Is it worth noting that Elon Musk has surpassed his goals for full self-driving once again?

Last year, Tesla defied its critics by boldly launching its robotaxi service, which by the end of the year required no human supervision and was available to everyone. More than 50 percent Residents of the United States.

At least that’s what Tesla CEO Elon Musk told us would happen by the end of 2025. But the reality, of course, was much different.

Tesla’s “robot taxi” service, as it exists today in Austin and San Francisco, is still not available to anyone who wants to use it. still Under supervision By an employee sitting in either the driver’s seat or front passenger seat with access to a ‘kill switch’ in case anything goes wrong. (There were some unsupervised tests(But it’s unclear how many.) And last time I checked, those two cities don’t make up 50 percent of the US population.

months agoMusk has promised an “uncensored” version of Tesla’s full self-driving software that he claims will enable drivers to use their phones while driving, among other things. The current version of FSD is a Level 2 “supervised” system, meaning drivers have to stay focused on the road and be ready to take control of the car when called upon. (In other words, not full self-driving.) For years, Musk has been touting the moment when Tesla cars will actually drive themselves — without needing supervision.

But here we are, in 2026, and Tesla’s FSD system is still a supervised system. Now Musk says he needs 10 billion miles to achieve this feat. Right now, it has just over 7 billion miles on it, according to Tesla’s FSD dashboard. All of this begs the question why did Musk promise unsupervised FSD by the end of 2025, when he knew Tesla hadn’t achieved this new benchmark yet?

The answer is that the goal post is always changing. In Tesla’s Master Plan Part IIreleased in 2016, Musk wrote that the company would likely need 6 billion miles “before true self-driving is approved by regulators.” Of course, there are no regulations preventing Musk from launching a completely driverless, unsupervised system. Waymo appears to have all its permits.

I think Tesla’s legal team is the one making the decision here. As long as the driver remains responsible for what happens in the car, Tesla can sometimes escape a wrongful death lawsuit. And unlike Waymo, Tesla doesn’t take responsibility for any accidents because it knows its vehicles aren’t fully autonomous. Why take responsibility for the Level 2 system? When Tesla owners tried to force the company to accept responsibility for certain accidents, they fought back in court – He often won.

But once the system becomes unsupervised, the floodgates of liability can open.