Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robotic was first introduced by the EV maker on the AI Day occasion in August 2021, which implies it’ll quickly be two years previous.

So when will or not it’s available for purchase? Nicely, it is nonetheless too quickly to speak about that, as growth of the robotic continues to be within the early phases. The Tesla Bot was proven in a video in Could strolling and selecting up stuff, and that was just about every little thing it was in a position to do on the time.

On Tesla’s Q2 2023 earnings name yesterday, a retail investor requested for an replace on the progress of the robotic’s capabilities and requested data on what number of Optimus robots the corporate has made up to now.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk joked that 10 million Optimus robots have been lively earlier than revealing the far much less spectacular actuality. “I believe we’re round 5 or 6 bots… But it surely’s type of – sure, there’s extra each month. There’s a number of attention-grabbing issues in regards to the Optimus bot,” Musk mentioned, in line with In search of Alpha (through Teslarati).

He famous that Tesla has constructed a small variety of robots up to now principally as a result of the corporate has actuator provide points. Extra particularly, Tesla realized that there have been no off-the-shelf actuators that “labored nicely” for Optimus.

6 Photographs

In consequence, Tesla needed to design and construct the actuators itself. The actuator is a key element for robots because it creates movement by changing saved power into mechanical work. 

“So, we have truly needed to design our personal actuators that combine the motor or the facility electronics, the controller, the sensors. And actually, each considered one of them is customized. After which, after all, we’ll be utilizing the identical inference {hardware} because the automotive,” Elon Musk defined. He added that Tesla is designing these actuators for quantity manufacturing. 

“So, they are not simply lighter, tighter, and extra succesful than another actuators wherever that exists on the planet, nevertheless it’s additionally truly manufacturable. So, we must always have the ability to make them in quantity.”

Tesla’s head honcho mentioned the primary “type of manufacturing candidate actuators built-in and strolling needs to be round November-ish,” with a manufacturing ramp to observe shortly after that. 

Musk mentioned in Could that Optimus was “extraordinarily underrated” and had big potential for the corporate. He mentioned it might not be stunning if Tesla’s enterprise sooner or later is constructed on the again of its humanoid robotic, for which he predicted demand as excessive as 10 to twenty billion models.

In consequence, the robotic would far outnumber Tesla’s international car fleet, with which it shares the Full Self-Driving software program.