Tesla Optimus Plans Evaporated – CleanTechnica

---

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

---

It should come as a shock to precisely no one that Tesla has missed a notable target regarding its Optimus robot. On a Tesla investor call earlier this year, Elon Musk stated that Tesla would build and use 10,000 of its Optimus robots internally this year, at least “several thousand.”

However, apparently, things have not gone according to plan. Reporting from The Information is that those plans were ditched in the summer. The claim that these bots would “be doing useful things by the end of the year” seems to be another missed promise from Musk, but we’ll wait a few more months to confirm that.

Word on the street, though, is that Musk plans on having “a dancing troupe of Optimus bots” at the upcoming Tesla annual meeting. Useful?

Proof of a coming bot revolution?

One of the things I feel like I’ve noticed from more than a decade of covering Tesla and Elon Musk is that when facing a big failure, Musk likes to make his biggest claims. So, unsurprisingly, just after reportedly dropping hope of having 10,000 Optimus robots doing useful things for Tesla, Musk predicted last month that Optimus would eventually represent 80% of the value of Tesla. Hmm…. It’s sort of an extreme case of that old tendency in the face of difficulty or being proven wrong to double down. Is Elon Musk a stubborn man? Some people claim that he always ends up delivering, but he has actually not delivered on a ton of notable things now.

Interestingly, a separate article caught my attention recently — one about a super realistic robot face (creepy). In that article, I read, “Internationally, the project is viewed as a symbol of China’s growing influence in the robotics industry. According to Futurezone, as early as 2024, nearly two-thirds of all global robotics patents originated from China. The Chinese company Unitree has even launched the R1 – a humanoid robot designed for home use. While the United States and Russia focus heavily on military applications, Germany’s efforts are directed primarily toward industrial robotics. As Evertiq reports, German industry leads the European market with an automation rate of around 40%.” Hmm…. It’s what reader “freedomev” keeps saying — China is far ahead on robotics and Elon Musk’s claims about Tesla being a leader in the sector are ridiculous. We’ll see. At the moment, that is what it looks like.