Tesla Bot becomes less of a sideshow as impressive new footage of the robots emerge
Tesla gave an update on its humanoid robot program, which is known as Tesla Bot or Optimus. New images of prototypes were quite impressive – making the project look less like a sideshow and increasingly like a potentially real product.
When Elon Musk first announced the Tesla Bot, many laughed it off as a sideshow or distraction to Tesla’s more important mission to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy.
The CEO hyped it up by describing how much value it would create by fixing the labor crisis, but like Tesla’s autonomous driving effort, everyone can see the value of humanoid robots – the problem is people have issues seeing Tesla making it a reality.
It didn’t help that the latest demo at Tesla AI Day last year was less than impressive.
At the time, Tesla had a very early prototype that didn’t look like much. It was barely able to walk around and wave at the crowd. That was about it.
The company also had another more refined-looking prototype, but it wasn’t even able to walk in time for the presentation.
Here’s what it looked like:
Tesla claimed to have a great opportunity to develop this humanoid robot because it could leverage a lot of existing hardware developed for its electric vehicles and software from its self-driving technology.
But it wasn’t clear how much effort was put into the project even though Musk claimed it became a top priority at Tesla early last year.
Now at Tesla’s 2023 shareholders meeting today, Musk gave an update on Tesla Bot that included a lot of new footage of multiple prototypes:
The footage included 5 Tesla Optimus prototypes, and they were seen performing simple tasks, walking around the office as well as in other Tesla facilities where Cybertrucks were around.
The prototypes were waking slowly, but they appeared to be stable.
While the tasks that they were performing were not really impressive, Tesla appeared to have made a lot of progress in developing the hands:
Tesla also gave a glimpse at the robots detecting and memorizing their environment.
Musk again claimed that the “Optimus stuff is extremely underrated”. The CEO said that the demand could be as high as 10 to 20 billion units.
He went as far as “confidently predicting” that Optimus will account for “a majority of Tesla’s long-term value”.
Electrke’s Take
I am still skeptical about this project, but I have to give credit where credit is due. This looks like a significant improvement over the last demo, which was just about 8 months ago.
The hands, which are arguably the most difficult part of a humanoid robot, are truly impressive here.
Now I think we are still at least about 3 years from a useful product, but that in itself would be amazing.
Mind you, that timeline is also when I think that Tesla will have a useful self-driving vehicle, which makes sense since Elon says that Tesla is leveraging its AI development for self-driving for Optimus.
While we can argue on the timeline, I wouldn’t bet against Tesla on this. On the hardware side of things, they do have a great advantage in leveraging their current EV hardware.
When you think about it, there’s no major engineering problem that needs to be solved in order to create a humanoid robot. It just needs to be efficiently packaged as well as designed and manufactured in a way that the robot doesn’t cost more than $100,000.
People didn’t think that was possible with electric cars and Tesla did it. I think they can do it for humanoid robots.
The AI side is the more difficult challenge. That’s why I am talking about ~3 years for a useful product. That’s accounting for the fact that Tesla has already made a lot of mistakes in developing AI for self-driving. Those are mistakes that it won’t make for the robot and at one point, it is going to run out of mistakes to make.
Also, a useful product doesn’t mean a robot that can replace a significant percentage of human laborers. It means that at the cost, it will replace some workers. It will likely be a decade before the capacity can extend to a large number of tasks and the cost of acquisition and operation make it a valuable option for deployment at scale.
Similar to what Tesla did with electric vehicles timeline-wise.
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Paris’ bike-share system, Vélib has long been considered one of the shining success stories of urban micromobility. With a massive fleet of over 20,000 pedal and electric-assist bicycles around Paris, the service has helped millions of residents and tourists get around the City of Light without needing a car or scooter. But lately, a growing problem is threatening to knock the wheels off this urban mobility marvel: theft and joyriding.
According to city officials and the service operator, more than 600 Vélib bikes are now going missing every single week. That’s over 30 bikes a day simply vanishing from the system – some stolen outright, others taken on “joy rides” and never returned.
“At the moment we’re missing 3,000 bikes,” explained Sylvain Raifaud, head of the Agemob company that currently operates the Velib system. That’s nearly 15% of over 20,000 Vélib bikes across Paris.
The sticky-fingered culprits aren’t necessarily professional thieves or organized crime rings. Instead, they’re often regular users who treat the shared bikes like disposable toys.
The city estimates that many people have figured out how to pry the bikes out of the system’s parking docks, unlocking one for a casual cruise and then ditching it somewhere far from a docking station.
Once pried free, the bikes are technically usable for the next 24 hours until their automatic locking feature kicks in. At that point, the bikes are often simply abandoned. Some end up in alleyways. Others get tossed in rivers. A few just disappear completely.
And since the bikes are intended to be parked at their many docking stations around the city, they don’t have GPS chips, further complicating recovery of “liberated” bikes.
The issue started small but has grown into more than an inconvenience – it’s beginning to undermine the entire purpose of the service. With bikes going missing at such a high rate, many Vélib docking stations are left empty, especially during rush hours.
Riders looking for a quick commute or a convenient hop across town are increasingly finding themselves without available bikes, or having to walk long distances to find a functioning one.
That kind of unreliability chips away at user confidence and threatens to drive potential riders back into cars, cabs, or other less sustainable forms of transport at a time when Paris has already made great strides to dramatically reduce car usage in the city.
The losses are financially painful, too. Replacing stolen or vandalized bikes isn’t cheap, and the resources spent on tracking down missing equipment or reinforcing anti-theft measures are stretching thin. Vélib has faced theft and vandalism issues before, especially during its early years, but this latest surge has officials sounding the alarm with renewed urgency.
Officials acknowledge that there’s no easy fix. Paris, like many cities with bike-share systems, walks a fine line between accessibility and accountability. Part of what makes Vélib so successful is its ease of use and widespread availability. But those same features make it vulnerable to misuse – especially when enforcement is limited and the consequences for abuse are minimal.
The timing of the problem is especially unfortunate. In recent years, Paris has seen impressive results in reducing car traffic, expanding bike lanes, and promoting cycling as a key part of its sustainable transport strategy. Vélib is a cornerstone of that plan. But if the system becomes too unreliable, it risks losing the very people it was designed to serve.
Meanwhile, as Parisians increasingly find themselves staring at empty docks, the challenge for the city and Vélib will be to restore confidence in the system without making it harder to use. That means striking the right balance between freedom and responsibility, between open access and protection against abuse.
In a city where cycling is supposed to be the future of mobility, losing thousands of bikes to joyriders and sticky fingers isn’t just frustrating; it’s unsustainable.
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