I second this. Is there anyone who actually believes Optimus is going to be a success and has any sort of data to back that up?

I'm not in robotics, but I look at humanoid robots and, while incredible examples of engineering know-how, they seem to be a long way from useful in commercial applications. Am I jhust ignorant of their true value? Seems like all I ever see them doing is parkour.

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londons_explore 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Optimus could do really well if they had all the smartest robotics engineers working on it...

But it seems that ~80% of the smart people I know refuse to work for Musk on principle, and the remaining 20% prefer to work somewhere that pays well (Musk companies do not).

End result is he has a team of mediocre engineers working on it which is why their demos appear years behind some competitors like Boston dynamics and Unitree.

I think the same is happening to Tesla cars (not much innovation in the last few years).

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jandrese 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Elon's hype level over Optimus practically off the charts. He has profit projections that have Optimus be effectively all of GDP in the future. Say what you want about Elon, but he does put his money where his mouth is and I believe he will try to manufacture robots. Also, the S and X models are old and their market segment is heavily saturated at this point so it makes sense for Tesla to exit those model lines.

Optimus is also a bit of a "squirrel!" for the market that he likes to talk about whenever sales figures at Tesla start flagging. Meme stocks only work as long as people still believe in infinite exponential growth.

	▲	zardo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Also, the S and X models are old and their market segment is heavily saturated at this point so it makes sense for Tesla to exit those model lines. Car companies typically invest in new models in the same segment in order to stay competitive with the other car companies.

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JKCalhoun 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is there any evidence there is any kind of market a humanoid robot at all?

(Regardless, from what I've seen, the Chinese will own this segment too.)

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spprashant 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Right. How many people actually want a remotely monitored robot collecting personal data, that will likely also require a hefty monthly subscription?

	▲	jimmydddd an hour ago \| parent [-]
		And he's talking about an eventual price point of $30K a robot. So a bit high for early adopter middle class folks who are just curious.

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SR2Z 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is some value in producing a lot of solid hardware, but nowhere even close to Tesla's absurd valuation.

I think they are perfectly capable of writing software to drive the robot - if Musk doesn't stick his head in like he did with LIDAR/FSD and impose some stupid requirement that handicaps the product.

	▲	jandrese 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		But the whole shtick with Optimus is that they aren't writing software. It's supposed to be all LLM training so when you buy your robot you can give it orders like "do the dishes", "clean the gutters", "dig a backyard pool for me", or "build me another Optimus" and you can go off to do whatever while it completes the task. Elon thinks it would be too expensive to have to write code for every task you might ask one of these to do, they want it to be fully autonomous. Their engineers aren't behind keyboards typing C++, they're wearing VR headsets and feeding the data to a LLM, although even that is probably too specific for Elon's long term plans. Obviously he doesn't want to have to have people repeat actions hundreds of times before the dumb robots figure it out. Especially for "simple" tasks like serving drinks at press events.
	▲	techblueberry 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		But how would we evaluate "perfectly capable" without evidence, there's just been no evidence they've done anything so far right? Am I missing something? I guess looking closer it was only announced four years ago. But it seems like it's only been smoke and mirrors so far.