What Elon SaidAn archive of questions answered

Subjects / When Will

When Will

Every estimate and prediction in the archive, with the date it was made. · 111 entries

Prediction

When will Starship be fully and rapidly reusable?

“Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught. First reflight of the ship will be either end of this year or early next. That will be a fork in the road of history for consciousness reaching the stars.”

— Elon Musk, 20 August 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will Starship be fully and rapidly reusable?

“High-cycle, reliable engine reflight without replacement, refurbishment or laborious inspection is about the same degree of difficulty as a rapidly reusable heat shield. And then there are thousands of smaller challenges throughout the primary structure. This is a crazy hard problem.”

— Elon Musk, 12 May 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

What's your view on China (competition, manufacturing)?

“Yeah, I will be surprised if domestic chip production in China is not competitive with Taiwan in raw compute, albeit less power efficient, within 3 to 5 years. There are also significant diminishing returns to reducing element size on a chip and some things, like SRAM, just don’t scale down.”

— Elon Musk, 2 March 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will Starships and people get to Mars?

“For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years. The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars. It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city. That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.”

— Elon Musk, 8 February 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

What will Neuralink do?

“Congrats to the @Neuralink team for helping many people who have lost use of their body with our Telepathy implant that enables computer use simply by thinking! The next generation Neuralink cybernetic augment with 3X capability will be ready later this year. Pending regulatory approval, we are also ready to do our first Blindsight augment that will enable those who have even complete loss of vision to see in low resolution at first, leading to high resolution over time.”

— Elon Musk, 28 January 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will AI be smarter than any human (AGI/ASI)?

“Just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car. Congrats to the @teslasi team! If you’re interested in solving real-world AI, which is likely to lead to AGI imo, join Tesla AI. Solving real-world AI for Optimus will be 100X harder than cars.”

— Elon Musk, 22 January 2026 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Why build your own chips (AI5, Terafab)?

“Slightly different versions of the Tesla AI5 chip will be made at TSMC and Samsung simply because they translate designs to physical form differently, but the goal is that our AI software works identically. We will have samples and maybe a small number of units in 2026, but high volume production is only possible in 2027. AI6 will use the same fabs, but achieve roughly 2X performance. Aiming for a fast follow to AI5, so hopefully mid 2028 for volume production of AI6. AI7 will need different fabs, as it is more adventurous.”

— Elon Musk, 4 November 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will AI be smarter than any human (AGI/ASI)?

“Capable of doing anything a human with a computer can do, but not smarter than all humans and computers combined. That’s probably three to five years away. Grok 5 will be better at AI engineering (called “research” by the pompous) than @karpathy, for example.”

— Elon Musk, 18 October 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will Starships and people get to Mars?

“I am confident that Starship will land humans on Mars. That path is clear. But what really matters is securing the future of consciousness, not just getting a small number of people to Mars. That probably requires getting over 100,000 people and 1M tons of cargo to Mars. The critical threshold to pass is making it such that Mars can grow even if supply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason.”

— Elon Musk, 15 October 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will Starship be fully and rapidly reusable?

“Making a fully reusable orbital rocket of any design is one of the hardest engineering problems of all time. Much, much harder than going to the Moon, which is why it still hasn’t been solved. I am cautiously optimistic that Starship will achieve full reusability next year. The other critical technology, albeit much easier, is orbital refilling. If fortune favors us, that will also be achieved next year. Then consciousness and life as we know it can extend to the planets and hence to the stars.”

— Elon Musk, 22 August 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Why are your timelines always late?

“I might be late, but I always deliver in the end From impossible to late… I think I do have like an issue with, uh, time. …would not have probably done cars or rockets. I am trying to recalibrate as much as possible.”

— Elon Musk, 14 August 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

What's the timeline for getting to Mars?

“Slight chance of Starship flight to Mars crewed by Optimus in Nov/Dec next year. A lot needs to go right for that. More likely, first flight without humans in ~3.5 years, next flight ~5.5 years with humans. Mars city self-sustaining in 20 to 30 years.”

— Elon Musk, 6 August 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will AI be smarter than humans?

“AI is already much smarter than most humans, just not yet smarter than any human at anything… But it will be. Probably smarter than any single human at anything in <2 years and smarter than all humans combined in ~5 years.”

— Elon Musk, 14 July 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will AI be smarter than any human (AGI/ASI)?

“Grok is already far smarter than humans in most respects. It can’t yet create new technologies or discover new physics (which very few humans can do) and sometimes misses on common sense. When Grok goes far wrong, that is usually due to something foolish we did, like a bad system prompt or placing too much weight on biased sources. Also, we need to complete improved image training, as even Grok 4 is still partially blind. That will be solved in a month or so.”

— Elon Musk, 10 July 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When is FSD coming to Europe?

“FSD in Europe will save lives of people in the car, as well as vulnerable road users like pedestrians, cyclists and pets. Please let your government know that you want approval. First (supervised) FSD approval in Europe! Congratulations to the Tesla team and thank you to the regulatory authorities in the Netherlands for all the hard work required to make this happen.”

— Elon Musk, 12 June 2025 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will Optimus be produced and sold, and how many?

“Optimus is a very sophisticated robot. It will be immensely difficult to get the cost to $20k. Not easy at all, but it will eventually happen. Production volume needs to be above 1M/year for that. Price will be driven by demand, but eventually even price will get to ~$20k.”

— Elon Musk, 26 November 2024 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

When will Starship be fully and rapidly reusable?

“Starship is now more than twice as powerful as the Saturn V Moon rocket and, in a year or so, it will be three times as powerful at 10,000 metric tons of thrust. More importantly, it is designed to be fully reusable, burning ~80% liquid oxygen and ~20% liquid methane (very low cost propellant). This enables cost per ton to orbital space to be ~10,000% lower than Saturn V. Starship is the difference between being a multiplanet or single planet civilization. Building a new world on Mars is now possible.”

— Elon Musk, 7 November 2024 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Is Grok open source?

“Worth noting that @xAI has been and will open source its models, including weights and everything, As we create the next version, we open source the prior version, as we did with Grok 1 when Grok 2 was released. The @xAI Grok 2.5 model, which was our best model last year, is now open source. Grok 3 will be made open source in about 6 months. Grok Build is now open source…”

— Elon Musk, 4 October 2024 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Why do you need the Tesla pay package / more voting control?

“I should note that the Tesla board is great. The reason for no new “compensation plan” is that we are still waiting for a decision in my Delaware compensation case. The trial for that was held in 2022, but a verdict has yet to be made. I put “compensation plan” in quotes, because, from my standpoint, this is primarily about ensuring the right amount of voting influence at Tesla. If I have 25%, it means I am influential, but can be overridden if twice as many shareholders vote against me vs for me. At 15% or lower, the for/against ratio to override me makes a takeover by dubious interests too easy. I would be fine with a dual class voting structure to achieve this, but am told it is impossible to achieve post-IPO in Delaware.”

— Elon Musk, 15 January 2024 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

What will Neuralink do?

“This is not much consolation, but Neuralink is working on a vision chip, which will be ready in a few years. That is the next area after enabling phone/computer telepathy for those who have lost their mind-body connection. We waiting for regulatory approval for our first human.”

— Elon Musk, 7 November 2023 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Did you grow up wealthy, or inherit money?

“I grew up in a lower, transitioning to upper, middle income situation, but did not have a happy childhood. Haven’t inherited anything ever from anyone, nor has anyone given me a large financial gift. My father created a small electrical/mechanical engineering company that was successful for 20 to 30 years, but it fell on hard times. He has been essentially bankrupt for about 25 years, requiring financial support from my brother and me. That said, he does deserve credit for teaching me the fundamentals of physics, engineering and construction, which is more valuable than money, but did not support me financially after high school in any meaningful way. Our condition of providing him financial support was that he not engage in bad behavior. Unfortunately, he nonetheless did. There are young children involved, so we continued to provide financial support for their well-being. Regarding the so-called “emerald mine”, there is no objective evidence whatsoever that this mine ever existed. He told me that he owned a share in a mine in Zambia, and I believed him for a while, but nobody has ever seen the mine, nor are there any records of its existence. If this mine was real, he would not require financial support from my brother and me.”

— Elon Musk, 6 May 2023 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Is a recession coming in the next 12 months?

“Fed data has too much latency. Mild recession is already here. It’s not like just the canary in the coal mine (SVB) died, one of the staunchest miners (Credit Suisse) died too & the cemetery is filling up fast! Further rate hikes will trigger severe recession. Mark my words.”

— Elon Musk, 30 April 2023 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Will Starlink IPO and let retail investors in early?

“We will probably IPO Starlink, but only several years in the future when revenue growth is smooth & predictable. Public market does *not* like erratic cash flow haha. I’m a huge fan of small retail investors. Will make sure they get top priority. You can hold me to it.”

— Elon Musk, 28 September 2020 · Post on X ↗ · In the archive

Prediction

Why hasn't Tesla accelerated Semi production?

“…that's part of the reason why we have not, for example, really accelerated production of the Tesla semi because it does use a lot of cells. And unless we've got a lot of battery cells available, then say, like accelerating production of the Tesla semi would then necessarily mean making fewer Model 3 or Model Y cars.”

— Elon Musk, 29 January 2020 · Watch: Tesla Q4 and full year 2019 earnings call (2020) · 39:22 ↗ · In the archive