Musk predicts Tesla will carry most passenger miles where it can operate freely
The Tesla chief tied his sweeping forecast to regulatory permission, while the company outlined further targets for its Cybercab and self-driving software.
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk predicted during the company’s October 21 earnings call that Tesla would eventually account for a majority of passenger miles in any country where it is allowed to operate freely. The forecast would put Tesla at the centre of passenger travel, but depends on governments permitting its autonomous vehicles to operate.
Business Insider reported that Musk called restrictions on autonomous technology, imposed by foreign governments seeking to protect domestic industries, the biggest hurdle to his prediction. Musk said he felt confident and invited people to revisit the forecast later. Neither report presented a timetable for Tesla reaching that share of travel.
How the passenger-mile forecast differs from Musk’s earlier prediction
The claim goes further than Musk’s January prediction, reported by Business Insider, that the vast majority of miles travelled would eventually be autonomous and fewer than 5% would be driven manually. That earlier forecast concerned how people would travel; his October prediction singled out Tesla as the operator he expects to carry most passenger miles where it can operate freely.
Tesla began rolling out its steering-wheel-less Cybercab for ride-hailing in Texas in September, according to Business Insider. The outlet reported that the rollout had encountered setbacks and that the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued an audit inquiry into Tesla’s self-certification hours after the vehicle’s public release. Tesla has said it is ramping Cybercab production and preparing rides in Florida.
At the October 21 call, Tesla vice-president of AI Ashok Elluswamy said unsupervised Full Self-Driving software was coming ‘somewhere around Q2 next year’, Business Insider reported. That places the company’s stated target around the second quarter of 2027; it was a target for a consumer launch, not an announcement that the software was available.
Tesla’s separate 2030 vehicle-delivery target
Musk also said Tesla was aiming for five million vehicle deliveries a year by approximately 2030 and thought it had a good chance of reaching that goal, The Verge reported. The outlet noted that this was below his 2020 projection of 20 million annual vehicle sales by 2030. Vehicle deliveries are a separate measure from the passenger miles in his latest autonomy forecast.
The Verge reported that Tesla’s annual deliveries fell from a peak of 1.81 million in 2023 to 1.64 million in 2025. It said Tesla had delivered 1,324,681 vehicles so far in 2026 and would need another 311,448 in the fourth quarter to avoid a third consecutive annual decline. Those figures show the scale of the separate sales target Musk discussed during the call.
Read in depth: Business
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Sources and context
- Tesla just laid out its transportation mission: World dominationBusiness Insider
- Elon Musk says Tesla will sell 5 million cars by 2030 — math says otherwiseThe Verge
AI-assisted article checked against the listed sources. NewsJaws did not conduct interviews or attend the reported events.