappointment is constantly postponed. The timeline shifts from year to year, the goalposts move, but the emotional investment remains. Some customers say they still believe that Tesla will eventually deliver even after being let down for almost 10 years. That long-term loyalty rooted more in belief than in actual evidence of FSD allows Tesla to keep selling a product

that doesn't even exist in the form that Elon Musk has promised. Now, Wall Street has rewarded that approach, though. Despite repeated delays, the prospect of autonomy continues to inflate Tesla's value.

Analysts cite the potential of full self-driving as a future revenue stream, even though the technology has missed every milestone so far. This speculative optimism continues to shape public perception, even as the actual performance of the software remains underwhelming. Now, the question that looms over all of this is not whether Tesla will one day achieve true full autonomy. They will eventually. It's whether customers who paid tens of thousands of dollars

based on promises from nearly a decade ago, will ever receive what they were sold. Some of these people have sold their cars already. So they paid $12,000 for something that they will never, ever be able to use. They might have moved on to a different brand. And there's no way to move full self-driving from Tesla to another brand. Now, if they don't get it,

Will anyone be held responsible? And without enforcement, companies can keep making these wild claims without being obligated to fulfill them. Musk's long string of missed targets has made this apparent. There's no external mechanism currently in place that forces Tesla to either deliver the private software or issue refunds for what was not provided. That leaves customers stuck in a loop of waiting and hoping.

While the company moves on to the next promise and continues to gather money from these people that are suckered into spending $12,000 on something that doesn't exist.

Now, in the end, the real product Tesla has been selling may not be full self-driving at all. It may be belief. A belief that the company is on the edge of solving a absolutely insanely complex problem. A belief that your $12,000 investment will someday pay off, not just for you, but for the company. And you're part of that. You're part of this community. It's a belief that Elon Musk knows something that the rest of us don't.

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full if it still needs human intervention. And after nearly 10 years of shifting deadlines, missed goals, and costly upgrades, it may be time to stop asking when Tesla will deliver self-driving.

The better question is whether they ever intend to deliver it at all, or whether the plan was always to keep selling the dream one year at a time.

And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more, go to patreon.com slash stage zero. And please take care of yourselves and each other. And I'll see you tomorrow.