"Lies" is pretty charged phrasing for what are explicitly declared as best-case timeline estimates, which the media then loves to (disingenuously) revise into "promises."
The not-so-big management secret is that even if Musk took your advice and sandbagged his timelines, then the timelines still wouldn't be met. However it would move the actual time of completion further to the right! By using best-case predictions, things are actually getting done sooner. Call it the Applied Parkinson's Law.
They've been selling something which doesn't exist for years, as a fixed fee, or subscription. Most large companies end up walking a tightrope of getting away with as much as possible. But FSD can only be described as a lie, a euphemism if you're feeling generous [1].
It's a company worth unthinkable amounts of money. Most people would have less patience with a guy running a Patreon in his spare time who had claimed for years his supporters would have a product soon, let alone an organisation swimming in funding (Twitter debacle aside).
The not-so-big management secret is that even if Musk took your advice and sandbagged his timelines, then the timelines still wouldn't be met. However it would move the actual time of completion further to the right! By using best-case predictions, things are actually getting done sooner. Call it the Applied Parkinson's Law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law