Elon Musk has delayed the rollout of the Tesla Optimus humanoid robot compared to a timeline shared just a few months ago.
Despite Musk’s threat not to build AI products at Tesla if he doesn’t get 25% control of the company, the CEO has already restructured the company around its AI products, including its humanoid robot: Tesla Optimus.
The idea is to leverage Tesla’s existing technologies to develop a humanoid general-purpose robot that can perform dangerous or repetitive tasks in different industrial or commercial purposes. Eventually, Tesla aims for the robot to also be used by consumers in their homes.
Last year, Tesla unveiled “Optimus Gen 2”, a new generation of its humanoid robot.
When it comes to a timeline, Musk said just a few months ago that he believes that Optimus will be used to perform real tasks inside actual Tesla factories by the end of the year.
Furthermore, Musk said that he believes Tesla could start selling the robot to customers outside of the company by the end of 2025.
Now, the CEO has updated the timeline saying that Optimus will go in “low production for Tesla internal use next year,” and the company is aiming for “high production for other companies in 2026”:
Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026.
That’s about a year delay compared to the last timeline.
Interestingly, Tesla already claimed last month that it has 2 Optimus humanoid robots working autonomously in its factories.
Electrek’s Take
As I previously stated, I think humanoid robots are going to be a thing and I do believe that Tesla has some valuable tech expertise that applies to this segment.
Top comment by CMG30
The cult of Elon has come to believe a myth about Elon that needs to be dispelled. It's the Iron Man myth... that he's some sort of technical wizard. Elon goes out of his way to play into the myth by giving himself grandiose nicknames like 'Technoking'.
As has become more and more clear with each former employee who speaks out, while Elon himself believes he's a technical wizard, in reality he's only got a cursory understanding of most technical issues. This leads directly into his management 'style' of simply making up timelines, demanding engineers meet those timelines, then making public announcements about things that are likely impossible to meet... and firing people when they can't deliver on the impossible.
This worked OK in the beginning when his image was such that all the talent wanted to come work for him because they believed it was an opportunity to change the world. This meant that Tesla could replace the talent they were bleeding as fast as they could become disillusioned. As Elon has become more and more insulated from reality by his turn to radical politics, propped up by a massive cult of personality, and buffered still further from consequence by an ungodly amount of personal wealth... things are starting to turn.
The pipeline of talent is slowly drying up because the image of Elon is slowly starting to tarnish due to his insane antics on ex-twitter. Real competition is coming in the form of Hyundai/Kia and the Chinese automakers and sales are slowing.
However, you should never believe Elon’s timelines.
He always announces super optimisitcs timelines that end up being pushed, like it has been the case for almost 6 years with “Full Self-Driving.”
Now it begins for Optimus with the first delay.
At least, with Optimus, Tesla is not using Elon’s promises to sell cars.
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