In short: Elon Musk has a lot faith in Tesla’s Optimus robot. Elon Musk believes that the Optimus robot will boost the valuation of Tesla into the trillions. He also expects to see thousands of these bots working in the factories of Tesla and other companies. The former Optimus team leader believes that these robots would not be suitable for repetitive, high-speed factory work.

Tesla announced in August 2021 that it was developing a bipedal humanoid robot that could perform tasks that humans find boring, repetitive or unsafe.

Since then, the robot has undergone a number of design changes, with improvements to speed, stability and weight, as well as balance.

Musk claimed last year that there would be at least one robot for every human in the world. He also said that Tesla would control a huge share of the market, pushing it to a value of $25 trillion. He said later that the robots will be used in Tesla factories to help build its vehicles, presumably lowering costs through replacing human workers.

Musk said last week

CNBC reported that Musk expects thousands Optimus robots to be working in Tesla factories before the end the year. He was confident that the company would be producing millions 5′ 8″ machines by 2030.

Musk is known for his optimistic timelines, as the Cybertruck demonstrated. The fact that these machines were remotely controlled at “We, Robot,” last December, when they served drinks to guests and even danced doesn’t inspire confidence.

Optimus seems to be controlled remotely… for the moment!

pic.twitter.com/L89fz8cnOM

– The Kilowatts i? 1/2-aA!i,A (@klwtts)

October 11, 2024 (

) Chris Walti, former team leader Optimus, has a different opinion from his former manager. He told

Business Insider states that humanoid robotics like Tesla’s are less effective in warehouses and manufacturing environments.

“It’s not a useful form factor. Most of the work that has to be done in industry is highly repetitive tasks where velocity is key,” Walti.

Walti has a reason to be pessimistic. He left Tesla in the year 2022 to start

Mytrais a company which makes slab-like robotics for transporting heavy loads in warehouses, using massive modular structures known as “cells.” According to him, these are much simpler forms than humanoids.

Walti said the wider range of movements in humanoid robots have led to engineering problems more difficult to solve than even self-driving cars. He added that robotics had not advanced enough to deploy humanoid robots properly.

Walti noted that the humanoid shape itself was a big part of the problem. Humans “evolved to escape wolves and bears. We weren’t designed to do repetitive tasks over and over again. So why would you take a hyper suboptimal system that really isn’t designed to do repetitive tasks and have it do repetitive tasks?”

Despite Walti’s concerns, more humanoid robots are finding their way into factories and warehouses. GXO Logistics signed a multi-year agreement with Agility Robotics last year to begin deploying Digit in its operations. Digit is the 5-foot 9-inch, 140-pound humanoid robot that Amazon first introduced into its warehouses in 2023.

GXO is also in the process of testing robots from Apptronik. In February, the robot maker announced a pilot partnership with American firm Jabil to test its Apollo humanoid robots. Jabil agreed to begin producing the robots in its factories, meaning that these robots could eventually be put to work building more of themselves.

In January last year, BMW announced that humanoid robots would begin working at its vehicle manufacturing plants, starting in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Some analysts believe that wide-scale deployment of humanoid robots in these industries will take place before the end of the decade. What that would mean for a segment that employs millions is unclear.