On July 22nd, Musk provided a new production schedule for humanoid robots.
He revealed on social media that Tesla will produce truly useful humanoid robots in "small batches" next year for internal use, and is expected to achieve "large batch" shipments and sales to other customers by 2026.
Tesla entered the humanoid robot race in 2021 and released a prototype of Optimus in 2022. In December 2023, the iterative version of the second generation of Optimus Prime was unveiled, and its motion and mission operation capabilities have been demonstrated multiple times in video form since then.
According to Tesla's official introduction, "Optimus Prime" uses AI technology that is similar to autonomous driving. With the help of visual neural networks and FSD (fully autonomous driving) chips, "Optimus Prime" has learned to mimic human operation for battery sorting. Currently, two Optimus Prime vehicles are working at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California, responsible for removing battery cells from the end of the production line and placing them into transport boxes.
On July 10th, Musk announced that the new design of the second generation of Optimus Prime will be completed later this year, and the new design is "special", but he did not provide detailed information on this.
But the commercialization progress of Optimus Prime is still slower than Musk's vision. In April of this year, he announced during the first quarter earnings conference call that he expected to start limited production of "Optimus Prime" by the end of 2024 and may begin external sales by the end of 2025. At the Tesla shareholders' meeting in June, Musk changed his statement and said that the production of Optimus Prime will only be limited to 2025, and there will be over 1000 or even thousands of humanoid robots working at Tesla factories by then.
Musk sees himself as a 'pathological optimist'. He previously stated that Optimus Prime would one day boost Tesla's market value to $25 trillion, more than half of the current total market value of the S&P 500 index. Musk is ambitious, stating that 'the popularity of humanoid robots will be 10 times that of cars'.
Recently, Tesla has also increased its recruitment efforts in the field of robotics. Out of approximately 800 job vacancies, the majority are for robotics and artificial intelligence positions.