No one promotes a lie better than a person who believes it is the truth. I believe Elon Musk believes what he says. It is frustrating that people say Elon should be a visionary who looks towards the future in one breath and then in the next they get mad at him because he looks past tomorrow and sees what he thinks will be tomorrow. He is a classic "ready go set" person. Sorry guys, you can't have it both ways. You either let him go to Mars or you hold him down to the earth. You either have Tesla or you have GM like we had for decades. Pick.
Actually there is another way.
Let Musk be the visionary. Let him dazzle us with his dreams that may one day come true.
Train him to speak
slightly differently as he dazzles us
At the same time, develop an effective Communications Team that can take Musk's dreams, run them by their internal experts (software, hardware, manufacturers, operational people, legal, etc) and come up with an implementation strategy that is feasible. Then communicate that to the public.
For instance:
Current Tesla:
(Tweet from Musk): We expect a Tesla will drive from SF to NYC without human input by December 2017!"
(no other communication, so this solidifies from "dream" to "expectation")
My proposed Tesla
(Tweet from Musk): I'm hoping that we can have a Tesla drive from SF to NYC without human input in the very near future! (slightly different wording, but still conveys Musk's vision)
Tesla Communications Team/PR/Speaker: "In our quest to fulfill our vision, Tesla's current time frame is to have AP2 cars reach parity with AP1 cars by XXX date. After this, we will roll out features in this order. A. B. C. This is our current progress on initiative X,Y, and Z. Here are our current hurdles, and how we anticipate overcoming them. For more information, please see the official Press Release at Teslamotors.com"