Tesla’s Optimus robots are going to be late to work. In a tweet Monday, Elon Musk wrote, “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.”
That’s yet another delay for the much-heralded robotic devices. In April, Musk had boasted that Optimus devices would be working in Tesla factories by the end of 2024 and deliveries to other companies would begin in 2025.
The Optimus line has a bumpy history. Musk declared his intention to make a Tesla robot in 2021 alongside a human in a skintight outfit who did an odd dance on stage. While the company has managed to make progress from that point, controversy has followed it.
Earlier this year, Musk posted a video that purported to show the Optimus folding laundry, but close observers noticed the robot wasn’t doing the work on its own, but rather a person was using teleoperation almost just outside the frame, in an attempt to make it seem the robot was more advanced than it was.
Musk, of course, has a long track record of overpromising, especially when it comes to dates and setting deadlines that are unreasonable. In 2014, for instance, he said he was hopeful the first people would be going to Mars in 10 to 12 years. In 2016, he talked of autonomous vehicles driving from Los Angeles to New York within the next two years. In 2019, he said Tesla would have “over a million robotaxis on the road” by the following year. (The product has yet to be unveiled.) The Cybertruck was delayed several times, as well. And in March 2020, he predicted the U.S. would be “close to zero new [COVID-19] cases…by end of April.”
