The pattern is real and worth conceding: Musk routinely sets deadlines his companies miss. Year-end 2025 roundups catalogued a long list of slipped targets — most prominently Tesla robotaxis "everywhere" and big FSD and Optimus milestones that arrived late or not at all — and he has a documented history of aggressive timelines, from "Mars by" dates to "full self-driving next year" repeated for years. Anyone taking his calendar predictions literally will be disappointed, and that is a fair criticism. What the "never delivers" version gets wrong is the outcome, as opposed to the schedule. The same person who is chronically late has also, eventually, done the things skeptics called impossible: landing and reusing orbital rockets, catching a Super Heavy booster with the launch tower, building the best-selling car on the planet, deploying the largest satellite-internet constellation in history, and launching an actual paid robotaxi service in Austin in 2025 — late and limited, but real. The honest verdict is that Musk's timelines are unreliable while his eventual delivery on the core goal is far better than "never." Verdict: mixed — chronic over-promising on dates is real; "never delivers" is contradicted by a long record of eventually shipping.