Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company will produce “really useful” humanoid robots to start working in its factories next year.
The world’s richest person, who has a penchant for making wildly ambitious claims on social media, posted on his X platform, formerly known as Twitter, that he also hopes to expand into “high production” mode to make humanoid robots available for sale to other companies in 2026.
Tesla will have humanoid robots that are really useful in low-production for internal Tesla use next year, and hopefully high-production for other companies in 2026.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2024
Musk, the owner of X and CEO of SpaceX, has previously made bold statements about when the Optimus robot will be ready for commercial use. In 2021, the billionaire, whose fortune Forbes estimates is $250 billion, said he expected the robot to be ready for use in Tesla factories the following year.
Optimus stands approximately 1.7 metres tall and weighs 56 kg, and is designed to do “dull, repetitive, and dangerous” work. The name is a reference to Optimus Prime, the powerful and benevolent leader of the Autobots in the Transformers media franchise.
At Tesla’s AI Day event in 2021 to launch the human-like robot, which at the time was called “Tesla Bot,” Musk hosted a bizarre show featuring an actor in a skintight suit who started dancing to electronic dance music.
At another AI Day 2022 event, Musk — who has claimed that Tesla’s robotics business will one day be more valuable than its cars — showed off a prototype of the robot that walked on stage and waved to the audience.
Video showed the robot carrying a crate, watering plants and moving metal rods at the automaker’s factory.
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Musk has previously said his goal is to mass-produce the robots and have them cost less than $20,000 each.
But Project Optimus isn’t the only project that’s lagging behind Musk’s initial expectations. In 2019, Musk said he was “very confident” that Tesla would have self-driving taxis on the road the following year.
Earlier this year, he said the model would be unveiled on August 8, but that looks likely to be delayed after Musk said he requested a change to the front of the car.
