Tesla Has Built Only “5 Or 6” Optimus Robots So Far, Musk Reveals

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

So when will or not it’s in the stores? Properly, it is nonetheless too quickly to speak about that, as growth of the robotic remains to be within the early levels. The Tesla Bot was shown in a video in May walking and picking up stuff, and that was just about all the pieces it was capable of 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 info on what number of Optimus robots the corporate has made to this point.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk joked that 10 million Optimus robots have been lively earlier than revealing the far much less spectacular actuality. “I feel we’re round 5 or 6 bots… However it’s kind of – sure, there’s extra each month. There’s numerous fascinating issues concerning the Optimus bot,” Musk mentioned, in accordance with In search of Alpha (by way of Teslarati).

He famous that Tesla has constructed a small variety of robots to this point largely 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.

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Because of this, 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 ability electronics, the controller, the sensors. And actually, each certainly one of them is customized. After which, in fact, we’ll be utilizing the identical inference {hardware} because the automobile,” 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 this planet, nevertheless it’s additionally truly manufacturable. So, we must always be capable of make them in quantity.”

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

Musk mentioned in Might that Optimus was “extraordinarily underrated” and had large potential for the corporate. He mentioned it will not be shocking 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 items.

Because of this, the robotic would far outnumber Tesla’s world automobile fleet, with which it shares the Full Self-Driving software.