Prediction record
MisstechA Tesla driver will be able to safely sleep at the wheel (full autonomy) in about two years, by roughly mid-2019.
A scored record for Elon Musk, made on .
Scored record
Misstech“I think that's about two years.”
A Tesla driver will be able to safely sleep at the wheel (full autonomy) in about two years, by roughly mid-2019.
- Made on
- 2017-04-28
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 3 / 5
- Contribution
- +0.46
Criterion
- Resolution status
- resolved
- Resolved on
- 2019-04-28
TRUE if by roughly 2019-04-28 Tesla self-driving was safe and capable enough that a driver could sleep at the wheel while the car drove; otherwise FALSE.
Criterion: by ~2019-04-28 self-driving safe/capable enough for a driver to sleep at the wheel. Not met — system was (and remains) Level 2 supervised, requiring constant attention. resolved_on set to the ~mid-2019 deadline (2019-04-28) at which the capability was clearly absent. No contrary evidence.
Sources
Outcome evidence
At TED2017 (April 28, 2017), asked when a driver could sleep at the wheel, Musk answered 'about two years' — i.e. roughly mid-2019 — distinguishing full sleep-capable autonomy from the sooner coast-to-coast demo. Electrek's contemporaneous report frames this as ~2 years away from being able to sleep in the car (Level 5).
Prediction ledger records the April 2017 'about two years' sleep-at-the-wheel claim and marks it not achieved: by mid-2019 Tesla had not reached the reliability needed for an unsupervised sleeping driver.
Throughout 2019 and since, Tesla Autopilot/FSD remained an SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance system requiring a fully attentive driver ready to take over at all times; it 'does not make the vehicle autonomous.' Sleeping at the wheel was neither safe nor permitted around April 2019 — driver-monitoring nags actively enforced hands/attention. So by ~2019-04-28 a driver could not safely sleep while the car drove.
Corrections
- Quote wording: Verbatim must be Musk's own words. To Anderson's question about sleeping at the wheel, Musk answered 'I think that's about two years.' The 'driver will be able to sleep at the wheel' phrasing is the interviewer's and cannot be presented as a Musk quote; the sleep-at-wheel content stays in claim_canonical/context via the Q&A.
Score contribution
+0.46- Confidence
- 65%
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 3 / 5
- Contribution
- +0.46
This page displays the scored record as published; the website doesn't recompute or adjust the score.
Provenance
A Tesla driver will be able to safely sleep at the wheel (f…- Methodology version
- v1.0.0
- Last computed
- July 7, 2026
- Made on
- 2017-04-28
How this profile was built
Scored by independent judges
Predictions gathered and sourced
Independently verified against sources