The Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, has claimed the company will produce “genuinely useful” humanoid robots to start working in its factories next year.
The world’s richest person, who has a penchant for making overambitious claims on social media, posted on his platform X, formerly Twitter, that he also hoped to expand into “high production” mode to make robots with a humanlike form available sell to 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
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2024
Musk, who owns X and is also the boss of SpaceX, has previously made bold claims about when the robot, called Optimus, would be ready for commercial use. Back in 2021 the billionaire, estimated to be worth $250bn (£194bn) by Forbes, said that he expected the mechanoid to be ready for use in Tesla factories the following year.
Optimus is about 1.7 metres tall and weighs 56kg; it is designed to do “boring, repetitious and dangerous” work. The name is an allusion to Optimus Prime, the powerful and benevolent leader of the Autobots in the Transformers media franchise.
At a Tesla AI Day event in 2021 to launch the humanoid robot, at the time dubbed the “Tesla Bot”, Musk hosted a bizarre demonstration featuring an actor in a bodysuit who proceeded to breakdance to a soundtrack of electronic dance music.
At another AI Day event in 2022, 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 on stage and waved to the audience.
A video of the robot carrying a box, watering plants and moving metal bars in the carmaker’s factory was shown.
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Musk has previously said his aim is for the robots to be mass produced and cost less than $20,000 each.
Optimus is not the only Musk project to be running behind his initial projections. In 2019, he said he felt “very confident” Tesla would have self-driving taxis on the road the following year.
Earlier this year he said the model would be unveiled on 8 August, but it now looks likely to be delayed after Musk said he had requested a change to the front of the vehicle.