Tesla’s chief executive has been promising the first humanoid robot for years.
Tesla’s Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk claimed the company will start producing humanoid robots for internal use next year and start mass selling them by 2026. Musk, the world’s richest person, is also the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), and CEO of SpaceX.
The humanoid robot, dubbed Optimus in a reference to the good robot in the Transformer franchise, would be the first in Tesla’s line of products. Tesla is the world’s second-largest electric car company, with the Chinese BYD taking the top spot earlier this year.
Optimus has been a long-time dream of Elon Musk. In 2021, the multi-billionaire said Tesla would start production the following year. During the “launch event” a human person dressed as a robot roamed the stage doing the tasks Optimus would reportedly do.
In 2022, Elon Musk claimed Tesla’s robotic segment would one day be larger than EVs. As the company faces several challenges in a fast-changing industry, this prediction may not be totally farfetched.
That same year, Musk presented a prototype of Optimus for the first time, showing a video where it performed some house chores. Musk said the price for one model would be $20,000.
Big promises, small deliveries
Elon Musk has a bad reputation for not delivering on his promises.
Most recently, Tesla was supposed to launch its first robotaxi on August 8th, but Musk postponed the event as the prototype was reportedly facing delays. The robotaxi is another long-time Elon Musk promise, first hitting the headlines in 2019.
Another recently failed promise was Tesla’s cheap EV model, whose plans have been scrapped according to a Reuters report. The new car, whose retail price hovered below the $25,000 mark, had been in the works for years.
From full self-driving software to overpromises on the Cybertruck (a self-described disaster for Elon Musk), the list goes on.
Some industry members are starting to question Musk’s credibility. “Sometimes we have to call it what it is, right? I mean have you seen this thing do anything? It’s bullsh*t,” Meta’s former vice-president of AI Jerome Pesenti said in an interview with Yahoo Finance.
Pesenti said a world with robots would be much different, and much more mundane, than what Musk envisions. “The real world is very complicated and very unpredictable,” he added.
The next Tesla launch event is now scheduled for October, which will decide the company’s future.
