Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robotic was first introduced by the EV maker on the AI Day occasion in August 2021, which implies it’s going to quickly be two years previous.

So when will or not it’s in the stores? Effectively, it is nonetheless too quickly to speak about that, as improvement of the robotic continues to be within the early levels. The Tesla Bot was proven in a video in Could strolling and selecting up stuff, and that was just about every thing it was in a position to do on the time.

On Tesla’s Q2 2023 earnings name yesterday, a retail investor requested for an replace on the progress of the robotic’s capabilities and requested data on what number of Optimus robots the corporate has made thus far.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk joked that 10 million Optimus robots had been energetic earlier than revealing the far much less spectacular actuality. “I believe we’re round 5 or 6 bots… But it surely’s type of – sure, there’s extra each month. There’s a number of fascinating issues concerning the Optimus bot,” Musk mentioned, in keeping with Looking for Alpha (through Teslarati).

He famous that Tesla has constructed a small variety of robots thus far principally as a result of the corporate has actuator provide points. Extra particularly, Tesla realized that there have been no off-the-shelf actuators that “labored nicely” for Optimus.

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In consequence, Tesla needed to design and construct the actuators itself. The actuator is a key part for robots because it creates movement by changing saved power into mechanical work. 

“So, we have really needed to design our personal actuators that combine the motor or the ability electronics, the controller, the sensors. And actually, each one among them is customized. After which, in fact, we’ll be utilizing the identical inference {hardware} because the automobile,” Elon Musk defined. He added that Tesla is designing these actuators for quantity manufacturing. 

“So, they don’t seem to be simply lighter, tighter, and extra succesful than some other actuators wherever that exists on the planet, but it surely’s additionally really manufacturable. So, we should always be capable to make them in quantity.”

Tesla’s head honcho mentioned the primary “type of manufacturing candidate actuators built-in and strolling needs to be round November-ish,” with a manufacturing ramp to observe shortly after that. 

Musk mentioned in Could that Optimus was “extraordinarily underrated” and had large potential for the corporate. He mentioned it will not be shocking if Tesla’s enterprise sooner or later is constructed on the again of its humanoid robotic, for which he predicted demand as excessive as 10 to twenty billion models.

In consequence, the robotic would far outnumber Tesla’s world automobile fleet, with which it shares the Full Self-Driving software program.