Elon Musk Doubles Down on Optimus Humanoid Robot Promises

Tesla Delays Production of Humanoid Robot Once Again OptimusCEO Elon Musk made the announcement on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.

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

“Tesla will have truly useful humanoid robots in low volume production for internal Tesla use next year and hopefully in high volume production for other companies in 2026,” he amended Monday. Musk did not elaborate on what functionality he considered “truly useful.”

Tesla is reported to have two Optimus robots working at one of its factories, although the company has not disclosed what their actual production duties are. A recent promotional video from the company showed off the second generation of Optimus foldable shirts.

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

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2024

Of course, this isn’t the first time Musk has overpromised to investors about a product’s delivery. In 2019, he said Tesla’s support for fully autonomous self-driving vehicles would allow the company to deploy a fleet of “robotaxis” by 2020. They haven’t arrived yet, though Musk wrote on X last week that the company needs more time to introduce its autonomous cabs to make “major design changes” to the front of the car.

Plus, the Cybertruck was originally supposed to hit the streets in 2021, but multiple delays pushed its launch back to November 2023. And even after its debut, the company has repeatedly paused and delayed deliveries of the long-awaited electric SUV to customers. And who can forget that the first “Optimus” to hit the scene was actually just a guy in a lycra bodysuit?

“An intelligent humanoid robot by 2025? I mean, come on, they tried to launch that product with a dancer in a robot suit,” Roth MKM analyst Craig Irwin joked to Yahoo Finance on Monday. “They’re going to have a hard time catching up to Boston Dynamics. What they showed us is really cutting-edge technology from 2014.”