Musk increasingly feels like a charlatan selling snake oil. He is great at hype and storytelling, not so great at execution. Big promises, missed timelines, excuses reframed as genius.

He has been promising fully autonomous Teslas since at least 2015 and “level 5” self-driving within a couple of years, yet cars still require human oversight and true autonomy remains elusive.

He said Tesla robotaxis would be on the road by 2020 and then “next year” repeatedly, which never happened.

He promised an affordable $35,000 Model 3 and a cheap family EV, but those never materialized as advertised.

He unveiled the Cybertruck with specific features and price points that did not pan out, and several promised add-ons never appeared.

He set repeated production deadlines for the Tesla Roadster that kept slipping for years.

And his Mars colonization timelines are still nowhere near realistic.

The same cycle keeps repeating, with fans focusing on a few wins while ignoring a long list of missed commitments. At some point it stops being bold vision and starts looking like a confidence game.