Tesla CEO Elon Musk is known for confidently underestimating the time it will take for anticipated advancements across many of his ventures, like Tesla, X, and SpaceX.
Some view that as an effort to push his company to meet goals, which may be the primary motivation, though a new Electrek editorial posited that some of these ambitious, unrealized promises look less like an expression of optimism and more like intentional deception.
On Thursday, Electrek’s Editor-in-Chief, Fred Lambert, published an article sparked by Musk’s then-recent exchange with Tesla investor and Musk acolyte Sawyer Merritt.
Four days prior, Merritt tweeted a brief clip from an interview featuring Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. In the clipped segment, an interviewer asked Khosrowshahi about the immediate future of autonomous electric vehicles.
In response to a question about whether Waymo’s multi-sensor approach would come out on top, or if Tesla’s “camera-only” setup would reign supreme, Khosrowshahi doubted cameras alone could bring about “superhuman levels of safety.”
Musk responded to Merritt, challenging Khosrowshahi’s take.
“Lidar and radar reduce safety due to sensor contention. … This sensor ambiguity causes increased, not decreased, risk,” Musk said in part.
The conversation caught Lambert’s eye and reminded him of a discussion he’d had with Musk back in 2021. Lambert took issue with Musk’s characterization of lidar and radar sensors as “more dangerous” than Tesla’s camera-only system, a contention he said was, in essence, a lie.
“It’s not only false, Musk told me directly that he agreed that radar and vision could be safer than just vision, right after he had Tesla remove the radars from its vehicles,” Lambert asserted.
He appended screenshots of the conversation to support his claim.
“We are now in 2025, and unlike what Musk claimed, Tesla has yet to deliver on its self-driving promises, but the CEO is doubling down on his vision-only approach,” Lambert added.
In one of the screenshots from 2021, Musk admitted that a “very high resolution radar would be better than pure vision, but such a radar does not exist.”
Ultimately, Lambert observed an overriding theme in Musk’s claims: If Tesla can’t do something, it can’t be done.
At the moment, the United States government appears to have gone all-in against EVs, while peer nations like Norway are making the switch at a startling rate.
For better or worse, Tesla dominated the electric vehicle space for years before stumbling hard in 2025 — and by the same token, the highly unpredictable and often abrasive Musk is functionally the automaker’s mascot.
At this point, separating Musk from Tesla is no easy task, and his volatile public perception stands to discourage drivers from making their next car an EV.
Lambert’s newly disclosed exchange with Musk gave consumers another reason to doubt the CEO’s motives, his relationship with the truth, and his putative disregard for safety.
One Electrek commenter illustrated Musk’s talent for souring trust, first asserting that the Tesla head believed consumers were “stupid” and unable to understand layers of safety mechanisms, or “redundancies.”
“If planes are so safe it is because they have loads of redundancy systems for everything. The only thing he cares [about] is cost/benefit so he is telling us that he is ok with some people dying,” the user angrily remarked.
It’s possible that Musk and Tesla came to truly believe these are unnecessary redundancies, despite some evidence to the contrary in favor of lidar and radar, but part of the picture Lambert painted is that leaving any shadow of a doubt is bad optics and can shake consumer confidence — especially when it comes to such a new frontier of combining technology and physical danger.
In spite of Tesla’s ongoing and varied woes and political headwinds, EV sales outstripped expectations in 2025 — even Tesla’s.
Tesla’s troubled year has also made secondhand EVs more affordable, and the brand’s unsure footing has bolstered sales of rival electric vehicle brands.
Consumers may be second-guessing Tesla, but they haven’t cooled to EVs because of it.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don’t miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
