Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said the company will produce “really useful” humanoid robots that will begin working in its factories next year.
The world’s richest person, who has a tendency to make overly ambitious claims on social media, posted on his X platform, formerly Twitter, that he also hoped to expand into “high production” mode to make human-shaped robots available for sale to other companies by 2026.
Tesla will have truly useful humanoid robots in low production for internal Tesla use next year and hopefully in high production for other companies in 2026
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2024
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Tesla will have truly useful humanoid robots in low production for internal Tesla use next year and hopefully in high production for other companies in 2026
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2024
Musk, owner of X and also boss of SpaceX, has already made bold claims about when the robot, called Optimus, would be ready for commercial use. In 2021, the billionaire, whose fortune Forbes estimates at $250bn (£194bn), said he expected the mechanoid to be ready for use in Tesla factories the following year.
Optimus stands approximately 1.7 metres tall and weighs 56 kg; he is designed to perform “boring, repetitive and dangerous” jobs. The name is an allusion to Optimus Prime, the powerful and benevolent leader of the Autobots in the Transformers media franchise.
At a 2021 Tesla AI Day event to launch the humanoid robot, then dubbed the “Tesla Bot,” Musk showcased a bizarre demonstration featuring an actor in a suit who proceeded to breakdance to a soundtrack of electronic dance music.
At another AI Day 2022 event, Musk, who has claimed Tesla’s robot business will one day be worth more than its cars, demonstrated a prototype of the robot that walked around the stage and waved to the audience.
A video was shown of the robot carrying a box, watering plants and moving metal bars at the carmaker’s factory.
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Musk has previously said his goal is for robots to be mass-produced and cost less than $20,000 each.
Optimus isn’t the only Musk project that’s not living up to his initial projections. In 2019, he said he was “very confident” that Tesla would have self-driving taxis on the road within the next year.
Earlier this year, he said the model would be unveiled on August 8, but that appears likely to be delayed after Musk said he had requested a change to the front of the vehicle.