Musk says Tesla will employ humanoid robots by 2025

Elon Musk on Monday said that “useful” humanoid robots will begin working internally at Tesla factories by 2025.

The Tesla founder and once CEO posted the announcement on social media platform X responding to a thread about predictions made by AI researcher and former OpenAI employee Daniel Kokotajlo.

“Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year," Musk posted.

Musk had originally announced in April a rollout of Optimus – the official moniker for the Tesla bot – in the company's factories by the end of 2024.

The electric automaker adding that “hopefully” Optimus would be in “high production for other companies in 2026.”

Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026

undefined Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2024

The predictions were originally detailed by Kokotajlo on The Alignment Forum, an online think tank devoted to discussing “all ideas related to ensuring that transformatively powerful AIs are aligned with human values…from technical models of agency to the strategic landscape, and everything in between,” the website states.

Musk’s previous statements on Optimus declared the bot would be ready by the end of this year, and for sale by the end of 2025. Musk has said he expects Optimus to be priced somewhere between $20,000 to $30,000 per robot.

A first generation version of Tesla’s Optimus robot, dubbed Bumblebee, was released in September 2022. A video of the Optimus 2.0 was released by Tesla earlier this year folding a T-shirt at the firm's facility.

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Humanoid robots have been in development for several years by Japan's Honda and Hyundai Motor's Boston Dynamics, which showed off its ‘Altas’ robot in February, moving vertically placed objects from one box and putting them in a horizontal position in another.

Earlier this month, luxury automaker BMW showcased a clip of its ‘01’ humanoid robot produced by the robotics startup Figure, getting ready for a job assembling cars at BMW’s plant in South Carolina.

The manufacturing, warehouse, and logistics sectors are banking on human-like bots to help meet predicted labor shortages in the next decade with their ability to perform repetitive tasks that are deemed dangerous or tedious for human workers.

Co-founder & Chief Investment Officer at Brilliant Advice and X user Cern Basher, commenting on Musk's exchange on X, laid out 32 reasons why humanoid robots are advantageous to companies, asking questions such as "If you could buy a machine that could save you 615,000 over ten years, what would you pay today?"

Claiming that humanoid robots could eventually be employed for as little as $40 a day, reasons highlighted by Basher include; bots never getting sick, no need for healthcare or retirement benefits, elimination of workplace harassment, politics, or discrimination, and finally bots are 'happy' to work 24/7.

The future is coming fast!https://t.co/VatUI8EC98

undefined Cern Basher (@CernBasher) July 22, 2024

In recent months, Musk has pivoted his focus to artificial intelligence, autonomous driving software, robotaxis, and the Optimus robot amid tapering demand for EVs, which make up more than 80% of Tesla's quarterly revenue, according to Reuters.

Currently, Tesla has eight major EV manufacturing plants located around the world including in California, Texas, Nevada, New York, Shanghai, Germany, and the UK. The tech mogul did not specify if Optimus would be employed in several or all of Tesla's factories.

Originally based in California, Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters to Austin, Texas in 2021, although the electric car company’s engineering division is still located in the west coast state.