I'll give you an example, on a topic that I have mentioned a few times -- because this article hit my pet peeve use of the word "promise" quite precisely. I've pointed out before how the media's use of the word "promise" is disingenous at best. They always use it incorrectly and with the intent of creating an emotional response. In this case, just reading the title of this article alone tells me exactly how (not) dedicated to honest facts this article is.
The author/editor of that article chose to declare a promise from Tesla right in the title:
Tesla Battery Day: Tesla Promises $25,000 EV in Three Years
They repeat the use of that word two more times, both times quoting only a single word from Elon -- "compelling." They did it in the bulleted summary at the top: "
Musk promised a "compelling" $25,000 car within three years", and later in the text, they say: "Musk wrapped up his remarks by promising a "compelling" $25,000 passenger EV in three years."
I wonder why they declared the same "promise" from Tesla three times, but the only actual quote from Tesla/Elon is the word "compelling."
To find the answer to that, I found a transcript of the actual battery day:
Tesla held its 2020 annual Sahreholder Meeting and Battery Day on September 22. Read the transcript of the event here, with updates from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and SVP Drew Baglino.
www.rev.com
As it would turn out, what looks to be timestamped over 2 hours into the event, Elon first said he was "confident" in a $25,000 Tesla in the "long-term." After rambling a bit, he settled on "probably...about three years". Nothing about "probably" and "about" should be taken as a hard deadline or even a predicted schedule, and of course it's not a promise. Elon was projecting a potential or likely timeframe for a future *capability*, not a target date for mass production.
This talk was in late September of 2020, so...we're at about 3.5 years at this point. We do know that Tesla is on at least their second generation of PRODUCTION 4680 cells -- they made a version that was used in many Model Y's, and they've got a new version in the Cybertruck. And we have reason to believe more improvements are in the works at Kato, and that the current production line(s) for the cells are being copy-pasted.
Elon's actual quote:
"What does this mean for our future products? So we’re confident that long-term we can design and manufacturer a compelling $25,000 electric vehicle. This has always been our dream from the beginning of the company. I even wrote a blog piece about it because our first car was an expensive sports car, then it was a slightly less expensive sedan, and then finally sort of a, I don’t know, mass market premium, the Model 3 and Model Y. But it was always our goal to try to make an affordable electric car. And I think probably, like I said, about three years from now, we’re confident we can make a very compelling $25,000 electric vehicle that’s also fully autonomous."
And then a second/simliar quote from later in the event:
"...I mean, that said, maybe on the order of three years, when we can do lower cost, like a $25,000 car, I think that will be basically on par, maybe slightly better than a comparable gasoline car. So I think maybe it’s on the order of three years-ish."
Again, very clearly an estimate and still very non-commital. "On the order" in a scientific setting usually means close within a factor of 10 -- so, in the most literal interpretation, he's saying it's closer to 3 years than 0.3 or 30 years. And again, he's talking about when it might be possible to make such a car based on battery cell costs, not when a factory would be ready to produce it, and not when cell production will be at the scale to make millions of those cars.
*Spoiler section edited to corrected where I accidentally typed "2022" instead of "2020"...but I always said it was 3.5 years ago. And then I also added the second quoted text from Elon.