Tesla Optimus: Car transforming into a robot? Promising future, affordable price?

On May 5, Tesla released a video about the latest situation of optimus, where the robot is doing simple assembly line work. The video has sparked controversy among Internet.

1. Car turning into a robot?

Tesla delivered 386,810 cars in Q1 of 2024, a decrease of 20.1% compared to the previous quarter, making it their worst quarterly performance since 2022. Meanwhile, in the wave of price reduction trend of electric vehicles in China, Tesla also announced a price cut for its series of vehicles and claimed that they would continue to push the production of low-priced models.

On April 23, Musk emphasized in the Q1 2024 earnings call of Tesla that Optimus is already carrying out factory tasks and is expected to be used more widely in the coming years. He predicted that by the end of this year, Optimus will perform a series of useful tasks and plans to sell it to the public before the end of 2025.

"As I've said before, I believe Optimus is going to be more valuable than everything else combined," Musk said in his earnings call, further emphasizing the importance of Optimus.

2. Development History of Optimus

In August 2021, Tesla for the first time demonstrated the Optimus robot at AI Day. The robot, standing 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 125 pounds, is designed to carry out repetitive tasks that humans loathe, but at this stage, it is only a virtual model dressed in futuristic robot attire, with no behaviors or operations observed yet. Since the announcement of Optimus, Tesla and its promotional team have been continuously following up on the project's progress and achievements on social media.

AI Day in 2022 was held on October 1st. By this time, Optimus had evolved from concept to reality. However, it was still a humanoid robot with exposed wires and mechanical structures, and has not yet moved to the aesthetic design stage, but people had now taken notice of the existence of Optimus.

On December 14th, 2023, Tesla launched the "Optimus Gen 2" and stated that this is the new generation of humanoid robots that should be able to take over human repetitive tasks. Optimus Gen 2 uses actuators and sensors designed by Tesla, faster and stronger hands, faster walking, lighter overall weight, articulated neck, and so on.

On January 16, MUSK posted a video of the Optimus folding shirt on social media, but netizens noticed a hand constantly sliding into the frame in the video, indicating someone might actually be operating the robot. This technology is known as "remote operation", which has been used in robotics since the 1940s. It essentially involves a person moving their own hand, with the robot mimicking this action. However, such simulated behavior is not enough to be called an intelligent robot with actual thought, at best it is a machine that duplicates human behavior.

The development of Optimus is being closely watched by the robotics industry and the automotive industry. Do you think the price of such a futuristic product will be extremely high? But it might not be the case. On March 27, Musk posted on social media that Tesla can reduce the price of its Optimus to "less than half the cost of a car".

What do you think about Tesla building robots?