Elon Musk has targeted an ambitious goal for Tesla’s humanoid robot: Optimus. Billed as “the biggest product in history,” Optimus is designed to handle mundane, dangerous, and repetitive tasks, smoothing the path for revolutionary transformations both in industry and at home.
Musk perceives Optimus as a linchpin for the future that is capable of changing not just the way industries function but even life at home. Standing 5’8″ tall and weighing in between 125-160 pounds, this humanoid robot is full of advanced features such as 28 actuators, human-like dexterity that allows it to handle tasks which demand precision and delicacy, be it moving heavy components around the factory or serving drinks with finesse at your home.
Tesla’s roadmap to Optimus features a step-by-step process toward scaling production.
2025: Low-volume production to start for Tesla’s internal use. Optimus will help with tasks like moving parts and assisting assembly lines within Tesla facilities.
2026: Scale up production to deliver between 50,000 and 100,000 units for third-party companies and, where relevant, directly to consumers.
2027: This will be a leap in development, with output pegged to between 500,000 and 1 million units yearly.
This aggressive timeline is in line with Musk’s vision of a world with 30 billion robots, where for every human, five robots exist.
Optimus is not a robot but a feat of engineering. Optimus, with the Tesla AI5 chip that goes into production this year, will integrate neural network-driven intelligence to navigate and perform tasks autonomously. A hand with 11-22 degrees of freedom in Optimus enables the robot to handle tools and fragile items with care.
Demonstrations have shown Optimus dancing, serving drinks, and executing complex, repetitive motions. Although it will cost between $20,000 and $30,000, Musk hopes Optimus can be used for everything from corporate warehouses to everyday homes.
By estimate, the global robot industry could reach an incredible $24 trillion. Tesla’s Optimus alone is expected to add significantly to this total, with analysts predicting that the Optimus will bring Tesla a revenue of $10 billion annually by 2035. Among its competitors in class, like Amazon’s Agility Robotics and chipmaker Nvidia, Tesla is faced with a slew of technological and competitive challenges as it strives to keep ahead of them all.
Although ambitious targets are pretty tough to digest, Musk’s targets did turn some investors’ and analysts’ heads upwards. Deutsche Bank estimates that Tesla will deploy roughly 1,000 Optimus robots in 2025, while Bank of America said the Optimus project marks a transformational step toward the long-term development of Tesla.
The journey for Optimus from being an achievement to widespread adaption has some very large hurdles to overcome: technical ones in resolving battery life, navigation through complex environments, and software reliability; and more philosophical ones in resolving ethics behind mass automation-job displacement, among other concerns.
Some critics have reservations regarding the possible redundancy of human workforce in manufacturing industries, aged care, and hazardous labor might result in massive unemployment. In this scenario, Musk becomes more optimistic when he asserts, “With artificial intelligence getting smarter, lots of previously working people might fall into poverty since robot-powered economies could provide everyone a very high standard of living that universal basic income would no longer be necessary “.
Elon Musk’s latest comments double down on Tesla’s shift away from cars and into robotics. Speaking during a meeting with CC Wei, Chairman of TSMC, Musk repeated Tesla’s vision as a robotics company with Optimus at the helm. As ambitious as the vision of a world dominated by robots may be, Musk’s track record with the transformation of industries at least lends credence to the claim. And if Tesla meets its production goal of 1 million Optimus robots annually, by 2027, the world indeed might reach the threshold of a robotics revolution.
