A new video surfacing from a Tesla demonstration in Miami this weekend shows the Optimus humanoid robot taking a nasty fall. But it’s not the fall itself that is raising eyebrows, it’s the specific hand movements the robot made on its way down, which strongly suggest it was mimicking a remote operator frantically removing a VR headset.

Humanoid robots are all the hype right now. Billions in investments are pouring in, and Elon Musk claims it will be a trillion-dollar product for Tesla, justifying its insane valuation.

The idea has been that with the advent of AI, robots in human form could use the new generalized artificial intelligence to replace humans in an increasingly larger number of tasks.

However, there are still many serious concerns about the effort, both at the ethical and technological levels.

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Technologically, most humanoid robot demonstrations have relied on remote control by human operators – pointing to a remaining gap between the software and hardware.

We discussed how the robots at the “We, Robot” event were heavily teleoperated, despite Tesla not explicitly disclosing that fact to the public.

That was more than a year ago, and despite claims that Tesla has made “AI demos” of Optimus since, it appears the company still relies on teleoperation to control them during demonstrations.

The Tesla Optimus Miami Incident

This weekend, Tesla held an event called ‘Autonomy Visualized’ at its store in Miami. The goal was to showcase Tesla’s “Autopilot technology and Optimus.”

However, there was nothing “autonomous” at Tesla’s “autonomy” event.

Many Tesla fans were seen posting videos of a Tesla Optimus robot handing out bottles of water at the event. It was also seen posing for pictures and dancing.

On Reddit, someone posted a different video of the demonstration:

As you can see, Tesla Optimus moved its hands too quickly, causing some water bottles to drop to the ground. It then loses its balance and begins to fall backward.

But the most interesting part is that just before falling backward, both of its hands immediately shoot up to its “face” in a distinct grasping motion, as if pulling an object off its head.

The robot, of course, is not wearing anything on its head.

The motion is instantly recognizable to anyone who has used VR or watched teleoperation setups. It appears the human operator, likely located backstage or in a remote facility, removed their headset in the middle of operating the robot for unknown reasons.

Optimus faithfully replicated the motion of removing a non-existent headset as it crashed to the floor.

Here’s a look at how Tesla trained Pptimus with VR headsets in its lab:

Electrek’s Take

This is embarrassing, but not just because the robot fell. Robots fall; that’s part of the R&D process. Boston Dynamics blooper reels are legendary, and they never really eroded the company’s credibility.

The problem here is the “Wizard of Oz” moment.

The specific motion of removing the “phantom headset” destroys the illusion of autonomy Tesla tries so hard to curate.

Even recently, Musk fought back against the notion that Tesla relies on teleoperation for its Optimus demonstration. He specified that a new demo of Optimus doing kung-fu was “AI, not tele-operated”:

Musk said again during Tesla’s last earnings call in October:

“Optimus was at the Tron premiere doing kung fu, just up in the open, with Jared Leto. Nobody was controlling it. It was just doing kung fu with Jared Leto at the Tron Premier. You can see the videos online. The funny thing is, a lot of people walked past it thinking it was just a person.”

Musk keeps telling shareholders that Optimus will be the biggest product in history and that millions of units will be working in factories soon. But if they are still relying on 1:1 teleoperation to hand out water bottles right now, it feels like we are still far away from a useful generalized Optimus robot.

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This week, BYD crossed a major manufacturing milestone as its battery production crossed 113 GWh in the first three quarters of 2025 – but instead of celebrating, the company is doubling down with a new “Zero Defects” initiative to bring battery quality to an even higher level.

CarNewsChina reports that the new “Zero Defects” plan at BYD was launched internally at the start of Q3, with a focus on minimizing manufacturing defects across all stages of the battery’s life, from the manufacturing line to the end user.

The initiative coincides with BYD’s growing role as a battery supplier to other automakers and its expanding battery energy storage system (BESS) business, which are giving BYD both an international footprint and global benchmarks.

In its ongoing bid to prove itself even further in the global battery market, BYD will reportedly emphasize operational efficiency, error reduction, and standardization across manufacturing, process control, and customer service, with the end goal believed to be, “management practices comparable to those of Toyota.”

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BYD on a charge

The Chinese automaker seems to be going from strength to strength in 2025, having overtaken EV sales leader Tesla in China back in June and repeating the trick again by overtaking Tesla sales in Europe in August.

Combine those EV sales with the fact that its domestic traction battery production reached 113.42 GWh in just the first three quarters of the year (with 23.65 GWh, or ~20%, being supplied to outside customers – including Tesla), and you might agree that betting against BYD seems to be a bad idea.

Note that BYD has not released official details regarding performance metrics or milestones for its new Zero Defects goal, but the message is clear: BYD plans to keep getting better.

SOURCE: CarNewsChina; images via BYD.

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This week, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed a plan to make cars less efficient when Americans are already paying record-high energy bills during an affordability crisis fueled by tariff-driven inflation. That plan is now up for public comment.

Since the beginning of this year, the occupants of the White House have been on a mission to raise costs for Americans.

This mission has encompassed many different moves, most notably through unwise tariffs.

But another effort has focused on changing policy in a way that will raise fuel costs for Americans, adding to already-high energy prices.

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This specific rollback focuses on a rule passed under President Biden which would save Americans $23 billion in fuel costs by requiring higher fuel economy from auto manufacturers. By making cars use less fuel on average, Americans would not only save money on fuel, but reduce fuel demand which means that prices would go down overall.

The effort to roll back this rule was initially announced on the first day that Sean Duffy started squatting in the head office of the Department of Transportation. Duffy notably earned his transportation expertise by being a contestant on Road Rules: All Stars, a reality TV travel game show.

Then in June, Duffy formally reinterpreted the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard, claiming falsely that his department does not have authority to regulate fuel economy.

Republicans in Congress even got into effort to raise your fuel costs, as part of their ~$4 trillion giveaway to wealthy elites included a measure to make CAFE rules irrelevant by setting penalties for violating them to $0. In addition, it eliminated a number of other energy efficiency and domestic advanced manufacturing incentives.

Duffy’s department then told automakers that they would not face any fines retroactively to 2022, which saved the automakers (mostly Stellantis) a few hundred million dollars and cost American consumers billions in fuel costs.

Then, finally, earlier this week, Duffy formally announced the proposed changes to the CAFE rules, lowering the required fuel economy for 2022-2031 model year vehicles, even despite all of the other changes in trying to make the rules unenforceable.

The theory behind this would be to make it harder to later enforce the rules, and to allow automakers to get off with more pollution, and to increase fuel demand and fuel prices for longer until a real government returns to power and starts doing its job to regulate pollution.

Specifically, the announcement changes the planned 2031 50.5 mpg target to 34.5 mpg, cutting vehicle efficiency by nearly a third, which will lead to a commensurate increase in your fuel costs (note: CAFE numbers are calculated differently, and tend to look higher than actual mpg numbers).

The regulation even explicitly describes ballooning vehicle sizes in a positive light, which is ironic given that at the same event, Mr. Donald Trump, the convicted felon who directed this change to begin with, also quipped that he wants to bring tiny Japanese kei cars to the US, displaying his lack of knowledge of why he was even in the room to begin with.

If President Biden’s regulations were retained through 2031, average fuel economy would have tripled since the 1970s, when CAFE targets were first put in place. In the last two decades, CAFE targets helped drive a 30% improvement in average fuel economy, saving an average of $7,000 over the lifetime of an average vehicle – and they did this without increasing vehicle prices.

Despite that the dictatorial regime proposing such braindead rule changes would rather just push its oil company funders’ demands through without having to consult the people it will harm, these rulemaking procedures are still governed by the Administrative Procedures Act. This law requires the government to accept public comments and to take into account and respond to substantive comments posted to the docket related to the rulemaking procedure.

And so, you can now leave your own comments on whether or not you think this plan to make cars larger, more dangerous and less efficient, thus raising your fuel costs, is a good one or not.

Comments can be submitted through this link. Information for the docket can be found at docket number NHTSA-2025-0491. The comment period ends on Jan 20 at 2026 at 11:59 PM EST (yes, that superfluous “at” is from the NHTSA’s docket, wonderful attention to detail from the fake lawyers running the place).

Another of the administration’s recent plans to raise your fuel costs, the EPA’s plan to increase gas prices by $.76/gallon by deleting climate science, was recently posted and received 568,326 comments, the vast majority of which opposed the plan. Public comment on that plan is closed now and the EPA is sifting through the mountain of comments made, trying to figure out a way to kill people and raise energy costs in service of their oil masters despite massive public opposition in a country that is supposed to be a democracy.

That plan also received a virtual public hearing where commenters could call in with their thoughts, held over a few days, during which a vast majority opposed the plan. We’re not aware of a similar hearing for this plan yet, but we’ll let you know if we hear about one.

And despite many readers’ probable initial reaction that the unqualified dictator pushing these plans won’t be interested in hearing your comments, it should be noted that improper rulemaking has and will continue to result in certain rules being thrown out in court. There is a legally required method to how the government makes rules, and courts can throw out regulations that do not follow the proper method. Part of that method includes seeking public feedback, and this is your chance to enter your thoughts into the official government record on this regulation specifically.

Public comments on this ridiculous plan are open through Jan 20, 2026 at 11:59 PM EST, 8:59PM PDT. Comments can be submitted here. In case you get lost, the docket code is NHTSA-2025-0491. DOT/NHTSA has to respond to legitimate concerns made during public comment periods or else the rule could be voided (as was the case for 90% of the cases the NRDC challenged last go around), so the more substantive your comment, the better.

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