MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow ridiculed Elon Musk’s illustrious history of prophesying things that never come to pass.
“It’s a running joke, right, his predictions?” Maddow said on Saturday’s broadcast of her eponymous show.
Maddow played a series of clips featuring Musk’s failed predictions.
In 2016, Musk predicted his company would send a manned voyage to Mars by 2025.
“Here it is, 2025. Mars isn’t nearly as hot as I thought it would be,” she quipped.
Other bad forecasts: Musk promised Tesla would have a “million” self-driving robotaxis on the road by 2020. Musk said in 2013 that California’s 700-mile-per-hour Hyperloop train would debut within several years. Neuralink would start human trials for a brain chip that allows users to control devices by 2020. None of these projects have launched, and Musk has abandoned the Hyperloop idea altogether.
As Musk seeks to slash government spending under the Department of Government Efficiency, his wealth has taken a hit. Tesla’s stock has fallen more than 40 percent since January, costing him upward of $121 billion, per a recent report from CNN.
Musk held an all-hands staff meeting at the car manufacturer on Thursday to reassure employees about the company’s dismal stock performance.
During the live-streamed meeting, plagued with technical difficulties, Musk “begged his employees to not sell their stock in Tesla, which many Tesla executives and board members have recently done,” Maddow noted.
Maddow cast doubt on Musk’s assurances that the company’s “future is incredibly bright and exciting.”
“They should really feel good about his assurances about the future because he has such a good track record of his predictions coming true,” she said.
