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Musk doubles down on promises for Optimus humanoid robots

By Andrew Tarantola Published July 22, 2024

The Tesla Suit Optimus with a black background. — Tesla

Tesla is once again delaying the production of its Optimus humanoid robot, CEO Elon Musk announced on X (formerly Twitter) Monday.

During April’s annual investor meeting, Musk told shareholders that Optimus would move into limited production in 2025 and predicted that “thousands” of the robots would be working in Tesla factories by the end of the year. He also hypothesized that sales of the robot, which is expected to retail for between $20,000 and $30,000, could add as much as $20 trillion to the company’s market capitalization.

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“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,” he amended Monday. Musk did not explain what he considers “genuinely useful” functionality.

Two Optimus robots reportedly work in one of Tesla’s factories, though the company has not revealed what their actual duties on the floor are. A recent promotional video from the company showed a second-generation Optimus folding shirts.

Optimus folds a shirt pic.twitter.com/3F5o3jVLq1

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2024

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Musk has over-promised his investors on delivering product. In 2019, he claimed that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving autonomous vehicle assist would enable the company to roll out a fleet of “robotaxis” by 2020. Those have yet to arrive, though Musk posted on X last week that the company is taking additional time to unveil its autonomous cabs in order to incorporate “an important design change” to the front of the vehicle.

What’s more, the Cybertruck was initially supposed to hit the street in 2021, but multiple delays pushed back its release to November 2023. And even after its debut, the company has repeatedly paused and rescheduled delivery of the long-awaited electric SUV to customers. And who can forget that the first “Optimus” ever revealed on stage was actually just a guy in a lycra bodysuit?

“A sentient humanoid robot by 2025? I mean come on, they tried to launch this product with a dancer inside of a robot suit,” Roth MKM analyst Craig Irwin quipped on Yahoo Finance Monday. “It’s gonna be hard for them to catch up to Boston Dynamics. What they’ve shown us is really state of the art for 2014.”

Andrew Tarantola

Former Computing Writer

Andrew Tarantola is a journalist with more than a decade reporting on emerging technologies ranging from robotics and machine…

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