- Elon Musk has made a series of predictions across Tesla’s most recent earnings calls.
- The Tesla CEO has said 2025 could be a “pivotal” year for the company.
- BI rounded up Musk’s predictions for this year, including Optimus robot production and unsupervised FSD.
The way Elon Musk sees it, 2025 could be a major year for Tesla.
Musk has said that this year could be “pivotal” for the EV maker, particularly in terms of autonomous artificial intelligence, an umbrella term under which Musk includes Tesla’s humanoid robots and fully self-driving cars.
“In fact, I think it probably will be viewed — ’25 — as maybe the most important year in Tesla’s history,” Musk said during Tesla’s quarterly earnings call on January 29. “There is no company in the world that is as good in real-world AI as Tesla.”
While Tesla saw some choppy waters in 2024 as it reported its first year-over-year sales decline, Tesla’s stock price has gotten a boost in the months since Donald Trump’s victory in November. Musk’s bet on Trump could also help pave the way to federal approval for fully autonomous vehicles, technology that the Tesla CEO has said is key to its future growth.
Musk, a self-described optimist, has told investors he envisions Tesla eventually being worth multiple trillions in market cap.
“I see a path, I’m not saying it’s an easy path, but I see a path of Tesla being the most valuable company in the world by far,” Musk said during Tesla’s Q4 earnings call. “Not even close, like maybe several times more than — I mean, there is a path where Tesla is worth more than the next top five companies combined.”
As of February 14, the top five most valuable companies in the world by market capitalization were Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Tesla sits at number eight on the list.
So, how does Musk plan on eclipsing his competitors? In short: solving “autonomy.”
Thousands of Optimus bots
VCG/ Getty Images
Musk said the company plans on continuing to home in on “autonomous vehicles and autonomous humanoid robots” in 2025, after laying extensive groundwork last year.
The company has said it’s moving onto “building the structure” necessary to produce the tech that Musk has identified as critical.
While Musk said that Tesla’s internal goals call for the production of around 10,000 Optimus robots, he recently hedged that the goal is likely unrealistic.
“Will we succeed in building 10,000 exactly by the end of December this year? Probably not, but will we succeed in making several thousand? Yes, I think we will,” Musk said on the earnings call. “Will those several thousand Optimus robots be doing useful things by the end of the year? Yes, I’m confident they will do useful things.”
Musk said Tesla plans on using the bots internally at Tesla factories to tackle “boring, annoying,” and sometimes “dangerous” tasks. The Optimus models in use at Tesla will inform tweaks for “production design 2,” Musk added, which he expects to launch in 2026.
When Optimus is finally ready to be sold externally, the bots could eventually cost in the neighborhood of $20,000 to $30,000, Musk has previously estimated.
Currently, increasing the volume of production year-over-year is one of Tesla’s foremost goals. Musk said the company is aiming to “ramp up Optimus production faster than maybe anything has ever been ramped.”
“It doesn’t take very many years before we’re making 100 million of these things a year if you go up by, let’s say, a factor by 5x per year,” he said.
The rollout of Tesla’s first robotaxi rides
Tesla
On the autonomous vehicle front, Musk said he expects 2025 to see the rollout of fully self-driving cars.
“But I think we’ll have unsupervised FSD in almost every market this year, limited simply by regulatory issues, not technical capability,” Musk said. “And then unsupervised FSD in the US this year, in many cities, but nationwide next year.”
Regulatory scrutiny could prove to be an obstacle — Tesla’s supervised FSD program has already been subject to regulator scrutiny. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a probe into the tech in 2024, after reports of four crashes, one resulting in a fatality, in which Tesla’s FSD was believed to be engaged.
Still, Musk said that the technology itself is there, with thousands of Teslas are already “operating autonomously” with unsupervised FSD at its California factory in Fremont. He added that Teslas will be driving “in the wild” with no oversight in Austin by June, with California to follow by the end of the year.
“So, what I’m saying is this is not some far-off mythical situation,” he said. “It’s literally five, six months away, five months away kind of thing.”
Musk acknowledged that he’s been promising FSD for a long time, but said he’s now confident that Tesla can deliver.
“Some of these things I’ve said for quite a long time, and I know people have said, ‘Well, Elon, the boy who cried like a wolf like several times,'” Musk said. “But I’m telling you, there’s a damn wolf this time and you can drive it. In fact, it could drive you. It’s a self-driving wolf.”
A less-expensive Tesla
Musk has said 2025 will also see a cheaper Tesla finally hit the market. He’s previously said a more affordable model could cost around $25,000 dollars, which would make it the first sub-$30,000 Tesla.
“We are still on track to launch a more affordable model in the first half of 2025 and will continue to expand our lineup from there,” said Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla’s CFO, on the company’s most recent earnings call.
Last year, Tesla sales dipped amid a wider EV slowdown and increased competition, particularly from Chinese rival BYD, which has a $9,500 EV available for purchase.
Regardless of Musk’s bigger-picture focus on autonomy, the majority of Tesla’s profits still come from EV sales, which a cheaper model could help boost.
The lower-cost vehicle could be built on Tesla’s “next-generation” vehicle platform, with the same manufacturing lines pumping out both Tesla’s $25,000 vehicle and upcoming Cybercab robotaxi.
It’s less clear what the lower-cost vehicle will look like, as Musk has previously said Tesla doesn’t plan to simply launch a version of the Cybercab with a steering wheel and pedals.
