Is Elon Musk hurting Tesla? (Mod Note Post #1)

Right don't get me wrong here - I certainly understand the utility of all kinds of robots in various industries. I'm asking about Optimus specifically, which seems far too generalist to be of any use to anything.

For example Amazon has been doing a tonne in robotics too, and they're smart enough to understand that you design a robot for a specific purpose, not to try and do everything. The amount of automation they have is astounding, but every single robot is purpose-built and does one job extremely well:

And then on the other side you have Optimus, which is mimicking human form when human bodies are an extremely flawed design for so many of our regular tasks.

Like take the example we've seen Optimus do in the past, which is bar-tending. Does it make sense to replace a human bartender with a human-shaped robot bartender? If you're doing so in order to improve efficiency, is that not still deeply inefficient? If you're chasing efficiency does it not make more sense to replace the bar with something largely invisible to customers that serves them drinks?

To flip the example, there are already automated pizza vending machines (I believe there's even one in Dublin) that will decorate and cook a pizza inside of a vending machine and then deliver it to you. The Optimus supposition seems to be — wouldn't it be better if a human-shaped robot prepared the pizza in front of you*?

To me it's very similar to the thing we keep telling people about adopting electric cars - where you have to change how you think about "fuelling" and adopt a different mental model. Robotics is similar, it doesn't make a tonne of sense to replace humans with human-form robots in the majority of cases — instead it requires a different mental model to understand how completing a specific task might be better suited to a very different form.

*Side-note from above: I think if people would prefer a human-shaped robot then they're also going to vastly prefer an actual human doing it. Same in the bartender example, you either care about authenticity and want a real human serving you, or you just want your drinks in which case a kind of vending machine would be fine.

Nah I think if people are reluctant to change, they’re less likely to accept human-form robots.

Like I genuinely believe a big part of the reason robo-vacuums and lawn mowers have become relatively widely popular is because they resemble little animals. They’re non-threatening, and very far from the uncanny valley.

And going back to my previous point, they’re also perfectly designed for their tasks - they can fit under and into narrow spaces in a way a human (or a human-form robot) with a vacuum couldn’t.
They also take up minimal space in our smaller houses, in a way a human form robot wouldn’t.

I agree - I just don’t see where the numbers are going to come from.
the single best use of a robot today in a residential environment is a Roomba vacuum with lidar (or equivalent), and they do a great job.

The notion that Optimus can meet me in the driveway and bring in my shopping and unpack it into the correct places is genuine fancy, and even if it’s possible, it will be disproportionately expensive, easily $30-40k per unit would be my terrible guess.

Bear in mind that Boston dynamics have done this for years, and have only found military uses, as they’re the ones with the budget

Related to the above, even if Optimus does manage to eventually find use with lifting boxes or stacking shelves, Amazon is already there, and I believe they're planning to hit a cost per-robot of $30-40k by 2027.

And this is a company that has a very real internal use-case for making those robots, and making them as cheaply as possible. AND they're clearly specifically designed for the task that they perform, they're not quite humanoid, which makes them more useful at lifting and carrying loads.

Tesla is building Optimus with basically no corporate clients in line for usage yet. I just don't understand their "it's for everyone" approach, other than part of yet another bit of Musk stock-juicing bluster.

Would be a very expensive mine clearance machine. And pretty ineffective. Literally too small a footprint.

Would be better as an offensive weapon.

Musk said he expects it to cost “$20-30k”, so assuming he’s lying (which he is), and the early Founders version will be in matte grey or whatever - would you pay $40,000 for one?

The market for Optimus as a consumer product is genuinely tiny, even if we all might want one.

There is no single task that any of us would use it for the justify the price, which make it a toy really - and ultimately probably an inconvenience.