[ad_1]
As Tesla continues to showcase its humanoid robot Optimus in increasingly public settings, from the Boston Marathon to a Hollywood diner launchCEO Elon Musk is finally outlining when the product could reach the real world—and what it will realistically be able to do at first.
During Tesla’s latest earnings callMusk said the company is moving toward “actually releasing Optimus,” with internal production already ramping up for testing. The goal, he added, is to have “Optimus be useful outside of Tesla sometime next year,” marking the first time the company has pointed to a concrete window for broader deployment.
That rollout, however, will be gradual and, in some areas, uncertain. Tesla plans to begin early production at its Fremont factory later this year, but Musk emphasized that Optimus depends on an entirely new manufacturing ecosystem. Because it involves a “totally new supply chain” and “totally new technology,” the company should expect a slow and uneven ramp-up.
“The production S-curve is always very slow in the beginning,” Musk said, underscoring that scaling will take time. He was even more blunt about the unpredictability of that process. “When you have a brand-new product in an entirely new production line and you have 10,000 unique items, all of which have to go right into ramp production,” he said during the call. “It will move as fast as the least luckiest, lowest, dumbest part in the entire 10,000.”
Tesla is already planning for that long-term scale. In addition to Fremont, the company is building a second Optimus factory at Giga Texas, which Musk said will likely begin production in the summer of 2027, suggesting that meaningful volume could still be years away.
Even so, Musk’s ambitions for the product remain expansive. He described Optimus as not just another addition to Tesla’s lineup, but something far bigger, saying it will “probably be the biggest product ever,” not just for Tesla but for the market at large.
In the near term, though, expectations are more grounded. The robot will start with “simple skills in the factory and then build up from there,” Musk said, positioning early versions as industrial tools before any broader consumer use.
[ad_2]
Source link
