Elon Musk is discovering simply how troublesome it’s to construct a robotic that may stroll, speak, and suppose like a human.
The Tesla CEO mentioned in the course of the automaker’s second-quarter earnings name on Wednesday that constructing Optimus, a humanoid robotic, is a “very complicated drawback to unravel,” and “nobody’s ever achieved this.”
Whereas Musk mentioned he believes Optimus would be the “biggest product ever,” he flagged “many challenges” in designing it to be dexterous, dependable, sturdy, and protected.
For instance, he mentioned that he needs Optimus to have at the least the identical dexterity as an individual, however the “human hand is an unimaginable factor.”
He identified that “there is no such thing as a provide chain” for Optimus, so Tesla has needed to construct one from scratch and produce some elements in-house. The automaker has to not solely secure enough AI chips but in addition “resolve reminiscence, logic, and packaging” to make Optimus a hit, he added.
Musk additionally underlined how tough it will be to crank out large numbers of the robots.
“That is going to be the toughest product to scale manufacturing that we have ever made at Tesla,” he mentioned.
Musk defined that is as a result of “all the things on the robotic is new,” which makes it a lot tougher to ramp up manufacturing.
The world’s richest man and CEO of each Tesla and SpaceX, recognized for giving overly bold timelines, mentioned he was managing expectations.
“I simply need to be sure that to calibrate folks appropriately,” Musk mentioned.
Tesla did not instantly reply to a request for remark from Enterprise Insider.
Musk has beforehand described the magnitude of the duty at hand. This time last year, he spoke about how Tesla has to design all the things from the motor and gearbox to the controls and sensors, to not point out practice Optimus. But he additionally mentioned he’d be “shocked” if Tesla wasn’t making 100,000 robots a month in 5 years’ time.
Notably, Tesla described its plans for “quantity” and “mass” manufacturing of Optimus in its earnings presentation final quarter, however did not use these phrases in Wednesday’s presentation.
Musk stands to achieve handsomely from making Optimus a hit. One of many milestones he should attain to unlock the complete worth of his newest compensation settlement is delivering a million Optimus robots within the subsequent decade.
