Elon Musk shares "dangerous" Optimus plans, reveals "perverse" Telsa self-driving feature
Billionaire has plans to make Tesla robots' working life even more "hardcore" than his own 100-hour weeks.
When will you be able to check your emails safely whilst speeding down the freeway in a Tesla? And what on Earth is that weird looking humanoid robot Optimus going to do once it finally leaves the factory in large numbers?
Those are two of the questions the ever-quotable Elon Musk answered at a Tesla earnings call, where his company reported quarterly revenue of $25.7 billion - up just 2% from a year ago.
Starting by answering a question about Optimus, Musk revealed that there is "a lot of uncertainty on the exact timing because it's not like a train arriving at the station".
"We are designing the train at the station and in real time while also building the tracks," he added. "And so, they'll be like, why didn't the train arrive exactly at 12:05? And like we're designing the train and the tracks in the station in real-time while like how can we predict this thing with absolute precision? It's impossible."
Tesla plans to build roughly 10,000 Optimus robots this year, but will "probably" miss this target. However, Musk did say several thousand Optimus robots would be "doing useful things" by the end of 2025.
"It doesn't take very many years before we're making 100 million of these things a year if you go up by let's say, a factor by 5x per year," he said.
What will Tesla Optimus be able to do?
Pity the poor robots that Musk employs because they will experience a working life even more "extremely hardcore" than his own, which involves 100-hour weeks and a level of productivity few other humans could sustain.
He said: "There's a ton of boring jobs, tedious jobs, slightly dangerous jobs. We expect to use Optimus for those tasks at our factories."
That includes jobs like loading the hoppers on production lines and transporting pieces of sheet metal to the robotic welders, as well as "dangerous repetitive testing no humans want to do".
When will Tesla self-driving be available?
On the earnings call, analyst Pierre Ferragu also asked when he would be able to check his emails or text messages at the wheel of a Telsa.
Musk revealed that full self-driving robotaxis would be tested in Austin, Texas, starting in June 2025, before revealing details of a situation in which Tesla drivers turn off their current limited autonomous capabilities to check their messages without having the computers in the car nag them into behaving properly.
"We need to be very confident that the probability of injury is low before we are able to check their email and text messages," Musk said. "In fact, right now, we're in this situation where people will actually go to manual driving to check their text messages so the computer doesn't help them and then put it back on autonomous mode once they've checked the text messages, which is, significantly, honestly less safe."
He added: "We're in this perverse situation where [drivers] will turn the car off autopilot [and] check the text messages while steering the car with their knee and not looking out the window."
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