Tesla CEO Elon Musk Considers Building Replica Of TARS From Interstellar In Addition To Optimus: 'Would Be So Cute'
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk on Friday teased making a robot resembling TARS from the Christopher Nolan movie Interstellar, in addition to its humanoid robot Optimus.
What Happened: “Maybe Tesla should built it. Would be so cute,” Musk wrote on X. The CEO was responding to a video of a functional, walking TARS replica.
Musk is currently attempting to make Tesla a robotics, AI, and sustainable energy company in addition to an automaker with an increased push toward diverse fields such as robotics, energy storage, and autonomous driving. The company is already developing a humanoid robot by the name of Optimus.
Optimus, however, is very different from TARS. While the fictional robot has a cuboidal structure with moving cuboidal parts, Optimus resembles a human with moving hands capable of performing tasks around a factory.
Two Optimus bots are currently employed in Tesla's Fremont factory, taking cells off the end of the production line and placing them in containers, Musk confirmed in early June.
Why It Matters: During Tesla's annual shareholder meeting in June, Musk said that there will be at least one humanoid robot for every person in the world in the future, implying a total humanoid robot population of at least 10 billion or more, of which the EV company will have a significant share.
“While autonomous vehicle is a $5-$7 trillion market cap situation, Optimus is a $25 trillion market cap situation,” Musk, who is known to over-hype his company’s products, then said. The CEO himself admitted that he is “pathologically optimistic” but delivers in the end.
Following a major hardware revision by the end of this year or early next year, Tesla expects to commence limited production of the Optimus to work in its factories and test its capabilities, the CEO added.
Tesla also plans to unveil its dedicated robotaxi product on Aug. 8. The CEO, in April, said that dedicating to autonomous driving is a “blindly obvious move” for Tesla.
“Even if I got kidnapped by aliens tomorrow, Tesla will solve autonomy, maybe a little slower, but it would solve autonomy for vehicles at least,” Musk said at the company's first-quarter earnings call. “If somebody doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company.”
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